MMD geology and building mod
Replace one generic stone with a world of recognisable rocks, broad geological formations, underground resources, and complete matching building families.
Minecraft Mineralogy is a geology-inspired content mod. It replaces much of the Overworld's ordinary stone and deepslate with recognisable rock types arranged into broad underground formations. Instead of every cave revealing the same grey wall, a journey can cross limestone, gneiss, shale, gabbro, marble, rock salt, volcanic glass, and many more materials.
Those rocks are not just scenery. Most participate in Minecraft's normal stone and cobblestone systems, and Mineralogy turns them into extensive building families: bricks, polished blocks, slabs, stairs, walls, relief carvings, and rock-matched furnaces. The result changes both halves of a mining trip—the world you explore and the palette you bring home.
Mineralogy is inspired by real rock families and geological relationships; it is not presented as a scientifically exact simulation. Its goal is to make Minecraft's underground more varied, believable, and fun.
Mineralogy 6 always uses OreSpawn 4
Mineralogy owns the rocks, blocks, items, fluids, recipes, textures, tags, and old-world compatibility. MMD OreSpawn 4 owns terrain replacement, geomes, formations, ore and fluid-deposit placement, world profiles, configuration screens, retrogen, and the public worldgen API.
That split is one of Mineralogy 6's biggest strengths. Mineralogy can focus on being the complete geology content experience while OS4 supplies one well-tested, configurable engine that can also coordinate other mods in the same world.
Earlier Mineralogy versions contained their own private geology and configuration systems. They proved how transformative broad rock formations could be, but every worldgen feature, compatibility hook, and editor belonged to one mod.
Mineralogy 6 makes the boundary clear:
Mineralogy
OreSpawn 4
For a player, the two mods feel like one complete experience. For a modpack author, the separation means Mineralogy's content can be tuned alongside Base Metals or another OS4 provider without several unrelated generators fighting over the same terrain.
Start with Recommended Defaults and let caves, cliffs, mines, and deep tunnels reveal changing rock families. Learn to recognise where one formation gives way to another.
Turn the rocks under a settlement into matching bricks, polished blocks, slabs, stairs, walls, reliefs, and furnaces. Every region can develop its own architectural character.
Adjust formation scale, rock weights, ore hosts, abundance, dimensions, biomes, and deposits through OS4 while leaving Mineralogy's jar intact.
Every world stores a complete OS4 profile. Copy the world and install the same mod set on a server to retain the geology chosen at creation.
Add a content provider such as Base Metals. OS4 can place its ores through Mineralogy's rock families without making either mod own the other's blocks.
Mineralogy retains historical registrations and aliases for saved blocks. Always upgrade a disposable copy first and keep every required content mod installed.
Mineralogy 6's provider gives OS4 32 active rock choices: 26 Mineralogy rocks and six appropriate vanilla materials. They are organised into four families so formations can feel related instead of randomly shuffling every block.
Igneous
Rocks associated with material reaching or approaching the surface.
Igneous
Deep crystalline rocks that give lower formations a weightier palette.
Changed by heat and pressure
Layered, crystalline, and decorative rocks for varied deep terrain.
Deposited in layers
Softer, bedded materials that bring character to shallower formations.
Minecraft now supplies its own andesite, basalt, diorite, granite, and tuff. Mineralogy uses those vanilla blocks in newly generated formations by default instead of placing visually duplicate versions. Mineralogy's historical blocks remain registered so existing worlds still resolve correctly and pack authors may deliberately select them.
That is content-aware compatibility rather than deletion: old saves keep their identity, new terrain uses the most natural shared block, and recipes can work through Forge and vanilla stone/cobblestone tags.
OS4 turns Mineralogy's catalogue into a stable world profile before chunks are generated:
A geome is a broad geological region. It changes which rock families and individual rocks are more likely without simply copying biome borders. Formation controls then decide the horizontal reach, vertical thickness, waviness, edge detail, and continuity of the strata within that region.
Mineralogy supports both OS4 geology experiences:
stable_layers algorithm creates broad, coherent formations whose size and shape can be tuned independently.The supplied Mineralogy profile starts with stable Sky formations, Overworld stone and deepslate hosts, and conservative settings that are ready to play. Recommended Defaults restores that authored baseline whenever experimentation goes too far.
Most standard rocks can become brick, polished, and polished-brick variants, then matching slabs, stairs, walls, and furnaces. Content flags let packs trim families they do not need.
Decorative rock reliefs add symbols and shallow carved detail without demanding a completely different building material.
Rock salt becomes warm lamps and tall streetlamps, giving the sedimentary family a useful decorative identity above ground.
Sulfur, phosphorous, and nitrate have provider-owned OS4 ore rules and matching dust or block recipes. Mineral fertiliser gives those resources a practical use.
Gypsum can be processed into building material, including a full set of coloured drywall for a cleaner contrast with natural stone.
Mineralogy supplies the crude-oil fluid and bucket. OS4 places covered, lobe-shaped deposits beneath ocean biomes in compatible sedimentary hosts.
Mineralogy deliberately keeps a relationship between the material you mine and the result you craft. A furnace made from one matching rock produces that rock's furnace. Rock-family slabs, stairs, walls, and bricks remain distinct instead of collapsing every recipe back into vanilla stone.
At the same time, ordinary recipes that genuinely mean “any stone” or “any cobblestone” can accept compatible Mineralogy rocks through tags. The mod therefore expands Minecraft's material language without needlessly breaking familiar tools and recipes.
Mineralogy supplies what may appear; OS4 controls how it appears. Open OreSpawn World Generation during world creation to use Recommended Defaults, choose a template, or tune individual systems.
| Area | What you can control |
|---|---|
| Geology engine | Sky geomes or classic Cyano layers |
| Formations | Horizontal size, thickness, waviness, edges, and continuity |
| Rocks and geomes | Enabled materials, weights, depth preferences, and regional influence |
| Ores | Dimensions, height, abundance, quantity, pattern, hosts, biomes, and cave exposure |
| Fluid deposits | Depth, frequency, radius, shape, hosts, biomes, roof, and shell |
| World profile | Templates, pack defaults, Create World edits, and the per-world snapshot |
| Advanced OS4 features | Optional vanilla-ore management, flat bedrock, and bounded retrogen |
Mineralogy itself contributes sulfur, phosphorous, nitrate, and crude oil. OS4's optional vanilla-ore management remains an engine feature and is not silently forced on by Mineralogy.
Changes normally affect newly generated chunks. OS4 can perform bounded ore or bedrock retrogen when deliberately enabled, but it never retro-generates rock strata through existing terrain.
Install matching Minecraft 1.18.2 Forge builds of:
Both are required on clients and servers. A world containing Mineralogy blocks should never be opened without Mineralogy installed.
The result is copied into the new world as a complete profile. Moving that world to a dedicated server keeps its choices when the same required mods are installed.
| Location | Purpose |
|---|---|
config/mineralogy-common.toml | Mineralogy content, recipes, drops, and compatibility options |
config/orespawn-worldgen.json | Installed-pack defaults used when creating new worlds |
<world>/serverconfig/orespawn-worldgen.json | One world's complete, self-contained worldgen profile |
config/mineralogy-orespawn.json | A pack's authoritative override of Mineralogy's provider |
config/mineralogy-guide/ | Mineralogy's exported player, content, and provider guide |
config/orespawn-guide/ | OS4 engine, schema, template, dimension, and API documentation |
Content configuration changes require a restart. Do not disable a block family that is already used in a world unless you understand the missing-registry consequences.
Mineralogy packages a declarative OS4 provider at:
data/mineralogy/orespawn/provider.jsonIt declares the 32 rock choices, the three Mineralogy ores, Overworld terrain hosts, matching vanilla aliases, stable-layer defaults, and Mineralogy's crude oil deposit. That is the normal integration—there is no private Mineralogy worldgen engine to enable or synchronise.
To replace the provider for a pack, ship a complete file at:
config/mineralogy-orespawn.jsonThe override is authoritative. If it is malformed or incomplete, OS4 rejects the Mineralogy provider instead of quietly falling back to different defaults. That fail-closed behaviour makes pack mistakes visible and avoids mixed or duplicated world generation.
Existing worlds retain their self-contained profile. A newer provider can introduce newly added IDs, but it does not overwrite choices already owned by that world.
mineralogy-common.toml controls whether optional decorative families are registered and craftable. Packs can independently choose reliefs, rock furnaces, slabs, stairs, walls, bricks, polished variants, and polished-brick variants.
Those flags control Mineralogy content. Rock placement, ore abundance, geomes, dimensions, templates, deposits, and retrogen belong in the OS4 profile. Keeping the two concerns separate makes configuration easier to reason about.
Other mods and pack tools should use OS4's supported provider format or zone.moddev.mc.orespawn.api. Do not build new integrations against Mineralogy's internal classes.
Useful compatibility tags include:
mineralogy:rocks and mineralogy:standard_rocks;mineralogy:crafting_materials/<rock> for matching recipes;Mineralogy has existed across many Minecraft generations, and the content side of Mineralogy 6 continues to own saved-block compatibility. Historical Mineralogy versions of andesite, basalt, diorite, granite, and tuff remain registered even though new OS4 terrain uses the matching vanilla blocks. Registry aliases also preserve deliberately renamed historical IDs.
World upgrades still deserve care:
Mineralogy can preserve only the content it owns; blocks and items from other absent mods cannot be reconstructed for it. New chunks use the current OS4 world profile, while existing chunks retain their saved blocks.
OS4 resolves blocks, tags, dimensions, rock weights, hosts, geomes, patterns, and provider ownership before generation. Mineralogy's provider is declarative: it does not insert callbacks, configuration reads, registry lookups, or logging into per-block generation loops.
Unconfigured dimensions skip immediately. The Overworld is the only default terrain-replacement dimension, so the Nether, End, and modded dimensions keep their own terrain unless a pack deliberately opts them in with valid hosts and rock rules.
Mineralogy 6 also ships complete language files for 16 locales and exports its own guides on first launch. The aim is a rich geology mod that remains approachable at world creation, inspectable by pack authors, and predictable on a dedicated server.