The 23 Best Minecraft Mods in 2024

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Reviewed by Austin Carroll

After your sixty-fourth Minecraft spelunking adventure or your twenty-first mountaintop keep, you might find yourself in need of a little recipe change. Well, with the help of Minecraft’s modding community, your infinite voxel playground just got infinitely bigger. Below I’ve selected the best Minecraft mods to date and arranged them in categories. The first seven picks are must-haves for any Minecraft player.

Like the base game, there’s a mod for just about anything you can imagine. Want to bring Minecraft into VR? There’s a mod for that. Want to add entirely new realms and experiences? There’s a mod for that, too.

But with all these mods, there simply isn’t enough time to try them all. It’s best to put together a list and separate the wheat from the chaff. While you could do all that discovery work yourself, allow us to offer some assistance in this very article. We here at High Ground Gaming have assembled a master list with the best-of-the-best mods for Minecraft, providing a springboard for infinite adventure.

But before we talk mods, let’s talk modding platforms. What is the best Minecraft version for mods: Minecraft Java Edition or Minecraft Bedrock Edition?

The Best Way to Mod Minecraft

Above, you’ll see the main menu for Minecraft Bedrock Edition. Note the character doll and profile button on the right. For most vanilla players, this is the preferred way to get your mine on.

Mods are officially offered for Bedrock Edition as add-ons, produced through the use of a handy API and sorted into Behavior Packs and Resource Packs. The former tends to affect the game logic, while the latter tends to provide new textures, blocks, and more.

However, for the modding-inclined, Minecraft Bedrock Edition is simply subpar. While the API may be handy, the way Bedrock Edition handles modding on the backend renders most older mods incompatible — forcing folks into the storefront-style add-on system — and thus split the community. When presented with a fork in the road, modders almost always prefer the path most traveled. In this case, that’s modding with Java and a robust pre-existing community.

For reference, this is what the main menu looks like for Minecraft Java Edition. If you’re ready to get your mod on, this is how your Minecraft client should look as well. There’s a variety of mature tools and plug-ins forged by modders over the past decade to make the modding experience as easy and feature-rich as possible over in the Java Edition.

From the launcher for Minecraft Java Edition, you’re able to select from any installed modpacks and launch directly into them, the same as you would the vanilla game. As you might infer from the talk of tools, plug-ins, and launchers, there’s a lot more we could dig into here, but that’s a whole different discussion. Perhaps take our word for it for now — Java Edition is the way to go if you’re looking to mod Minecraft.

Now that we’ve covered the best Minecraft version for mods, let’s talk about the best mods to stuff your launcher with.

The 7 Best Minecraft Mods: Our Top Picks

To start things off, we’ve curated our top seven all-time favorite Minecraft mods. Let’s check ’em out.

1. Better Animals Plus

The best animal mod for Minecraft

Created: September 23rd, 2018
Authors: cybercat5555 and ist_meow
Available for versions: 1.15, 1.14, 1.13, 1.12
Website: betteranimalsplus.com

The Better Animals Plus mod adds over two dozen lovingly rendered mobs into your Minecraft worlds. Along with the added immersion of mobs like walruses (walri?) in frozen biomes and turkeys in forests, you get some new items to play with like goat milk and cheese, pelts, and even blubber.

Take your worlds to the next level with Better Animals Plus, and consider picking up the ancestral Better Animal Models mod when you see how good the new models look next to the classic creatures.

2. Biomes O’ Plenty

The best survival mod for Minecraft

Created: May 9th, 2014
Authors: Forstride and TheAdubbz
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/biomes-o-plenty

In Minecraft’s Survival mode, there’s always something to do, especially if you’re motivated to reach beyond straightforward goals like “get a full set of iron armor” or “find more diamonds.” There are only so many block types and biomes in the vanilla game to explore — eventually, you’ve seen just about all there is to see.

Enter Biomes O’ Plenty, and exit Overworld exploration boredom.

It supposedly adds around seventy biomes for you to explore. I say “supposedly” because even I haven’t encountered all there is to explore. Perhaps it’s impossible to do in one playthrough. Ready for a new goal?

3. Expansive Fantasy

The best PE mod for Minecraft

Created: October 22nd, 2019
Authors: zahf22
Available for versions: 1.16
Website: https://mcpedl.com/dragon-zahf22-addon/

Beware of the vicious dragons and wyverns this mod will add into the Overworld, each with their own unique biome to spawn in. Should you brave the wilds and slay one of these beasts, you may find yourself the proud owner of a shiny new dragon egg, and that’s where the real fun begins.

Hatch and raise your dragon, then make good on your How to Train Your Dragon fantasies by taking to the skies astride your winged friend. This mod also adds some other mobs like Orcs and Sea Serpents, and some new blocks. But let’s be honest — dragons are the real reason we’re here.

4. MrCrayfish’s Furniture Mod

The best furniture mod for Minecraft

Created: August 5th, 2020
Authors: mr_crayfish
Available for versions: 1.15, 1.16
Website: http://www.9minecraft.net/mrcrayfishs-furniture-mod/

MrCrayfish looked at the sorry state of stock Minecraft furniture and said, “This simply will not do.” He saw a void, swirling with ghostly images of what could be: cabinets, kitchen appliances, lamps, birdbaths, and toilets. He even beheld electronics like computers and TVs. The limits of what could be were sundered as he continued to gaze deep into the rift, which stared back into him.

Thus, he reached into the void and drew out the hopes and dreams of Minecraft players everywhere, manifesting them in polygons and vertices. And boy, are we glad he did.

5. Vivecraft

The best VR mod for Minecraft

Created: 2013 as Minecrift, mid-2016 changed to Vivecraft
Authors: mabrowning, StellaArtois, Automat-GH, jrbubba, and Techjar
Available for versions: 1.7.10 and 1.10 – 1.16
Website: http://www.vivecraft.org/

Despite the name, Vivecraft is fully compatible with SteamVR. This means you can experience Minecraft in Oculus, Windows MR, and Valve Index as well as Vive. It’s absolutely something VR owners should try at least once.

Have you ever considered the scale of the Minecraft world? Blocks are one meter cubed. That’s enormous relative to your person. And plunging into the darkness of a cave or abandoned mine is a lot more nerve-wracking when there isn’t a screen between you and the cave noises. Other than that, it’s just the Minecraft you know and love –— with a whole new dimension of immersion.

6. Waystones

The best exploration mod for Minecraft

Created: June 2nd, 2016
Authors: BlayTheNinth
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/waystones

It’s easy to get lost in Minecraft. Worry no more about finding your way back to your fort on spawn point with Waystones. Use the new Warp Scroll or Warp Stone items to charge your crafted waystones and create your own teleportation network around the world.

Random waystones will also generate around the world to offer you proverbial checkpoints for your adventures. But even so, pair waystones with a map for best results.

7. Ensorcellation

The best enchantment mod for Minecraft

Created: October 26th, 2019
Authors: TeamCoFH and KingLemmingCoFH
Available for versions: 1.14 and 1.15
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/ensorcellation

Feel like you’ve seen and done all you can with the vanilla Enchantments? Get your Ensorcellation on with a few dozen new and exciting Enchantment opportunities.

Enchant your armor to teleport away or set on fire those who dare to strike you. Grant your weapons damage boosts against particular mobs. Add an AoE to your tools while gathering blocks. You can even buff your farming capabilities. And these are just a small sample of what’s possible with Ensorcellation. Time to be magical.

The 6 Best Adventure Mods for Minecraft

If exploring Minecraft’s procedural world and going on grand adventures is your cup of tea, you’ll love this next list!

1. Twilight Forest

Created: Feb 7th, 2015
Authors: Benimatic, Drullkus, Tamaized, AtomicBlom and Squiggly_Androsa
Available for versions: 1.6, 1.7, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/the-twilight-forest

O Brave Adventurer, heed not the call of the Twilight Realm. Seek not its natural splendor: an ancient, majestic, and endless forest basked in eternal shadow. Nor should you seek its riches, interred in stone ruins and sprawling dungeons, guarded by evil monsters the likes of which you’ve not seen in the world from whence you come.

Nay, Brave Adventurer, the many novel items to be plundered from the depths of this strange realm… are they truly worth your life? Should you ignore all warnings, then create for yourself the portal of soil, flora, and water. Toss your most precious gem into the pool and prepare yourself for the adventure beyond.

2. Roguelike Dungeons

Created: June 20th, 2014
Authors: Greymerk
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/roguelike-dungeons

Do the words Rogue and Nethack mean anything to you? These classic dungeon crawlers paved the way for many modern RPGs and pioneered the idea of procedurally-generated worlds. Now, thanks to the Roguelike Dungeons mod, you can have your dungeon crawls right in the middle of your favorite procedurally generated voxel survival game.

3. The Betweenlands

Created: March 27th, 2016
Authors: oily_oil, Tripleheadedsheep, pau101, GoryMoon, bobmowzie, imdutch21, vadis365, TheCyberBrick, and wightofshadows
Available for versions: 1.7, 1.10, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/angry-pixel-the-betweenlands-mod

Just as the Nether is the realm below and the End the realm above, the Betweenlands is a realm that exists, well, in-between. This is a massive mod that adds an entirely new realm to explore, offering new mobs to battle, bosses to conquer, and plenty of eye-catching biomes to spice up your Minecraft life.

As much as I’d love to tell you more, The Betweenlands is a mod best discovered firsthand with as little knowledge going in as possible. What are you waiting for?

4. Lycanites Mobs

Created: October 8th, 2014
Authors: Lycanite
Available for versions: 1.12, 1.14, 1.15
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/lycanites-mobs

Lycanites Mobs adds more mobs than you can shake a flint and steel at, borrowed from a number of mythologies, legends, and even other videogames. Besides the mobs, you get some new equipment crafting to keep you busy, as well as unique dungeons to reward the brave explorer.

Beware, adventurer — of all the realms, the Nether is most affected by this mod. And there’s no Doom Slayer to save you when you get in over your head….

5. Vampirism — Become a Vampire!

Created: July 22nd, 2015
Authors: maxanier
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, and 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/vampirism-become-a-vampire

For many players, Adventure mode is synonymous with role-playing. Vampirism introduces one of fantasy role-playing’s classic archetypes into the world of Minecraft: the vampire.

Riding on the coattails of Skyrim’s best expansion, Vampirism allows you to become a creature of the night yourself or a vampire hunter seeking to purge the world of evil. Choose your path wisely — once you become a vampire, you’ll become a target for every vampire hunter roaming the wilds. Better build yourself a coffin.

6. AbyssalCraft

Created: March 12th, 2013
Authors: Shinoow
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/abyssalcraft

In keeping with the dark theme, AbyssalCraft leans into the works of H.P. Lovecraft and brings a little eldritch horror to your Overworld.

Craft yourself a Necronomicon, and let your fel adventure begin. Scout out the Dreadlands, plunge into the realm of J’zahar known as Omothol, or let your light be extinguished by shadows in the appropriately named Dark Realm. New mobs, blocks, and magic ritual mechanics abound here. Just try to maintain your sanity.

The 5 Best Minecraft Mods for Building

Love building different structures, like bunkers, homes, and forts? If so, this list of best Minecraft mods for building is just for you!

1. Create

Created: July 18th, 2019
Authors: simibubi
Available for versions: 1.14 and 1.15
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/create

Create is a toolkit designed to set you free. It adds the concept of rotational force and moving parts to Minecraft, allowing you to build elaborate assembly lines or water-powered machinery that obeys basic real-world principles.

Bring your world to life without command block trickery. It’s perhaps more of a science experiment than anything else — other concepts like stress/torque are implemented as well — but the result is stunning to behold.

2. Building Gadgets

Created: July 14th, 2018
Authors: Direwolf20 and Error_MiKeY
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, and 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/building-gadgets

Sometimes, it feels like gathering the resources for a massive building project is the fastest, least tedious part of the process. Make the rest of your construction conundrums a breeze with Building Gadgets, a mod that adds some tools to help you become a master architect.

Use templates like walls and rows to cut out the busywork. You can even exchange materials or copy and paste large chunks (pun intended) of existing work. It’s easy to understand and fun to use, like a good mod should be.

3. Chisel

Created: August 22nd, 2015
Authors: tterrag1098, Drullkus, and minecreatr
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/chisel

Chisel is relatively straightforward — it adds a massive number of new cosmetic blocks for you to build and decorate with. They’re all placed with the added chisel tool — hence the name. The mod adds a second tool called the Ender Offset Wand that you can use to shift textures around that cover several blocks for pixel-perfect placement.

4. Storage Drawers

Created: August 29th, 2014
Authors: Texelsaur
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, and 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/storage-drawers

The bigger you build in Minecraft, the more crucial good organization becomes. You can use the time-tested technique of chests labeled with signs, but why not spring for something more condensed and easy to use?

Storage Drawers adds storage solutions that aren’t accessed through an interface, but simply based on how you click on them. You can drop off or retrieve items in a flash, and the drawers offer plenty of storage that’s ideal for filling unoccupied corners of your fortress.

5. Macaw’s Bridges

Created: November 16th, 2019
Authors: sketch_macaw
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, and 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/macaws-bridges

As you explore, you’ll doubtless be building a lot of bespoke bridges. Rather than isolated blocks of wood, cobblestone, or dirt, why not use the Macaw’s Bridges mod to make your bridges immersion-friendly and safer to use?

Yes, the ropes and guardrails actually work. And crossing a rickety rope bridge in the depths of the jungle is about as aesthetic of an experience as you can get. It’s time to build better bridges.

The 5 Best Ore Mods for Minecraft

Last up, we have the best ore mods for Minecraft. This list is ideal for everyone (it is called Minecraft, after all)!

1. Base Metals

Created: January 20th, 2016
Authors: jriwanek and dshadowwolf
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/base-metals

Base Metals fills out your Minecraft worlds with more than a dozen new metal ores, ranging from the common to the fantastic. Smith Copper and Tin into Bronze alloys, brave the Nether to find the incredibly strong Adamantine ore veins, or make a full set of Aquarium armor for water breathing.

More ores mean more reasons to mine and craft. And isn’t that why we’re all here?

2. Nether Metals

Created: March 24th, 2016
Authors: knoxhack, dshadowwolf, and jriwanek
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/nether-metals

Sure, the Nether is fun and all – but what if you could mine ores there too? Nether Metals adds all the ores to the Nether, and is even cross-compatible with the Base Metals and Modern Metals mods as well. But even without the other two, filling out the Nether with more content and more reasons to brave the Ghasts is always welcome.

3. TFC: Metallum

Created: August 29th, 2019
Authors: UnlimitedStone9 and dis5str
Available for versions: 1.12
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/tfc-metallum

This mod adds a ton of ores and metals into Minecraft, ranging from things like aluminum and magnesium to uranium and the legendary mithril. Not all of the new metals have a use out of the box, but the new tools combined with the visual impact of stacked ingots may make up for that.

Become the Dwarf you always knew was lurking deep inside. Embrace your metal-loving self.

NOTE: This mod requires TerraFirmaCraft

4. Silent’s Gems

Created: May 8th, 2014
Authors: SilentChaos512
Available for versions: 1.14, 1.15, and 1.16
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/silents-gems

Gems aren’t ores. I know. But for our purposes, they’re functionally identical. Burying gems deep into your Minecraft soil gives you ample motivation to keep digging, and once extracted, you can use them to craft blocks and useful items.

Variety is the spice of life when you’re sixty-four blocks deep and searching for anything shiny. Silent’s Gems are just the ticket for those little endorphin rushes you get when you spot some color amid all the stone.

5. Super Ores

Created: December 12th, 2015
Authors: Abused_master
Available for versions: 1.10, 1.12, and 1.14
Website: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/super-ores

Just look at the image for Super Ores. That’s a diamond block, but unlike any diamond block you’ve ever seen before. Super Ores seasons your Minecraft chunks with blocks of “compressed” ore. For the lucky explorer, that means you hit the jackpot. And may never need more iron or diamond again.

That was a joke — we can always use more iron or diamond. But if you’re hunting for ore-based easy mode, look no further than Super Ores.

Related Reading

The 23 Best Minecraft Mods in 2024

The Best Way to Mod Minecraft