(patch 1.2.5)

Additional Information Video

(patch 1.3.2)

By now, many great extensions of the Minecraft gameplay exist (such as Industrialcraft, Buildcraft....) but they have one common weakness. They usually require you to amass X resources before you can make use of the advanced stuff. The process of mining down and then stripmining for raw materials has become very repetitive and boring after a while, so i decided Minions to do it for you were needed!!!

Minions can [currently]:

follow you around
be sent to places
chop down entire forests
carry you, animals and other players
dig mineshafts complete with stairwell
dig custom spaces you defined, above and below ground
mine ore veins you point out to them
intelligently strip mine where you tell them to
return their goods and loot to you
or to a Block with inventory (> 23 slots) you pointed out

Minions use an A-star algorithm custom pathing system. It's threaded and multicore-capable.
Hitches and problems/teleporting you see all stem from Minecraft pathfollowing, which is ... lets call it suboptimal.

The tree finding algorithm is threadbased aswell, and stops when it has found 16 trees or has scanned a 64x64 area. It supports mod Tree's so long their custom Tree blocks have "wood" in their name.

Animal abduction works on all entities that extend EntityAnimal.

Strip mining scans the walls and roofs of the dug shaft continuously for precious blocks. Anything that is not worthless (eg dirt, stone, gravel...) is considered precious, so it fully supports mod ores.

Giving the order to mine an ore vein or having found such a vein while strip mining, the Minion will follow the vein and mine all connected Blocks of the same kind until there are no more. Then it will return to the player, or, if it was stripmining, return to that.

They don't come for free, you have to prove your worth by slaying living beings (to accumulate levels) and then take action for the dark gods. Only after a number of evil deeds they may grant you minions.

So, here's the short minion manual:

Kill enough stuff to reach lvl 8
Press M and do evil 4 times
Receive Master Item
Rightclick Master Item to spawn Minions
Rightclick to issue orders, context-sensitive (a place, trees, an animal, an ore vein, your feet)
Also press M for advanced orders
Rightclick chest (FROM DISTANCE) to set it as destination
Charge staff like a bow to have minions follow you
Rightclick minions to have them drop whatever they have
Leftclick Minions for working incentive .... mueheheheh
Leftclick with Staff out for evil sparkly

Minions are fully compatible with SMP. However there may be oddness regarding their movement and animations - i'm not sure that is fixable.

Default settings: (configurable by the file in the /mods/ folder)

Minions main menu: "M"
Maximum Minions per player: 4
Cost of evil Deed: 2 levels
- 4 evil deeds are required to gain minions

Instructions:

Requirements to install:
Newer versions - just Forge

The folders in the downloaded file are labeled.

Take part!
As you might notice, evil Deeds can be added dynamically using the config file. Share yours!

Minecraft Minions