logo

Indigo Empire

 

Mods and Settings

Indigo Empire is founded on a custom collection of mods, resource packs, and options that form a completely unique but still vanilla-esque experience.

My mod pack is overwhelmingly focused on QUALITY OF LIFE, and some of the changes are DRASTIC. I imagine most would consider it cheating. But consider this: I don't have all day to play Minecraft! I'm playing, journalling, and web-deving this on my evenings and weekends. I could spend my play time chopping trees, running back and forth between chests, and fumbling through the darkness and fog for points of interest. Or, I could use the tools that the community has graciously provided, alleviate these vexatious tasks, and focus on the fun stuff like building and storytelling :)

My criteria for adding a mod to the game are:

  • If a game feature is annoying with no upside, I will seek to improve it with mods.
  • The game has to run well! I'm not on a "gamer PC" so performance mods are a MUST.
  • The game still has to look vanilla, so that readers (and me as the player!) know what they're looking at. That means NO new blocks or items, and no mass retextures!

I provide these to (a) credit the creators, (b) give you a window into the mind of the player, and also (c) let you play along at home if you're so inclined. I'll remind you that core parts of this pack are only updated to 1.19.4 so I'm sorry to say you'll have to leave behind those Happy Ghasts if you wanna join me!

Note: The author listed here is the profile name listed on the mod's page at time of writing. I'm aware that some are run by teams or have changed ownership. Details are on the mod pages :)

Mods

Gameplay Enhancing

  • Stacker by Andrew6rant
  • Change the max stack size for items. Allows values up to 2^30 (over 1 billion). Includes a config file to set stack limits for all items, classes of items, and single items. This is the single mod that defines Indigo Empire and the character Ela. Minecraft's default inventory limits are just SO AWFUL and it's literally my #1 point of frustration with this game – I've literally taken to calling it the "Inventory Management Simulator". So when I discovered Stacker during 1.19, it's safe to say it was life changing, and the experience has stuck with me ever since. I set the stack size to 2^20 (1,048,576) just so I can have *some* chance of filling up a stack someday!
  • PickupWidely by HadronCollision
  • Increases how far away the player can pick up items from. Great for mining blocks below you that would otherwise fall down a hole. Comes with an editable properties file to set the radius; I've left mine at the default value of 3 (vanilla range is closer to 1).
  • FallingTree by rakambda
  • Destroy a whole tree by breaking one log block with an axe. A huge timesaver for resource gathering. It counts durability use for each block removed, so it's not extra cheaty in that way! Includes several options; see mod page for details.
  • Colytra by TheIllusiveC4
  • Allows chestplate and elytra to be combined into one slot, and separated again, via crafting. The combined "colytra" gives the protection of a chestplate and the flight of elytra without having to switch between the two.
  • Trade Cycling by henkelmax
  • Reroll a villager's starting trades with a button or hotkey, instead of breaking and replacing the workstation. A huge quality-of-life improvement when working with librarians.
  • Easy Anvils by Fuzs
  • Customise anvil enchant costs, prior work penalty, "too expensive" limit, and chance of damage when used. Also, items stay in the anvil when exiting the GUI, with an in-game rendering of those items on top of the anvil.
  • Easy Magic by Fuzs
  • Allows enchantment tables to show all enchants instead of just the first, and adds a reroll option with a nominal cost of xp and lapis. Items and lapis stay in the table when exiting the GUI, with the item rendered on the table and lapis floating in the air around it.

Information/HUD/Utility

  • Xaero's Minimap by xaero96
  • Adds a minimap to the GUI displaying the local area. Includes A LOT of optional features – see the mod page for details.
  • MiniHUD by masady
  • A highly configurable HUD and overlay. Features include info lines (a customisable "mini-F3 screen"), light level viewer, shapes (eg. despawn radius spheres), and structure bounding boxes. I LOVE the light meter for spawnproofing!
  • Horse Stats Vanilla by TeaJ4y
  • Shows the speed, jump, and health stats of tamed horses on their inventory GUI. Compare your prize stallions without setting up a racetrack!
  • Neat by Vazkii
  • Adds health bars to mobs. Great for keeping track of which creeper is one hit from death, and which one will explode in your face if you try to melee it.
  • Appleskin by squeek502
  • Adds a yellow glow around the hunger meter showing the current saturation level. Saturation is essentially a secret "second hunger bar"; when it hits zero, the "real" hunger bar starts going down, so effectively this mod tells you when you're about to get hungry.
  • Mod Menu by Prospector
  • Consolidates your mods' individual settings screens into one convenient location in the game's menu. Absolutely essential if you have several mods with their own config pages.

Visual

  • Distant Horizons by James_Seibel
  • GREATLY increases render distance by implementing a level-of-detail (LOD) system, using lower resolution for farther chunks where it's less noticeable. This is a total game-changer and massively increases immersion!
  • No Fog by Tommeh2
  • Removes distance fog to maximise view distance. Especially useful in the nether which by default is cloaked in a thick red mist, hiding those precious nether fortresses. Also removes the fog from water and lava, letting you see the precious materials beneath!
  • Gamma Utils by Sjouwer
  • An port of Fullbright. Toggle maximum gamma and/or Night Vision effect to see in the dark. Youtubers do this so viewers can actually see what the heck is going on during underground parts of gameplay, so I figured I may as well too. It's not like the caves are actually dark in modern Minecraft anyway :P
  • Freecam by hashalite
  • Gives you a free-flying camera mode that lets you view the world from anywhere, including underground. Similar to spectator mode, but your character remains in place – make sure you're in a safe place before you cam! A wonderful tool for getting screenshots from all angles.
  • Logical Zoom by LogicalGeekBoy
  • Implements the zoom-in hotkey feature from Optifine. I don't use Optifine any more so it's awesome that there's a standalone mod that does this, and by an esteemed Youtuber too!
  • Continuity by Pepper_Bell
  • Adds connected glass and a few other connected textures, plus compatibility support for Optifine-based connected textures.

Performance

Support Mods

These work in the background to enable other mobs or packs to function.

Resource Packs

  • Vanilla Tweaks by xisumavoid
  • The legendary Hermitcraft pack! I'm using: no pumpkin overlay, lower fire, lower offhand items, no cave sounds, budding amethyst borders, clear banner patterns, and most of the redstone visuals.
  • Invisible Armor Model by fixyldev
  • Disables armour rendering so you can always see your player skin. Handy when you want to rep a pride rainbow and the armour would totally cover it!
  • Original Green Ancient Debris (I don't have the link any more; there are dozens of similar packs out there!)
  • Colours ancient debris blocks green to make them stand out against netherrack when mining for netherite.

Data Packs

  • Vanilla Tweaks by xisumavoid (again!)
  • Yep, this page has datapacks too! I've picked out:
    • Anti enderman grief, to stop my world turning into a jumbled mess
    • Silence mobs, allowing creatures to be muted via nametags
    • Unlock all recipes, stopping the "new recipes unlocked" spam throughout the game
    • A few custom crafting recipes like shapeless, extra stairs, extra trapdoors, dropper to dispenser, and redyeing.
  • Glass Breaker by unilock
  • Designates pickaxes as a fast tool for breaking glass. It's a fragile block so even a decent pickaxe can instamine it. Also works on "glass-ish" blocks like glowstone and sea lanterns.
  • No Bat Spawning by MikeStorm03
  • Prevents bats from spawning by removing them from the list of spawnable mobs. Bats do nothing but get in the way and cause lag so I prefer not to have them in my caves.

External Tools

These aren't mods or settings but I don't know where else to put them lol.

  • Chunkbase
  • Seed map viewer showing the location of biomes and structures. I made EXTENSIVE use of this to find a good seed for Indigo Empire, and still refer to it for finding points of interest.
  • Minecraft Wiki
  • What can I say, it's the Minecraft Wiki. The real one, not the Fandom one. Good luck figuring out this game without it :P
  • uNmINeD
  • World viewer and mapping tool. Renders generated chunks and outputs them to .png format. Make your own world maps and start building some lore!
  • Plotz Modeller
  • Layer-by-layer block placements for spheres and other shapes. Great for bringing those non-cubic shapes into your cube game :)
  • Autohotkey
  • Automation scripting tool that can send keyboard and mouse inputs to programs. I have a few basic scripts to hold down one or both mouse buttons, and a more advanced script to left-click once per second. These were designed for AFK farming, but they're also great for saving my wrists and fingers during short bursts of mining!

Settings

  • Difficulty: Hard. This is the optimal setting because it means villagers always zombify when killed by zombies, raids have the maximum number of waves, and mobs have the best chance of dropping enchanted gear.
  • Pillager patrols are OFF – They are just an annoyance. Especially since I'm based in a village and playing in the version where killing a raid captain immediately gives you Bad Omen D:
  • Phantoms are OFF – These were a mistake and I'm SO happy there's a setting to remove them. Having to sleep all the time completely breaks my flow.
  • Fire spread is OFF – I don't want to worry about my house burning down!
  • KeepInventory is ON – I'm aware this is controversial, but if you've read this far, KeepInventory should be the least of your worries lmao XD
  • Commands are ON – Just in case something breaks in the modpack and I need to set things right. (Spoiler alert: something breaks in the modpack. Nothing major so far though!)
  • One minor tweak to the controls; I've remapped Drop Item from Q to P so I don't drop my valuable stuff when I fumble for the W key. Pro tip :P