Voidworks is a NeoForge 1.21.1 expansion for Neo Tinkers built around deeper material progression, specialized equipment, and a dedicated transformation system that sits alongside normal Smeltery metallurgy.
Rather than treating progression as a straight ladder where every new material simply replaces the previous one, Voidworks is designed around strong identities, tradeoffs, and build specialization. Different materials excel at different jobs: some favor speed, some durability, some defense, some reach, some sustained combat, and some raw offense. The goal is to make material choice matter across an entire tool or armor build instead of reducing progression to “use the highest-tier metal.”
At the center of the mod is the Voidworks itself.
The Smeltery remains the place for conventional metallurgy and alloying. The Voidworks handles transformation. Using Molten Voidstone as fuel and a Stabilized Void Catalyst, existing materials can be pushed beyond their normal limits into Voidworked variants. These transformed materials exaggerate the defining identity of the base material, often dramatically, while introducing meaningful drawbacks so they remain specialized rather than universally superior.
A fast material becomes absurdly fast but more fragile. A defensive material becomes extremely tough but heavier and slower. A reach-focused material gains even more spatial utility while sacrificing durability. The Voidworks is not simply a second Smeltery; it is intended to feel like a separate, dangerous branch of progression.
Voidworks adds a large material roster covering early, mid, late, and endgame progression. Materials include Voltite, Gravium, Glimmerite, Cindersteel, Echolite, Starlight Steel, Chronium, Enderium, Sculkerite, Blood Iron, Infernal Bloodsteel, Wraithbone, Voidmetal, Proto-Voidsteel, Voidsteel, Aurelite, Empyrean Steel, Nullsteel, and multiple alloy and Voidworked variants.
Each material has its own gameplay identity.
Chronium specializes in extreme mining and attack speed.
Enderium focuses on spatial effects such as reach and blocking range, at the cost of durability.
Echolite is built around exceptional durability and resistance to durability loss while deliberately remaining mediocre in raw performance.
Starlight Steel favors armor and defensive applications.
Sculkerite adapts to repeated actions and combat patterns.
Blood Iron and Infernal Bloodsteel support aggressive combat builds with durability recovery during fighting.
Wraithbone provides additional upgrade capacity, but its bonus is intentionally nonstacking on a finished item.
Voidmetal acts as an amplifier, improving several aspects of a finished tool while increasing durability cost.
Voidsteel is the apex conventional Voidworks material, combining strong overall performance with an armor-penetrating Void Edge effect.
Voidworking expands many of these identities further. Void-Cobalt emphasizes extreme speed at the cost of durability. Void-Echolite pushes durability to unreasonable levels while sacrificing performance. Void-Enderium extends spatial reach much further while becoming extremely fragile. Void-Chronium becomes an extreme speed material with significant durability cost. Void-Manyullyn focuses heavily on offense. Void-Knightmetal becomes an exceptionally defensive but heavy material. Void-Aetherium, Void-Echosteel, Void-Skullyn, Void-Cobalite, and other variants continue the same philosophy of exaggerated specialization with real drawbacks.
The mod also introduces several new modular equipment types.
Heavy Armor provides a higher-cost, higher-defense armor system using dedicated plating, cores, lining, and trim. Different component materials allow the armor to be tuned toward toughness, durability, mobility, blocking, repair, utility, or other effects.
The Heavy Shield is an extremely defensive shield built from three Heavy Plates, a Tough Handle, and a trim component. Its large plating investment makes material choice especially important. It is intentionally cumbersome while blocking, although materials such as Chronium can help offset that penalty.
The Glaive is a two-handed polearm built for high damage, long reach, and slower attacks. It can block, uses ordinary Neo Tinkers Large Plates as part of its construction, and includes custom defensive interactions through Plate Guard.
Claws provide the opposite weapon profile: very fast attacks, low per-hit damage, and short reach. They are assembled from three normal Sword Blade components, Armor Trim, and Maille, with the three blades contributing to the weapon without simply tripling normal sword damage.
Voidworks also includes a separate holy or anti-Void progression branch.
Aurelite is produced through conventional Smeltery processing using Gold, Diamond, and Stardust. Aurelite is then combined with Starlight Steel and Netherite to create Empyrean Steel.
Empyrean Steel represents a stable, ordered endgame material and does not normally require the Voidworks.
Players who deliberately force Empyrean Steel through the Voidworks can instead create Nullsteel.
Nullsteel is intentionally unusual. Its raw statistics are not dramatically superior to other endgame materials. Its strength lies in its Last Covenant trait.
When worn armor containing Nullsteel would otherwise allow the player to suffer lethal damage, Last Covenant can activate if the qualifying armor pieces collectively have enough remaining durability. The effect reproduces the normal survival behavior of a Totem of Undying, but instead of consuming a Totem, it consumes a large amount of armor durability.
The durability cost is distributed across qualifying armor pieces based on their maximum durability. If one piece cannot contribute its share, the remaining cost is redistributed across the others. If the armor set cannot collectively pay the full required durability cost, Last Covenant does not activate.
Because Last Covenant is paid through durability rather than a cooldown, it can interact naturally with repair-focused builds. Infernal Bloodsteel is particularly useful here because worn armor containing Bloodforged can recover durability through combat, allowing players to build heavily around survivability if they are willing to dedicate enough component slots to it.
Nullsteel also has another major use: Molten Nullsteel can be cast over an Emerald to create a vanilla Totem of Undying, providing an expensive late-game alternate route for producing Totems.
Voidworking itself requires infrastructure and resources.
Molten Voidstone acts as the machine's fuel. Stabilized Void Catalysts provide limited charges, and actual Voidworking consumes those charges while ordinary remelting does not. Stabilized catalysts are deliberately expensive and Netherite-gated, making advanced transformations a meaningful resource investment rather than routine processing.
The mod includes custom molten fluids for its materials, casting support, remelting, world generation, advancements, material traits, and integration with recipe-viewer mods so Voidworks transformations can be inspected like other processing recipes.
Compatibility support is also included for several major combat and equipment mods.
Better Combat integration gives supported weapons appropriate attack behavior and animation profiles.
Epic Fight integration maps custom weapons into suitable weapon categories and movesets.
Apotheosis compatibility keeps custom gear classified appropriately within its equipment systems.
Neo Planner support allows Voidworks equipment to participate in material and tool planning alongside Neo Tinkers equipment.
Recipe-viewer integration exposes Voidworks transformations, inputs, outputs, Molten Voidstone fuel requirements, and catalyst costs so the progression is discoverable without requiring external documentation.
Voidworks is ultimately built around experimentation.
A material that is excellent for a pickaxe may be poor for armor. A material that creates an extremely durable defensive build may sacrifice mobility and offensive performance. A weapon built entirely for speed may burn through durability or struggle with damage per hit. A fortress-style armor set using Void-Knightmetal, Infernal Bloodsteel, and Nullsteel can become exceptionally difficult to kill, but doing so consumes component slots that could otherwise provide speed, reach, utility, or modifier capacity.
There is no intended single best material or single best equipment configuration.
The strongest build is the one designed for the job you want it to perform.
Voidworks extends Neo Tinkers with a larger progression system, more equipment choices, stronger material identities, and an endgame built around transforming already-powerful materials into something stranger, more specialized, and occasionally much more dangerous.
