Spore & Stem

Grow something strange

Spore & Stem fills your world with fungi. Giant Glowcaps hang curtains of light over the Mushroom Fields and the caves, springy Bouncecaps crowd the meadows and shaggy Inkcaps drip ink in the swamps. Each one gives a full building wood. Nine small mushrooms, all modelled in real 3D, go into a forager's kitchen; cultivation logs and Mycelial Soil let you farm them. Mycosis, a slow fungal infection, makes the dead rise as Shamblers. Seven creatures live among the caps, from tameable Sporelings to the Mimicap that only looks like a toadstool. Under it all stirs the Myceliarch.

Every texture, 3D model, creature animation and sound was made for this mod. It needs nothing beyond Fabric API on Fabric. There are no new biomes: everything grows into the vanilla world through tags a datapack can change.

• Huge Glowcap: a slender stem under a flat, glowing parasol. Its gills hang in curtains of light (light 14) and let luminous spores drift down. Mushroom Fields, and cave floors deep underground.
• Huge Bouncecap: a stout stem and a puffy pink dome. Land on the cap and you bounce, with no fall damage. Flower forests, meadows and the Mushroom Fields.
• Huge Inkcap: a tall stem inside a shaggy bell that drips ink. Dark forests, swamps and the Mushroom Fields.
• Bone meal grows each one from its small mushroom on dirt, moss, mycelium or Mycelial Soil, given the room.

Each giant gives a full wood: stem, stripped stem, hyphae, stripped hyphae, planks, stairs, slab, fence, fence gate, door, trapdoor, button and pressure plate, plus its cap block. Glowcap wood is cool blue-grey with teal grain, Bouncecap wood a rosy tan, Inkcap wood a deep charcoal violet. The doors and trapdoors carry each species' motif.

• An axe strips the stems. Every recipe that takes any planks or logs works with them: crafting tables, chests, sticks, tools, barrels and more.
• Like nether stems, fungal wood never catches fire, and it still burns in a furnace.
• Glowcap Lantern (light 15): standing or hanging, from glowcap stems, Lumen Spores and Mycelial Thread.

Mushroom	Eaten raw	Found
Glowcap	Night Vision 10 s (and it glows, light 9)	Mushroom Fields, dark forests, caves
Bouncecap	Jump Boost 10 s	Flower forests, meadows, birch forests
Inkcap	not edible; crafts black dye	Swamps, dark forests, old growth taiga
Morel	2 hunger; roast it for 6	Forests and birch forests
Chanterelle	2 hunger	Taiga and birch forests
Deathcap	Poison II and Mycosis. Don't.	Dark forests
Frostcap	Fire Resistance 10 s, a little Slowness	Snowy biomes
Emberstool	Haste 10 s (it smoulders, light 7)	Deep caves, crimson forest, basalt deltas
Puffball	2 hunger; nine make a Giant Puffball	Plains, meadows, savanna

• Placed, every one is a real 3D model, randomly turned and offset like flowers. All nine go in flower pots.
• They live on dirt, moss, mycelium and Mycelial Soil in any light, and on any solid block in the dark. Bone meal spreads the small ones to a free spot nearby.

• Mycelial Veils hang from cave ceilings and grow down like vines. Some carry glowing bulbs (light 10): use one to pick Lumen Spores. Shears or a Foraging Knife cut Mycelial Thread from them. You can climb them.
• Shelf Fungus: turkey-tail brackets on tree trunks, one to three shelves that grow over time. They are solid: climb them like steps.
• Glowcap Gills hang under every giant Glowcap and drop Lumen Spores.
• Giant Puffballs: land on one and it puffs a cloud of spores and halves your fall damage.
• Fairy Rings of mushrooms in plains and forests (one in 48 chunks), Truffle Soil under the forests.

• Cultivation Log (3 logs over Mycelial Thread, Mycelial Soil and Mycelial Thread, makes 2): use any of Glowcap, Bouncecap, Inkcap, Morel, Chanterelle, Frostcap or Emberstool on a fresh log to inoculate it. It fruits through four stages, twice as fast on Mycelial Soil and slower under an open daytime sky. Use a ripe log for 2-3 mushrooms; it falls back to its first flush and fruits again.
• Mycelial Soil (dirt, bone meal and any 2 mushrooms, makes 2): every mushroom, vanilla ones too, lives on it in any light, and it slowly spreads them or grows the giants.
• Foraging Knife (iron, stick and Mycelial Thread): mines fungal blocks fast, cuts a better share of spores, gel and ink from caps, and takes Mycelial Thread from veils.

Food	Recipe	Effect
Roasted Morel	Smelt, smoke or campfire a Morel	6 hunger
Chanterelle Toast	Bread and 2 Chanterelles	8 hunger
Glowcap Soup	Bowl, 2 Glowcaps and Lumen Spores	Night Vision 90 s
Bouncecap Jelly	Glass Bottle, Bouncecap Gel and Sugar	Jump Boost II 45 s, Slow Falling 15 s
Frostcap Tea	Glass Bottle, 2 Frostcaps and Sugar	Fire Resistance 90 s
Ember Skewer	Stick, Emberstool and a Roasted Morel	Strength 30 s
Truffle	Truffle Soil and Trufflers	Regeneration 5 s
Truffle Stew	Bowl, Truffle, Morel, Chanterelle and a Baked Potato	Regeneration II 8 s, Absorption 60 s
Forager's Stew	Bowl and any 3 edible mushrooms	Cures Mycosis
Antifungal Tonic	Glass Bottle, Frostcap, Chanterelle and a Honey Bottle	Cures Mycosis, then Spore Ward 3 min

Bowls and bottles come back.

• Mycosis comes from Shambler hits, Deathcaps, spore clouds, Spore Globs and Spore Bombs. It deals a point of damage every 4 seconds (twice as often per level) and never takes you below one heart.
• The infected dead rise. A zombie, husk, drowned, villager, pillager, vindicator, witch or player that dies with Mycosis claws back up out of the ground as a Shambler.
• Cures: milk, Forager's Stew and the Antifungal Tonic. Spore Ward (the tonic, a full set of Mycoleather or the Crown of the Bloom) makes you immune.
• Spore Bomb (Puffball, Deathcap and Mycelial Thread, makes 2): throw it for a cloud of Mycosis and Slowness.
• Fungal creatures shrug it all off.

• Sporeling: a waddling little mushroom in one of four caps (Glowcap, Bouncecap, Inkcap or Chanterelle) by biome. It tends the fungi around it. Tame it with Truffles (one in three); tamed, it follows, sits when you use it and sheds a mushroom of its kind every 5-10 minutes. Breed them with Truffles.
• Truffler: a mossy boar with a mushroom garden on its back. It sniffs the ground and now and then digs up a Truffle, and it roots out Truffle Soil nearby. Breed them with Truffles.
• Glowmoth: soft glowing wings, drawn to light and to Glowcaps. Drops Lumen Spores.

Creature	Health	What it does
Bloatshroom	16	Waddles close, swells and bursts into Mycosis, Nausea and Blindness. Breaks no blocks. Fire sets it off
Shambler	26	Cap-headed walker whose hits infect. It doesn't burn, but it wilts in full sunlight
Sporemaw	20	Waits burrowed with only its cap showing, then rises and lobs arcing Spore Globs. Hit it three times and it burrows away
Mimicap	22	Sits as a plain red or brown toadstool. Come within five blocks and it unfolds six legs, climbs walls and bites (Rooted)

Summon it with a Fruiting Heart (4 Lumen Spores, 2 Truffles, 2 Mycoleather and a Mycelial Core from Shamblers, Mimicaps or Sporemaws). Use it on Mycelium, Mycelial Soil, Podzol or Moss: roots and spores rise for three seconds, then the Myceliarch climbs out of the earth with its boss bar. Only one at a time within 96 blocks.

• Slam up close: 14 damage in front of it and a ring of Root Spikes. A ring of spores on the ground shows you where it will land.
• Root Eruption at range: the ground cracks in a line, then twelve Root Spikes burst through, 8 damage each and Rooted.
• Spore Nova: its cap swells as spores are drawn in, then a ring of Mycosis II bursts out seven blocks and shoves everything back.
• Brood Call: two Bloatshrooms and a Shambler.
• Second bloom at half health: it roars, its gills burn brighter, it moves faster and attacks more often, and it adds Spore Rain, globs that fall around you (each landing spot is marked first).
• 300 health and 10 armor. It never despawns, can't be pushed, breaks no blocks and stays within 40 blocks of where it rose. Every attack is telegraphed; a Slam takes about half the health of a player in full iron on Normal.

Felled, the Myceliarch collapses into spores and drops the Spore Heart, 4-8 Mycoleather, 8-16 Lumen Spores and 250 experience.

• Bloomreaver (Spore Heart, a Diamond Sword, 2 Lumen Spores and 2 Mycoleather): 8 attack damage, and every hit infects. Use it for a Spore Burst: Mycosis and Slowness on everything around you, and a shove (10 s cooldown).
• Crown of the Bloom (Spore Heart, a Golden Helmet and 2 Glowcap Caps): Night Vision and Spore Ward while you wear it, and Sporelings trust you.
• Mycoleather (3 mushroom caps and a Mycelial Thread, makes 2): armor between leather and iron, and a full set gives Spore Ward.

config/spore_and_stem.json is created on first launch, with a comment beside every key. Missing keys are added and your values are kept.

• mycosis_enabled, mycosis_rising and mycosis_damage_interval: turn the infection off, keep the dead from rising, or slow it down.
• myceliarch_health and myceliarch_damage_multiplier.
• sporeling_shed_min and sporeling_shed_max (minutes), truffler_dig_chance.

• 15 advancements, from Lights Out, Caps On to Uprooted and Reap What You Sow.
• 55 sounds, all with subtitles, from the Sporeling's squeak to the Myceliarch's roar.
• Spawn eggs for all eight creatures, and everything in its own Spore & Stem creative tab.
• Datapack friendly: every feature and every spawn is placed through biome tags under data/spore_and_stem/tags/worldgen/biome/, and the infected dead are the spore_and_stem:mycosis_risers entity tag. Mushrooms are in c:mushrooms, Mycoleather in c:leathers, Bouncecap Gel in c:slime_balls.
• No new biomes, no world-type changes: it works in existing worlds; new chunks grow the fungi.
• Mushrooms, caps and puffballs go in the composter.

Minecraft	Loaders	Java	Also install
1.21.1	Fabric, NeoForge	21+	Fabric API (Fabric only)

• Download the file with your loader in its name: -fabric- or -neoforge-.
• Install Spore & Stem on both the server and every client, at the same version.
• Spore & Stem is a mod. It does not work as a Paper, Spigot or Folia plugin.

Do I need a new world? No. Fungi, creatures and features grow in chunks generated after you install it. Explore somewhere new, or grow the giants yourself with bone meal.

Where do I find the giant mushrooms? Head for a Mushroom Fields island: it fills with all three. Glowcaps also grow on cave floors deep underground, Bouncecaps in flower forests and meadows, Inkcaps in dark forests and swamps.

Mycosis keeps finding me. Drink milk, eat a Forager's Stew or drink an Antifungal Tonic. For the long run, wear a full set of Mycoleather: it gives Spore Ward. Or turn Mycosis off in the config.

Will the Bloatshroom blow up my base? No. It bursts into spores, not an explosion, and breaks no blocks. No creature in this mod breaks your blocks, the Myceliarch included.

How do I get a Mycelial Core for the Fruiting Heart? Shamblers drop one 5% of the time, Mimicaps 8% and Sporemaws 4%, more with Looting.

Where are the docs? Usage guide · Release notes · Issues

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Spore & Stem is licensed under Apache-2.0. The Fraunces and Spectral fonts used in this artwork are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.