switched over from spring to dagger and from hibernate to openjpa, to significantly reduce the file size.
made category loading asynchronous
updated dependencies (Including NBT api)
removed the requirement for extra server command line parameters (-illegal-access=permit --add-opens java.base/java.lang.invoke=ALL-UNNAMED is no longer needed)
This version supports 1.17 and newer and requires the server to use Java 17 (or newer).