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Minecraft’s visual design is probably the most iconic in all of gaming. Its blocky, pixelated textures ooze the indie charm with which the game was created. However, the game is quite old, dating over a decade. Players have probably put hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into the game, after which players might want to change up the look of the game to keep things fresh.
While resource packs can change textures, the more interesting option for revamping the visuals of Minecraft are shaders. These are community-made graphical overhauls that change how the game renders lighting, how water looks, even how shadows and the skies look, which can breathe new life into every aspect of the game.
The 10 best Minecraft shaders as of 2022
10) Lagless Shaders
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Lagless Shaders is the single best shader option for players on the lower end or aging systems. This shader’s goal is to be as simple as possible, hardware demand-wise, while still elevating the look of the game beyond vanilla.
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The shader accomplishes this by increasing the vibrancy of the game’s colors, and increasing the fidelity of the game’s textures. This shader is the epitome of making the vanilla game look better rather than overhauling the game in its entirety.
9) Naelego’s Cel Shaders
The shader does one thing, as implied by the name. This shader adds a thick border around every texture in the game, to mimic the cel-shading look made famous by classic comics and cartoons, most famous within gaming in the Borderlands series of games. This shader, however, is not particularly optimized, and will run poorly on all but the beefiest of PCs.
Naelego’s Cel Shader is by far one of the most unique shader offerings for Minecraft. However, this unique appearance is a double-edged sword. If a player does not enjoy this specific look, the shader is worthless. On the other hand, it is invaluable for players who want this art style.
8) Nostalgia Shader
This shader, as the name suggests, is a reference to the origins of shaders as a concept. The idea behind the shader is to mimic the aesthetic that shaders had almost a decade ago where shaders were a type of mod, rather than a visual rendering restructure handled by either Optifine or Iris.
This shader will probably only speak to those who have experienced this era of shaders. There is nothing that scratches the same nostalgic itch, making it a must-have for those wanting a blast from the past with all of the modern game’s features and additions.
7) SEUS
Sonic Ethers’ Unbelievable Shaders, or SEUS for short, is one of the longest lived shaders in the entire history of the game. This shader is the foundation for many other shaders, making it vital for the progression of shaders as we know them today.
SEUS strikes a fine balance between making the game look better, while also allowing the game to continue to feel like Minecraft. Oftentimes, with shaders, the enhanced visuals can detract from the beautiful simplicity of the game. However, SEUS does not have this problem, making the game look like an enhanced version of Minecraft rather than a totally different game.
6) Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders
This shader is similar to SEUS, also being a shader with a lot of history behind it. The age is not necessarily a hindrance, however, as this shader is still regularly updated by a dedicated team of developers.
There are also several different versions of this shader, ranging from extreme, totally changing the look of the game for those with beefier machines, and also versions of the shader that are intended to be very lightweight, allowing those with worse machines to experience the game in a new, and visually interesting, way.
5) Oceano
The shader is specialized, with the goal of being unbeatable when it comes to enhancing one area of the game’s visuals: the ocean. Almost every shader out there aims to either enhance the game’s water, or make it photo realistic, the Oceano shader takes this to 11.
The oceans featured within the shader are breathtaking in a way that no other shader can compete with, featuring just the right combination of clarity, fog, and color to force players to focus their builds on the coastline, just so they can see more of the sea.
This shader, while focusing on the ocean more than anything else, does not lack in the other important things for shaders: dynamic light, shadows, etc.
4) Werrus
Werrus is another specialized shader. However, it focuses on two of the most important aspects of the game’s visuals for shaders: shadows and water. The water, while not quite a match for the Oceano shader, is as close as any shader has managed to come, with nice cool colors and gentle, rocking waves.
The shadows featured in the Werrus shader have no equal out there, and there are stunning god rays to go along with them, making them look even better. The best part of this shader is that it runs well on older hardware, making it very accessible.
3) KUDA Shaders
KUDA is a well-known shader in the greater Minecraft community. The changes that KUDA makes are more subtle than many other shaders, mainly focused around changing the depth of shadows found in the game and enhancing the vibrancy of the game’s colors. There are also quite good water reflections, but the water is a weak spot for the shader.
Where KUDA truly shines, no pun intended, is in the sky. The skies found in KUDA are so amazing that no other shader even comes close. KUDA really overhauls the atmosphere of Minecraft, in both a literal and figurative sense.
2) ProjectLuma
ProjectLuma gets a spot next to, but above, KUDA for one simple reason: ProjectLuma is the official successor shader to KUDA, which has been remade entirely from the ground up. ProjectLuma is an interesting shader, as it is neither a performance shader or a graphical overhaul shader. It is both. This balance is incredibly hard to make work, but ProjectLuma has so far pulled it off.
Using ProjectLuma, the game looks genuinely incredible, with crystal clear water, gorgeous skies, and breathtaking light rays everywhere the player looks, all without any major performance hits. This is a great shader for accessibility and visuals.
1) Too Many Effects
Too Many Effects, as the name suggests, is a shader that aims to do one thing: add every possible shader effect and visual change to the game that it can. The lens flair caused by light is so intense that it almost feels like the lens flair has its own flair.
The shader markets itself as one that players who want the best that shaders have to offer should use, everything crammed into a single, resource intensive, CPU melting, frame rate dropping pack. There are lens flairs, water reflections, trees and grass swaying in the wind, god rays, and even more in this shader.
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