Sus Archaeology

Sus Archaeology

Everything is suspicious now.

Sus Archaeology is a NeoForge 1.21.1 overhaul of Minecraft’s archaeology system. It does not stop at a few extra sand piles: it turns ordinary terrain, structures, ores, wood, copper, mobs, and even your own building materials into potential archaeological finds.

The mod is deliberately playful, but the systems are connected. The intent is to make players look at an ordinary stone wall, a villager, or a piece of copper and think, “What happens if I brush that?”

What the mod adds

138 suspicious blocks

The mod adds 138 brushable suspicious block variants. They cover stone, deepslate, dirt, grass, ores, logs, leaves, coral, terracotta, sandstone, mushrooms, copper, Nether and End materials, functional blocks, and structure blocks such as stone bricks and bookshelves.

Each suspicious block behaves like vanilla suspicious sand and gravel: brush it repeatedly, and it eventually turns back into its original block and drops archaeology loot. Because the block itself returns, brushing is an addition to mining rather than a replacement for it. You can brush an iron ore for raw iron, then mine the restored ore as usual.

The copper family includes the full waxed series: copper blocks, cut copper, chiseled copper, grates, and bulbs across all four oxidation levels. Copper grates render with cutout transparency, suspicious copper bulbs emit light level 15, and the suspicious dirt path is a proper 15-pixel-high block rather than a full cube.

Natural archaeology in new chunks

In newly generated chunks, natural blocks can be replaced by their suspicious counterparts. This is controlled by a configurable chance for every source block, so a world can have subtle archaeology or a much denser dig-site feeling.

Natural replacement is enabled by default but can be disabled. The server config also controls how many new chunks are processed per tick, keeping the work bounded on servers. Existing chunks are not retroactively rewritten.

Contextual and block-specific loot

Loot is not one generic pool. Suspicious blocks select loot from their context:

• Biome-specific tables for forests, deserts, badlands, oceans, caves, Nether biomes, and other regions.
• Structure-specific tables for villages, mineshafts, strongholds, trail ruins, ocean monuments, ocean ruins, woodland mansions, desert pyramids, jungle temples, igloos, ruined portals, shipwrecks, fortresses, bastions, End cities, swamp huts, pillager outposts, trial chambers, and Nether fossils.
• Fixed block-specific tables for ores and bookshelves. A suspicious iron ore always gives raw iron rather than a random biome item, and a suspicious bookshelf has a chance to contain an enchanted book.

Some examples:

• Suspicious iron ore: raw iron.
• Suspicious bookshelf: books, paper, and a chance of an enchanted book.
• Stronghold stone bricks: a chance of an ender eye.
• Trial chamber copper: wind charges, heavy cores, breeze rods, and ominous bottles.
• Ruined portal blocks: highly enchanted golden equipment, including Sharpness X and Efficiency X pieces.
• Suspicious coral: a chance of tropical fish.

The contextual loot system can be turned off in the config if a pack wants every suspicious block to use the default table.

Eight brush tiers

The mod adds eight brushes: feather, wood, stone, flint, iron, gold, diamond, and netherite. They have different durabilities and enchantability, and they use the normal brush interaction on both blocks and living entities. The brushes are also included in the standard c:tools/brush item tag for mod compatibility.

Brushes work on suspicious blocks and on entities. Brushing a living entity takes a short hold, consumes brush durability, and opens a separate entity archaeology table.

Entity archaeology

Living entities can be brushed once. Instead of simply reusing their death loot, the mod adds 16 themed entity archaeology categories: zombie, skeleton, wither skeleton, creeper, spider, enderman, villager, illager, witch, piglin, Nether, animal, aquatic, arthropod, golem, and a generic fallback.

Each category has its own loot identity. Zombies can yield rotten flesh, bones, nuggets, and rare iron; creepers can yield gunpowder and a creeper head; spiders can yield string and spider eyes; villagers can yield books and paper; illagers can yield emeralds and a rare totem; Endermen can yield ender pearls and eyes; aquatic mobs can yield fish and prismarine; and so on.

Suspicious spawners are another part of this system. When a spawner is converted into a suspicious spawner, its spawn data is preserved. Mobs spawned from it receive the hidden “Suspicious” name, and brushing those mobs uses the entity archaeology tables.

Suspicious dust coating

Suspicious dust lets players create their own archaeology. Right-click a normal block that has a suspicious variant with the dust to coat it. The conversion consumes one dust, has a short cooldown, preserves properties such as axis, layers, waterlogging, and facing where possible, and assigns the correct contextual or block-specific loot table.

Dust is obtained from archaeology itself, so suspicious blocks and entities feed back into the coating system. This makes archaeology renewable and gives players a reason to keep brushing even after they have seen most of the block list.

Visual progression and presentation

Many blocks use four dusted-stage textures instead of one fixed “cracked” texture. This includes terracotta, clay, mud, ice, stone, dirt, grass, sandstone, bone blocks, mushrooms, birch logs, copper, pumpkin, melon, and other low-contrast blocks. The result is a subtler, vanilla-like progression: a freshly placed suspicious block starts with a light layer of dust, and the texture becomes more disturbed as brushing progresses.

The mod includes English and Simplified Chinese localization.

Optional integrations

• Jade: suspicious entities display their hidden “Suspicious” name in the Jade overlay.
• JEI: an “Entity Archaeology” category shows the possible drops, quantity ranges, and weights for each supported entity. JEI is not required and the mod still starts normally without it.

What a player experiences

A new world feels familiar at first, but the ground is no longer completely trustworthy. Stone deposits, ores, dirt, trees, copper structures, village paths, and stronghold bricks can all hide a brushable variant. The player can:

1. Explore until they find suspicious blocks or a suspicious spawner.
2. Brush blocks for resources and themed loot, or brush a mob for entity archaeology.
3. Use suspicious dust to coat normal blocks and create new archaeology sites.
4. Hunt structure-specific rewards such as enchanted books, ender eyes, trial chamber materials, or highly enchanted ruined-portal gold.
5. Tune the system through the config if they want a light sprinkle of archaeology or a world where almost everything is suspect.

The mod changes the base game by giving ordinary blocks a second interaction and a second loot path. It is not a single new structure or a single new item; it is a configurable layer that changes how players evaluate the terrain around them.

Configuration

The server config includes:

• Toggle natural replacement in newly generated chunks.
• Per-source replacement chances, including disabling individual sources.
• Contextual loot toggle.
• Chunks processed per tick.

Pack authors and server owners can keep the full 138-block set while reducing the density for performance or balance.

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge
• No required external dependencies beyond NeoForge
• Jade and JEI are optional

Links

• Source code: https://github.com/EndingCrystal/susarchy
• Issue tracker: https://github.com/EndingCrystal/susarchy/issues

If you enjoy vanilla archaeology, collecting, structure hunting, or simply watching a ridiculous amount of the world become suspicious, Sus Archaeology is built to give that idea a full progression and a lot of replayable loot.