Don's Building Stuff

a mod for people who can engineer a factory… but can't build a decent wall

👋 Hi!

My name is Donnie — an enthusiast developer.

I can build complex machines, automate half the game…
…but when it comes to survival building?

yeah… no.

So I decided to fix that.
By making the game do the annoying parts for me.

⚠️ Status

🚧 Active development

This is a passion project. I'm learning as I go, so expect rough edges, weird ideas, and updates that actually change things.

🔨 The Tool: Trowel

This mod is built around one idea:

building in survival should feel creative, without actually becoming creative mode.

The Trowel is a smart building tool for:

• texturing walls without constantly swapping blocks by hand
• making clean gradients and patterns
• replacing existing blocks without tearing everything down
• building large walls and floors much faster than normal

It currently comes in four tiers:

🟠 Copper Trowel — chaos mode

The simple one.

• Uses blocks from your hotbar
• Places them in a slightly random order
• Great for quick texturing and rough variation
• Perfect when you want a wall to stop looking flat, but don't want to micromanage every block

basically: "just make it look less boring"

⚙️ Iron Trowel — control mode

The practical survival upgrade.

• Lets you pick materials directly from your inventory
• Gives you more control over what gets placed
• Better for planned builds, cleaner palettes, and less randomness
• A good middle ground between "chaos texture spam" and full pattern control

for when you start pretending you know what you're doing

💎 Diamond Trowel — architect mode

This is where things get serious.

• Choose exactly which blocks the trowel can use
• Set block ratios for mixed palettes
• Control placement order instead of relying on randomness
• Great for stripes, gradients, checkerboards, and deliberate patterns
• Supports rotation controls for directional blocks

Use Ctrl + Right Click to change placement order.

suddenly you're not bad at building anymore. suspicious.

🔥 Netherite Trowel — endgame mode

The final upgrade for people who are done placing blocks one by one.

• Higher durability
• Bigger quick-place range
• Better suited for large walls, roads, roofs, and long survival projects
• Built for high-volume building without losing control
• Best version of the trowel for serious late-game use

It can be upgraded through a normal smithing recipe, and also has a Create sequenced assembly recipe when Create is installed.

🚀 Quick Place Mode

For when building by hand starts feeling insulting.

Available on the higher trowel tiers.

• Press Alt + Right Click to start a quick-place selection
• Preview the full area before placing
• Great for walls, floors, facades, and other flat surfaces
• Works especially well with ordered palettes and checkerboard-style patterns
• Netherite pushes this even further for large-scale builds

⚠️ It is meant for fast clean surfaces, not cursed 3D geometry.

✅ Built with modded survival building in mind, including Create-based setups

🔁 Replacement Mode

Hold a pickaxe or shovel in your offhand to activate replacement mode.

This lets you swap existing blocks directly instead of breaking everything first.

• Pickaxe in offhand: great for stone, bricks, deepslate, and most hard building blocks
• Shovel in offhand: great for dirt, gravel, sand, paths, and terrain-style reworking
• Replace blocks much more cleanly during renovations
• Ideal for fixing ugly gradients, reworking roads, touching up terrain, and changing palettes mid-build

In other words:

• less rebuilding
• less cleanup
• less suffering

✨ Enchantments

Yes, the trowels are enchantable.

Supported enchantments

• Efficiency → increases smart building radius / building power
• Fortune → gives a chance to not consume blocks
• Unbreaking → makes long building sessions less painful
• Mending → because repairing your tool is boring
• Attraction → pulls drops into your inventory for smoother cleanup
• Silk Touch → Changes will apply softer. No torches destroyed, no blocks updated.

Attraction

Attraction is the mod's custom utility enchantment. WORKS FOR ALL ITEMS AND NOT ONLY FOR TROWELS

• Pulls relevant block drops into your inventory
• Also works on mob drops
• Makes cleanup much faster during building, replacing, mining, and general survival play
• Fits the whole point of the mod: less annoying inventory and ground clutter

🎮 Controls

Quick summary so people don't have to guess:

• Right Click → normal trowel use
• Ctrl + Right Click → change placement order
• Alt + Right Click → quick-place mode
• Tab → cycle rotation / orientation modes
• Shift → show more detailed tooltip info

🎯 Goal of the Mod

Make building:

• faster
• easier
• less annoying
• and actually fun

Without turning it into full creative mode.

💬 Final Words

This mod is made with love, experiments, and a bit of chaos.

If something breaks — it’s probably a feature.
If it works — I’m as surprised as you are.

Join my Discord or find me directly (@silentudono)