Mods and getting the most out of Minecraft!

[Noranagoyaka]

Hi, I really like mods. I think they really enable one to get the most out of Minecraft, in terms of both enjoyment and experience. They can help breathe new life into Minecraft every once in a while, and reignite one's love and passion for the game. Therefore, I have accumulated a list of the mods that I most like, along with a short description and the appropriate links, if you too would like to try any of them out.

I have sorted them into a few different categories, depending on what they do. My personal favourite category is the 'ambience'-category, due to the immersive quality it provides. The mods in this list are all based on Fabric, as that is what I use, though many are available for Forge also. Some have alternatives, and even some which provide better quality or better experiences, IMO, for a few things. Generally, however, I find that the possible combination and amount of mods that are to be found on Fabric are greater. Especially client-side mods, which are required, if you want to enjoy them on CubeVille!

For everyone · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Even without altering the 'vanilla' Minecraft experience, some mods vastly improve the performance and playability of Minecraft on servers. These I would recommend for everyone, especially if you are not much into altering the 'vanilla' feeling of the game :

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all#01) — Sodium

Boosts performance immensely, similar to OptiFine for Forge. Sodium easily increases game FPS 4-12x in my experience and reduces stuttering.

all#02) — Farsight

Allows for chunk-rendering, not limited by the server, client-side, provided the player has visited these before.

all#03) — Bobby

Bobby stores previously rendered chunks, client-side, in a separate folder in the '.minecraft'-local directory, meaning the client can pull these upon joining, and update them whenever the player again moves inside the server-set render limit.

Some prerequisites · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Before getting into the categories, it is worth noting that some mods require others in order to work. These mods don't necessarily alter anything, but enables others to do so more effectively or even at all. The mods in this list will require the following :

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Forge Config API Port (Fabric)
Cloth Config API (Fabric)
Fabric Language Kotlin
Iceberg (Fabric)
Fabric API
Mod Menu
MaLiLib
Indium

Ambience · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

My personal favourite of all the categories. Ambience mods create so much, by changing so little. In my experience, they primarily tend to focus on sound. Birds chirping, wind howling, caves echoing the growl of zombies, music and alike. The ambience really makes a huge change to the atmosphere of the Minecraft universe :

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amb#01 — Sound Physics Remastered

Better cave reverb and ambience.

amb#02 — Ambient Environment

Adds noise to the biome colours of the game, affecting grass, water and leaves.

amb#03 — Dynamic Music

Adds more dynamic/situational music and more tracks to the game.

amb#04 — Mambience

Adds a lot of context based ambient sounds, such as wind, chirping and alike, calculated client-side.

Character immersion· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Being the primary interface between you and the world of Minecraft, one's character is especially important for immersional value. Changing how your character looks, 'feel', move and interact with the world around them can allow one to develop an even deeper connection with one's character. I have, therefore, included a few mods which do that :

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cha#01 — Better Third Person

Changes the thrid-person camera.

cha#02 — First-person Model

Improves the first-person camera experience by including a visible player model.

cha#03 — CameraOverhaul

Improves the camera physics.

cha#04 — Nimble (Fabric)

Adds a small, subtle animation whenever switching from 1st to 3rd person, along with elytra camera roll.

cha#05 — Skin Layers 3D

Blends the two different layers, ones skin might have into each other to create a better 3D player effect.

cha#06 — Extended lantern

Adds 3D torches and lanterns when held in hand.

cha#07 — Not Enough Animations

Adds numerous animations to the game, and fixing some of the broken ones.

Game immersion· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Making the world feel more alive visually can make it feel quite different, even with small changes. Making trees drop leaves or look more lush and alive, torches and lanterns giving off light when you hold them in your hand, or little fireflies flying around can really create a nice ambience and help you get more immersed :

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gam#01 — LambDynamicLights

Provides the game with dynamic lights, held and dropped.

gam#02 — Presence Footsteps

Adds more footstep sounds.

gam#03 — Falling Leaves (Fabric)

Adds falling leaves effect to trees, client-side.

gam#04 — Eating Animation (Fabric)

Adds a unique eating animation for the in-game food items.

gam#05 — Physics Mod

Adds ingame physics, eg. ragdoll effect to dead mobs, client-side.

gam#06 — Enchantment Lore

Adds the ability to 'read' enchantmentbooks for some in-game lore/information, client-side.

gam#07 — Interactic

Better dropped item rendering mod, with a client-side only feature.

gam#08 — Botany's Lush Leaves

Changes the look of some leaves, and adds a few immersive entities, client-side.

Utility · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Every now and then, one wishes Minecraft had that one quality-of-life feature, which would make just some tasks a bit easier or the interface just a little more clear or fuller of information for the user. I have included quite a few smaller ones :

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utl#01 — Mouse Wheelie (Fabric)

Adds more functionality to the Minecraft inventory system.

utl#02 — AppleSkin

Adds a intuitive UI for eating food, showing health, hunger and saturation values.

utl#03 — Controlling for Fabric

Adds a search-fuction to the key-binds control-tab, for clients with many functional mods.

utl#04 — Enchantment Descriptions

Adds descripton-tool-tips for enchantment books and enchanted equipment.

utl#05 — KronHUD

Adds to the in-game HUD.

utl#06 — HUDTweaks

Allows for movement of the default in-game HUD elements.

utl#07 — Inventory HUD+

Adds a lot of inventory/armor/durability related HUD elements.

utl#08 — ShulkerBoxTooltip

Adds the possibility to view the stored items inside shulkerboxes.

utl#09 — WTHIT

Tells the player what block/entity/mob etc. they are looking at along with useful data.

utl#10 — Merchant Markers (Fabric)

Adds informative icons, clarifying villager trades for unexperienced players.

utl#11 — Armor Chroma for Fabric

Re-interprets the armor-meter by material, colour and enchantment status.

utl#12 — Sign Tools

Adds tools to the sign-edit GUI, allowing the player to copy, cut and paste signs easily.

utl#13 — Logical Zoom

Gives the player the ability to zoom in, as in OptiFine.

utl#14 — What's That Slot?

Adds in-game cue-boxes to slots, explaining what items can go into them.

Visual · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Visiual mods are like the cherry on top, changing just the smallest of things, which can be really fun, when noticing them while playing :

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vis#01 — Illuminations

Provides the game with some nice, atmospheric particle effects for immersion.

vis#02 — Effective

Splash and waterfall effect, client-side.

vis#03 — Legendary Tooltips (Fabric)

Adds colourful, decorative borders to rare and/or enchanted items.

vis#04 — Visuality

Adds more custom particles to the game.

Shaders · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

When installing shaders on Fabric-clients, really there is one way to go. Iris Shaders. Iris Shaders is snappy and allows for a variety of shaderpacks to be used on Fabric. You can change many shaderpacks to your heart's desire. Personally, I like to use :

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sha#01 — Complementary Shaders

Provides the game with some nice, atmospheric particle effects for immersion.

Niceties· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Finally I have a few mods, which are a bit out of the other categories but are really nice to have. These can help the enjoyment of the game as well and aid one in solving tasks in-game :

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nic#01 — Xaero's Minimap

Adds a in-game map, displaying rendered chunks.

nic#02 — Xaero's World Map

Adds a full-screen map of the explored chunks.

nic#03 — Blur (Fabric)

Adds the option to blur the background slightly (or a lot) of any UI which has been opened, ie. chest.

Do you like mods? Which ones do you use? Please share!

NB: Please note that all of the descriptions are based on my understanding of how these mods work and are not necessarily accurate. Please do read the authors' pages for more information and detail about their mods!

Thank you for reading.
~ Nora

[Noranagoyaka]

This is what my Minecraft looks like with all the mods active on CubeVille BTW, for anyone interested
- From the North Skyway

(You can click to expand)








With Farsight and Bobby, I am able to have the Render Distance set to 64 chunks, meaning the farthest blocks in the images are about a thousand(!) blocks away

~ Nora