Tree Nuke

Quickstart

1. Craft either the Foliage Cleaner or the Risky Foliage Cleaner (recipes below).
2. Place the block anywhere in the world — it looks like a small device block.
3. Right-click it to trigger an immediate wide-area cleanup. The block removes itself, plays a soft break sound, and begins clearing foliage across a large radius.
4. Alternatively, Sneak (Shift) + Right-click to activate steady mode, which spreads the work across many ticks to keep the server running smoothly.
5. When the sweep finishes, you'll hear a grass-break sound near the original placement spot.

Overview

Tree Nuke (mod ID: tree-nuke-n7o3r4pg) is a Java Edition 1.20.1 Fabric mod that adds two placeable block-items for rapidly clearing forests and vegetation from large areas. Instead of explosions and fire, these cleaners silently delete foliage, trees, and ground vegetation, leaving open cleared land behind.

What It Adds

Both cleaners remove:

• All types of leaves
• Logs connected to trees (see safety rules above)
• Surface vegetation: grass, tall grass, ferns, large ferns, dead bushes, sweet berry bushes, vines, hanging roots, moss carpet, moss blocks, azalea, flowering azalea
• All flowers (small and tall)
• Saplings
• Underwater vegetation: seagrass, tall seagrass, kelp

How To Use

Normal Activation (Right-click)

Place the Foliage Cleaner or Risky Foliage Cleaner and right-click it. The cleaner removes itself immediately, plays a soft item-break sound, then begins scanning and clearing blocks across the entire radius. Block changes are spread across server ticks to limit lag. When complete, a grass-break sound signals that the sweep is done.

Steady Mode (Sneak + Right-click)

Shift + Right-click the placed cleaner to activate steady mode. Instead of processing whole chunks at a time, the cleaner scans terrain column-by-column and drains a small removal queue each tick. This is the recommended mode for large modpacks or performance-sensitive servers, as it greatly reduces the chance of lag spikes or crashes. It takes longer, but the server remains responsive throughout.

Radius

The clearing radius is at minimum 16 chunks in every direction from the placement point, and automatically scales up to match the current server view distance if it is larger.

Structure Safety (Foliage Cleaner only)

Before removing any log, the standard Foliage Cleaner checks whether that log is adjacent to blocks that suggest a player-built structure — such as planks, stairs, slabs, fences, doors, stone bricks, terracotta, and similar materials. If any such block is found nearby, the logs in that connected tree are left untouched. The Risky Foliage Cleaner skips this check entirely.

Performance Notes

• Up to 4 cleaners can be active at the same time; additional activations while the queue is full will be skipped.
• The mod automatically reduces how many chunks it processes per tick when the server tick time is high (slowing down under load, speeding up when the server is idle).
• Block updates are applied without triggering neighbor cascades, further reducing lag.

Crafting And Obtaining

Foliage Cleaner:

Risky Foliage Cleaner:

Both recipes are automatically unlocked for players when they join the world.

Progression And Strategy

• Start with the Foliage Cleaner when clearing land near your base. Its structure-detection logic means nearby buildings with log walls or wooden roofs are less likely to be accidentally stripped.
• Use the Risky Foliage Cleaner only in wilderness areas far from any builds, or when a previous sweep left orphaned logs behind.
• Always prefer Sneak + Right-click (steady mode) on servers with other players or large modpacks to avoid lag spikes.
• Because the radius scales with render distance, increasing your server's view distance before activating a cleaner will expand the sweep area automatically — use this intentionally if you need to clear a very large region, but be aware it also increases the total work done.