Getting Started

Townstead is an expansion for MCA Reborn. Villagers get needs to keep up with, careers to grow into, workplaces to staff, and a written village history. Most of it works with MCA alone. More features turn on when you also install the cooking, drink, and survival mods it supports.

Note

This guide is under construction. The pages linked below are complete and checked against the current build. Pages that still say “Coming soon” are on the way.

What You Need

	1.21.1	1.20.1
Loader	NeoForge 21.1 or later	Forge 47.3 or later
MCA Reborn	7.7.36 or later	7.7.1 or later

Everything else is optional. Townstead detects the mods it supports on its own. You do not need to configure them.

Install

1. Drop the Townstead jar into your mods folder alongside MCA Reborn.
2. Start the game once. Townstead writes its server and client configuration files under config/townstead/.
3. Play. Existing villagers pick up their needs and careers on the first tick; nothing has to be reset.

For a dedicated server, install the same jar on the server and every client.

Your First Hour

Look at a villager. Open their dialogue screen. The icons beside their portrait show hunger, energy, temperature, and thirst if you have a thirst mod. Hover for the exact value. See Villager Needs.

Feed them. A stocked chest near where villagers live is enough to start. Set up a farm to keep the chest full, and a kitchen if you want the crops cooked into meals. See Hunger and Cooking & Baking.

Give them somewhere warm. A lit campfire with a few blocks of masonry around it becomes a hearth. Cold villagers go there to warm up. See Temperature.

Put them to work. Build a recognised workplace, such as a kitchen, and an idle villager takes the seat. Pin up an Order Sheet to tell them what to make. See Careers and Orders.

Let them live. Villagers visit hangouts, talk, form relationships, and grow up and old. See Hangouts, Conversations & Dialogue, Relationships, and Life Stages.

Read the record. Open the Chronicle to read what has happened in the village, and the Archives to read each character’s career. See Chronicles and Careers.

Going Further

• Roots for villagers who are not human.
• Community Spirit for what your buildings say about the village.
• Reactions for how villagers respond to what you do.
• Calendars & Stamps for dates, seasons, and the marks on the record.
• The configuration reference for every switch.

Making Content

Townstead is data-driven. Careers, roots, genes, workstations, and dialogue are JSON in data packs, and the reference sections on the left cover each format. Start with Careers for professions and work, Roots for species and genes, and Pheno for the condition and action language they share.