Minecraft is a game coded in java, which is relatively unconventional. But this does mean that the game’s community has more leverage with how they can make modifications to change the way they can play the game. These Minecraft mods have become incredibly popular, and have become the lifeblood of its gaming community.
Here we’ve curated some of the best Minecraft mods you can add to improve your crafting experience.
Prefer chaotic games instead? You can always check out our list of the Best GTA Roleplay Servers to Live Out your Criminal Fantasies.
1. JEI
JEI (Just Enough Items) is a neat little tool which gives you an overlay on the side of your screen when you’re looking at your inventory. This overlay depicts every single item in the game, and tells you the ingredients you need to craft it.
When there are other Minecraft mods adding hundreds of items to your inventory, it becomes absolutely necessary to keep track of it all. That’s what makes this a wonderful mod as it allows you to focus on crafting the items rather than trying to remember the recipe.
Many versions of this mod also exist, such as TMI (Too Many Items) and NEI (Not Enough Items) which both do the same thing as JEI with minor adjustments.
2. Quark
Quark is a subtle mod with many quality-of-life improvements. For example, instead of manually feeding animals, they can just eat food dropped on the ground near them. This makes them easy to automate. With over 200 modular adjustments in this Minecraft mod, you can choose which ones you want.
What I love about Quark is how it keeps the feel of the vanilla gameplay without turning into something else entirely. It is still the same Minecraft, but you’re now playing more of it.
3. Biomes O Plenty
One thing Minecraft fans might be bored with is the repetitiveness of the landscape. Biomes O Plenty adds new biomes, trees, and even some mobs to make the landscape more interesting and entertaining.
Minecraft has around 60 biomes in the base game. BoP doubles that and breathes new life into the old terrain with mobs and effects. People enjoy building massive structures within the game, but they also love exploring unknown areas and terrain.
4. Create
Now we’re getting into the “content” mods. These are mods that can change the gameplay. One of the standout ones is Create – a Steampunk-vibe mod that gives you gears and cogs to make full-fledged machinery to do incredible things.
You can build retractable bridges, massive drills that actually work, harvesters that function the way they should. Above all, the greatest thing about Create is the Schematicannon, which you can use to create a blueprint of any built structure and save it locally, on your computer.
You can then use that blueprint anywhere you want – across different game servers, packs, worlds. The build you spent months on is now immortalized, forever.
5. Botania
Similar to Create, Botania is also a progression-type mod with tasks to do, new resources to manage and cool things to unlock. There’s a running gag in the community where users refer to it as a “magic” Minecraft mod, while the mod creator frantically explains how it’s actually a tech mod.
Using the power of flowers and pixie nonsense, you can accumulate mana, unlock creative flight, craft magical rods of wondrous power, and so many other things. The reason why I love this mod is its depth. It has new tools, new blocks, new equipment, new mechanics, item storage, ore generation, and everything that you would want out of a modded experience. I love it so much that I have trouble playing any Minecraft world without Botania. It’s that good.
6. Mekanism
An incredibly popular mod, Mekanism has been the modern day answer to the legacy mod Draconic Evolution where you could create unstable nuclear power plants by harnessing the power of dragons. In Mekanism, you do something similar, but instead of harnessing the power of dragons, you harness the power of the mod-specific ore “osmium”.
The main issue with this mod is that it makes everything else obsolete. There’s no need to explore anymore, there’s no need go mining for resources, and there’s such an incredible amount of RF (Minecraft mod version of electricity) generation that makes you completely indestructible. It basically turns playing survival Minecraft into creative piece of work. Of course, some people look for that in their Minecraft experience, while others seek more of a challenge. The beauty of these mods is that there’s something for everyone!
Honorable Mention
Here are a few more Minecraft mods worth checking out:
- JourneyMap – A HUD that gives you a constant map of the region you’ve explored.
- Optifine – A performance upgrade mod that makes everything run smoother client-side.
- Appleskin – A display on every food item showing how much hunger and saturation it gives you.
- Texture Packs – Graphical upgrades adding textures, lighting, and other upgrades. Note that it is very performance intensive.
- Crossover Mods – Use mana from Botania to generate RF for Mekanism machines! Or use Biomes O Plenty wood to make chests!
If you’re still not sold on Minecraft, check out ‘The Best Upcoming Nintendo Switch Games in 2022‘ to scratch your itch.
