Minecraft has been around since 2011, but it continues to be one of the most popular games, with almost 150 million players worldwide. Perhaps, it’s because of how the game continues to be complex and challenging for gamers, even in newer ways.
A part of it might be due to the addition of Minecraft mods. A Minecraft mod is a user-based modification to a game that can transform the game, and give it a new character, especially if you’re bored with the same old surroundings or gameplay experience.
Mods can be as simple as adding light to decorative elements in a game, or they can help bring in new characters, challenges, and powers. Mods can improve your gameplay by giving you an entirely new experience and bringing in some major developments. To take a look at the best Minecraft mods, take a look below:
FastCraft
FastCraft is a Minecraft mod that’s sophisticated and savvy to improve the client and server performance without introducing any major game changes. You can either install FastCraft on your server or your client.
You’ll get a broad range of optimizations with FastCraft. Here’s what to expect from your Minecraft mod:
- FastCraft will increase the speed of the gameplay
- It’ll also eliminate and reduce lags to a minimum
- There’s also faster game setup with improved frames-per-second optimization
While mods can often add adventures and mini wacky games, FastCraft only optimizes gameplay so that you’re able to have a personalized game experience.
JourneyMap
JourneyMap‘s the perfect client and server mod for mapping your Minecraft world in real-time. In fact, as you explore, you can view the game map as a mini-map or view it in full screen in a web browser. You can view three maps using JourneyMap:
- In-game minimap
- Full-screen map
- Webmap
A map-based Minecraft mod is practical for the times you’re feeling lost in the game. This will help you check your location, go back to spots you need to, and also identify uninvited strangers.
JourneyMap can also help generate large map images. Moreover, JourneyMap is available on mod loaders – Fabric, Forge, and Quilt. JourneyMap can give you a scrollable view of areas you have been to in the game. It’ll show them in the exact state you discovered them – it won’t give you a view of how the places look like in current time.
JourneyMap takes care of your privacy as well, and doesn’t track any personal info. It operates by sending out basic stat and configuration details for one-time installation, and that’s fully anonymous!
Just Enough Items (JEI)
Just Enough Items (JEI) is an item and recipe viewing mod that’s known to enhance stability, ease of use, and performance. Now, if you’re wondering how this is useful to the gameplay experience, let’s break it down.
Crafting is no easy process, and you would rather not be constantly googling recipes to craft something and switching out of the game. In fact, JEI is for finding the right crafting recipes and having them at your fingertips for constructing tools and blocks within the game.
Recipes are essential for smooth gameplay in Minecraft, and whether you’re new to the game or a veteran, knowing the exact recipe can be challenging. So, JEI is an all-in-one recipe manager that can also help you review the use of items.
Now you won’t be able to see recipes for everything – just craftable items, really! You can also view other information like different uses that can help you grasp a more in-depth understanding of an item’s functionality.
Enchantment Descriptions
A client-side mod, Enchantment Descriptions, will help you understand what an enchantment can be applied to, what are the different types of enchantments, and what are all the effects. It’s important to enchant your tools in Minecraft to boost their power and give you new abilities.
This mod is lightweight and yet big on its usefulness. There are three all-purpose enchantments that can be applied to armor, tools, and weapons you own within the game.
Using mending, you can repair items. Whereas unbreaking, as the name suggests, makes your weapons stronger. And, the curse of vanishing makes your weapons disappear upon death, to not leave a chance to be gained as spoils of war by your enemies.
Besides this, there are 30+ enchantments available that are specific to armor, tools, melee weapons, and ranged weapons. It can be confusing to remember where all of this can be used to boost what capability. In fact, that’s why Enchantment Descriptions exist to help you navigate the world of Minecraft more effectively.
All vanilla and modded enchantments are supported by Enchantment Descriptions in over 13 languages.
The Twilight Forest
A dimension exploration mod, The Twilight Forest, focuses on adventure and new journeys that add a new realm to Minecraft. The dimension is huge, dim, and heavily forested. You’ll find giant structures in the shape of trees, dungeons, new mobs, and bosses.
You can find new gear to craft, meet strange creatures, and explore dungeons and mazes. Moreover, this dimension is locked at sunset time, but you can find a place to sleep the night. One thing that’s useful to know about the mobs in The Twilight Forest is that they don’t spawn on the surface of the forest. For that, look out for the caves and the dungeons.
The Twilight Forest is a peaceful biome. Entering the Twilight Forest is only possible by creating a portal. Just be careful when you step into the world generated by the mod for the first time. That’s because it can take you to a boss liar or a hollow hill – potentially dangerous situations. There’s no way to know or control where the portal will take you when you step into it.
So, progression through The Twilight Forest is possible through the landmarks – the difficulty in the game rises as you pass through specific landmarks. The chest items and drops you receive become more valuable, and you meet challenging enemies and difficult bosses that are a delight to fight.
Biomes O’Plenty
Biomes O’Plenty, as the name suggests, is a mod that adds plenty of biomes to your Minecraft world. There are over 90 biomes, to be exact. Each biome has its unique plants, building blocks, flowers, trees, mobs, ores and more.
It’s an expansive biome mod, perfect for the ones who are tired of the same old Minecraft surroundings. However, you won’t get alternate dimensions to open up. The mod is all about making the overworld a diverse play to play.
It makes some parts of Minecraft more accessible without changing the core dynamics of the game or the rarity of items and such. That’s to say, biomes like the Fungi Forest can help you get your hands on Mooshroom mobs without ever needing a specific mushroom biome.
You can also find other sub-biomes within major biomes, like an oasis sub-biome within other desert biomes and the like.
RLCraft
Popular as one of the most challenging modpacks for Minecraft, RLCraft brings you a more complex and fierce world of gameplay. It has a fully packed survival RPG journey that’ll help immerse you in the game.
In fact, this mod comes with fantastical creatures like dragons, mermaids, and sea monsters. You’ll be defeating the mysterious creatures plaguing your world, as you dive into a world from the Middle Ages.
The maker of this mod urges you to be ready to die a lot. It’s quite difficult and has been hand-crafted to suit the playing style of survival and adventuring. Moreover, this mod comes with over 340+ optional quests that you can undertake.
There are more interesting features like all-new underground biomes, caves, and a revamped Nether. You also unlock new and robust RPG skills, items and abilities, new custom crafting, and recipes for specific vanilla items.
Pixelmon
Does Pixelmon remind you of Pokémon? Well, you’d not be too wrong to correlate the two, considering Pixelmon is Pokémon-like, and on a Minecraft server. To simplify, your Minecraft world will have an addition of 900+ cute critters or Pokémon-like creatures.
Besides being a mod that’s entirely configurable, you’ll get access to a world of features. Think a Pokédex, a 3D Pokeball with the capture animation, and a fossil machine that’ll help you revive fossils wherever you go. Coming to the most important part, you’ll also find 500 attacks with status effects and modifiers as a part of a comprehensive attack system.
This mod is lightweight and will have no difficulty sitting in with other mods or base files. You can catch Pokémon in Minecraft, become a trainer, and battle with other trainers. You can also earn gym badges like you’d do in the real Generation 8 Pokémon universe and upgrade your Pokémon stack by battling them or trading them.
What’s new and different from the Pokémon games is the breeding mechanic that’s a part of the Minecraft mod world. You’ll need a suitable environment for breeding here, and spawning happens naturally in the Overworld. Plus, Poké balls can be bought from the Poke Mart or crafted using apricorns and iron.
To run, the Pixelmon mod requires 800 MB to 2 GB of RAM for the best performance. Moreover, you’ll also need Java 8 – 64 bit.
SkyFactory 4
SkyFactory4 is a Minecraft mod about matter and energy, and using them to conquer the world. It’s a brand-new experience that encompasses tech, magic, bacon resources, and the power of full automation.
Moreover, there are 30+ world types that can diversify your game experience and take it to another level. It also unlocks a new Prestige system that’s optional to play. So, it makes use of the open progression system and allows you to unlock mods and mechanics.
The best part is the prestige points you earn, and the mods you unlock are for global use – that means you can bring them to other worlds and make them a part of your Minecraft gameplay. Moreover, you have to enable the prestige system on the world creation system. You can earn points when you finish advancements or use the time-traveling Parabox.
The resource gathering is quite advanced. In fact, there’s a built-in progression system that allows you to choose and pick what resources you’d want, than receiving a randomized bunch of resources like before.
Decocraft
Decocraft is a decoration Minecraft mod that gives you over 3000+ decoration choices to light up your in-game world. New props, furniture, and overall a lot of customization to bring life to the same old surroundings of the vast Minecraft world.
You’ll have a lot more decoration options with Decocraft without compromising the overall Minecraft aesthetic. In fact, the real key to this mod lies in the crafting clay and the deco bench you get to craft the items required.
Now, if you’re wondering how you’ll get access to the crafting recipes: they’re all there on the deco bench to guide you through. Get ready to create a personal and unique aesthetic and Minecraft interiors for your game. You can have canopy beds for your bedroom in the color of your choice. You can also add storage with bed tables and vanities.
Not only that, but you can also craft sinks, faucets, and have toilet paper rolls in your bathrooms. Now your bathrooms will no longer lack attention to detail or real-life character. Moreover, a lot of the items are also functional, in addition to being decorative pieces.
Adding a hanging bridge can amp up the aesthetics, but can also make for a strong and perilous passage across the chasm. You can also have your Christmas decorations, anytime round the year, and get in the spirit.
BiblioCraft
A storage and organizational mod, BiblioCraft started from being a single bookcase. It adds useful blocks that are aesthetically pleasing and serve as display units for various equipment.
Moreover, these blocks are practical because they make whatever’s displayed more accessible and readily available.
That helps free up storage space whenever not needed. This mod is useful for vanilla Minecraft, as the primary vantage point of this game is to collect and store items. Now, the same storage methods can become tedious both in aesthetics and functionality.
Spice up your storage needs with this very popular mod. Get your hands on armor stands, tool racks, desks, printing presses, shelves for potions, and items like keys and locks, clipboards, and compasses.
Pam’s HarvestCraft 2 – Food Core
This Minecraft mod, Pam’s HarvestCraft2, is all about using vanilla Minecraft ingredients to create 120+ food items. You’ll find a few generic recipes within the pack that should work for the majority of items.
You’ll need specific tools to create any recipe. Bakeware, cutting boards, pots, mixing bowls, rollers, saucepans, and skillets will be available to you.
Moreover, you can make generic food items like stews, meatloaves, and fruit salads. You can also make other items like wheat, dough, cocoa, potatoes, mutton, pork, fish, beef, chicken, and other recipes from these items.
You can use this by itself or along with other mods like Pam’s HarvestCraft 2 – Crops, Pam’s HarvestCraft 2 – Trees, and Pam’s HarvestCraft 2 – Food Extended.
Fossils and Archeology: Revival
Fossils and Archeology: Revival is a Minecraft mod that’s perfect for bringing back prehistorical creatures and dinosaurs to life. You can do that by discovering bones, creating embryos, extracting DNAs, and making eggs.
It’ll give you a chance to take your Minecraft gameplay to a new level by unlocking adventures in deeper realms. This Minecraft mod works well for SSP (survival single-player) and SMP (survival multiplayer).
You can unearth valuable fossils of prehistoric creatures like mammoths, terror birds, and dodos. Moreover, you can also let ancient ruins and relics lead you to the dictator Anu. You can hunt the fiend and end his realm.
This mod also adds a wide variety of mobs like Spinosaurus, or an archaeologist, or a villager. In fact, you can also add tools and enchantments, and naturally spawning creatures.
OptiFine
OptiFine for Minecraft isn’t your typical mod that adds extra elements from other franchises to make a whole new game in Minecraft. However, it is a performance mod for Minecraft that takes the game’s experience to a whole new level.
The mod has been created by a user named sp614x, who basically changed the Minecraft gaming scene forever. Thanks to this mod, you’ll be able to add multiple HD textures and shaders to improve the look of Minecraft.
Vanilla Minecraft doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look all that great either. So, with OptiFine, you’ll be able to use different types of lighting effects, shaders, and even ensure that your game runs better on your PC.
You can check out the official OptiFine webpage for more information on the mod. However, we highly recommend you install it. If you’ve got a beefy rig, you’ll notice how great Minecraft can look with this mod. If you’ve got a low-end PC, you’re likely to get a significant FPS boost with this mod. So, it’s a win-win situation!
Weeping Angels
This Minecraft mod is a bit different than the rest on this list. It doesn’t add HD textures, dynamic lighting effects, or even extra areas to the game. Instead, it’s inspired by the 2007 Dr. Who episode, in which statues attack people when they turn around.
Well, the Weeping Angels mod in Minecraft does pretty much the same thing. When you’re looking at them, they’re perfectly fine-looking statues. However, the moment you turn around, they’ll creep up on you. Don’t worry, though — they don’t eat away at your blocky health.
Instead, they will transport you to another in-game dimension. This adds another layer of gameplay to an already complex game. If you don’t want the added difficulty, you can customize the mod to allow you to return to your original dimension.
But, we feel that takes something away from the essence of the mod (and Dr. Who). What do you think?
Steps to Install Mods
To install mods available on the CurseForge website, follow the steps below:
- Download a modpack and install it to the app using the Import feature
- When you click on files, you can choose the modpack version you want to install
- Once it’s downloaded, you can Create a custom profile and click on Import
- Next, select the downloaded file and click Open
- Once importing is over, just click on Play
Minecraft Mods Can Enhance Gameplay
Minecraft mods can work to make your gameplay stable or challenging. In either case, Minecraft mods will make gameplay infinitely better by adding new challenges, enemies, powerful features, and more.
While certain unique mods exist to make your gameplay fun, like Pixelmon, you can use the rewards anywhere in the game. You can also decoration items, food recipes, or use mods to find recipes for enchantments. The steps to install the mods are easy and the same for all. You can also use a mix of many mods to make your gameplay an exciting one.
Next, take a look at our picks for the best Minecraft bridge ideas and designs to personalize your Minecraft world!
