Best Minecraft mods to download in 2022: Recipes, biomes, crafting & UI

Minecraft continues to be a popular pick amongst players of all ages, offering huge amounts of freedom and experimentation when it comes to creating the perfect world. On top of that, our list of best Minecraft mods can make the game even better in 2022, from UI and crafting changes to biomes, and recipes. 

From ultra-realistic graphics in Minecraft to fan-made biomes, the game world is filled with never-ending possibilities. Whether you’re looking to build a huge castle or want to spice up your current world, there are plenty of mods that will enable you to do just that. 

Of course, knowing which Minecraft mods to download and install can be a little tricky, especially when there are so many.

Fortunately, we’ve done the hard part and found eight of the very best Minecraft mods you should download and install right now. Not only do these mods drastically improve upon the game’s vanilla experience, but they also help keep the game feeling fresh.  

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Contents

• Best Minecraft mods
• Just Enough Items
• OptiFine
• Biomes O’ Plenty
• Pam’s HarvestCraft 2
• WAWLA – What Are We Looking At
• AppleSkin
• Waystones
• JourneyMap

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Best Minecraft mods to download in 2022

From Minecraft mods that allow you to search for items on a whim, to increasing the variety of items that spawn in the world, there’s plenty to choose from and download:

Just Enough Items (JEI)

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If you’re a new Minecraft player or a seasoned crafter, you’ll want to add the Just Enough Items mod to your list. This handy tool allows you to instantly search for in-game recipes, show individual item uses, and toggle the game’s list of materials.

• Read More: How to build a castle in Minecraft: Castle ideas

While it may not be an overly fancy mod, it does help to decrease the amount of time spent scrolling endlessly through the Minecraft wiki page.

OptiFine

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While Minecraft’s blocky world may look charming enough, there are times when the game’s textures can look a little rough around the edges. Not only does OptiFine enable Minecraft to run much smoother, but it also comes packed with HD texture support.

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Everything from improved weather effects, dynamic lighting, detailed environments, and configurable animations have been added. Mahjong’s masterpiece certainly looks better than ever with this mod. 

Biomes O’ Plenty

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One of the reasons behind Minecraft’s worldwide success is its huge replayability factor. After all, combining huge procedurally-generated worlds with the player’s own imagination makes for a highly freeing experience. The Biomes O’ Plenty mod adds to the overworld exploration even further, giving Minecraft fans even more unique worlds, new plants, flowers, trees, building blocks, and more to discover. 

Pam’s HarvestCraft 2

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As the name suggests, Pam’s HarvestCraft 2 is all about crop tending. Split into four different packages, this ever-growing mod adds a huge amount of new items and foods to Minecraft, giving your character a healthier diet than ever before. Highlights from the mod include 70+ new crops (including cotton for string), 45+ fruit or item-bearing trees, and over 120+ new foods.

• Read More: How to make a beehive in Minecraft

If that wasn’t enough, many of the mod’s resources can then be processed via the presser block to make them into various commodities. All these new resources can be sold via the shipping block, which enables you to acquire a decent amount of money. If you’re a fan of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, then you’ll feel right at home with this mod.  

Other goodies packaged with this mod are:

• Re-balanced Vanilla foods.
• Placeable cake blocks for all of the new cakes.
• A Market block, allowing you to buy things like bonemeal, farming animal spawn eggs, seeds and saplings in exchange for emeralds.
• A Shipping block, allowing you to sell beekeeping items, crops, fish, and meat in exchange for emeralds.
• Tofu, working as a meat replacement for vegetarian/vegan recipe options.

WAWLA – What Are We Looking At

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Are you struggling to keep track of where you put a particular item? When installed, WAWLA’s UI mod – an expansion of WAILA and HWYLA – will display all the contents of a chest without the need to actually open it. This is particularly useful if you’re cultivating crops from Pam’s HarvestCraft 2, collecting various resources, or doing dungeon raids. 

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To make matters even better, WAWLA also showcases animal breeding and animal growing timers. There are even progress bars for block breaking, armor points, block blast resistance, horse speed, and player head usernames. Once you’ve seen how useful this UI mod is, you’ll never want to go back to Minecraft’s original HUD. 

AppleSkin

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This mod is a must-have in Minecraft, especially if you’re utilizing others that aim to deepen the food and crafting mechanics present in-game.

Visually displaying all you need to know about food, whether it’s regarding what particular items can be eaten, or how long particular foods and items you’re holding will satiate you (displayed above in the HUD), AppleSkin is one of the best additions to any Minecraft player’s game.

While these mechanics have always been there, they’re hidden by default, and as such, this mod does not modify any game files.

Waystones

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No best Minecraft mods list would be complete without Waystones. This mod is a necessity for those that like to build, explore, and return to areas across their map. Adding blocks that the player is able to come back to through other Waystones or with Warp Stones and Warp Scrolls will aid any adventurer’s need out in the wild.

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As a bonus, the mod can be used in Adventure Maps, Survival Mode, and multiplayer servers (instead of using previous /home and /warp commands). If you’re feeling extra chill, you can even add an option to the inventory tab that allows you to teleport around at will!

JourneyMap

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The JourneyMap is an incredibly useful Minecraft mod for many reasons. Firstly, the mod comes packaged with both a mini and world map, taking out the requirement for multiple downloads. You’ll also be able to channel your inner cartographer, as it lets you mark things down on your map that can also be seen in-world with beacons, should you need to return there.

As you explore your world, the mod will mark out the map for you as you traverse through biomes. Pressing the J button in-game provides you with a lot of information, too! From viewing those marked waypoints and turning their visibility on or off, you can also change the color of these waypoints and name them, too!

Other features included are:

• Teleportation (with cheats enabled).
• Topographic data, allowing you to see the elevation of your world. These can be fine-tuned and customized to your liking, also.
• Optional maps in your browser, and/or IOS and Android devices.
• Day and night map modes.

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So, there you have it, eight of the best Minecraft mods you can download in 2022.

For more tips and tricks, make sure to check out our guides:

Best Minecraft house ideas | Best Minecraft seeds | How to make Concrete in Minecraft | How to change Villager jobs | How to make potions | How to teleport in Minecraft | Best Minecraft cheats and console commands | Best Bedrock shaders and texture packs