⚠️ Early Release · Active Development This mod is evolving quickly. Expect rough edges, expect changes, and back up your worlds. Bug reports and feedback are welcome and genuinely shape where it goes next.
💽 Required on both client and server. Shard's Factions adds custom content (the Obelisk block), so it must be installed on the client and the server. It is not a server-only drop-in.
🚫 Not affiliated with "Factions." This is an original NeoForge mod — in no way affiliated with, derived from, or compatible with the Bukkit/Spigot Factions plugin or any of its forks. The shared word "factions" describes the genre, nothing more.
A protected claim is immune to hand tools and automated miners. Non-members cannot break or place a single block inside it. The only way through claimed terrain is explosives.
This isn't an oversight — it's the whole design. Ground troops cannot crack a fortified base; cracking it takes ordnance. Defenders dig in and fortify; attackers must mount a real siege. Every other rule in the mod serves that fantasy.
Found a faction, invite members, and run a three-rank hierarchy — Owner, Officer, Member — with permission gates on each command. Ownership transfers but is never vacant, and a faction ends only by deliberate disband, never by emptying out.
Membership is invite-gated: in a PvP mod, an uninvited join is a spy who can build and break inside your walls.
Claim chunks against a power budget that scales with faction size. Power is combat-driven — win fights and your faction holds its ground; lose fights and your power bleeds until your territory is overextended.
A stronger faction can then overclaim a beaten rival's land, peeling it chunk by chunk — but overclaiming is self-limiting: every chunk taken raises your own commitment, so you can't strip a rival bare without overextending yourself.
Explosives strip a base's defenses. Sustained combat dominance is what lets you take and hold the ground.
A faction's protection hinges on a single placed block: the Obelisk. While it stands, your claims are protected.
It is the one block in your territory that anyone can break — by hand, tool, or explosive — but automation cannot touch, keeping its destruction a deliberate act at the climax of a raid. Destroy an enemy's Obelisk and their land falls unprotected; their online members are warned the walls are down.
Re-protecting means placing a new one — possible immediately, buying a besieged faction a desperate window to repel attackers before their land is overclaimed.
Admins can carve out permanently protected areas:
| Zone | Blocks | PvP | Explosions |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAFEZONE | Protected | ❌ Off | 💥 Immune |
| WARZONE | Protected | ✅ Live | 💥 Immune |
A SAFEZONE is ideal for spawn — fully locked down. A WARZONE keeps PvP live as a buffer between the safe core and the open world. System zones never expire, never become overclaimable, and use no Obelisk.
Uses NeoForge's native permission system — works standalone out of the box, no permission manager required. LuckPerms or any other manager plugs in automatically if present to grant or revoke nodes. No hard dependency.
Built for explosive-heavy modpacks. A separate companion mod, Shard's Factions — Ballistix Compat, teaches Ballistix's larger warheads to breach player claims correctly while leaving system zones immune.
Server-side authoritative for all faction data — factions, claims, roles, power, and Obelisk bindings persist across restarts. No external database required.
On the roadmap — not in the current release:
