6 best vanilla-friendly mods for Minecraft

Since Minecraft is a sandbox game, the community has created thousands of mods to add new features to it. While some mods can completely change the look and feel of the game, others retain the vanilla feel while still adding useful features. These are often referred to as vanilla-friendly mods. They can either be performance mods or quality-of-life mods.

Here is a list of six great vanilla-friendly Minecraft mods players should check out.

Note: Some parts of this article are entirely subjective and solely reflect the writer's opinion.

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List of 6 vanilla-friendly Minecraft mods

1) Just Enough Items

Just Enough Items adds a completely custom GUI. (Image via CurseForge/mezz)

With more than 411,000,000 downloads from the CurseForge website alone, Just Enough Items is among the most popular vanilla-friendly Minecraft mods ever made. If players struggle to remember all the crafting and smelting recipes, this mod can save a ton of time.

Since Minecraft is a sandbox game, crafting and smelting items is a crucial aspect of the gameplay. But it can be complex and time-consuming to learn every recipe.

Functional blocks' GUIs are entirely altered by Just Enough Items, which improves their intuitiveness. Additionally, a list of all the blocks and items in the game is available, enabling players to choose any one and discover how it might be utilized in each crafting recipe.

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2) Apple Skin

AppleSkin can show important details about each food item (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming/Mojang Studios)

Minecraft has several food items, with each of them replenishing different levels of hunger. Since remembering how effective each food item is can be difficult for new players, the AppleSkin mod can be of use to them.

This mod displays the number of hunger and saturation points each food item will offer. It also updates the hunger bar in the HUD, showing the saturation bar as a golden outline.

Saturation is also an important health and stamina mechanic that is hidden by default. Hence, AppleSkin is a great vanilla-friendly mod.

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3) Clumps

Clumps is a mod that combines multiple dropped XP orbs (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming/Mojang Studios)

When players perform an activity, they are rewarded with XP points in the form of orbs that drop in Minecraft's world. These orbs might seem small and insignificant, but many of them can take several device resources to render in the game.

This is where the Clumps mod comes in handy. Whenever there are lots of XP orbs dropped in the world, this mod simply combines them and makes them into one small orb that contains all the points. This helps with the gaming performance while still giving all the XP points that players deserve.

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4) Nature's Compass

Nature's Compass helps players find biomes more easily. (Image via CurseForge/Chaosyr)

At first, discovering new biomes in Minecraft might feel enjoyable, but if the world generation isn't working in your favor, searching for a certain biome can become quite time-consuming and unpleasant. The Nature's Compass mod can be extremely useful in this situation.

This mod adds a unique compass that can be configured to point in the direction of a particular biome. To locate that precise biome fast, just hold the compass and move in the direction it points.

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5) Xaero's Minimap

Xaero's Minimaps add an excellent minimap with other useful features (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming/Mojang Studios)

When players first enter a new Minecraft world, they quickly realize that the game does not have a minimap or world map. Many players might feel lost while traveling and exploring Minecraft. This is where Xaero's Minimap mod comes in handy.

It simply adds a configurable minimap to the game that displays the terrain, biomes, mobs, and dropped items. Players can further configure the mod using Mod Menu and show various kinds of information, like coordinates, type of biome, light level of a block, and even day and time.

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6) Waystones

Waystones adds a new block that can be used to fast-travel in Minecraft. (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming/Mojang Studios)

Despite featuring a nearly endless map, Minecraft still does not have any sort of fast-traveling system. In vanilla versions, players still travel by foot, ride a mob, row a boat, or fly with elytra. Seeing the need for fast travels, the modding community came up with the Waystones mod.

This mod adds new blocks and items that solely focus on creating a fast travel system in Minecraft without changing other features. Players can craft these waystones and place them anywhere in the world and use special scrolls and items to fast-travel between them.

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