Rick Lane takes you through the various mods available for Minecraft on the PC, from different shaders and texture packs, through to new game features.
Minecraft is less of a game and more of a cultural phenomenon. With 54 million copies sold on all platforms to date, it’s become one of the most widely played games on the planet. Almost everything you can imagine has been recreated in its blocky world, from the Starship Enterprise to Westeros to the entirety of Denmark. It’s even become a teaching aid in many schools across the world, in subjects including science and English.
Its near-universal appeal also means there’s an abundance of user-created content for the game that expands its potential in nearly every way possible. Graphical updates, new items, new environments, new adventures. In fact, there’s so much content available that attempting to sort the wheat from the chaff is liable to make your eyes go square. As such, we’ve put together a detailed guide to making the most of Minecraft, including which mods to install, how to install them and how to generally make Minecraft a fuller, more enjoyable experience.
Mod installation
Despite being one of the most heavily modded games in existence, there’s no official mod support for Minecraft. Instead, the majority of mods function via a thirdparty program called Minecraft Forge. Installing Forge is simple enough. To do so, go to http://files.minecraftforge.net and download the Recommended iteration of Forge relevant to the most recent version of Minecraft, which at the time of writing is version 1.7.10. Also ensure to download the Windows Installer version, and be careful when navigating the annoying ad.fly advertising link-through (you’ll become very familiar with this screen in the process of modding Minecraft, as many modders appear to use it to generate revenue).
Installing Forge is a simple matter of running the executable and selecting the Client Install option on the menu screen. Once complete, run the Minecraft launcher and select the Forge profile in the bottomleft dropbox. Now, when you click Play, you’ll see a new Mod menu button on the title screen. The only task now remaining is to make Minecraft’s modding folder easily accessible. Most Minecraft mods are installed by dragging and dropping, so it makes sense to make the folder accessible. Open Run on the Windows Start menu and input ‘%appdata%\.minecraft’ (minus the quote marks) in the box. Locate the Mods folder in the results, create a shortcut and place it on your desktop.
We’ll give you just one final tip before getting into the nitty-gritty of mod installation too, which is that when you’re downloading a mod, check to see whether the mod version matches up with the current version of Minecraft. The versions don’t need to be the exactly the same to be compatible, but older mods won’t always work with newer versions of Minecraft. All the mods we recommend in this feature work with the latest version of Minecraft (1.7.10) at the time of writing.
Visual improvements
Minecraft has a unique visual charm in its original form, but it has the potential to look far better. Graphical upgrades and alterations come in three general types: texture packs, resource packs (which are texture packs with additional assets such as model skins) and shader packs. Here, we’ll only be discussing the latter two, because texture packs often have a more advanced resource pack alternative.
Before you install any packs, you need to install two groundwork mods. The first is OptiFine, which adds a host of options for improving game performance and, more importantly, support for highdefinition textures. All the mods discussed in this article are easy to find through a Google search, or on websites such as www.minecraftmods.com or www.planetminecraft.com
Just ensure that you click the right download link when acquiring them, avoiding any advertisements or malware masquerading as the link to your file. Installing OptiFine is a simple case of dragging and dropping it into your Mods folder. The other mod is GLSL shaders, created by a modder called Karyonix. Put simply, this mod enables support for custom shaders. Drop it into the mods folder, launch Minecraft and check the game’s Options menu, where you should now see a new submenu called Shaders.
With both these mods ready, you can now think about mods that directly improve the game’s look. Shader packs have the most significant overall effect, enabling Minecraft to make use of advanced lighting and mapping techniques. There are dozens of shader packs available for Minecraft, many of them variations on ‘realistic’ shading techniques. Perhaps the most remarkable of these shader packs is Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders, which provides crisp visuals and impressive lighting effects. Viable alternatives are Sildur’s Shaders, which has slightly subtler effects, or Stazza85’s Super Shaders, which give the game a rich hue.
There are also a couple of alternatives to the realistic look that many custom shaders address. Naelogo’s Cel-Shaders, for example, lends the game a comic-book aesthetic, where objects are drawn with thick black lines and colours contrast vibrantly. Meanwhile, a modder named Beed 28 has created a ‘Jelly’ shader that makes everything in the game world bounce around. We have no idea why anyone would want this feature, but it’s certainly novel!
Installing shader packs is slightly more involved than installing standard mods. Once you’ve downloaded a pack of shaders, select the Shaders tab in the Minecraft options, then select ‘Open Shaderpacks folder’ (you can create another shortcut to this folder if you want to access it easier). Create a new folder inside Shaderpacks, and give it a name related to the pack you just downloaded. Then, inside that newly named folder, either create another folder named ‘shaders’, and extract the .fsh and .vsh shaders into it. Alternatively, if the folder inside the downloaded zip file is already named ‘shaders’, just extract it as a whole into the named folder.
The pack you downloaded should now appear as an option in the Shaders menu. It’s possible to switch between shader packs while playing without quitting the game, so it’s best to download a few at once and then judge which you like best for yourself. One other factor to note is that most shader packs have multiple download options, geared towards PCs with different specifications. All of the shaded screenshots on this page were taken using shader packs with High or Ultra settings, although there are often Light and Medium options available too.
Resource packs are even more abundant than shader packs, with themes ranging from Skyrim to Star Wars. Many of these packs appeal to particular tastes, rather than applying a general improvement, so we’ve selected packs that can be enjoyed without needing to know the lore of any fictional universes. One of the most popular texture packs is the oddly named JohnSmith, which gives you lovely sharp textures for surfaces, particularly building on resources. It’s a little less bright and breezy than the standard Minecraft colour palette, but it works well with Sildur’s muted shader pack.
Chroma Hills, meanwhile, arguably gives you an even more beautiful set of textures than JohnSmith. What makes Chroma Hills interesting is that it’s been specifically designed to complement Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders, so you can guarantee that combining these two packs will make Minecraft look brilliant without having to experiment or tweak any settings. If you simply want to dive into a super-pretty world of blocks, Chroma Hills is your best bet.
If you’re after a more adventurous appearance, then Glimmar’s Steampunk resource pack lends Minecraft a hint of a more specific personality, while retaining much of the pastoral pleasantness of the original game. It also has an absolutely stunning night sky, and probably the best sun of any texture pack you will find.
Resource pack installation is fairly simple. Download the pack, and locate Minecraft’s resource pack folder through the options menu, again creating a desktop shortcut if you want. Most resource packs can be dropped directly into this folder without having to be unzipped. Also, as with shader packs, you can switch between resource packs mid-game, although Minecraft may take a longer time to respond as it loads the new textures.
There are two additional mods worth downloading to improve your sensory experience of Minecraft. The first one is AtomicStryker’s Dynamic Lights mod, which changes all light sources, such as torches, fires and lava, so they light the area around them dynamically. It’s a minor tweak, but it adds a little extra mood when you’re exploring a spooky cave by torchlight. The second is Matmos, which generates ambient sounds based on your current location in the game world. This mod adds a great deal of atmosphere to Minecraft, and is worth downloading even if you can’t run any of the graphical mods we’ve suggested. Unlike the resource packs, both of these mods are installed by dropping them straight into the Mods folder.
A better world
Experimenting with shader and resource packs is great fun, but their beauty is only skin-deep. To truly improve your Minecraft experience, you need to enhance Minecraft’s fundamental components.
One of the most dramatic improvements comes from the BiomesOPlenty mod. Minecraft’s world is constructed from different environments known as ‘biomes’, standard examples of which include deserts, deciduous forests, jungles and deserts. BiomesOPlenty tweaks Minecraft’s procedural generation algorithm, and adds components of its own to generate a whopping 75 additional biome types to your Minecraft world.
Some of these biomes are more specific versions of existing biome types. Hence, in addition to existing forests, you also get seasonal forests, thickets, redwood forests, maple woods and so on. Other biomes are completely new, including volcanoes, alpine peaks, Arctic Tundra, mangrove swamps and coral reefs. There are even different environment types for Minecraft’s version of Hell – the Nether. It massively expands the exploration potential of the game. Basically, if you install any of the mods mentioned in this article, make it this one.
There are several further mods that complement BiomesOPlenty, though you can also install them separately if you wish. The first is Oceancraft. Minecraft’s seas and oceans are frankly a tad dull, mostly acting as an obstacle that needs to be surmounted. OceanCraft turns these watery environments into Biomes worthy of their own exploration. It fills the oceans’ murky depths with all manner of sea creatures, and it sprinkles seagulls and crabs across the coastlines. It even adds huts that house hungry cannibals to certain shores – a vital component in any good beach holiday.
The next world-building mod to consider is Elemental Caves. Underground exploration in Minecraft is already huge fun, but Elemental Caves adds extra spice in the form of three new cave types – jungle caves, ice caves and lava caves. Each of these cave types are generated at sensible locations in the game world – jungle caves in rainforests and ice caves in wintry landscapes, for example. Each cave comes with a host of new block types and materials for crafting new items too, including weapons and armour that are unique to the mod.
Other popular modding targets for the Minecraft community are the procedurally generated villages you encounter in the game, which are an interesting idea, but somewhat rudimentary in their standard form. There are a few mods you can download to improve them though. Mo’ Villages is straightforward enough, adding a large number of additional village types for each of Minecraft’s starting biomes.
A more involved village mod is Millenaire, which not only brings larger, more varied villages to the game, but also includes a host of NPCs with which you can interact and trade. Doing so will enable the villages to expand and change their settlement, and you can even become the leader of a community if your relationship with the villagers is strong enough. Be warned, though, Millenaire seems to be very resource intensive, and caused our game to crash on multiple occasions. One last structure-based mod worth considering is AtomicStryker’s Ruins mod, which implements spooky ruined buildings into the game, adding a little more eeriness to exploration.
There are a couple of more general mods worth considering too. LotsOMobs simply populates your world with a huge number of additional animals, including elephants, crocodiles, deer and lions. It even adds penguins into Minecraft – which, as we all know, are the greatest creatures.
Another mod we strongly recommend checking out is the Local Weather Mod by Corosus. This mod changes the basic meteorology of Minecraft into a far more dramatic and sometimes dangerous experience. Dark clouds can gather overhead, forming fearsome thunderstorms, and there’s even the potential for tornados and hurricanes that can lift you off your feet and bounce you around the environment like a meaty pinball. This mod also throws in a few new craftable items, such as weather vanes and Anemometers, helping you to predict storms and take the necessary precautions, such as sheltering safely underground.
One final mod to try is the Aether mod. The Aether is a community-built counterpart to Minecraft’s Nether, the heaven to its hell, and it essentially offers an entire new world for you to explore. In many ways it’s far more detailed than the Nether, equipped with unique items, crafting recipes, weapons, block types and more. If that hasn’t convinced you, it also features flying pigs. Flying pigs!
Getting crafty
Now we’re going to discuss the slightly bizarre Minecraft phenomenon of adding content into the game that lets you add content in your game. It makes sense, honest! After all, half of Minecraft is about building. Again, there are innuberable mods that add craftable items into the game, from weapons to vehicles, and again, we’re going to concentrate on items that make general enhancements.
With this in mind, your first port of call should be Buildcraft, which expands Minecraft’s construction potential enormously. Through the addition of a craftable wrench tool, Buildcraft enables you to create all kinds of machinery and industrial systems in your world. These machines included automated mining engines, industrial smelters, automatic workbenches and so on. There’s a work-inprogress version that will eventually let you build your own robot helper too, which sounds like a fascinating prospect.
Alongside Buildcraft is Computercraft, which lets you construct computers inside the game and, in Inception-like fashion, code games in those computers using the LUA scripting language. Most impressively of all, it includes programmable robots called Turtles, which can move, mine blocks and even use tools and weapons. Getting all these parts to work requires basic scripting knowledge, of course, but Computercraft offers an interesting way to learn while having fun in Minecraft at the same time.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for some more destructive action then the Nuke TNT mod should suit your needs. It basically takes the idea behind Minecraft’s standard TNT block and runs with it, adding craftable scatterbomb blocks, firebomb blocks, napalm blocks and even a nuke block. This all may sound counter to the pleasant, harmonious theme with which we’ve been running so far, but explosives are useful for clearing large numbers of blocks easily, so having a range of incendiary materials at your disposal is always handy.
Totally converted
Total conversion mods are different from other Minecraft mods in that, instead of improving the game, they change it entirely. These mods are unlikely to work with any other mods, due to the radical alterations they make, so we won’t dwell on them, but it’s worth exploring a couple just for a taste of how much you can really change Minecraft if you want.
If you find Minecraft lacking in challenge, then the Better Than Wolves mod might be up your street. Generally speaking, it focuses in on the survival aspect of Minecraft, making it altogether a tougher, harsher experience. However, it also adds plenty of new materials and craftable objects into the game, including water wheels and windmills, enabling you to build a more sophisticated settlement for yourself. In some ways, this aspect is similar to what you get from Buildcraft, but it’s a little more carefully constructed, and designed to integrate more naturally into Minecraft.
If you’re after a completely different Minecraft experience then we can recommend nothing better than the recently released Endless City mod. Endless City ditches the pastoral theme of Minecraft entirely, replacing it with an infinite metropolis of concrete and glass. In this world, you must scavenge stone-built houses and towering skyscrapers for food, weapons and other loot in order to survive. The player’s ultimate goal is to return nature to the city’s entirely artificial existence, which makes for an intriguing inversion of the Minecraft theme.
Weird and wonderful
Let’s conclude our tour of the Minecraft modding universe with a few mods that don’t really fit into any other category, as they’re just a little bit bizarre. First up is Ritsugami’s Biosphere Mod. Put simply, this mod tweaks the generation algorithms so that each biome spawns separately and is encased in an enormous glass biosphere. It’s mostly just a curiosity, but it’s visually impressive.
Another weird mod is Candycraft, which adds another biome that’s made entirely of candy, enabling you to re-enact the ‘land of chocolate’ sketch from the Simpsons. Meanwhile, the ‘trains and zeppelins’ mod replaces the game’s minecarts with a variety of train models, then it adds zeppelins that you can fly around, because why not?
Perhaps the weirdest mod of all, though, is Extreme Farming. This mod adds several new types of TNT block in the game; detonating any one of these will cause an explosion of edible crops to spread across the ground, which can then be instantly harvested. It’s an ideal mod if you want to see some explosions without the destruction-based guilt that normally accompanies such an activity. Think of it as the friendlier carpet-bombing experience.
Modding Minecraft is a relatively easy and immensely enjoyable process. If you can imagine any way to alter the core game, there’s a good chance that there’s already a mod that does it. If there’s any final advice we could give, it’s to ensure that your mods don’t overlap in terms of their function, as this will lessen the risk of them conflicting or crashing the game. Oh, and don’t stand around, taking screenshots of a rapidly approaching tornado without paying attention to precisely where it’s approaching. That tends to end badly. Have fun!