Evolving Furnaces

Evolving Furnaces lets you upgrade vanilla Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, Smokers, and Brewing Stands into stronger machines. Start from a normal furnace or brewing stand, turn it into Copper, then keep evolving it through Amethyst, Iron, Lapis, Redstone, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, Obsidian, and Netherite.

Vanilla machines stay vanilla until you upgrade them. Each type keeps its own recipes, fuel behavior, and base speed. Higher tiers process faster, handle more items (or potions) at once, and change appearance using the textures of their material.

From Copper onward, cooking machines can also install an energy module. A Furnace can become a Generator and burn fuel into Forge Energy, or go Electric and cook without fuel. Blast Furnaces and Smokers can go Electric. Brewing Stands stay potion-only. Shift-click the installed module to remove it and go back to a normal furnace.

Getting Started

Place a vanilla Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, or Brewing Stand, open its GUI, and click the Upgrade button. The first upgrade costs 8 Copper Blocks and 2 experience levels, and turns the machine into its Copper tier.

From there, keep using it. Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, and Smokers gain progress as items finish cooking. Brewing Stands gain progress from potions actually produced. When you have done enough work, gather the next material and experience cost, then upgrade again. Contents, fuel, cycle progress, energy module, and progression are kept.

On Copper and above, Furnaces also get Generator and Electric buttons. Blast Furnaces and Smokers get Electric only. Vanilla GUIs never show those buttons. Hold Shift and click the other module to swap, or Shift-click the installed one to remove it. There is no refund.

The Info panel shows the current tier, process time, batch size, remaining progress, installed energy module, and the next upgrade cost without leaving the GUI. Installed modules also add an energy bar in the machine GUI.

Key Features

• Vanilla-first: Furnaces, Blast Furnaces, Smokers, and Brewing Stands are not replaced. You upgrade them when you are ready.
• 10 default tiers: Copper to Netherite, with a new look at every step.
• Usage-based progression: Furnaces need to cook a certain number of items. Brewing Stands need to produce a certain number of potions.
• Faster processing: Each tier reduces cycle time. Blast Furnaces and Smokers stay twice as fast as Furnaces.
• Batch cooking: Higher furnace tiers cook several items in a single cycle. Fuel is still consumed per tick, not per item in the batch.
• Batch brewing: Higher brewing tiers hold several potions per bottle slot. One cycle can brew all three slots. Ingredient cost is the largest brewable stack (8-7-4 consumes 8, 3-2-0 consumes 3). Fuel stays one Blaze Powder charge per cycle.
• Energy modules: From Copper onward, cooking machines can install one module. The choice is kept when you upgrade the tier. Hold Shift to swap to the other module, or Shift-click the installed module to remove it. There is no refund. Brewing Stands cannot install modules.
• Generator: Furnaces only. Stops cooking and burns fuel into Forge Energy. Burns up to batch_size fuel items at a time (1 for buckets), 4× faster than vanilla burn time. Generation is not multiplied by batch. The front goes dark when the buffer is full. A generator furnace no longer gains cook progress.
• Electric: Furnace, Blast Furnace, and Smoker. Same recipes, cook time, and batch size, but no fuel. Cooking pauses when the buffer cannot pay the consume rate. Progression still counts cooked items. Each kind has its own front overlay.
• Upgrade costs: Each upgrade spends materials from your inventory (main, hotbar, and offhand) plus experience levels.
• Info panel: Check stats, the installed module, and the next upgrade cost directly in the machine GUI.
• Configurable IO: Set each side to Input, Output, Fuel, Energy input, Energy output, or Disabled. Hoppers and other item pipes respect that config. Items never auto-eject. Generators auto-push FE from Energy faces. Energy input and output have their own IO icons. On brewing stands, fuel is Blaze Powder only.
• Custom visuals: Each furnace tier uses the source material's textures on the machine borders. Brewing stands fuse the material into the base plate. Generator and Electric replace the front overlay. Unused generator input/output slots and the electric fuel slot are covered in the GUI. The rest stays vanilla, so resource packs still apply.
• Data preservation: Upgrading keeps inventory, fuel, cycle progress, stored recipe XP, facing, name, IO config, energy module, and progression.
• Recipe compatibility: Uses vanilla smelting, blasting, smoking, and brewing, including recipes added by other mods or datapacks.
• JEI, EMI, and REI: Browse every enabled tier, compare stats, and see upgrade costs. Separate Generator Upgrades and Electric Upgrades categories show install cost, generate or consume rate, and capacity. In JEI, furnaces and upgrade items inside the category are real slots. Jade shows the styled machine name, the active module, and stored FE.
• Per-machine config: Each machine type and each energy module can be enabled or disabled in evolvingfurnaces-common.toml. Disabling a machine hides it from creative and recipe viewers, removes the vanilla upgrade button, and converts already placed Evolving blocks of that type back to vanilla (contents kept). Disabling a module hides its button, strips already installed modules of that type, and stops cables from inserting or extracting FE for it.
• Fully data-driven: Tiers, stats, costs, visuals, display names, progression, and energy values can all be changed with JSON datapacks.
• Lightweight by design: Throughput comes from batch size, not from processing many items in a single server tick.

Default Tiers

Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, and Brewing Stand each have their own progression. The default material path is the same for all four:

• Copper
• Amethyst
• Iron
• Lapis Lazuli
• Redstone
• Gold
• Diamond
• Emerald
• Obsidian
• Netherite

Default Furnace stats:

Blast Furnaces and Smokers use the same batch sizes, but cook twice as fast. A Netherite Furnace cooks 8 items in 5.5 seconds. A Netherite Blast Furnace or Smoker does the same in 2.75 seconds.

Default Brewing Stand stats. Batch is potions per bottle slot, so Netherite can brew 24 potions in one cycle:

Breaking an upgraded machine drops the machine at its current tier. Items inside drop separately, like vanilla.

Energy Modules

Furnace, Blast Furnace, and Smoker can install one energy module from Copper onward. Installing a module spends materials and XP from your inventory, ejects items from slots the module no longer uses, and resets IO to that module's defaults. Unused generator input/output slots and the electric fuel slot are covered in the GUI, so a resource pack that recolors the furnace GUI stays consistent.

Hold Shift and click the other module to swap. Shift-click the installed module to remove it and go back to cooking with fuel. There is no refund either way.

Default install costs:

• Generator: 8 Coal Blocks and 15 experience levels. Furnaces only.
• Electric: 8 Redstone Comparators and 15 experience levels. Furnace, Blast Furnace, and Smoker.

Default IO after install (you can still reconfigure):

• Electric: Input, Output, Energy input, or Disabled (no Fuel). Top is input. Bottom is output. Sides are energy input. Cables can insert FE on Energy and Input faces.

• Generator: Fuel, Energy output, or Disabled. Top is fuel. Bottom and sides are energy output. FE is pushed automatically from Energy faces.

Energy input and output have their own IO icons. Both modules use Forge Energy (IEnergyStorage).

Default energy stats. Generator output is the JSON generate value divided by 4. Electric still consumes the JSON value:

Middle-click pick copies the tier and the installed module, not stored FE. Ctrl-pick uses the vanilla block-entity copy (energy included).

For Modpack Makers

Nothing is hardcoded around the default 10-tier path. A datapack can define 5 tiers, 50, or 135.

Each machine type has its own JSON file. You can change:

• Number of tiers and their order
• Display names per language
• Cook time or brew time, and batch size
• Required items cooked, or potions produced, to unlock the next upgrade
• Upgrade materials, including item tags
• Experience level cost
• Visual style block and texture face
• Energy capacity, generate rate, and consume rate per tier
• Generator and Electric install costs

Furnace, Blast Furnace, and Smoker use required_cooks and cook_time. Brewing Stands use required_brews and brew_time.

Energy fields live on the cooking-machine files. generator_cost and electric_cost sit next to levels. In-game generator output is energy_generate / 4 (fuel also burns 4× faster). Electric consumes energy_consume per cook tick. The Generator module is still Furnace-only even if other files define those fields.

A datapack replaces the full list for that machine. /reload updates the server and syncs the new tiers to clients, GUIs, tooltips, and recipe viewers.

Each machine and each energy module can also be turned off in the common config. A datapack cannot re-enable a machine or module disabled there.

Compatibility

Required: Minecraft 1.21.1 + NeoForge, or Minecraft 1.20.1 + Forge

Optional: JEI, EMI, REI, Jade

Evolving Furnaces currently supports the Furnace, Blast Furnace, Smoker, and Brewing Stand. Generator and Electric use Forge Energy and work with any cable or machine that exposes IEnergyStorage.