*EDIT: 4/6/15 3:40pm – added suggestions off of Reddit. Thanks!

So maybe you’ve heard of a little game called Minecraft. Heck, maybe you even own it. If so, congratulations, you are one of over 19 million owners. Minecraft is most famous for being the most-bought video game of all time. It started out as a small indie game made by one man, Markus Persson, but these days it’s so huge it’s hard to use the word “indie.” And in a way, this indie game is no longer indie, seeing as they were bought up by Microsoft for a snug 2.5 billion dollars. That being said, the core game is still unchanged by this, and the development team I’m still counting this as an indie game.

INTRODUCTION

In case you’ve been living under The Rock for a while, Minecraft is essentially online Lego. You pop into a world where everything is blocks, and what happens next is all up to you. You can build a castle in the sky, explore the deepest cave, or run around in circles until you die of starvation. You do what you want.

Minecraft, apart from being the most-bought video game, is probably the most modded video game of all time (If not coming in second after Skyrim or Gary’s Mod). If you’ve ever played the game, you probably understand why. The game is fun for a while, but there’s only so much that you can do with what the game gives you. That’s where mods step up to the plate.

MODS

Mods are, in a technical term, bits of code created by users that edit and usually add features to the core game. “Features” is really the only easy way to describe what they can add. There are mods that add almost anything that you can imagine. Want to sacrifice an animal while flying a helicopter? With mods, you can. Want to build a nuclear reactor on Mars? No problem. Mods for minecraft add a ridiculous amount of content to the game, enough to keep you going for months, if not years.

Now, as much as I would like to list every mod and tell you how cool it is, that’s just not feasible. But I can list all the types of mods. So here’s what I see as the three largest categories of mods for the game.

TECHNOLOGY

This is probably the largest category out there, rising up a little over the next on the list. Technology mods, at their core, are pretty straightforward. They add some set of realistic contraptions to mess around with.

MAGIC

This type is for all you fantasy fans out there. Magic mods add systems of magic into the game, and are generally the most complex mods.

ADVENTURE

Okay I’ll admit, ‘Adventure’ is just a fancy way of having an “other” category. You could probably divide this up into a handful of smaller categories, but all together they get pretty close in quantity to our last categories.

HOW-TO

So now I’ve explained what mods are and what they do and everything. That’s great and everything, but you probably have no idea how to get these mods. This is where things get rough.

Step 1 is to find the mods. Because there are a lot of spam/malware sites that claim to have mod downloads, always be wary when looking. The only sites you should trust are:

The official mod forums

Curse and Curseforge

Mod authors personal websites

Anywhere else, and you’ll probably end up with a nasty virus or something similar.

Next, download it, and put it into the game. Somehow, this is harder than finding mods and making sure they don’t destroy your computer. Now, instead of me just explaining it, here’s a nice in-depth tutorial on how to install mods, taken off of YouTube. This talks about Forge, which I’ll discuss in the next section.

BUT WHERES THE API?

If you thought that was way more complicated than it should have been, you’re exactly right. The developers of Minecraft have been promising to make modding the game way easier with something called the “Modding API.” That’s great and all, except it was mention early 2012, and everyone is still waiting for it.

There is an unofficial solution, though. That is Minecraft Forge. Forge has essentially been acting as a stand-in for the official API. With this mod, all other mods are much easier to download. It also unifies and standardizes most mods to an extent.

The lack of official support for mods, apart from making installation rough, means that not all mods work perfectly together. Having the game be unable to load or getting random crashes can happen from time to time. I recommend making a backup of your world when dealing with mods.

MOD PACKS

Partially because of this, people have gotten together to “bundle up” mods. These are called mod packs, and they try very hard to solve all the problems with modding I’ve mentioned. They are usually specifically tailored to make the game run as smoothly and bug-free as possible, and many do a great job.

Solving the confusing download process, mod packs come in one of several easy-to-use game launchers. These launchers include Feed the Beast, ATLauncher, the Technic Launcher, along with several smaller ones. It’s as easy as finding a pack, clicking download, and waiting.

Minecraft, along with the modding community has steadily grown for several years now. It’s hard to say what this game will look like in a few years, but it better include a goddam Modding API. I’ve sunk an ungodly amount of hours into playing this game modded, and I have crashed the game thousands of times. I wholly recommend you check out a modpack if you are interested, as they take a lot of the stress and anger out of the game.

Have you tried out mods? Got a favorite mod? Maybe even a favorite Modpack? Share it right down in the comments!