Minecraft — great on its own, but better with add-ons. Thanks to the robust and incredibly creative community, avid Minecrafters have thousands upon thousands of different plugins, mods, minigames, servers, maps and other content that we can play with when we get bored of the vanilla grind.
Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world today, and it’s no wonder. With its flexible and replayable gameplay, it’s a treasure trove for all sorts of gamers. Whether you like braving the dangerous dark deep in the mine in search for the shiniest ores, or if you spend most of your days relaxing in fields of wheat, you can enjoy Minecraft at your own pace and in your own way.
Inevitably, however, each and every player hits the point where vanilla Minecraft becomes predictable and, perhaps, even boring. Even with the content – packed updates that Mojang pushes out every so often, after all, there is only so much you can do in Minecraft, especially if you’ve been playing the game for years. Minecraft’s saving grace in this aspect, however, is its amazing moddability — it has perhaps one of the biggest modding libraries and communities of any video game, with thousands of mods and modpacks available with a single click on dozens of different launchers.
As with any video game community, the modders out there are vastly creative, with fun and passionate ideas that surpass our wildest imaginings. If you’re new to the Minecraft modding community, you’re in for a treat. The mods on the market do everything, quite literally, from adding dungeons and dragons, to overhauling weaponry crafting into a literal forging system, to introducing nuclear reactors to Minecraft, to adding thousands of new decorative items.
Minecraft mods can introduce new blocks, foods, mechanics, recipes, quests, models and mobs — all at the click of a button once you’ve got the installation process down. Of course, while you can certainly venture into modded Minecraft with your guns blazing, and put together your favorite mods, I’d highly recommend going with a modpack, such as those in this Best Minecraft Modpacks of 2024 list.
Or, if you already know what kind of mods you like, you can refer to a mod list like this one! Today, we’re going to cover the Top 10 Magic Minecraft Mods. These are mods that add a dash of fantastical whimsy to your Minecraft world, whether through terrifying mythical beasts, incredibly cool magic spells, or unique magical items and artifacts.
Installation
If you already know how to install Minecraft mods, feel free to skip right on ahead. However, for those who are new to mods, here’s the quick and dirty on how to get these additions into your game.
There are quite a few methods to load mods, but in the interest of this article, we’ll be talking about Forge Modloader, one of the oldest, biggest and most well-known mod loaders out there. To install Forge, you can either visit their official site, select a version you’d like to download, and follow the instructions from then on, taking care to choose to install the client and NOT the server.
Thaumcraft
No magic mod list would be complete without the addition of Thaumcraft, one of the oldest, biggest and most extensive (and intensive) magic mods in the history of Minecraft. Thaumcraft is a wonderfully intricate magic mod that focuses on researching the world around you to learn magic.
The world of Thaumcraft starts off fairly simply: you’ll be spawned into a regular Minecraft world with some strange additions, most obviously elemental crystals that’ll form around the world. Once you collect some of these crystals, that’s when the magic begins — you’ll be visited by strange dreams and visions that will instruct you where to go next: crushing the crystals in a bowl and applying them to various blocks to create your first Thaumcraft workspace. As you play, you’ll be prompted to create a device that can scan every single item in the world around you, even modded items (!) and learn of the natural, manmade and forbidden magics that exist in the world, before learning to harness them for your own usage.
There are several main categories of magic that you can choose to specialize in: Alchemy, Artificing, Golemancy, Infusion, Thaumaturgy, and Eldritch. Each of these contain entire skill trees of progression, and you’ll be slowly guided through the basics of each through your trusty Thaumonomicon. Here’s a quick rundown of all of them:
Alchemy is the manipulation of the elements around you in the world. There are dozens of aspects that you can get from melting down items — ignis, or fire, from coal; terra, or earth, from grass, and the like.
Artificing is the crafting of magic objects, with over 50 new magical items you can create and utilize, ranging from jars that store exp and elemental energy, to lamps that make plants grow faster and magical armor and tools. This also includes a casting glove that will
Infusion is the act of enchanting, or infusing, certain effects into certain items — both to imbue them with enchantments and to transmute them into different things completely!
Golemancy is a lovely twist from the usual popular tech mods, and a fantastic replacement for them if having tubes and powerducts running all over your base isn’t your thing — instead of building high-tech machinery to do things for you, you can create and customize special golems to perform repetitive or difficult tasks, such as mining, digging, transferring items, fighting and more!
Of course, Thaumcraft is far too big of a mod for me to explain in such a short space. If you’re interested in learning more, we recommend going to their wiki… or better yet, giving the mod a try! Fend off the corruption, master both the magics of nature and the darkness, build up your alchemical lab and become the best mage there is in Minecraft!
Mystical Agriculture
Mystical Agriculture is a bit of an outlier on this list, as it handles crops, but it’s such a fantastic mod that we’ve simply got to mention it. Mystical Agriculture adds magical seeds that you can customize and plant to grow any resources — that’s right, ANY resource in the game. Make resource crops of anything from wood to iron!
The mod introduces 2 new ores (prosperity and inferium), which are used to create base seeds. Base seeds can be used to plant any sort of lower tier resources, such as grass and dirt. Inferium, on the other hand, can be used to upgrade these songs into much rarer and higher tier resources. What makes this mod great is its support for almost all the other popular mods on the market, such as Botania, Thaumcraft, EnderIO, Mekanism and much more.
Of course, this mod also comes with a set of mystical armor and tools. You can upgrade armour and tools from tier 1-5. Tier 5 tools and armour are unbreakable and you can even add special enchantments on them. The mod also introduces tiered furnaces, inferium apples and inferium coal (better gapples and more efficient coal, respectively).
You can also add the addon Mystical Agradditions to add tier 6 seeds, which are used to craft extremely rare items (nether stars,dragon eggs)!
Astral Sorcery
Explore the magic of the constellations with Astral Sorcery! Create custom weapons, tools and gear with all sorts of special effects, magic wands for every occasion (travel, light source creation, protection, building… even block transmutation!)
This mod is a solid magic mod on its own, but it also stands out especially as a lovely aesthetic mod. The blocks (marble and the like) and special particles can be used by builders and casual players alike to create some incredible designs!
Use magic to automate your everyday Minecraft tasks, set up mystic portals to teleport yourself around the map, rituals to give yourself superbuffs and enchant armor and tools far far past their vanilla limits. You can also unlock a personal constellation tree for personal buffs, such as mining speed, bonus armor, bonus slots, etc.
Explore the world and discover not only new special ores for your shrines, wands and equipment, but also ancient shrines and floating crystals that can offer you riches beyond your wildest imaginations… but with a price.
Blood Magic
Blood Magic is an ominous magic mod with a unique twist: it uses life energy as a source of power! Sacrifice you own health or health of mobs to create life energy; then use this life energy at a blood altar to cast magic! Use life energy for rituals ,spells, create ores and more.
Craft sigils for useful buffs and utility (create water, create lava, fall damage immunity), obtain bound tools and armor! Bound tools and armor use blood instead of durability and also have special powers such multiblock mining, breaking whole trees at a time, etc. These special equipment pieces can also be given sigils for permanent buffs during combat and exploration.
Create a ritual altar to use powerful magic to obtain creative flight, change biomes in sizable areas, and even summon massive meteors to bring order to the land. Use a spell table to create custom spells that generate lightning, make it rain, freeze water and more! Of course, as with any general magic mod worth its salt, it also adds in alchemy which allows you to create potions that give flight, damage buffs, resistances and more!
This mod is also flawlessly compatible with Thaumcraft, in case you want to double-dip in some different magic mods!
Ice and Fire: Dragons
Now, magical flowers are fantastic and all, but are you looking for a mod that adds creatures to fear? Behold — Ice and Fire: Dragons is the perfect mod, not just because of its nuanced details and great models, but also because who doesn’t want to fight, tame and ride some dragons?
Ice and Fire: Dragons adds two kinds of dragons to the game: Ice and, well, Fire! The type of dragon largely influences the color of the dragon, and their main form of attack. It also adds a ton of mythical, fantasy creatures such as hippogryphs, death worms, cockatrices, sirens and cyclops… all of which have their own mechanics, but mainly, the dragons take the cake in this mod.
These dragons spawn with treasure hordes and an assigned gender, and a level between 1-5. All dragons drop loot when killed, but only level 5 female dragons drop dragon eggs — the only way you can tame a dragon of your own. Once the conditions are met for the egg to hatch, you’ll have your very own, ravenous, baby dragon! And if you manage to keep it alive and healthy till it grows up, you too will be able to soar the skies in a blaze of inferno or glacial fury.
In all, this is a fantastically detailed and coherent mod that any thrillseeker looking to add a mythical element to their gameplay. It fits great in almost any modpack, or as a standalone, with its set of own armor, weapons and items.
Do note that Ice and Fire: Dragons is a large mod that we can’t fully cover in this short blurb, so if you’re interested, do check out their modpage below!
Download Ice and Fire : Dragons
Bewitchment
Bewitchment is a witchery / occult themed magic mod that adds in tons of new trees, ores, mechanics and utilities. For those who enjoy a bit of roleplay, it also adds in unique cosmetics and enchanted armors, such as witch hats and vampire robes.
The mod brings dozens of new flowers for brewing potions, doing rituals and crafting magical items with; as well as new mobs to hunt down and befriend, ranging from familiars like the owl and raven, to the terrifying blindworms and hellhounds. Brew potions with various effects such as bonus health, or construct a ritual altar and perform rituals to create powerful magic (for example, turn day to night, speed up time, teleport to a specific location, etc).
Explore the nether fortresses to discover curses, then cast these curses onto mobs or other players. The curse of darkness will make them blind, the curse of lightning rod will bring down the wrath of the gods upon your unfortunate target, etc. You can also create taglocks and voodoo puppets to protect yourself and harm your enemies. Tame passive mobs and make them your trusty familiars, or summon powerful demons with the altar. You can interact with deons to trade with them for rare resources, or even obtain demonic contracts used to tame imps and other mobs!
Conclusion
Part of why Minecraft is so incredibly appealing is its nostalgic quality, the familiarity that you can load into your new world and know exactly how everything works, know exactly what you want to do.
However, sometimes, what makes Minecraft so appealing is that it is what the player makes it, that it’s so receptive to player creativity. And nothing demonstrates player creativity like player-made mods!
Whether you’re a seasoned monster hunter or just looking for something to enhance your farm, we hope that there was something that caught your eye in our 5 Best Minecraft Magic Mods guide.
