The Compression Upgrade turns part of a storage into a bottomless column for a single material. Drop in iron and it keeps nuggets, ingots, and blocks together as one enormous pile, far more than any normal chest could hold. You pull items back out at whatever size you need, so the same barrel feeds both your nugget crafts and your block builds.
It shines for bulk resources you gather by the thousand, like iron, gold, and redstone. Instead of watching loose ingots swallow a whole chest, you compress everything automatically and free up space for other loot. A single upgrade can track billions of one item.
Obtaining
You craft the Compression Upgrade at a Crafting Table. Surround an Upgrade Base with two Iron Ingots, two Pistons, and two Redstone Dust in the pattern below. The Upgrade Base is the shared starting point for almost every upgrade in the mod, and pistons and redstone are both cheap.
Usage
Place the Compression Upgrade in one of the upgrade slots along the side of any Sophisticated Storage chest, barrel, or shulker box. From then on the upgrade quietly manages a group of slots inside that storage and stores a single material at a scale no ordinary container can match.
Setting Up a Chain
Install the Upgrade
Claims five slots by default
Slot the upgrade into the storage and it immediately reserves five slots inside the container, marked with a compression icon. Those slots come out of the storage’s normal space, so it works best on roomy Diamond or Netherite storages.
Fill the First Slot
Sets the material for the chain
Put your chosen material into one of the reserved slots. The upgrade reads that item and lays out its full compression chain across the neighboring slots, giving each slot one tier of the same material. For iron that means one slot tracks nuggets, one tracks ingots, and one tracks blocks.
Store and Retrieve
Deposit or pull any tier
Deposit more of the material at any tier and it flows into the chain on its own. The upgrade packs everything down into the highest tier behind the scenes, so each slot can display a count in the billions. Take out nuggets, ingots, or blocks from their slots whenever you need them.
What It Compresses
The upgrade works with any stackable material that packs into a block and unpacks again. Standard resources handle themselves automatically, including Iron, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, Redstone, Lapis Lazuli, and Coal, complete with their nugget, ingot, and block tiers where they exist.
It also covers items that pack one way in the base game but do not normally unpack. These special cases are built into the mod so the chain still works both directions. Some materials even form three-tier chains, such as Ice into Packed Ice into Blue Ice, where 81 Ice collapse into a single Blue Ice.
| Packed Form | Unpacks Into | Items Per Block |
|---|---|---|
| Glowstone | Glowstone Dust | 4 |
| Quartz Block | Nether Quartz | 4 |
| Clay | Clay Ball | 4 |
| Snow Block | Snowball | 4 |
| Bricks | Brick | 4 |
| Nether Bricks | Nether Brick | 4 |
| Nether Wart Block | Nether Wart | 9 |
| Melon | Melon Slice | 9 |
| Packed Ice | Ice | 9 |
| Blue Ice | Packed Ice | 9 |
Every slot in the chain must belong to the same material family and follow the tier order the upgrade expects. The simplest approach is to drop in one item type and let the upgrade build the layout for you, rather than placing items by hand.
The Compression Upgrade cannot share a storage with the Compacting Upgrade or the Advanced Compacting Upgrade. They conflict, so you must pick one per chest or barrel. Choose the Compression Upgrade when you want to keep every tier and store huge amounts of one material.
Tips
Each upgrade handles a single material family, so dedicate one storage to iron, another to gold, and so on. If a storage still has free slots, you can add a second Compression Upgrade to run two separate chains in the same container.
Pair it with input automation for hands-off sorting. A Hopper Upgrade or a funnel of resources from a farm or mine will compress on arrival, so your storage never overflows with loose ingots or dust again.
Remember that the reserved slots come out of the storage’s own capacity. Putting the upgrade on a low-tier chest eats into the little space you have, so save it for higher-tier storages that can spare five slots comfortably.
Use it as a central stockpile rather than a working chest. It packs a single material tightly enough to absorb the overflow from any resource you produce faster than you can spend it.
FAQ
Any stackable material that packs into a block and unpacks again works, such as Iron, Gold, Diamond, and Redstone. It also handles special cases like Glowstone, Quartz Block, Snow Block, Nether Wart Block, Melon, and the Ice chain.
No. The Compression Upgrade conflicts with both the Compacting Upgrade and the Advanced Compacting Upgrade, so only one of those fits in a storage at a time. Pick the Compression Upgrade when you want to keep every tier and store a single material in bulk.
Effectively billions of a single material. The upgrade packs items into their highest tier internally, and each tier slot tracks its own count that can climb into the billions.
Yes. It reserves five slots by default from the storage’s own inventory, and server settings can set that anywhere from three to nine. Use it on larger storages so the reserved slots do not crowd out your other items.
Each upgrade manages one material family. If the storage has enough free slots, you can add a second Compression Upgrade to run another chain in the same container.
