Physical Load

Physical Load

What you carry weighs on you.

A tool in your hand, armour on your body and a full bag all add to your burden.
Moving with that load takes effort. Sustained effort wears you down, and putting
the bag down does not make the fatigue you have already built up disappear.
To find out what something weighs, craft a steelyard and take a reading.

Beta: This is an early public build. The weight and effort systems work,
but full lifting limits are still being developed: very heavy items can still
enter your inventory. Item masses, effort coefficients and instrument tolerances
include estimates and can be adjusted. Please report problems in the comments.

Weight

• Everything you carry adds up. Stacks, armour, your other hand, items on the cursor and the personal crafting grid are counted.
• Containers include their contents. A loaded shulker box or bundle weighs more than an empty one. Containers inside containers are counted too.
• Where you carry it matters. Hand-held, worn and supported loads contribute differently to effort. Moving an item changes its support, not its mass.
• Blocks keep their scale. A full solid material block represents about one cubic metre. A stone block is 2,700 kg; a stone slab is 1,350 kg. Small objects and hollow containers have their own estimates.

Effort and rest

Walking, sprinting, climbing, swimming and mining contribute to effort. Sustained
effort builds short-term strain and longer-term fatigue. Rest lets them ease;
a tired player may have to stop sprinting before starting again.

Fatigue is saved with the player. There is no permanent load counter in the
corner of the screen, and ordinary item tooltips do not reveal the weight.

Weighing

• Hand Steelyard — up to 20 kg. Hold the steelyard in your main hand and the load in your other hand, then use it. Crafted from 1 iron ingot, 2 iron nuggets and 1 stick.
• Standing Steelyard — up to 100 kg. Craft it from 4 iron ingots, 2 chains and 3 sticks, place it on solid ground, then right-click it while holding the load. Breaking and replacing it keeps its calibration. If its support is removed, it drops as an item.
• The whole load is weighed. A container’s own body, its contents and any retained water are included. There is no automatic tare subtraction.
• A reading has limits. The instruments have graduations and their own persistent calibration error. Readings are approximate. Beyond an instrument’s capacity there is no reading; neither instrument can weigh a load above 100 kg.

Wet clothing

With Wetting & Drying installed, absorbent clothing takes up water in rain
or when submerged, and that water adds weight. Shallow water can wet your boots
while your headgear stays dry. Outer layers reduce the rain reaching inner ones;
drying gradually removes the retained water.

Exposed dropped clothing is updated too. Water already inside packed clothing
is still counted. Removing Wetting & Drying stops new wetting and drying, without
deleting water the items already hold.

Works with

Both optional. Physical Load works with the vanilla inventory and without any other gameplay mod.

• Realistic Inventory Plus: worn clothing, pockets, belts, back straps, pouches and backpacks contribute their weight and support.
• Wetting & Drying: provides the weather used by the clothing-water integration.

Installation and configuration

Minecraft 1.21.1, Java 21, with NeoForge or Fabric. Install the matching
file on both client and server. The Fabric file includes the API modules it needs;
a separate Fabric API installation is not required.

Server settings are in config/physical-load-server.json. Weight definitions
can be changed with data packs. The reference body mass defaults to 75 kg.
The experimental force-based jump limit is off until a force profile is configured.

For operators, /physical_load status and /physical_load held show the calculation;
/physical_load audit exports the item definitions and /physical_load profile
checks inventory calculation cost.

Modpacks

Physical Load may be included in modpacks distributed through CurseForge or
Modrinth, including packs that earn revenue.

AI Usage

The code, textures and models of this mod were made with the help of AI. The idea, design and all gameplay decisions are mine, and everything was tested by hand.

If you’d like to support the mod, you can buy me a tea ☕