Highlights
- Minecraft mods offer endless possibilities for multiplayer gameplay, allowing players to explore and build with friends in new and exciting ways.
- Certain mods allow players to automate massive builds and efficiently gather resources, making the experience an easier group project.
- Other mods like WorldEdit, Waystones, and JourneyMap enhance the multiplayer experience by providing tools for terraforming, navigation, and marking important locations.
Minecraft has long been a game where hundreds of players can join a server and build something spectacular, while also being totally accessible to single players. Nothing in the gameplay requires a big group of friends, but a lot of us made our first gaming memories discovering Minecraft with pals.
Despite the regular updates, Minecraft will never be perfect for everyone, but luckily, we have thousands of talented developers who offer free mods to improve gameplay in any way we see fit. These are just some of the best ones for multiplayer servers.
Updated December 20, 2023 by Rosa Baumgartl: Mods get updated and added all the time, making them viable for the latest releases of Minecraft. We've included a few more that will add content and play time to your multiplayer worlds, while still working with version 1.20. Try combining a few of the smaller packs for extra variety with friends.
13 Buildcraft
Keep an eye out for Oil deposits which spawn occasionally throughout the world. Like crude oil in real life, this stuff is incredibly useful and can be sucked out using a Well. Oil is one of the best ways to fuel other machines you'll need.
For those worlds where you want to go big, Buildcraft is a great modpack to play around with. You'll need a group of friends just to explore and take advantage of everything this mod has to offer. Automate massive builds using Blueprints and Builders, so you can get on with other projects while this machine creates everything from the ground up.
Every Minecraft world needs materials, and strip mining with friends isn't what you really want to be doing, so set up a Quarry or Mining Well. It will keep digging until it reaches lava or bedrock, and Wooden Pipes will transport all the blocks back to the surface for you. Waterproof Pipes can move any liquid, and Conductive Pipes transfer Redstone energy.
12 WorldEdit
If you're feeling fancy or just want something funky to look at, try entering a complicated math equation to produce complex structures around your world. These can be used as the basis for cool buildings or as decoration in open landscapes.
Let's go even bigger, and instantly build the whole world to your party's specifications. With WorldEdit, you and your friends can terraform any landscape with a few commands. Try punching holes in a mountain, removing thousands of blocks down to bedrock, and then erecting a giant statue in your likeness.
Using Photoshop-like tools, you can brush Sand into crevices, remove unsightly ores from mountainsides, or copy and paste entities to fill up your city or farm. Lava will cease to flow if you will it, vegetation will crop up instantly. Your imagination really is the limit with this, so get some inspiration online or from real world landscapes.
11 The Aether
Look out for Moa Eggs as these can be incubated and tamed. Once it's fully grown, you can ride these prehistoric birds around the Aether, making sky travel much easier and safer.
Floating way above the Overworld on islands reminiscent of the End, the Aether dimension is a dangerous paradise in the sky. You can visit with your friends for a change of scenery, to mine new ores, or loot useful baubles for your gameplay. Alternatively, follow the plot progression to unlock fun aspects of this heavenly landscape.
You'll need to progress through three dungeons, with increasingly difficult sections and bosses to further the mod. Having a group of friends is going to make this a lot easier, so why not add this to your multiplayer world for some added challenge? Make sure to bring plenty of blocks with you at first to traverse the distant land masses.
10 Waystones
Beacons will naturally pop up upon a player's death. This makes it super convenient to locate your dropped inventory and get back there before your stuff despawns. You can also spread out from your friends to search for useful structures, then teleport when someone finds something cool.
A big part of Minecraft is exploration. Finding useful biomes, special structures, and the perfect places to build giant farms is something you'll be doing throughout the game. Being able to get back to those places, and also find one another when your friends inevitably get lost, is an invaluable ability.
Waystones allow you to place a beacon with your coordinates attached, as well as a label to remind you of what's there. You can then teleport to it if you wish, or just use it as a guide. This way you can find your way back home, or leave behind a note about something interesting you've found for your friends.
9 JourneyMap
When you start up your server for the first time, try pressing 'J' and click 'Auto Map' to see a map of the whole world. This way you can choose the perfect place to set up your huge base without trekking through dangerous jungles and over oceans.
In the same vein, JourneyMap is a great mod for keeping track of friends and finding each other when adventures go awry. Not only does this mod show you and other players, the different colored tokens portray aggressive mobs, passive mobs, specially generated buildings and which biomes you're near. This is a great way to stop a Zombie sneaking up on you, or your pals if they have dastardly intent!
You can mark things on the map, which can be toggled to stay on screen in the corner at all times. Never misplace friends again.
8 Ender Storage
When out exploring, if you find that you need to get home in a hurry but don't have any teleportation mods active, just drop all of your stuff and then get your brains eaten by a Zombie.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder, but doesn't it suck when someone from your party wanders off carrying something super valuable that you needed for crafting? Introducing Ender Storage. This mod works like any other Ender Chest, except anyone can reach in and take items. The chests are color coded so, for example, the red Chest links up to every other red Chest. There are also Ender Pouches which are helpful portable storage solutions.
If one of your friends is building something epic on one side of the world, you can be farming items for it somewhere else and drop them in these handy modded Ender Chests for them to use. Alternatively, if you have to share something rare, such as a Beacon, it's easy to borrow it from the communal chest wherever you are. Just make sure to put it back again.
7 Vault Hunters
The more friends you play with, the faster you can collectively unlock the specialist, high-tier skills that really change the game. Each player can go down a different Research path to open mods such as Elevators, Collossal Chests, and Botania.
This isn't a quality-of-life mod, but rather an adventure for you and your friends to journey on together. Procedurally generated Vaults will spawn, and are opened using Crystals, which can be crafted, imbued, modified and farmed. Everything revolves around these Crystals.
The mod pack basically turns Minecraft into an RPG, with a variety of play styles and progression, armor sets and special abilities such as Dash, Mega Jump and Ghost Walk. You'll research to earn experience and unlock new powers, while tackling every surprise the Vault throws at you. There will be rich rewards and peril. Compete with friends or build a team to defeat the game.
6 Better MC
The sheer size of this modpack means that you're never going to be able to discover all of it. Start out with one dimension or goal in mind, such as reaching a Bastion Castle in the Nether rather than running at high level bosses blindly.
Better MC advertises itself as being Minecraft 2, or 'what Minecraft should have been.' Whether you agree with them or not, this is certainly a big adventure to embark on. This is an entire modpack, which means it's made up of a lot of separate mods that work well together. The quality-of-life additions are certainly helpful, like Just Enough Items, but that's not why you install something like this.
Not only are there thousands of new mobs, items and blocks, but you can build portals to new dimensions like the Twilight Forest, uncover deadly dungeons full of traps, as well as bosses that require an army to defeat. The End has also been overhauled into something akin to a microscopic world full of bacteria made massive and fungi that towers over you. This is a great mod to explore with friends.
5 Domestication Innovation
If you think a Rabbit pet would be cute, but are let down by their attack stats, then try looting Woodland Mansions. In very rare cases, you can discover a Sinister Carrot. If fed to a tamed Rabbit, it will turn it into a Killer Rabbit, with much improved stats in battle.
If you've ever wanted to have more interactions with the animals in Minecraft, then this is the mod for you. Domestication Innovation massively expands on the term 'Tamed', allowing you to befriend, train and even enchant wildlife. Think of it like giving a Wolf a Bone in vanilla Minecraft to get a Dog that will fight for you.
However, you won't be limited to just Dogs, as Frogs, Axolotls, Horses, Rabbits, Foxes, and loads more can be fully trained to do your bidding, which also extends way beyond a weak attack. Enchantments like Psychic Wall stop entities from approaching, Bubbling traps mobs in floating bubbles, Charisma which lowers trade prices, as well as curses like Blight and Immaturity. Train up a hoard of your favorite animals and hunt down the rarest enchantments, then battle it out against friends, or take on a Bastion together with your formidable Pandas.
4 RLCraft
Try to tame a flying mount as quickly as possible. It can take a while, but by farming Silex and Trolls underground, you can get Avian Treats and Saddle to tame a Roc or Raiko. This makes exploration and looting infinitely easier.
This modpack touts that it's one of the hardest and most complex developed so far. 185 individual mods make it up, and create what is essentially an entirely new game with the most devastating mobs you'll ever encounter. If you're prone to rage-quitting, this might not be for you.
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Having a group to watch your back is essential when starting this mod, as dragons roam the skies, insta-killing unsuspecting players, and the oceans are full of creatures that will drag you into the depths. However, this is balanced by the incredibly overpowered Baubles, Enchantments and loot-filled structures that can be found the moment you spawn. Stick together, and you might just make it to the optional bosses, like Asmodeus and Rahovart.
3 Pixelmon
To travel in style, get yourself a flying mount such as Hoothoot or Spearow. When they evolve at level 20 you can explore much more easily.
We've all wanted to live in a world full of Pokemon that are our best friends, riding them around and earning badges. If Pokemon Go didn't scratch that itch for you, then maybe this Minecraft mod will. Download it with friends to discover all the Pokemon you've come to know and love, as well as all the strange new ones that no one can keep track of anymore.
The battle mechanics of Generation Eight are all there, and you can buy Poke Balls, or craft your own using new crafting materials. Vanilla Minecraft mobs will no longer spawn, but most of the other parts of Minecraft you love will remain. Multiplayer servers are a great way to experience this mod, to battle real players and earn TMs, so get out there and catch 'em all!
2 The Hunger Games
Place down any green boxes that appear in your inventory. You can right-click to open them and receive gifts from sponsors, like in the books. What you receive is randomly generated from a table, but some possibilities include awesome weapons and helpful food.
Another amazingly popular series is The Hunger Games. Whether you cheered for Katniss or Finnick, this is your chance to prove to your buddies that you'd definitely have won if it was real, and you totally wouldn't have somehow frozen to death on the first night.
You don't need a huge group of friends to play though, as the mod provides you with teams of incredibly intelligent tributes to outwit, as well as thematic weapons and outfits. Beware of Tracker Jacker Hives, and heed the advice of your mentor, or else the next cannon might be for you.
1 Survival Island
Make sure to choose which type of map you'd like to generate upon creating the world by going into World Creation. Choose many smaller islands and defend yours from your friends with traps and underwater tunnels.
Have you ever wanted your own little island paradise? Perhaps neighboring your best friend so you can build bridges and ships in between? Then this is the perfect mod for you guys. This configurable mod allows you to set the parameters for exactly the world you want to live in.
You can even generate a map that is entirely one large (or small, if you're looking for a struggle) island, where you'll all need to ration the blocks and avoid culling the limited animals. This really flips the script of Minecraft, which is typically an endlessly generating world of resources. See which island lasts the longest, and who comes begging for a Sapling first.
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