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       Types of Mods

      Some mods are designed to change how the game looks visually. These types of mods are commonly referred to as Texture Packs. Texture Pack mods vary in their appearance dramatically. Some are designed to make Minecraft fit a particular theme like Glimmar's Steampunk Hybrid Mod and the Silent Hill Resource Pack. Others are more neutral like Pixel Perfection. All these packs just affect the appearance of the game, changing the look of everything; from the world to items to the player itself.

      Other mods enabled Minecraft players to experience a different type of game, maybe new content or different game experience. Mo’ Creatures is one Minecraft mod that adds a new set of mobs, which refers to all Minecraft creatures. Some of the mobs included in the Mo’ Creatures Minecraft mod are elephants, crabs, raccoons, and wyverns.

      There are also Minecraft mods designed to improve game play by making the graphics load faster, allowing the game to run faster. One of the most popular types of game improvement mods is called Optifine. The Optifine Minecraft mod allows players with slower computers, especially laptops, experience much faster performance as well as improved graphics. Many Minecraft players consider the Optifine modification a must-have mod because of its ability to massively improve FPS. FPS is the frames per second, the higher the number the better the game runs. Players with poor graphics cards and slow computers often experience very low FPS numbers, which results in their Minecraft game running very choppily and even crashing.

      Another popular game play improvement Minecraft mod is Rei’s Minimap Minecraft mod. This Minecraft mod inserts a map into the game’s interface that is fully functional, allowing players to set waypoints, with an arrow pointing the way. One of the most popular features of Rei’s Minimap is that it shows your death point, so when a player dies, he can find his way back and find any lost items.

      Often considered to be mod are the various custom worlds, or maps. Two of the most popular mods in this category are Skyblock and Complex.

      Skyblock is a map mod that when you spawn, or start the game, you are on a small floating island in the sky. There are usually only a few blocks, a tree, and a chest. It allows players to enable their inner creativity and sees what they can create with a limited number of Minecrafting blocks.

      Complex is also a map type mod, but this time spawning the player in a huge maze. This maze world can take the player up to five hours to complete depending on the ranging difficulty. The maze consist of many rooms, some containing dangerous mobs as well as trial rooms with ladders, buttons, lava, and more.

      The last common type of Minecraft mod is what is known as ‘toy mods’. These ‘toy’ Minecraft modifications are designed to be pure fun as opposed to improving the game graphically or functionally. These ‘toy’ mods can range from fun to ridiculously silly. One such silly but fun Minecraft mod is Squid Bomb by roza330. This mod is exactly as it sounds. When a creeper explodes, dozens of squids, a normally friendly mob, fall from the sky.

       Server Mods

      Server Minecraft mods are not something the typical Minecraft player deals with unless they are creating their own server or are an administrator or moderator of a Minecraft server.

      Server modifications vary as much as typical Minecraft mods do. Some of the common Minecraft server mods include Bukkit, Spout, Voidity, Canary Mod, and LoginMessage.

      The main goal of server Minecraft mods is to allow in game administrators and moderators to use various type-in commands to do various things. These type-in commands are typed by the moderator into the chat command line. Some of the popular server mod commands include banning players from server, temporarily kicking players from the server, and editing the world.

      Another category of Minecraft mods are ones that create ‘protections’ in the server world that prevent griefing, which is usually of one or more Minecraft players destroying other people’s creations. These ‘protections’ protect certain areas and only allow certain players to edit the blocks.

       Where to Find Mods

      The most popular ways for a Minecraft player to find mods for their game include browsing YouTube and MinecraftForum.Net.

      Using YouTube, Minecraft players can search for ‘Minecraft mods’ and find hundreds of videos reviewing and showing various mods. The advantage to this method of finding mods for Minecraft is that the player can really see what the mod does and looks like.

      MinecraftForum.Net is considered to be one of the ultimate Minecrafting resource; having everything from new mods as well as helping players find servers to play on. It is also worth mentioning that MinecraftForum.Net has hundreds of tutorials that can prove to be invaluable to Minecraft players everywhere. To find mods on MincraftForum.Net, the Minecrafter just needs to looks for the “Mapping and Modding” Forum section and then find the “Minecraft Mods” forum.

       Minecraft Mod Problems

      It is important as a Minecraft player to make sure your mod is up to date. Outdated mods tend to cause game play issues especially as the game gets updated, and the mod doesn’t. The best mods, like some of the ones discussed, are constantly being updated by the creators to ensure the best possible game play at all times.

      Some outdated mods can cause your game not to load properly and destroy saved game data. The best defense a Minecraft player has against this is to have backup files. The most important files to have backed up are the .minecraft folders.

      It is important to know that Mojang, the developers of Minecraft, do not offer technical support to Minecraft mods. That means, if the Minecraft player is having problems with a mod, they should contact the Minecraft mod creator not Mojang support.

Chapter 3- What Are the Benefits of Using Minecraft Mods?

      Minecraft is a game that is enjoyed by children and adults worldwide. The things that are possible in the game seem endless. It allows you to create our own world and survive as long as you can by building shelter, crafting tools and armor, fighting off bad guys (mobs) and foraging. Although just the basic Minecraft can be endless fun for most people, modifications to the game, or mods as they are commonly called, can make it that much better. I would like to discuss some of the many benefits to installing and using mods for Minecraft.