How to Make a Crop

A custom crop is a normal EcoItem with a crop: section, which turns the item into a seed: right-click farmland to plant a staged crop that grows over time, can be bonemealed, and drops loot when harvested fully grown. This page covers making a crop from scratch and how growth works.

Quick start

1. Open /plugins/EcoItems/items/ and create your seed's file, e.g. golden_wheat_seeds.yml. items/examples/_example_crop.yml lists every option if you'd rather copy it.

2. Add an item: section for the seed, with its own texture.

3. Add a crop: section with a list of stages, lowest first.

4. Put one texture per stage in pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/crop/ inside the EcoItems plugin folder.

5. Run /ecoitems reload to rebuild the pack.

6. Give yourself the seed with /ecoitems give <player> golden_wheat_seeds, plant it on farmland, and bonemeal it to confirm each stage renders.

Naming and IDs

A crop shares its seed item's ID: the file name without .yml. Drops reference items with the Item Lookup System, so ecoitems:<id> gives back seeds or other EcoItems.

The structure of a crop

# === Seed item: what players plant ===
item:
  item: wheat_seeds
  name: "&6Golden Wheat Seeds"
  texture: item/golden_wheat_seeds # The seed icon

crop:
  # === Stages: lowest to highest ===
  stages: # Each stage needs a texture (or model)
    - texture: crop/golden_wheat_0
    - texture: crop/golden_wheat_1
    - texture: crop/golden_wheat_2
    - texture: crop/golden_wheat_3

  # === Growth: timing and planting rules ===
  growth-time: 1200 # Average seconds from planted to fully grown
  requires-farmland: true # false = plants on any solid block
  min-light: 9 # Growth pauses below this light level
  bonemeal: true # If bonemeal advances one stage
  rain-multiplier: 1.5 # Optional; growth speed while raining (1 = neutral, above 1 = faster)
  thunder-multiplier: 2.0 # Optional; growth speed during thunderstorms
  snow-multiplier: 0.5 # Optional; applies instead of rain in cold biomes

  # === Drops: loot from breaking it ===
  drops: # Broken fully grown; without this, drops the seed
    items:
      - item: ecoitems:golden_wheat
        amount: 1-3
      - item: ecoitems:golden_wheat_seeds # Seeds back
        amount: 1-2
    xp: 0-2
  immature-drops: # Broken early; defaults to the seed item
    items:
      - item: ecoitems:golden_wheat
        chance: 0.1

Seed item

The item: section is the same as any other EcoItem; see How to Make an Item.

Stages

Each stage takes a texture (a cross model is generated from it) or a model. Crops occupy stringblock (tripwire) states, one per stage, so they render as cross-shaped plants with no collision and break instantly, like vanilla crops. Stage state assignments are saved in block-variations.yml like any custom block.

Growth

• Growth runs on a timer over loaded chunks. Time keeps counting while a chunk is unloaded, so crops catch up the moment the chunk loads.

• If the block below stops being farmland (trampled or broken), the crop pops with its immature drops, like vanilla. Water flowing into a crop breaks it too.

• The weather multipliers are optional: 1 is neutral, above 1 grows faster, and below 1 grows slower.

• blocks.worlds in config.yml limits which worlds crops can be planted in.

Drops

Breaking uses the same drop pipeline as custom blocks: the fortune and silk touch options in drops:, and eco's drop queue with telekinesis support. drops applies when the crop is fully grown and defaults to the seed; immature-drops applies when it's broken early and also defaults to the seed. Protection plugins see real place and break events.

Where to go next

• Blocks: How to Make a Block for the block system crops are built on.

• Loot: Loot Injection to drop your seeds from vanilla blocks, mobs, or fishing.

• The base item: How to Make an Item for the seed's display and recipe fields.