Nomad Labs
A Hytale crossbow with an iron-grey bow and a dark wooden stock, its string drawn back with a bolt seated in the groove

Nomad Drawstring

Both vanilla crossbow strings move when bolts load and fire. Asset-only, with no configuration.

First-person view of a loaded crossbow held over a lake, with a bolt seated on the drawn string. Side-by-side of the iron crossbow: vanilla with slack string on the left, Nomad Drawstring with the string drawn and a bolt seated on the right. Side-by-side of the ancient steel crossbow: vanilla with slack string on the left, Nomad Drawstring with the string drawn and a bolt seated on the right.

What you get

  • A crossbow that looks loaded. The vanilla crossbow's string never moves. With this mod, while the weapon holds at least one bolt, the held model shows the string hauled back over the nut, the limbs bent and a bolt seated in the groove. Shoot the last bolt and the string springs forward again.
  • Both vanilla crossbows. Iron (Weapon_Crossbow_Iron) and Ancient Steel (Weapon_Crossbow_Ancient_Steel).
  • Any vanilla arrow. Each crossbow can now be loaded with any of the five vanilla arrow types (Crude, Iron, Clearshot, Deadeye, Trueshot) instead of only Crude.
  • Nothing else changes. Damage, reload speed and the six-bolt magazine are untouched.
  • Cosmetic and server-side. There is no config, no commands and no code running on your server tick.

Install

  1. Put NomadDrawstring.jar in your server's Server/mods/ folder and start the server.
  2. That is all. The models and item overrides are inside the jar, so there is nothing to unzip.

Players need nothing on their end. To go back to vanilla, remove the jar; the crossbows and any bolts loaded in them are untouched either way.

How it works

The swap is driven by the crossbow's own ammo count, so the mod does not listen for shots or reloads and cannot fall out of sync. The drawn pose is the one Hypixel authored and shipped in the game files as a clip nothing plays; Drawstring bakes it into a second copy of the crossbow model.

Known limits

  • The string snaps, it does not travel. It goes from slack to drawn the moment the first bolt counts, in the middle of the reload animation. Hytale has no hook for playing a stat-driven clip on a held item.
  • The Ancient Steel crossbow keeps its own texture when loaded.
  • Conflicts. Any mod that overrides Weapon_Crossbow_Iron or Weapon_Crossbow_Ancient_Steel outright will fight this one, since whichever pack loads last wins the item definition. Mods that only add new crossbows are unaffected.

Before you install

Questions

Does it change how the crossbow plays?

No. Damage, reload speed and the six-bolt magazine are the same. The one gameplay difference is that each crossbow can now load any of the five vanilla arrow types, not just Crude.

Do players need to install anything?

No. It is server-side only. Put the jar in the server's mods folder and players join with the ordinary Hytale client.

Does it need a config or commands?

No. There is no config and there are no commands. The plugin is a jar only because Hytale asset packs ship inside jars.

Will it clash with other crossbow mods?

Only with a mod that overrides the vanilla Iron or Ancient Steel crossbow item outright, because whichever pack loads last wins that item definition. Mods that only add new crossbows are unaffected.

Can I take it out again?

Yes. Remove the jar to go back to vanilla. The crossbows and any bolts loaded in them are untouched.

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