The Vanilla (standard) version of Minecraft is amazing however the Java edition of game is very flexible and can be tweaked to your liking. By installing ‘mods’ (modifications) you can change almost anything – from graphics to general quality of life. You can even install mods that add games within the game.

Beginner’s Guide to installing Minecraft Mods

When I’m playing Minecraft I like to keep things as close to the original game as possible. However there are a number of quality of life tweaks I use that just make things… better!

One of my biggest frustrations with vanilla Minecraft is mapping. There are some in-built tools to create maps but they’re very frustrating to use. Since the world is almost infinitely big they’re wildly impractical. You’ll spend more time creating hundreds of individual tiny maps than doing anything else.

As such one of the most useful additions is a mapping mod and for that I like to use Xaero’s World Map and Minimap. I also love MiniHUD to show some additional on-screen information such as the in-game clock and coordinates relative to the Nether. I also use Vanilla Tweaks along with a couple of other things such as ReplayMod and Sodium for recording. This video explains it in a bit more detail:

Here are links to some of the more common mods and mod loaders I use. ALWAYS scan any downloads for viruses before installing them:

• Fabric mod loader
• Fabric API
• Xaero’s World Map
• Xaero’s Minimap
• MiniHUD
• MaLiLib
• Big Sign Writer
• Vanilla Tweaks

All of the above are client-side mods. Vanilla Tweaks Data Packs are installed on a per-world basis and as such are installed by default on the Gosforth Handyman Minecraft Server. I’ve just included these in case you want to install them on your own single player worlds.

Enjoy the world of modding!