
Shard's Factions
Territory-control factions for NeoForge PvP. Protected claims can only be breached by explosives — destroy the Obelisk, break the defense, take the land.
About this Mod
Shard's Factions
A native NeoForge territory-control mod for hardcore PvP servers, built around one idea: bases should be assaulted, not sneaked down.
⚠️ Early Release · Active Development
This mod is evolving quickly. Expect rough edges, expect changes, and back up your worlds. Bug reports and feedback are welcome and genuinely shape where it goes next.
💽 Required on both client and server.
Shard's Factions adds custom content (the Obelisk block), so it must be installed on the client and the server. It is not a server-only drop-in.
🚫 Not affiliated with "Factions."
This is an original NeoForge mod — in no way affiliated with, derived from, or compatible with the Bukkit/Spigot Factions plugin or any of its forks. The shared word "factions" describes the genre, nothing more.
⚔️ The Core Idea
A protected claim is immune to hand tools and automated miners. Non-members cannot break or place a single block inside it. The only way through claimed terrain is explosives.
This isn't an oversight — it's the whole design. Ground troops cannot crack a fortified base; cracking it takes ordnance. Defenders dig in and fortify; attackers must mount a real siege. Every other rule in the mod serves that fantasy.
🛡️ Factions & Roles
Found a faction, invite members, and run a three-rank hierarchy — Owner, Officer, Member — with permission gates on each command. Ownership transfers but is never vacant, and a faction ends only by deliberate disband, never by emptying out.
Membership is invite-gated: in a PvP mod, an uninvited join is a spy who can build and break inside your walls.
📈 Claims, Power & Overclaiming
Claim chunks against a power budget that scales with faction size. Power is combat-driven — win fights and your faction holds its ground; lose fights and your power bleeds until your territory is overextended.
A stronger faction can then overclaim a beaten rival's land, peeling it chunk by chunk — but overclaiming is self-limiting: every chunk taken raises your own commitment, so you can't strip a rival bare without overextending yourself.
Explosives strip a base's defenses. Sustained combat dominance is what lets you take and hold the ground.
🗿 The Obelisk
A faction's protection hinges on a single placed block: the Obelisk. While it stands, your claims are protected.
It is the one block in your territory that anyone can break — by hand, tool, or explosive — but automation cannot touch, keeping its destruction a deliberate act at the climax of a raid. Destroy an enemy's Obelisk and their land falls unprotected; their online members are warned the walls are down.
Re-protecting means placing a new one — possible immediately, buying a besieged faction a desperate window to repel attackers before their land is overclaimed.
⏳ Rate-limited — acquisition gated by a configurable cooldown (default: one week).
💀 No spares — Obelisks are destroyed on the holder's death; none leak into circulation.
🟩 System Zones
Admins can carve out permanently protected areas:
ZoneBlocksPvPExplosionsSAFEZONEProtected❌ Off💥 ImmuneWARZONEProtected✅ Live💥 Immune
A SAFEZONE is ideal for spawn — fully locked down. A WARZONE keeps PvP live as a buffer between the safe core and the open world. System zones never expire, never become overclaimable, and use no Obelisk.
✨ Quality-of-Life
🗺️ Chat-grid claim map (permission-gated)
📍 Action-bar territory readout as you cross borders — your land, an enemy's, or open wilderness
🚶 Autoclaim — paint territory as you walk
🏠 Faction home — teleport to your Obelisk
🛠️ Full admin suite for setting up system zones
🔑 Permissions
Uses NeoForge's native permission system — works standalone out of the box, no permission manager required. LuckPerms or any other manager plugs in automatically if present to grant or revoke nodes. No hard dependency.
🧩 Compatibility
Built for explosive-heavy modpacks. A separate companion mod, Shard's Factions — Ballistix Compat, teaches Ballistix's larger warheads to breach player claims correctly while leaving system zones immune.
⚙️ Technical Notes
Server-side authoritative for all faction data — factions, claims, roles, power, and Obelisk bindings persist across restarts. No external database required.
🔮 Planned for the Future
On the roadmap — not in the current release:
🏆 Trophy system — defeating a faction yields a trophy recording the win, deposited into a displayable faction trophy case, with public viewing of rivals' trophies.
📊 Faction stats — wins, losses, claims taken, sieges survived.
🌟 Obelisk polish — an animated, glowing Obelisk in place of the current static look.
💣 Wider explosive compatibility — claim-aware breaching for more of the pack's siege weapons, plus coverage for automated-miner mods.
⚖️ Refined siege economics — tuning around Obelisk loss and cooldowns.
Available Versions
How to Install Shard's Factions on Your Server
Order Server
Order a Minecraft Java server with at least 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
Set neoforge Loader
In the panel under "Egg", select the neoforge loader and matching Minecraft version (1.21.1).
Install Mod
Open the mod browser in the dashboard and search for "Shard's Factions". Click "Install" – done! Alternatively, upload the .jar via SFTP to the /mods folder.
Compatibility
Mod Loaders
Minecraft Versions
1.21.1
Server-side
✓ RequiredRecommended RAM
4 GB(min. 3 GB)Frequently Asked Questions
Shard's Factions server crashes on startup – what to do?
Most common cause: wrong neoforge version or insufficient RAM. Check the server log (latest.log) for "OutOfMemoryError" or "Mixin" errors. With Mado Hosting: ensure at least 3 GB RAM is allocated and the loader matches the mod version (1.21.1). You can switch loaders with one click in the panel.
Is Shard's Factions compatible with neoforge?
Shard's Factions officially supports neoforge for Minecraft 1.21.1. The Mado dashboard automatically detects incompatible loader combinations.
Server lagging with Shard's Factions – how to optimize performance?
Recommended RAM: 4 GB (per 8 players). Use /spark profiler to check if Shard's Factions consumes the most tick time. Common fixes: reduce server view-distance to 8-10, install "performant" or "starlight" as supplementary mods on Forge. With Mado Hosting, your server runs on NVMe SSDs with dedicated CPU cores for minimal latency.
Rent Modded Server
Install Shard's Factions with just one click on your server.