Your character. Your gear. Your adventure.

That pickaxe you keep repairing? It should get better with use. Your favorite sword should have a history. And your dog should get to be part of the adventure.

Skilling Overhaul brings lasting RPG progression to everyday Minecraft survival. Train skills by playing, shape your character, grow attached to your equipment, and head into increasingly dangerous territory with a companion at your side.

The idea is to make the Minecraft you already enjoy feel deeper. Familiar tools, armor, creatures, and activities gain new purpose, without burying the game under piles of replacement items.

Why?

This mod is a bit of a passion project for me. I made the Skilling Overhaul mod because I could never quite find the right combination of mods for the Minecraft adventure I wanted.

I wanted tools worth keeping that got better as I used them. Equipment with a history that I could get attached to. Pets that could grow stronger. An end-game setup that reflects the time I've put into my world, not just a lucky dungeon chest or a good seed. In short I wanted to feel the progression in my worlds in more ways than just the familiarity of my caves, the size of my builds, or how complicated and vast I could make my storage room.

Finding something great should still matter, but for a game that I have personally spent thousands of hours in and literally grown up alongside, I understand that the really great things are made through time and care. That's the adventure I wanted to build; where your equipment, companions, and character clearly show the story of everything you've been through together.

Play your way. Grow your character.

Mining, building, farming, fighting (and so much more) all contribute to your player level. As you level up, you earn stat points and choose where your strengths lie.

Build a tougher adventurer with Constitution, hit harder with Strength, or move faster with Dexterity. Intelligence improves your brewing and enchanting, Wisdom helps you learn, and Luck nudges the RNG a little more in your favor.

Thirteen skills to make your own

Each skill grows through use, with bonuses and milestones along the way. Better equipment and recipes give you something to work toward, while familiar tasks become more rewarding.

• Mining: Work through stone and valuable ores, unlock better pickaxes, and become a more capable miner.
• Excavation: Dig soil, sand, and gravel, to uncover useful supplies and rare treasures. Your chances of finding interesting items improve as you level up.
• Woodcutting: Cut trees, unlock better axes, and get more from your time as both your skill and axe improves.
• Building: Improve your reach as you build, making bigger projects a little easier to tackle. Every block you place steadily grows your skill. As your building skill improves, get more space to hold the basics. Shift+E opens dedicated block storage that grows to 54 slots, with eligible block stacks reaching 256 in supported personal inventories.
• Farming: Prepare your fields, harvest crops, as you work toward better tools and better harvests.
• Crafting: Bringing progression to crafting in a way that doesn't force you to relearn the game. Your skill improves the materials you can work with, and the quality of the results, not the recipes themselves.
• Fishing: Fish like a pro to improve your chances of bonus rewards and how fast the fish will bite.
• Alchemistry: Brew longer-lasting and more potent potions to prepare for whatever comes next. The more you experiment, the less you'll suffer from negative effects and the better your potions will get.
• Enchanting: Improve your enchantments and get more value from the new enchantment shrines that can appear mysteriously across the map.
• Melee: Master close combat and unlock new weapon materials and styles (pairs best with Better Combat and Weapons Expanded).
• Ranged: Develop your arrow-slinging skills and take down your foes before they know what hit them as you work toward Todd's vision of the perfect adventurer…
• Defense: Grow tougher through combat and unlock stronger armor, making use of the new Armor Tier system to bring a new level of granularity to your options for staying alive.
• Friendship: Befriend all the mobs! Grow alongside your chosen companion! Enjoy the experience of better control for combat and exploration! Cry when they die! Rejoice when you earn enough to resurrect them! Friendship!

Equipment worth keeping

Weapons, tools, fishing rods, and armor have their own progression, with up to 1,000 item levels. Weapons become more formidable, tools work more efficiently, and armor grows tougher. Milestones bring extra improvements, and experienced equipment can earn a custom name and [Unique] identity that really makes it yours.

Repairing should feel like taking care of a favorite item, not starting over. Combine matching unenchanted equipment in a crafting grid while preserving the more experienced item's progression and quality. Enchanted gear can be repaired at an anvil or shrine.

There's even an optional critical-durability warning to catch you before that long mining session costs you your favorite pickaxe.

Craft something special

Crafted equipment can gain workmanship qualities ranging from Novice through Apprentice, Journeyman, Masterwork, Heroic, Legendary, and the exceptionally rare Godlike.

These qualities improve the item's stats, giving every worthwhile craft the possibility of something special. As your Crafting skill improves, so do your opportunities to produce exceptional gear.

Armor has another path forward with reinforcement tiers. Upgrade a piece by utilizing increasingly valuable materials, changing its trim and strengthening its protection without losing its identity or earned progress. Upgrades can also improve its workmanship.

Fully reinforced armor opens up prestige set bonuses. Build a matching prestige set to meet specific environments and plans, if you need that little bit of extra capability, such as fall protection, underwater exploration, night vision, fire resistance, longer-lasting potion effects, or light you don't have to hold. You can even stop Endermen from taking offense when you stare… deeply… and… passionately?… into their eyes.

Earn and Spend

Start with a Coin Pouch, earn money from hostile mobs and trading, and let the pouch handle your coins without filling your inventory. Smaller denominations automatically combine as your balance grows.

Villagers and wandering traders use coins, while emeralds remain something you can sell. Village loot is tuned more finely so finding a village is still a welcome opportunity, just not the completion of your survival progression.

Player-to-Player trading has also been added. Right-click another player with your Coin Pouch to offer items and coins, then review and confirm the exchange.

Out in the world, discover enchantment shrines: weathered pillar structures with glowing Soul Lanterns and signs offering services for coins. Purchase enchantments, repair treasured equipment, or bring a fallen companion back to your side. Their ruined stone and desert variants fit naturally into the landscape.

The world opens as you grow

Begin in a small starting region with basic enemies. Player milestones expand the shared world border, opening new territory with new threats. Eventually, the full world becomes yours to explore.

Danger belongs to the place, not your latest level-up. Your starting area stays familiar as you grow, while venturing farther out brings stronger enemies, better rewards, and nightly champions in boss zones.

The zone display changes color as you head beyond your suggested difficulty. You can turn back, prepare a little more, or find out whether that new sword is as good as you think it is.

In multiplayer, world expansion is shared. One player's milestone can open the next adventure for everyone.

Bring a friend

Build trust with creatures and turn them into named companions. Wolves and cats are only the beginning: the growing roster includes farm animals, mounts, birds, aquatic creatures, and some… less obvious friends.

Choose whether your active companion should Follow, Defend, Hunt, or Wait. Adventure together, feed them, and help them grow through their own levels, stats, and prestige. Their progress also trains your Friendship skill, and a stronger bond helps them develop further.

Individual stat and growth differences give each companion a little personality. Species bonuses add more reasons to try different partners, from a wolf's hunting strength to a parrot's warnings or a turtle helping maintain your armor.

Companion tags, recall controls, friendly-fire protection, and shrine resurrection help you keep that relationship going. This is meant to be a friend you take with you, not one that you have to worry about constantly.

Configurable HUD

Press G for the full Skilling menu: allocate stats, browse skills, and see upcoming unlocks. Toggle the RPG HUD with Ctrl+G.

Choose which details stay on screen, including your level, zone, equipment, recently trained skill, coins, and companion health and/or XP. Drag the HUD where you want it, adjust its appearance, and choose where XP popups appear.

Compact tooltips keep everyday inventory use readable. Hold Shift for more information, or use /rpg helditem for a detailed equipment breakdown. Floating XP and short level-up chimes make progress noticeable without constantly interrupting play.

Requirements

Minecraft Java Edition 26.2 · Fabric or NeoForge · Required on both client and server

Choose the mod file and libraries for your loader.

A fresh world is recommended for the intended progression. Back up existing worlds before installing or updating: Caefer’s Skilling Overhaul changes the world border, spawning, trading, and equipment. Existing Fabric RPG progression is not automatically converted to NeoForge when switching loaders.

Optional integrations

Optional support includes:

• Better Combat and Weapons Expanded — combat and equipment compatibility.
• Farmer’s Delight — Farming XP for supported crops and harvestables.
• Goblin Traders — coin-based trading.
• Mob Champions and Friends & Foes — zone encounters.
• CTOV and Lootr — tuning for supported village loot tables.
• Waystones — integration at shrines and villages.

These mods are optional and require compatible releases for your Minecraft version and loader. Not every integration has been verified on both loaders.

Other mob mods may require additional support: currently, unrecognized modded hostiles are excluded from ordinary Overworld spawning.

Still growing

Caefer's Skilling Overhaul is still new and I am continuing to work on updates and bug fixes. If you have a suggestion, feel free to leave a comment.

Find a bug? Please, include your mod versions, mod list, relevant log, and what happened when reporting it.