Quark

Overview

Quark is organized into eight modules: Building, Decoration, Automation, Tweaks, Management, Vanity, World, and Experimental. Each module contains individual features that can be enabled or disabled independently through the config. This means you can tailor Quark to your exact playstyle, keeping the parts you love and turning off anything that doesn't suit you.

The mod spans new building blocks, decorative items, Redstone components, inventory shortcuts, mob variants, new hostile mobs, world generation features, cosmetic options, and dozens of small gameplay tweaks. You can browse all items and recipes using the tabs at the top of this page. This guide walks through the mod's content organized by how you'll encounter it in a typical playthrough.

Gameplay Tweaks

The Tweaks module is the largest in Quark, containing over 25 individual changes to vanilla mechanics. These are the quality-of-life adjustments that make Quark feel essential.

Tool and Item Changes

Hoes now function as Sickles, breaking a 3x3 area of plants and crops. A Diamond Hoe increases this to a 5x5 area, making large-scale farming significantly faster. The stair crafting recipe yields 8 stairs instead of 4, and you can reverse Slabs back into full blocks by placing 2 Slabs in a shapeless recipe. Armor Stands now spawn with arms when placed, allowing them to hold items.

Mob Behavior Changes

Chickens shed Feathers periodically and can be sheared for additional Feathers. Baby Zombies now burn in daylight like their adult counterparts. Creepers turn red when about to explode, giving you a visual warning. Pigs and Chickens spawn with randomized texture variants. Looking down while on a Ladder makes you slide down quickly, and right-clicking a Ladder with another Ladder places it below, so you can extend ladders downward without risking a fall.

Miscellaneous Tweaks

You can right-click Signs to edit them after placement. Knocking on Doors with a right-click produces a knocking sound. Jump Boost now grants step-assist, letting you walk up 1-block edges smoothly. Note Blocks with a mob head placed on top play that mob's sounds. Snow layers can be removed by right-clicking with a Shovel. The grass throughout the world appears slightly greener than vanilla, though this is configurable.

Building Blocks

Quark's Building module adds an enormous variety of new blocks and extends existing ones with missing variants. Nearly every new block type comes with Stairs, Slabs, and Walls where appropriate.

New Block Types

Midori Blocks are crafted from Cactus Green Dye in a 2x2 pattern, yielding 4 blocks. They have a smooth green appearance with a pillar variant, plus stairs, slabs, and walls. Iron Plates are crafted with 8 Iron Ingots in a 3x3 grid with the center empty, producing 24 plates per craft, making them an efficient industrial-looking building material. Sandy Bricks blend sandstone and brick textures, while Snow Bricks provide a clean white building option from packed snow.

Thatch is crafted from Hay Bales and provides a rustic roofing material. Bark Blocks use the log bark texture on all six sides of the block, available for every wood type. Charred Nether Bricks offer a darker variant of Nether Bricks. Hardened Clay Tiles, World Stone Bricks, Polished Stone, Carved Wood, Reed Blocks (from Sugar Cane), and extended Sandstone variants round out the building palette.

Vanilla Block Extensions

The Vanilla Stairs and Slabs feature fills in missing stair and slab variants for blocks that Mojang overlooked. The Vanilla Walls feature does the same for wall variants. These additions are subtle but make a huge difference for builders who want consistent block sets across all materials.

Decoration

The Decoration module focuses on aesthetic blocks and items. Colored Item Frames can be dyed any of the 16 colors, letting you match frames to your build's color scheme. Colored Beds extend the vanilla Bed with 15 additional dye colors. Varied Chests add wood-type-specific Chest textures so your storage rooms can match the wood you're building with. Varied Trapdoors provide similar wood-variant options for Trapdoors.

The Blaze Lantern is a decorative light source crafted from Blaze Rods and Purpur Blocks. The Lit Lamp provides a glowing lamp variant. Paper Walls offer a Japanese-inspired aesthetic panel. Leaf Carpets let you place thin leaf layers on the ground for natural landscaping. Nether Brick Fence Gates complete the Nether Brick building set. The Charcoal Block lets you store Charcoal compactly, mirroring the Coal Block.

Automation and Redstone

Quark adds four Redstone-oriented features that expand automation possibilities without overshadowing vanilla mechanics.

Ender Watcher

The Ender Watcher emits a Redstone signal of 15 when a player is looking directly at it. It's crafted with Redstone at the cardinal positions, an Ender Eye in the center, and Biotite Blocks (or Obsidian if Biotite is disabled) at the corners. This block enables all sorts of gaze-activated contraptions, from secret doors to traps.

Rain Detector

The Rain Detector works like a Daylight Sensor but for rain. It outputs a Redstone signal of 15 when it's raining, and can be inverted by sneak-clicking it. It's crafted with Glass on top, Biotite (or Obsidian) in the middle row, and Purpur Blocks on the bottom. Perfect for automated retractable roofs or weather-dependent farms.

Obsidian Pressure Plate

Crafted from 2 Obsidian, this Pressure Plate only activates when a player steps on it. Mobs, items, and other entities are completely ignored. This makes it ideal for player-only doors and entrances in mob farms or public areas.

Dispensers Place Seeds

Dispensers can now plant seeds directly onto farmland. This simple change opens up fully automated crop farming when combined with Hoppers and Water harvesting.

World Generation and New Mobs

Quark enriches world generation with new mobs, structures, and resources. These additions make exploration more rewarding while keeping the vanilla feel.

Depth Mobs: Ashen and Dweller

Below Y level 20, two new hostile mobs appear in any biome where their vanilla counterparts spawn. The Ashen is a Skeleton variant that carries a Splash Potion of Harming in its off-hand, making it significantly more dangerous than a regular Skeleton at close range. The Dweller is a Zombie variant that spawns with permanent Resistance, making it nearly invincible until it attacks or takes damage, at which point the Resistance temporarily drops. Both spawn in packs of 1-2 with a spawn weight of 10 (compared to 100 for regular Zombies and Skeletons), so they're uncommon but memorable.

Wraiths

Wraiths are spectral mobs that spawn on Soul Sand in the Nether. They move at 0.28 speed (faster than Zombies) and have full knockback resistance, so you can't push them away. On hit, they inflict Weakness II for 60 ticks. They spawn in groups of 4-6 with a spawn weight of 60, making them quite common in the Nether. Each Wraith has a randomized sound type drawn from 17 different mob sound sets, giving them an unpredictable and eerie presence.

Wraiths drop Soul Beads, which can be consumed to inflict a Curse effect on yourself. While cursed (lasting 24,000 ticks, or 20 minutes by default), all hostile mobs that spawn near you within 64 blocks gain permanent Invisibility. This is a high-risk mechanic intended for players seeking extra challenge. The curse range and duration are configurable.

Pirate Ships

Pirate Ships are structures that generate in ocean biomes, roughly 1 per 1,200 chunks. They're guarded by Pirate mobs, which are Skeleton variants wearing Pirate Hats and wielding Bows. The ship contains loot chests and the Pirates themselves drop Pirate Hats, a Leather-tier helmet with rare item rarity.

Buried Treasure

Treasure Maps can spawn in Desert Temple, Jungle Temple, and Dungeon loot chests (weight 10 each). These maps lead to treasure locations within a 400-600 block radius, giving you additional incentive to raid every structure you find.

Other World Gen Changes

Basalt generates naturally underground as a new stone type. Clay now generates underground in pockets similar to Dirt, making it easier to find. Guardians can spawn naturally in ocean biomes (not just near Ocean Monuments). Blazes spawn naturally throughout the Nether instead of only in Fortresses. Large Mushrooms generate in Swamp biomes, and larger trees appear in Plains biomes.

Loot and Enchanting

Ancient Tomes

Ancient Tomes are one of Quark's most powerful additions. These rare items appear in Dungeon Chests (weight 8) and Stronghold Libraries (weight 12), and each one carries a single enchantment at its maximum vanilla level. When you combine an Ancient Tome with a matching Enchanted Book of the same enchantment and level in an Anvil, the result is an Enchanted Book one level higher than the vanilla maximum. For example, combining two Sharpness V books (one being an Ancient Tome) produces a Sharpness VI book. This costs 35 experience levels.

You can then apply these over-leveled books to items normally via an Anvil. The default list of valid enchantments includes Protection, Fire Protection, Feather Falling, Blast Protection, Projectile Protection, Respiration, Aqua Affinity, Sharpness, Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Knockback, Fire Aspect, Looting, Efficiency, and Unbreaking, among others. This list is fully configurable.

Color Runes

Color Runes are loot items found in Dungeons (weight 20), Nether Fortresses (weight 15), Jungle Temples (weight 15), and Desert Temples (weight 15). They come in all 16 dye colors and can be applied to any enchanted item via an Anvil for 15 experience levels. Once applied, the enchantment glint on that item changes to the Rune's color. This is a purely cosmetic change but lets you create color-coded gear or simply replace the default purple shimmer with something more appealing.

Special Items and Tools

Extra Arrows

Quark adds three new arrow types, all crafted as shapeless recipes. The Ender Arrow (Arrow + Ender Pearl) teleports the target to the impact location with a 2.5% chance to spawn an Endermite. The Explosive Arrow (Arrow + 2 Gunpowder) creates a 2.0-radius explosion on impact. The Torch Arrow (Arrow + Torch) places a Torch where it lands. All three can be fired from Dispensers, opening up Redstone-powered traps and lighting systems.

Slime Bucket

Right-click a tiny Slime (size 1) with a Bucket to capture it in a Slime Bucket. The captured Slime starts bouncing inside the Bucket when you're standing in a Slime Chunk, making the Slime Bucket a portable Slime chunk detector. You can deploy the Slime back into the world by right-clicking a block. The Slime Bucket also counts as a Slime Ball in crafting recipes via the Ore Dictionary.

Witch Hat

Witches have a 2.5% chance to drop a Witch Hat, increasing by 1% per Looting level. Wearing the Witch Hat in your helmet slot halves all damage received from Witch attacks. The hat has 30 uses of durability and uses the vanilla Witch texture model. It's a rare find but worth keeping if you're raiding Witch Huts.

Vanity and Cosmetics

The Vanity module provides purely aesthetic features. You can dye Elytra any color by combining them with a Dye in a crafting grid. Firework Rockets can be cloned by combining a crafted Firework with a plain one, copying all its explosion data. The Emote System adds a panel of character emotes accessible from the chat menu, each bindable to a custom key. You can even sit in Stair blocks by right-clicking them while sneaking.

Boat Sails let you add colored sails to boats. The Panorama Maker provides tools for taking panoramic screenshots. These features are all about personal expression and don't affect gameplay balance.

Inventory Management

The Management module streamlines inventory handling with five features. The Store to Chests feature adds an Insert button that dumps your inventory (excluding your Hotbar) into a chest, and an Extract button that pulls everything out. Hold Shift while pressing these buttons to only move items that already have matching stacks on the other side.

The F key (rebindable) lets you quickly swap items to your main hand from within the inventory. Ctrl-clicking an item marks it as a Favorite, indicated visually, which prevents it from being stored when using the Insert button. Link Items lets you share items in chat by holding Shift and pressing your chat key while hovering over them, allowing other players to see the item's tooltip by hovering over the chat message.

Biotite: The End Game Material

Biotite is Quark's unique endgame material, tied to the Ender Dragon. By default, Biotite does not generate naturally; instead, Biotite Ore spawns in the End dimension when a Dragon is killed. The generation happens during the Dragon's death animation, producing clusters of 14 ore blocks at a rate of 16 clusters per tick throughout the End island. Four Biotite items craft into a Biotite Block, which has a distinctive dark appearance.

Biotite Blocks are used in the crafting recipes for the Ender Watcher and Rain Detector (substituting for Obsidian when the feature is active). The block also comes with Stair, Slab, and Wall variants, making it a full building material set. If you prefer to have Biotite generate naturally in the End like a standard ore, you can enable that in the config.

Configuration

Quark's configuration system is one of its greatest strengths. Every single feature can be independently enabled or disabled, and most have additional sub-settings. The config file is organized by module (automation, building, decoration, management, tweaks, vanity, world, experimental), with each feature having its own section.

Server operators can use the /quarkconfig command (if the experimental ConfigCommand feature is enabled) to modify settings in real-time without restarting. The syntax is /quarkconfig <module> <category> <key> <value>, with optional "save" to persist changes to disk and an optional player name to target specific players. For example, /quarkconfig tweaks - "Shearable chickens" false disables chicken shearing for all players on the server.

Key config options worth knowing about include: GreenerGrass intensity and color values, Biotite natural generation toggle, Wraith spawn weight and curse duration, Depth Mob Y-level cutoff, Stair recipe output quantity, and Ancient Tome enchantment whitelist. The Experimental module (disabled by default) contains BiggerCaves for larger cave generation and Tabards for armor overlays.