Minecraft is a fantastic game. Not only has it defied the odds and survived 16 years as a game, but it’s still thriving today.
Like many expansive multiplayer experiences, mods are a big part of what has kept this game alive. These tweaks add valuable quality-of-life improvements, add new materials and items, and help you become an even more creative player. Here are my favorites that I simply can’t play Minecraft without.
5
FallingTree Makes Chopping Trees Less of a Chore
Let’s face it: chopping trees is both integral to Minecraft, and also one of the most annoying things you have to do in the game. It’s even the first thing you do in a new world.
But, when chopping larger trees, like spruce or dark oak, it can take absolutely forever. That’s where FallingTree comes in, which works with Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge.
Instead of having to chop the tree block by block, you just chop one block and the whole tree breaks. The leaves fast decay, too, so you can pick up saplings, sticks, and apples within seconds (instead of minutes or hours).
Now, don’t think that this mod is entirely game-breaking. Chopping a tree down still incurs the same amount of wear on your tools as it would if you did the entire thing manually. I’ve broken many axes when trying to cut down a larger dark oak or spruce. And, if a tree is larger than a certain number of blocks (I believe by default it’s 100, but it’s actually modifiable in the config file, which I did a long time ago) then it will only break one block.
If your tool is low on wear and breaks while cutting the tree down, then it’ll only chop down however many blocks your tool has left to chop. You can pair this with inventory or other mods to swap the tool before it breaks if you don’t want to lose your enchanted ax. But, I typically don’t worry about this because I use other mods (Create, which I talk about below) to constantly farm diamonds and experience, so I can just enchant another ax later.
4
Sophisticated Backpacks Deliver the Inventory Overhaul I Need
Minecraft inventory management is abysmal. It has been for years, and it likely will be for years still. Yes, Minecraft did just launch Bundles in October of last year, but they’re a far cry from the proper inventory organization that the community has been asking for.
That’s where Sophisticated Backpacks comes in, which works with Forge and NeoForge. I absolutely can’t play Minecraft without Sophisticated Backpacks. This is one of the most polished backpack mods for Minecraft — and I’ve tried quite a few.
With this mod, you’ll find multiple backpack recipes, starting with a leather backpack. Each upgrade (going up to netherite) adds more storage as well as additional upgrade slots. A maxed-out backpack can hold literally millions of items.
Some of my favorite upgrades include the stack upgrade, which allows you to hold more than one stack per inventory slot in the backpack (up to several thousand stacks per inventory slot). Another is the compacting upgrade. This one takes items in your inventory and compacts them down either in a 2×2 or 3×3 grid depending on if you have the base upgrade or an advanced one.
With the advanced upgrade, it can take iron nuggets and compact them to be iron ingots, then blocks of iron. Or, nine raw iron into a block of raw iron. Compacting like this can be crucial on longer mining trips as it allows items to take up far fewer inventory slots.
I also love the smelting and crafting upgrades. They do exactly what you think. The smelting upgrade will automatically pull fuel sources from your backpack (like wood or coal) as well as raw ores and smelt them into their finished counterparts. The crafting upgrade adds a portable crafting table to your backpack so you can assemble stuff on a 3×3 grid anywhere you are.
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3
Create Mod Is an Absolute Must for So Many Reasons
If you’ve not heard of Create Mod, then it’ll completely change how you play Minecraft. Working natively with Forge and NeoForge (with a port for Fabric available too), Create adds so much to the game, with the headlining function being automations. Using Create, I can make farms that you could never dream of building in vanilla Minecraft.
For starters, you can make an iron farm by first building a cobblestone generator and then crushing the cobblestone into gravel. After that, you wash the gravel into iron nuggets and flint. Then, you can have a system that compacts the iron nuggets directly into iron bars (or blocks of iron). Another option would be to use Storage Drawers (a mod I’ll talk more about down below) with compacting drawers and store the iron nuggets directly in there, allowing you to grab nuggets, bars, or blocks without doing any extra work.
That’s just scratching the surface of what Create can do. It also adds full train networks to link cities or transport items, the ability to make an infinite lava pool (which has equally infinite uses), build out power networks, and a lot more.
Create actually just got its first major update in a while to Create 6.0. This update introduces lots of new features and blocks, as well as support for Minecraft 1.21.1. I’m really excited about this update because I’ve been wanting to be on 1.21 since it released, so the fact that Create finally supports it means I can start working on upgrading my worlds and servers.
There is also a whole subset of Minecraft mods surrounding Create itself. The mod has mods. And they’re awesome. One of my favorites is using Create: Ultimate Factory to make diamonds. Yes, you can make diamonds. Using Create: Ultimate Factory, you can fully automate diamond production by starting with a tree farm (which is made easier by Create). From there, you use lava and an encased fan to cook the wood blocks into charcoal. Then, compact four charcoal into coal, and compact nine coal into a coal block.
Once you have a coal block, you can send nine of them, plus lava, into a heated furnace and out comes a diamond! A lot of what I just said is focused around Create-exclusive components, so they might not sound familiar to you if you’ve not played with Create yet.
2
Storage Drawers Finally Gives Me the Organization I Need
One thing I always disliked when playing vanilla Minecraft was the storage system. There are chests and barrels and that’s basically it. This method of storage is… fine. It’s not great, but it works, though it’s not very organized.
Storage Drawers completely changes that, and is compatible with Forge, NeoForge, and Fabric. With Storage Drawers, you’ll be able to, very easily, create a vast storage network in your Minecraft world. There are 1×1 drawers (just one drawer), 1×2 (two drawers), and 2×2 (four drawers). Each drawer shows a picture of the item that’s stored inside of it (and you can only store one type of item in a drawer).
However, you can lock the drawer so that, even when empty, it shows what item belongs there. You can also use a quantify key to have it show you the number of items in the drawer. Drawers also have lots of upgrades, with my two favorites being stack upgrades and the void upgrade.
Stack upgrades allow you to hold more than the normal amount of stacks in a drawer. A 1×1 drawer with max emerald stack upgrades can hold well over 300,000 individual items. The void upgrade voids off anything more than what the drawer can hold. This is great for farms because your farm can continue to run even when one element that you’re producing is full without throwing items everywhere.
Storage Drawers also integrates well with Create, as you can use things called threshold switches to send a redstone signal to turn off a farm once a specific drawer is full. This is perfect if you have a dedicated tree and coal farm to run your diamond production, with the diamonds being stored in a storage drawer.
When the drawer fills up with diamonds, you simply have the threshold switch tell the farm to turn off. When the amount of diamonds in the drawer drops below a certain threshold (hence the name), the farm turns back on and starts working again.
If you’ve been frustrated with Minecraft‘s storage and organization workflows in the past, give Storage Drawers a look.
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1
Farmer’s Delight Brings New Food Options (And Automations)
Last, but certainly not least, is Farmer’s Delight, which works with Forge and NeoForge. This mod completely changes food in Minecraft. Not only does it add quite a few new food options, but also ways to automate each one using Create.
Typically, food is not something that can be easily automated in Minecraft. In vanilla Minecraft, you can somewhat easily automate a cow farm that can produce steaks, but it’s not that simple to automatically cook those steaks and then store them.
With Farmer’s Delight, you’re able to do so much more than just automatically cook steaks. You can use cooking pots and pans to make more advanced things, like cooked rice, bone broth, beef stew, steak and potatoes, grilled salmon, hamburger, a bacon sandwich, and so much more.
The automation works in tandem with Create, allowing you to have farms that produce the individual ingredients and then systems that combine those ingredients into final meals. Then, you can use Create to automatically put the finished meal into storage with Storage Drawers so that way you can just swing by your drawer, grab some hamburgers, and go on your way.
Plus, with threshold switches, you can turn off food farms until you get below a certain amount of food left in storage and then have it kick back on to produce more.
The possibilities with modded Minecraft are truly endless, and these are just five mods of thousands. If you’re thinking of getting into Minecraft, you might be interested to know how easy is it to set up your very own server.
