Oxidized Progression: Wood Matters!

A Forge datapack for Minecraft 1.20.1 that makes copper ore mineable with wooden pickaxes, enabling a cleaner early-game progression.

Designed for use with a copper tools mod that uses the vanilla minecraft: namespace, like Copper Age Backport or future updates of Vanilla Backport.

Recommended with a mod that can remove the stone tools completely, like Item Obliterator.

Oxidized Progression fixes one of Minecraft’s clunkiest progression bumps: wooden tools barely matter. In most worlds, they last less than a minute before being replaced by stone tools after mining just three blocks of cobblestone.

This datapack smooths that out by making copper ore and deepslate copper ore mineable with wooden pickaxes, creating a more natural progression path:

Wood → Copper → Iron etc.

instead of:

Wood → Stone → Copper → Iron etc.

The result is a cleaner early game, fewer redundant tiers, and a progression system where each step has a clearer purpose.

🧾 Why This Exists

Early-game progression feels best when each tier has room to matter. As it stands, the wooden tier is so short-lived that it barely feels like a real part of progression at all. Most players do not even wear out their first wooden pickaxe; they replace it almost immediately with stone after mining a few blocks of cobblestone.

The stone tier also becomes awkward once copper enters the equation. Instead of adding depth, it creates unnecessary overlap and makes each material tier feel less distinct.

Oxidized Progression is designed to remove that friction. By allowing the wooden tier to lead directly into copper, modpack authors can safely remove the stone tier from the game, making its opening become more intentional, more streamlined, and less cluttered.

✨ Features

⛏️ Copper ore mineable with wooden pickaxes

• Removes copper_ore and deepslate_copper_ore from the minecraft:needs_stone_tool block tag.
  • This allows wooden pickaxes to mine copper, keeping progression moving even when stone tools are removed.

🏆 Advancement progression adjusted

• Edits the stone pickaxe advancement to visually and mechanically point to the copper pickaxe instead.
  • The advancement icon is changed to a copper pickaxe.
  • The item requirement is changed from stone to copper to reflect the new progression path.

🔧 Forge-friendly tag editing

• Uses a Forge remove tag approach rather than blindly replacing the entire tag file.
  • This preserves better compatibility with other mods and datapacks that may also modify the same mining requirement tags.

🧩 Intended Setup

This datapack is not a standalone "copper tools" implementation.

It is meant to be paired with a mod that adds copper tools using the vanilla minecraft: namespace, so that progression, recipes, tags, and advancements all line up correctly.

Recommended setup:

• A Forge 1.20.1 environment.
• A copper tools backport mod using vanilla-style item IDs.
• Optional (but recommended) removal of stone tools via an external mod/datapack.

Important: This datapack is designed around the assumption that stone tools are removed, or at least discouraged. If stone tools remain fully available, the progression rework still works, but the design intent is less meaningful.

⚙️ Technical Notes

• Built for Minecraft 1.20.1
• Requires a Forge environment
• Relies on Forge tag removal support
• Modifies:
  • data/minecraft/tags/blocks/needs_stone_tool.json
  • data/minecraft/advancements/story/upgrade_tools.json

Because it uses a remove-based tag edit, it is more compatible with other content than a full hard overwrite would be.

❌ What It Is Not

• Not a copper tools mod on its own
• Not a vanilla datapack for every loader
• Not intended to preserve the stone tier
• Not a broad rebalance of the entire tool system

This pack does one specific thing: it makes a wood → copper progression path actually work.

🖇️ Credits

• Datapack: HandLock_
• Idea: Inspired by Minecraft Diverge

"Scissors beat rock?!"