The Best Mods For Minecraft

During the existence of Minecraft, so many mods have been created for it that the game can compete on equal terms with the "bison" of the entire gaming industry: Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V, and even Garry's Mod. Only on CurseForge, the largest portal of mod builders, are more than 73 thousand modifications posted.

The first mods — at first only server mods — began to appear in the Classic version, which was released in 2009. With the transition of Minecraft to the alpha version in June 2010, simple client modifications began to come out: support for high resolutions, bug fixes, and replacement of the compass and cursor. But in the same year, Minecraft Coder Pack, also known as Mod Coder Pack or MCP, was released: it changed unreadable Minecraft machine code to meaningful strings (this is called "deobfuscation"). It was this tool that became the harbinger of the mass appearance of custom modifications for the game.

Rating of the best mods for Minecraft. Here are the classic modifications that have passed the test of time — a kind of cheat sheet for those who are just beginning to get acquainted with the galaxy of user content for Minecraft. 

Minecraft Forge

Minecraft Forge is not just a mod but a "mod of all mods". This is a program that allows mod builders to use all the richness of tools and players to install various mods without fear that they will conflict. Did you know that before the advent of ModLoader, the predecessor of Forge, those who wanted to use two or more modifications at the same time had to combine them manually, combining the code line by line?

Minecraft Forge not only encompasses the classic Minecraft Coder Pack toolkit but also includes ForgeModLoader, a program that enables you to install and uninstall mods with a single button without worrying about conflicts. He also adheres to the recipes: even if certain ingredients have different names across various versions, the game will consistently recognize which items are suitable for each purpose.

OptiFine

OptiFine serves as a supplemental mod designed to address performance issues in the game, both on less capable and overly robust systems, by enhancing the frame rate—potentially nearly doubling it in certain instances. Moreover, it extends the render distance for objects, facilitates HD texture support, and introduces an array of additional graphical options.

By using OptiFine, you gain the ability to enhance the game with shaders and dynamic lighting, refine textures through smoothing and anisotropic filtering, customize the density of fog and altitude of clouds, render water with clarity and transparency, and improve the appearance of snow and grass for added realism. The modification automatically saves the game in the specified time periods. In general, it is considered by many to be one of the most necessary, like DBM in World of Warcraft.

Just Enough Items

Just Enough Items is simply an indispensable modification for Minecraft beginners. It stores all the recipes of game blocks and items and allows the player to see what is needed to create them. She also allows cheating: by clicking on an item; the mod adds this item to the inventory. But this is more interesting for those who build huge worlds and do not want to waste time crafting every single detail.

Millenaire

Not everyone likes the fact that the Minecraft world is empty from the very beginning. This problem is successfully solved by the Millenaire mod — it fills territories with non-player characters: whole villages full of people. Additionally, none remain inactive; instead, each one continuously reproduces, thereby boosting the population, constructing and enlarging their dwellings, cultivating vegetables, and participating in various handicrafts. You can make friends with them and trade, receiving unique items as a reward.

Thanks to Millenaire, villages of 11th-century Normans, Indians, Japanese, Mayans, Byzantines, Inuit, and Seljuk Turks can appear in the Minecraft world. Over time, they promise to add other nations.

And if that doesn't seem enough, you can use the Custom NPCs mod: it allows you to create any non-player characters yourself.

BuildCraft

When conversing about BuildCraft, one is encompassing a myriad of distinct "crafts." There are numerous mods designed to enhance the scope of gathering resources and manufacturing diverse goods, with BuildCraft being one of the most expansive among them. This mod incorporates essential industrial components such as engines, gears, transport pipes, excavation machinery, and even complementary technologies like electricity. The scale of BuildCraft is so extensive that it has spawned its own range of additional plug-ins.

The IndustrialCraft2 mod focuses on advancing industrial capabilities within the game, introducing a variety of electrical applications such as weapons, tools, armor, jetpacks, and several methods for generating power, including nuclear reactors. Additionally, it expands gameplay with elements of metallurgy, electrical engineering, agriculture-based industries, brewing, and more.