Wear your armor. Keep your wings.

ElytraPlate removes one of Minecraft's most annoying late-game compromises: choosing between the protection of a chestplate and the freedom of elytra flight. With this mod, you can permanently fuse both items into a single piece of equipment that provides armor protection and full elytra functionality from the same chest slot.

The result is not a replacement for progression or a free early-game upgrade. Creating an ElytraPlate requires exploration, an elytra, a chestplate, and a rare custom smithing template hidden inside Ancient City chests.

How it works

Explore an Ancient City and search its loot chests for the rare ElytraPlate Smithing Template. Once you have one, use a smithing table with:

• Template: ElytraPlate Smithing Template
• Base: Any supported vanilla chestplate
• Addition: Elytra

The smithing table produces an ElytraPlate made from the selected armor material. The resulting item retains the important data from the original chestplate, including its enchantments, durability, custom name, and armor trim.

Supported armor materials

ElytraPlate includes variants for every vanilla chestplate available in Minecraft 26.2:

• Leather
• Copper
• Chainmail
• Iron
• Gold
• Diamond
• Netherite

Each variant uses the normal protection, toughness, enchantability, repair material, and equipment appearance of its original armor material.

Balanced progression

The ElytraPlate Smithing Template has a configurable chance to appear in Ancient City chests. By default, the chance is 20%, making the upgrade rare enough to reward exploration without turning every Ancient City expedition into unpaid overtime.

Templates are consumed during smithing by default, just like vanilla smithing templates. Once you obtain the first template, it can be duplicated using:

• 1 ElytraPlate Smithing Template
• 7 Diamonds
• 1 Echo Shard

The recipe produces two templates. Template consumption and loot probability can both be changed in the configuration.

Durability and repairs

Smithing an ElytraPlate combines the remaining durability of both input items instead of silently throwing away the condition of the elytra. The combined value is limited by the maximum durability of the resulting armor material.

Every ElytraPlate can be repaired using either:

• Phantom Membranes
• The matching chestplate repair material

For example, a Diamond ElytraPlate accepts diamonds or phantom membranes, while a Copper ElytraPlate accepts copper ingots or phantom membranes.

When an ElytraPlate reaches its broken state, its armor protection remains available, but the damaged wings can no longer be used for flight until the item is repaired. Broken items also use unique damaged-wing textures, so their condition is visible directly in the inventory.

Advancements

The mod includes three custom advancements:

• Ancient Aeronaut — obtain an ElytraPlate Smithing Template.
• Two Birds, One Chest Slot — create your first ElytraPlate.
• Heavy Aviation — obtain a Netherite ElytraPlate.

Configuration

ElytraPlate creates a config/elytraplate.json file with settings for:

• Ancient City template loot chance
• Whether smithing consumes the template
• Whether input durability is combined
• Whether broken wings disable flight

If Mod Menu is installed, these settings are available through an in-game configuration screen. In singleplayer, the menu edits the active local configuration. Dedicated server owners should edit the server-side config file so that gameplay rules remain authoritative for all players.

Recipe viewer compatibility

All crafting and smithing recipes use standard Minecraft recipe types, allowing them to appear automatically in popular recipe viewers:

• EMI
• Roughly Enough Items (REI)
• Just Enough Items (JEI)

Mod Menu and recipe viewers are completely optional and are not required to run ElytraPlate.