Hidden Display

hidden_display decides what a player who has not unlocked the stage sees in place of the real item. It changes nothing about whether the item is locked — only how it presents itself. Once the stage is unlocked, everything displays normally again.

In the editor

Not a tab — it belongs to the stage rather than to one lock category. Stage Settings, the button on the stage's own screen, holds it as the Display card: the two modes as dropdowns, their replacement texts as fields, and the lock-hint switch.

Per-entry overrides are set where the entry is: right-click the item, tag, mod or fluid in its list and pick Text Override.

No Text Override in the menu?

It only appears while this stage's name_mode or tooltip_mode is set to "replace" — with both off or hidden there is no text for an entry to override, so the menu leaves it out rather than offering something that would do nothing.

{
  "hidden_display": {
    "name_mode": "replace",
    "name_text": "???",
    "tooltip_mode": "replace",
    "tooltip_text": "Unlock the Stone Age to reveal this item.",
    "show_lock_hints": false
  }
}

Key	Type	Default	What it does
name_mode	String	"off"	"off" — name unchanged. "hidden" — name is cleared. "replace" — name becomes name_text.
name_text	String	""	The replacement name, used when name_mode is "replace".
tooltip_mode	String	"off"	"off" — tooltip unchanged. "hidden" — extra tooltip lines are stripped. "replace" — tooltip becomes tooltip_text.
tooltip_text	String	""	The replacement tooltip. \n starts a new line.
show_lock_hints	Boolean	true	With false, the padlock icon and the "Locked" hint line are left off the tooltip.

Taking full control of the tooltip

show_lock_hints on its own does very little — turning it off simply removes the padlock line and leaves whatever the item would otherwise show. It earns its place in combination with tooltip_mode: "replace", which together is the only way to decide every line a locked player reads:

{
  "hidden_display": {
    "name_mode": "replace",
    "name_text": "Ancient Relic",
    "tooltip_mode": "replace",
    "tooltip_text": "Recovered from the ruins.\nIts purpose is not yet clear.",
    "show_lock_hints": false
  }
}

Without show_lock_hints: false, the mod's own "requires stage X" line is appended underneath and gives the answer away.

Overriding it for a single entry

Entries in items and tags can carry their own name_text and tooltip_text, which take precedence over the stage-wide ones:

{
  "hidden_display": {
    "name_mode": "replace",
    "name_text": "???",
    "tooltip_mode": "replace",
    "tooltip_text": "Not yet discovered."
  },
  "items": [
    "minecraft:iron_ingot",
    {
      "id": "minecraft:netherite_ingot",
      "name_text": "A Heavy Metal",
      "tooltip_text": "Heavier than gold, and it does not burn."
    }
  ]
}

Only the text is overridden, never the mode. name_mode and tooltip_mode in hidden_display still decide whether replacing happens at all — an entry with a name_text and a stage whose name_mode is "off" shows the real name.

??? is the mod's own word for "unknown"

hidden_display is off by default, so nothing is renamed until a stage asks for it. But if you want a replacement name that matches the rest of the mod, use ??? — that is what the built-in lock messages ("??? This item is still unknown to you ???") and the Stage Graph's hidden-stage node already say. It is a deliberate house style rather than an unfinished placeholder.

What hidden display does not cover

An item whose entry narrows the lock down to a single action — say recipe alone — still shows as hidden and still carries the "requires stage X" tooltip. Both statements describe that the item belongs to a stage, which stays true however narrow the gate is. Everything that actually refuses an action reads the action list; the two display surfaces deliberately do not.

See also

• Unlock Actions — narrowing which interactions a lock covers.
• visual.toml — the server-wide defaults for lock messages, tooltips and the padlock overlay, which apply to every stage that does not override them.