ShadowsZ brings the iconic necromancy of the Shadow Monarch from Solo Leveling straight into Minecraft — raise the fallen, command an army of shadows, and bend every mob you defeat into a soldier that fights for you.

As a fan of compatibility and flexibility, this mod is highly configurable: tweak max shadow count, arising difficulty, cooldowns, entity blacklists, progression, and much more. Every major system below can be switched on or off in the config, so you can play anything from a pure shadow-army sandbox to a full RPG progression run.

How It Works

Claiming the Power

Shortly after joining a world, the shadows will offer you their power, accept it and the army is yours; reject it and nothing works. Until you're attuned, every shadow keybind, menu and spell stays silent.

Server owners can lock this down entirely with the shadowszRestrictPowers gamerule (see Server Tools below).

Shadow Eyes

Press N to reveal the shadows of fallen entities nearby. Shift + right-click a shadow to attempt Shadow Arising:you get 3 chances to succeed. Fail all three and the shadow vanishes forever. Wild shadows despawn after 5 minutes if unclaimed.

Arising chance is calculated from the entity's max HP and your current Mana — more Mana means better odds, higher HP means a harder conversion. Fully tweakable via config.

The Army Menu

Press B to open your army. It's a two-panel interface: a searchable roster on the left, and a detail page on the right with a live rotating 3D model of the selected shadow. From here you can:

• Name your shadows
• Assign hotkeys for instant individual summoning (9 slots)
• Set behavior: Wander / Follow / Stay
• Set combat stance: Aggressive / Passive / Neutral
• Toggle item pickup per shadow
• Spend level-up points on Health, Speed, Damage and Armor
• Fuse shadows and manage Equipment (optional, see below)
• Permanently release shadows when storage is full

Shadow Storage

Press Y for a shared inventory that works like an ender chest. Any loot your shadows collect is funneled straight here, so an aggressive shadow parked in a farm becomes a fully automatic item collector.

Commanding the Army

• V look at any target and your whole army attacks it. Press it again looking at nothing to stand them down.
• Summon All / Dismiss All / Despawn Wild Shadows bindable keys for instant army control.
• Groups organize shadows into squads with their own behavior and stance, and bind up to 3 group hotkeys to summon or dismiss a whole squad at once.
• Position Swap instantly trade places with one of your shadows (config cooldown).

Shadows force-load their own chunks, so they keep working even when you walk away.

Shadow Progression

Shadows earn XP from kills and level up, granting points you invest in Health, Speed, Damage or Armor. Two optional systems build on top:

• Shadow Fusion (off by default) sacrifice a shadow to add half its level to another of the same type.
• Shadow Equipment (off by default) give your shadows real armor and weapons through a 6-slot gear menu. Their stats and damage scale with what they carry.

Progress Mode & Titles (optional, off by default)

Enable progressMode to level the player as well. XP comes from your own kills and your shadows' kills, and every level raises how many shadows you can field at once and how many you can store.

Your level earns you a title, each granting real Iron's Spellbooks attribute bonuses:

Reach Shadow Monarch and your shadows turn from blue to deep violet, and every shadow near you gains a permanent health and armor aura.

Umbral Magic (Under progress)

ShadowsZ adds its own Umbral magic school to Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks, with its own spell power and resistance attributes:

• Miasma a creeping shroud of shadow.
• Umbral Bond bind a shadow to another creature as an invisible guardian. It defends its ward to the death and can never harm it.
• Aura of the Monarch the Monarch's presence made manifest.

Parties

Form runtime teams with other players. Invite from the menu, accept with a click in chat, and party members, along with all their shadows and pets; become permanent allies who can never damage each other.

Smart Shadow Behavior

• Shadows have their own inventory and can carry loot
• Shadows never burn in daylight and never drop their own loot
• Shadows never transform a shadow zombie won't turn into a drowned, a shadow pig won't be struck into a piglin
• Special interactions: Evokers raise Shadow Vexes, Witches throw healing potions at you
• Tameable entities become tamed on conversion, claim a wild horse and it becomes a fully tamed Shadow Horse, keeping its saddle and armor even after death
• Kill another player's pet and it becomes your tamed shadow
• Boss shadows never play their boss music or show their health bar
• Die, and your entire active army is safely stored

Server Tools

• /gamerule shadowszRestrictPowers true — only operators may take the power of the shadows. Enforced server-side, so a modified client can't grant itself the power.
• /shadowsz grant <players> — give the power of shadows.
• /shadowsz revoke <players> — take it back. Their army is safely recalled and their roster kept intact.
• /shadowsz levelplayer <n> and /shadowsz levelshadows <n> — grant levels for testing or events.

🔗 Compatibility

Requires — Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks

✅ Compatible with most modded entities, with dedicated support built in for:

• Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks — boss shadows raise their own minions to fight for you
• Legendary Monsters
• Bosses Rise
• Monster Expansion
• Mowzie's Mobs
• L_Ender's Cataclysm

Every compat layer is optional, none of these mods are required, and ShadowsZ runs fine without them.

⚙️ Configuration

Nearly everything is tunable: max simultaneous and stored shadows, arising base chance and scaling, mana difficulty and cost, shadow base strength, attack-order range, teleport cooldown, Monarch aura strength and radius, XP curves, entity blacklists, protected-entity lists, the black shadow texture, and the on/off switches for leveling, fusion, equipment and Progress Mode.