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All things considered, Minecraft is about as close to a perfect game as you can get. It’s not overly hard to understand, it bridges the age gap, and the creative and imaginative structures and worlds fans build are simply awesome. However, in my book, a perfect game doesn’t mean it has no flaws. Whatever your gripes are with Minecraft, you can usually get past them with the best quality-of-life mods.
5. Corpse Mod
If there’s one aspect of Minecraft I despise, it’s when my items burst from my body like a pinata when I die, especially the sweet loot I got from buried treasure. And with my luck, I often watch, in horror, my items waving goodbye as they fall into a massive trench. Sure, there’s a “Keep Inventory” option, but with that on, death becomes meaningless, and I end up throwing risk out the window.
The Corpse mod offers a much better solution. With this mod, you’ll leave behind a corpse that you can then run back to in order to retrieve your items. It never decays, it can’t be destroyed, and you’ll never have to worry about missing an item. Better still, it retains that essence of challenge. After a while, though, it’ll turn into a skeleton, which is nice and doesn’t affect anything.
4. Xaero’s Minimap or JourneyMap
Throw away that flimsy, awkward vanilla map and get yourself something worthwhile. If you’re like me and don’t care about how maps are implemented in Minecraft, I suggest Xaero’s Minimap or JourneyMap.
Xaero’s Minimap is the more lightweight option out of the two, but still has a lot of useful features and looks more in line with Minecraft’s aesthetic. You can switch between a square and circle map, have it rotate (or not), add cardinal directions, even set waypoints.
If you don’t mind having too many options, then JourneyMap is more your speed. You’ll be able to fine tune waypoints (like size), where mobs and other players are, toggle a fullscreen map, even adjust colors to your liking.
Whichever map mod you choose, both have multiplayer and singleplayer versions, so you don’t gain an advantage over other players.
3. Inventory HUD+
My main issue with Minecraft’s HUD is that it’s too minimalist. I need a little more information, you know? It’d be nice to know stuff like the durability of my armor or the number of arrows I have without opening my inventory or taking up space on my hotbar. And it just so happens the Inventory HUD+ can do that and more.
The mod lets you see valuable information at a glance, like potion effects, the remaining space in my bag, and even show my inventory while I play. You can make adjustments to the modules as well, such as size, placement, or toggle certain features.
On a side note, I really appreciate the effort put into making Inventory HUD+ blend in with the bubbly icons.
2. Just Enough Items
Similar to how Minecraft’s HUD is lacking, the in-game recipe book could use a helping hand. It feels cumbersome to use in both creative and survival mode. Worst of all, if you have a mod that adds items, those items essentially don’t exist.
Just Enough Items isn’t the recipe book we need, but the one we deserve. Got an item and want to know what recipes it goes into or just eliminate recipes you never use? Want to bookmark a recipe for later? How about searching for modded items? Yes, yes, and yes!
The search function is also quite extensive. For example, I was building a house (as you do) and wanted a splash of color. You can actually specify a color, like blue, and it’ll populate the results with every item of that color. Pretty neat!
1. Optifine
The days of potatoes being able to run Minecraft never really ended. Even a laptop from five or so years ago with decent integrated graphics will do just fine with a bit of tweaking, but you can do better with Optifine.
All it does is improve the game on the backend to eke out more frames and even smooths out stuttering. It’s a godsend on aging hardware, but I still recommend using Optifine even if your PC can handle the graphics dialed to 11.
You can go the other way, too. Optifine has built-in functions for running resource packs and shaders to beautify your experience. As a bonus, it adds a zoom function, making the spyglass all but useless.
