When it comes to community-made content, you’d be hard-pressed to find a game that has as much as Minecraft, especially at such a high quality. A game all about inspiring creativity has done just that, and thousands of great mods are out there for you to transform your experience. However, finding all the mods you want, installing them, and working out what’s compatible with what is a pain, and can take quite a long time.
That’s where the modpack comes in. A modpack does all the hard work for you, bringing a large collection of mods together – usually all centered around one theme – so you can have a fully modded experience with just one click of a button. Plus, these curated packs make it much easier to find exactly the kind of experience you want.
We’ve gone through as many as we could find and picked out the best Minecraft modpacks you can play for a whole new Minecraft experience.
Starting simple, while plenty of other modpacks will introduce mechanics, biomes, and dimensions that make Minecraft seem like a whole new game, Better Minecraft is about simply enhancing the vanilla experience.
There are no complicated tech or magic mods in Minecraft, instead it only adds features that already feel like they fit in with official Mojang-made content. Mods like Alex’s Mobs adds loads of new wildlife to the game, Terralith enhances the world generation with cool new biomes, alongside mods that enhance the content in both the Nether and End dimensions.
Also, Twilight Forest, because it’s almost impossible to find a modpack like this that doesn’t have Twilight Forest in it.
Prominence 2
If you’re looking to turn Minecraft into an in-depth RPG experience, then look no further. Prominence 2 is the ultimate RPG modpack for Minecraft, with a huge story campaign that is being actively developed on with regular expansions.
You’ll have a complex talent tree based on games like Diablo and Path of Exile, as well as the ability to create a whole host of legendary armor and weapons that will dramatically alter your playstyle. Of course, as part of that, you’ll have plenty of cool new bosses to challenge yourself, as they scale infinitely with your power level across nine different dimensions.
Plus there are plenty of ways to build an efficient base, as several tech mods help you automate some of the more exhaustive crafting challenges.
While you may have fond memories of cowering in a dirt hole when you played Minecraft for the first time, it probably didn’t take long for that fear to fade, and now you know how to deal with a Minecraft nighttime easily.
Fear Nightfall aims to put that terror back into your heart. A whole host of powerful and scary-looking monsters are added in this pack, and if you play with the recommended shaders you’ll be dragged down into a dreary world where darkness is something you need to actively combat.
Naturally, you can’t have a pack like this without having a sanity meter included, which you must manage as reworked combat effects make life much harder. You won’t get much of a chance to do any creative building in this pack, as you’ll be too busy clinging to life.
MC Eternal
Minecraft’s modding history is surprisingly complicated, but to make it as simple as possible, when update 1.13 came around, it created a lot of problems for modders due to the major changes Mojang made to the game. Those problems have long since been solved by the community, but it caused many of the game’s most popular and complex mods to be stuck in version 1.12, no longer seeing active development.
MC Eternal is the best modpack for everything that was left behind in that version of the game, alongside a whole host of newer mods made by developers who decided to stay creating in the 1.12 environment. It’s a modpack with all the complexity of the best modern packs, but with unique mods that you won’t find anywhere else.
Sticking in 1.12, Tekkit 2 is an easy bit of nostalgia. If you remember the early days of Minecraft modding, you’ll remember that Tekkit was easily the best there was. It focused mainly on technology mods but had a sprinkling of other features in there to give you plenty of variety.
Tekkit 2 revives that core set of mods with IndustrialCraft, BuildCraft, and Equivalent Exchange, but adds to it with several cool mods that have been developed in the years since the original. Inclusions like GalatiCraft, Forestry, and Quark are just a few examples of mods that feel true to the core Tekkit gameplay but enhance the experience beyond the original.
BigChadGuys
Despite what the name may suggest, BigChadGuys is essentially Stardew Valley, plus Pokémon, plus Minecraft.
It’s one of the best “Vanilla Plus” mods out there, giving you a massive expansion to farming, not just adding loads of new crops, but letting you sell them for a profit and buy lots of cool decorations with it. A seasonal system actively changes the look of your world throughout the year and affects how your fields grow.
It uses Cobblemon to fill the world with Pokémon in a way that feels immersive to Minecraft, rather than Pixelmon’s more direct approach. However, if you don’t want it, then there is a version without Cobblemon instead.
On top of that, it has plenty of mods that improve the adventuring side of Minecraft, adding loads of new dungeons to the overworld, Nether, and End, plus mods like Mythic Metals greatly expand gear progression. There’s also an expansive quest system that carefully guides you through everything there is to do in the pack.
RLCraft has long been one of the most popular Minecraft modpacks out there, and it’s easy to see why. If you’re looking for an experience that simultaneously makes Minecraft more difficult but also endlessly expands the creative potential, then you’d be hard-pressed to find anything better.
It will take a while for you to get used to it, as fantasy monsters hide around every corner, and the expansion of the survival mechanics mean you have to worry about more than usual, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s very rewarding. You can go on endless adventures out into the many different worlds the game offers, and having true mastery over this world feels more rewarding than just about any other modpack.
DawnCraft
DawnCraft has a very similar philosophy to RLCraft, only it brings it into the modern versions of Minecraft, as where RLCraft is stuck in 1.12. What that means is you’ve got a whole new set of mods that aim to do the same things, creating a compelling RPG experience.
It goes one step further than most mods though, as it completely overhauls the Minecraft combat system, and with just the push of a button, you can switch into a combat mode that feels like something out of a Souls game. It has all of the complex skill and gear progression you’d expect with a mod like this, with a massive roster of bosses to fight and unique weapons and items they can drop. If what you love about RPGs is the thrill of discovering new adventures, then DawnCraft is right up your street.
AllTheMods does exactly what it says on the tin. If you just want a modded experience that crams as much in as it possibly can, then AllTheMods is the place to be. There are several different versions of this mod for various versions of Minecraft, and all of them offer the biggest range possible of modded experiences.
You’ll have endless technology at your fingertips, magic the likes of which you can only dream of, and a world full of dungeons, structures, and secrets to explore. While compatibility issues mean that it can’t include literally every mod to exist, it is by far the biggest modpack you can find, with careful curation behind it to make everything run smoothly together.
Vault Hunters
Vault Hunters is not the biggest or most complex mod, but it is utterly addictive in a way no other pack has managed.
In short, Vault Hunters is a mod that adds a new dimension that contains a procedurally generated dungeon that is unique every time you play. In there you can find plenty of loot for your base, but on top of that is a massive progression system with gear, skills, and unique mechanics that will keep you coming back for more.
It also contains plenty of other popular mods like Create, Botany, and Mekanism, but brilliantly ties them into the progression system, as not only do you need loot from the Vaults to unlock them, but you’ll need Vault-exclusive resources to build all of their weird and wonderful machines.
Vault Hunters is the perfect example of a pack that picks one idea and focuses everything on it, making it easily the tightest package available in the world of modded Minecraft.
