Five Minecraft Mods to Improve the Core Gameplay Loop.

Minecraft took the game world by storm when it came out. In fact, it's easily one of the most popular games in the world now, even almost a decade after its initial release. Its gameplay loop, creative potential, and most importantly, its modularity, makes it one of the most popular targets for modding in gaming history. Many of these mods add more mechanics or straight up change its genre, but here are a couple of mods that will add a ton to the core gameplay loop.

5. Sophisticated Storage

Out of all the blocks in Minecraft, the storage chest is one of the most important. Good luck trying to build a house with your limited inventory space. However, they're also rather basic in the base game. They just hold stuff for you, and that's that. Sophisticated Storage aims to improve their space saving capabilities. There are a couple of versions of chests that you can tell apart by their coloration. To make each chest, you need to craft the base level and then level them up with a special material. On top of that, you can install an automatic smelter and automatic smoker in them. The quality of life this provides is immense.

4. Furnish

The community has used a ton of creative workarounds for furniture, but Minecraft natively doesn't have that much for all the interior decorators out there. Furnish adds a ton of crafting recipes specifically designed to add furniture to the game. If you wanted to make your home look better, you definitely want this mod.

3. Furnace Mk2

The furnace is important to progressing through the game, but  if you're tired of making a giant super-furnace network, then you should take a look at Furnace Mk2, which will expand the functions of the base furnace. Once you right click on them, you'll quickly notice that there are a bunch of extra slots on the side, which you can slot various upgrades in. To help you get acclimated, the mod comes with a recipe book that tells you all the information you'd possibly need, such as which items can be smelted, how many of them you can smelt per fuel source, how much XP you get from them, and more.

2. Farmer's Delight

When it comes to cooking and farming, Minecraft is sadly very basic. However, Farmer's Delight aims specifically to fix that deficiency.  This mod expands greatly on farming by giving you a massive variety of new crops to plant as well as create compost to nourish the soil much like bonemeal does.

However, it's in the kitchen where this mod truly shines. You can cook a ton of new goods, and prepare them using a bunch of different tools. For example, you can put cooked pork on a cutting board and use a knife on it to cut it into multiple pieces. You can then take these pieces and combine them with bread and veggies to make sandwiches or hamburgers. On top of that, you now have a pantry that will store veggies and various other tools. If you're a fan of the domestic roleplaying, then you should definitely download this mod.

1. Villager Recruits

Villagers are the only friendly NPCs available to you, but they're pretty useless on their own. They're very much there to be protected by you. Villager Recruits aims to change that by providing different combat professions for the villagers, giving them the ability to defend themselves and you. You can also command them to go out and raid a certain location or focus down a specific enemy on top of just defending your home. This upgrades villager use to a massive extent and you can now use them whenever you need to.