Soul Shard
by Konoplanyy
Soul Shard changes what happens to a player's items on death: they go into a crystal instead of scattering across the ground.
What it does
On death, the dropped items are gathered into a single Soul Shard crystal placed at the point of death. The crystal can be broken to recover everything stored inside, and its hit points are shown as five hearts. Items are kept together rather than spread over the terrain, so a player searches one location instead of tall grass, caves or water.
The crystal keeps the classic five-minute risk: it has a five-minute lifespan that follows the same despawn logic as ordinary vanilla items, so the recovery pressure stays. If the crystal is broken by players, mobs or environmental hazards, its stored items drop to the ground. Lava, explosions and fire can destroy it, and the items then burn or vanish as they would in vanilla. Loot stealing between players in multiplayer remains possible.
The mod is designed as a lightweight utility for death mechanics and is open source under the MIT License. Both the server and every player need it, because the crystal and its inventory handling run on both sides. Files are published for Fabric and NeoForge, with the latest release, 1.2.1, dated 2026-04-25.
Key features
Organized recovery
Dropped items are stored inside one crystal at the point of death instead of scattering over the ground.
Vanilla-friendly risk
The crystal keeps the five-minute despawn window that matches standard vanilla item lifetimes.
Loot integrity
Items inside a broken crystal drop to the ground, so the loot stays intact and can still be taken by other players.
Environmental danger
Lava, explosions and fire can destroy the crystal, and the items then burn or vanish as in vanilla.
Gallery
Compatibility
Latest build for each game version and loader.
Only full game releases are shown. This mod publishes no snapshot builds.
Use cases
Who it’s for: Players who want a less tedious recovery after death without removing the core risk of losing items. Server owners who run multiplayer survival can install it on the server and on every client.
How it compares
Hulis Z-Crystals is a server-side only Fabric mod, released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only and open source. Death Soul runs on Fabric, Forge, NeoForge and Quilt for 1.21.4 – 1.21.11, with the server required and the client optional, under the MIT License, but it is not open source. Soul Shard needs both sides and is published for Fabric and NeoForge.
| Mod | Loaders | Game versions | Environment | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soul Shard | Fabric and NeoForge | 1.20.1 – 1.21.1 | Client and server | 2026-04-25 |
| Hulis Z-Crystals | Fabric | 1.20.1 – 1.21.1 | Server-side only | 2024-12-25 |
| Death Soul | Fabric, Forge, NeoForge and Quilt | 1.21.4 – 1.21.11 | Server required, client optional | 2026-01-23 |
Questions
Does Soul Shard need to be installed on the server?
Which loaders does Soul Shard support?
Can other players take the items from a crystal?
In the catalog
Soul Shard is one of 19,031 Adventure mods on ModsFinder, and one of 10,052 Adventure mods for Fabric. 32,366 mods support Minecraft 1.21.1.
Similar mods
What the author says
Soul Shard is a lightweight utility mod designed to refine the vanilla death mechanics without making the game "too easy." Instead of items scattering randomly across the ground, they are neatly contained within a Soul Shard crystal that spawns at the point of your death. Development Roadmap: - Mod Integration…
Official listing
- Modrinth page
- modrinth.com/mod/soul-shard
- Owner
- Konoplanyy
- Published
- 2026-02-08
- Updated on Modrinth
- 2026-04-25
- Facts verified
- 2026-10-15