Adventures in MineCraft Modding

My basic play of MineCraft is vanilla. I certainly don't have any increase in the items available, although they would be helpful. There's a whole range of addons you can get, to help with crafting, flying and killing. However, there are a few I've added just to make my life easier.

Forge: Start with this one. Pretty much all mods rely on this package, and once installed and up and running, it's very easy to add in more mods over time.

Chicken Bones: This is another base mod that other mods are built on. However, the default mod had a problem I encountered when used with the next mod whereby redstone caused the server to crash. The author has updated it, but you need to use the latest build, not the default one.

Not Enough Items: With the above mod, this is one of the most useful mods for me. NEI accesses the items available, and a) can show what block you are looking at (very useful when mining) and b) can show all the items and the associated recipes to create them. Which makes it much easier than switching over to the web and looking it up, which would otherwise be the normal option.

LiteLoader: When mods aren't Forge, they seem to be based on LiteLoader. Fortunately, there's a version of LiteLoader for Forge, so you can combine them!

Voxel Map: This uses LiteLoader. This displays a map in the upper corner, which is handy. But more usefully it allows for waypoints to be added, so you can navigate your way around. So often I could so easily be lost, but with this, I'm able to go anywhere and make my way back.

Now if only I had somewhere interesting to go. In the world I'm in, there are Plains and Forests and Ocean... and that's it. No desert or anything. No villages or temples. But at least two ocean temples though. And the Endermen aren't dropping ender pearls. And no sign of blazes in the Nether... man, this world sucks.

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