Pedestals

Overview

Pedestals turns any block into a physical crafting altar. Admins design a recipe and a reward using an in-game GUI — no config file editing required — and players who have the right ingredients in their inventory simply right-click the pedestal to craft. Link pedestals together into an "Infusion" ritual for multi-stage crafting, gate progression behind prerequisite chains, or hand out randomized rewards from a weighted loot table.

Key Features

• Modern Display Entities: Built entirely on 1.21+ ItemDisplay/BlockDisplay entities rather than invisible armor stands, with configurable scale, height, size, rotation speed/axis, and a breathing or pulse animation.
• In-Game Recipe Editor: Define up to 28 ingredients by placing items straight into an inventory GUI. Ingredients are matched by full item data (name, lore, enchantments, custom model data), so custom items from resource-pack plugins work automatically.
• Infusion Ritual Pedestals: Link a master pedestal to nearby "pillar" pedestals (within 10 blocks). Each pillar must be crafted (prepared) independently first — shown live with color-coded particle beams — before the master can complete the ritual.
• Random Loot Tables: Give a pedestal multiple possible rewards with weights and min/max amounts, previewed as small items orbiting the pedestal.
• Persistent Progress: Multi-step prerequisites (must craft from other pedestals first) and per-player crafting history are saved to disk, so progression survives server restarts.
• Cooldowns, Costs & Limits: Per-player and global cooldowns, an XP cost (levels or points), a total craft limit, a custom permission node, and an optional discovery range that hides the recipe until a player walks close enough.

Step-by-Step Setup & Mechanics

Getting started with Pedestals is intuitive for players but highly configurable for admins. Here is how to set up the core features on your server.

Step 1: Build a Standard Pedestal

1. Stand where you want it and run /pedestal create. The physical structure spawns instantly and the editor GUI opens.
2. Hold the reward item and click Set Display Item — this is what floats above the pedestal and what players receive.
3. Click Recipe Editor and place up to 28 required ingredient stacks into the grid, then confirm with Create Recipe.
4. Click Save Changes to register the pedestal.
5. Any player with the matching ingredients in their inventory can now walk up and Right-Click the pedestal: the ingredients are consumed and the reward is added to their inventory.

Step 2: Build an Infusion (Ritual) Pedestal

Infusions require one master pedestal and one or more pillar pedestals within 10 blocks of it, each configured with their own recipe and reward exactly like Step 1.

1. On the master pedestal's editor, toggle Crafting Type to Infusion Master.
2. Open Infusion Settings and click each nearby pedestal you want to require — linking one automatically caps that pillar to a 1-craft limit.
3. Players craft each linked pillar normally first; this "prepares" it, shown as a green particle beam instead of red.
4. Once every linked pillar is prepared, right-clicking the master consumes the master's own recipe and completes the ritual. Pillars with Pillar Reset enabled automatically go back to 0 crafts afterwards, ready to be prepared again for the next infusion.

Step 3: Prerequisites & Random Loot

1. Open Requirement Tree on a pedestal to pick which other pedestals a player must have crafted from at least once before this one will work — perfect for progression chains.
2. Open Random Loot Table to enable random output; hold an item and click it in your inventory to add it to the table (default weight 10, min/max equal to the amount held), then adjust as needed. Up to 8 entries preview as small items orbiting the pedestal.

Integrations

Pedestals doesn't need dedicated hooks for custom-item plugins — recipe ingredients and rewards are matched and displayed using the real ItemStack, so anything another plugin gives you works automatically.

Oraxen, ItemsAdder & Nexo

Because ingredients are matched by full item data (material, name, lore, enchantments, and custom model data) and reward items are rendered with a real ItemDisplay entity, custom-textured items from Oraxen, ItemsAdder, or Nexo display and match correctly with no extra setup — just put the actual custom item into the recipe editor or set it as the display item.

PlaceholderAPI

When PlaceholderAPI is installed, Pedestals registers automatically and exposes:

• %pedestals_total% — total number of registered pedestals.
• %pedestals_crafts_<name>% — times the named pedestal has been crafted.
• %pedestals_cooldown_<name>% — seconds left on the viewing player's personal cooldown for that pedestal.

bStats

Pedestals reports anonymous usage metrics (total pedestal count, type distribution, and discovery-mode adoption) via bStats so you can see how the feature is used across the community.

Real-world Examples

1. A One-Time "Server First" Trophy Craft

Want a legendary item that only the first team on the server can ever forge?

• Set a rare, expensive recipe and set Craft Limit to 1.
• Enable Announcements so the whole server sees who completed it.
• Give it a custom display name (or type @hand while renaming to copy formatting straight from the reward item).
• Once crafted, the craft limit blocks anyone else — it's a permanent, one-of-one server milestone.

2. A Hidden Recipe Behind Discovery Mode

Reward exploration instead of publishing every recipe up front:

• Enable Discovery Mode on the pedestal.
• Tuck it away somewhere out of the way — its hologram shows only "??? Walk closer to discover!" until a player gets within the configured discovery.range.
• The moment they get close enough, the real recipe and reward reveal themselves with a discovery message.

3. A Three-Pillar Infusion Altar

Build a multi-stage "forge the legendary blade" questline using Infusion pedestals:

• Place two or three pillar pedestals in a circle, each with a cheap recipe (e.g., Iron Ingots, Blaze Powder, Ghast Tears).
• Place a master pedestal in the center with its own recipe (e.g., a Netherite Sword base) and link all the pillars to it via Infusion Settings.
• Players craft each pillar individually to prepare them, watch the particle beams turn from red to green, then right-click the master to complete the ritual and receive the final item.

Commands

Comprehensive command list for administrators and players.

Permissions

On top of those two nodes, each individual pedestal can also require its own custom permission node (set via the Permission Gate button in the editor) — handy for VIP-only or event-only crafting stations.

Configuration (config.yml) Breakdown

The config.yml controls the plugin's chat message formats and the discovery system's default range.

# Pedestals Configuration
# Use MiniMessage format: https://docs.advntr.dev/minimessage/format.html

messages:
  # The prefix used before every plugin message
  prefix: "<bold><#E0E1DD>PEDESTALS <#1B263B>◆ </bold>"
  
  # Format for missing item alerts
  missing-items: "<#D90429>You are missing: <#778DA9>{items}"
  
  # Format for successful crafts
  craft-success: "<#778DA9>You have crafted {item}."
  
  # Global announcement format
  broadcast-craft: "<#1B263B>◆ <#E0E1DD>{player} <#778DA9>reached completion! <#E0E1DD>{item} <#778DA9>reached completion!"

  # Warning and Error formats
  warning: "<#8D99AE>{message}"
  error: "<#D90429>{message}"
  info: "<#415A77>{message}"
  success: "<#778DA9>{message}"

# Discovery system settings
discovery:
  # How close (in blocks) a player must be to discover a pedestal
  range: 5.0
  # Message shown when a player discovers a pedestal
  message: "<#52B788>✧ You discovered a new pedestal: <#E0E1DD>{name}!"

Line-by-Line Breakdown

Troubleshooting & Tools

1. The reward item isn't showing up

Make sure you've set a reward with the Set Display Item button in the editor — a pedestal with no display item and no recipe will simply warn players that it isn't configured. Pedestals requires Paper (or a fork) 1.21+, since it strictly relies on modern ItemDisplay/BlockDisplay entities; it will not work on older versions.

2. Infusion ritual isn't triggering

If right-clicking the master pedestal does nothing:

• Confirm Crafting Type is actually set to Infusion Master on that pedestal.
• Every linked pillar must show a green particle beam (crafted/prepared at least once) — a red beam means that pillar still needs to be crafted first.
• Pillars must be linked from the master's Infusion Settings page and within 10 blocks of it in the same world.
• The master still needs its own recipe ingredients in your inventory — linking pillars doesn't replace the master's own recipe.

3. Pedestals vanished after a crash

Pedestal data is saved to disk asynchronously (and flushed instantly on a clean shutdown), so a hard crash can only ever lose the last few unsaved seconds of changes. If the physical displays look missing, frozen, or duplicated after a crash or a chunk unload/reload, just walk back into range — each pedestal automatically re-adopts or repairs its own display entities (including any loot-table item previews) the moment its chunk loads again. No manual reload command is needed.

4. Items are invisible but holograms exist

This happens if you are using a custom resource pack and specified a Custom Model Data ID that doesn't exist in your pack. The game renders an invisible item. Double-check your ItemsAdder/Oraxen configurations.