Hello everyone! We hope you’re having a great day so far. Welcome back to another “Best Of” compilation from Team Visionary. Today, we’ll be covering some of the best Minecraft Modpacks as of March 2021.
Minecraft — and truly, it’s a fantastic, flexible and beautiful game on its own. Sometimes though, you can get a little tired of all that Vanilla, which is a great time to enhance it with the creativity of others: through Minecraft maps, skins, plugins, texture packs. However, sometimes the grind of regular old Minecraft can just get a little too monotone, and you might yearn for something more. It’s at this point that many of us begin to delve into the vast and majestic world of Minecraft Modpacks.
As with almost all gaming communities, Minecraft mod-makers are absolutely incredible. Mods with thousands of new blocks, foods, mechanics, recipes, quests, models and mobs are all over the internet, with a mod for almost everything you could think of. And as if that weren’t enough, there are a ton of modpacks — hundreds of these mods put together in balanced packs for your enjoyment. And you’re just a click away from getting to enjoy these intricate experiences! Here are the best Kitchen Sink Minecraft Modpacks as of March 2021.
Do note that while we have played almost all of these modpacks extensively, these are subjective opinions based on our own experiences, as well as research and reviews from other players. The best way to truly decide which experiences are for you is to, well, experience! Try out a pack that looks like fun, and then build on from there.
Pixelmon Generations
Overview
Perhaps this famous modpack needs no introduction — nor does the explosively popular franchise that it’s based off of! Pixelmon Generations is built around the Pixelmon mod, which is in turn a delightful combination of the Pokemon franchise with the survival and adventure aspects of your favorite block game, Minecraft! This modpack was destined for success the second it was dreamt of; after all, how could combining 2 of the most popular video games of all time ever go wrong? Frankly, if both Minecraft and Pokemon were large parts of your life, then this modpack is a perfect must – try for you! The nostalgia of two of my favorite childhood games combined truly did hit me like a truck when I tried them.
The goal of this modpack remains the same as what you might be used to in the teeming, lively world of Pokemon — to catch ‘em all! Well, that is, if that’s your thing. You can also simply roam the world in search of your perfect team, aim to build a party of EV-trained, IV-perfected beasts, or just catch the Pokemon you vibe with the most! That’s the beauty of both Pokemon and Minecraft — the world is yours! Of course, given that this modpack is set in Minecraft, there are also few different things to aim for, such as building a lovely ranch for all your Miltanks and a sprawling library for your Litwicks! Pixelmon truly puts your gameplay into your hands; with very little progression and / or timegates, the limit is truly your imagination in this modpack.
Mods / Gameplay
Pixelmon Generations offers everything pokemon offers and more! You can now find Pokemon wandering around your Minecraft world that you can battle, catch and collect! Pixelmon offers all of your favourite Pokemon, from gen 1 to gen 8, totaling over 900 Pokemon to discover and capture. This modpack also introduces dozens of new biomes for Pokemon to spawn in — and of course, Pokemon also spawn according to their ecobiology — meaning you’ll be finding plenty of Magikarp in the ocean and Blitzle in the savannah, etc.
The modpack also introduces more than just Pokemon: you’ll also be able to find shops, gyms and Pokemon Centers! Of course, what Pokemon mod would be complete without battles? Pixelmon introduces a unique pokemon fighting interface to Minecraft, adding cool animations and hundreds of custom models for each Pokemon that’ll have you forgetting that you’re playing Minecraft. We recommend learning more about some of the best resource packs for minecraft here.
This modpack comes in a small package that packs a big punch It only contains 7 mods — perfect for lighter systems, yet it still manages to introduce over a 1000 new models, entities and items into the game. Thanks to the fact that this is such a small modpack, it is almost guaranteed to work on all computers. As such, you’ll also have the ability to add all the utility mods you could ever want without worrying about the impact it could have on your computer
If you are looking for some awesome client side mods for this pack, you can check out our Top 10 Must-Have Client Side mods list here!
Conclusion
In all, this modpack is absolutely perfect for anyone chasing a taste of their favourite childhood games — or even if you’re a Minecraft veteran wanting to try out the Pokemon games but don’t know where to start. The mod developers did a fantastic job creating a clean and smooth fusion of the two games, to create this masterpiece of nostalgia.
Sevtech: Ages
Overview
Sevtech: Ages is a modpack that focuses on content and progression. As the name might suggest, the whole idea of this modpack is to work your way through the ages and make it all the way to the end — achieving incredible technological feats like nuclear power, rocket ships, and the like along the way.
Upon spawning into the world, you’ll find yourself in the Stone Age of Minecraft, where everything seems similar to your average vanilla playthrough but with a few twists to make things a little more challenging. From there, you’ll work your way through bronze, medieval, industrial, modern and then finally the futuristic ages.
Sevtech Ages provides a great blend of mods that range from smaller and simpler mods in the earlier stone and bronze ages to crazy intricate mods that get introduced in the modern and futuristic ages
Mods / Gameplay
Sevtech Ages provides a great early game with tons of improvements and tweaks to exploration It offers great ore dictionary and micro-crafting cleanliness — I noticed that it was one of the few modpacks out there that took the time to make sure only one of the same type of ore is used through the mod.
(This was pleasantly surprising, since most other modpacks don’t bother removing duplicate ores, leading to about 7 different kinds of copper from various tech mods that can get real messy in an M.E. System!)
Another great thing that Sevtech Ages offers is clarity and progression. Many, many modpacks on the market are heavily based off of technological progression, but Sevtech Ages has taken this to the next level, putting copious amounts of extra effort into making sure the progression makes logical, historical and scientific sense.
Thanks to the developers’ focus on the progression system, they’ve also made it very easy to comprehend the progression map. As such, there’s very little guesswork involved in figuring out now exactly and what is needed to get to the next spot you need to be within the modpack.
Sky Factory 4
What’s Skyblock?
If you’ve played Minecraft at all, it’s very likely that you’ve tried, or at least heard of, the explosively popular gamemode: Skyblock!
For everyone who hasn’t heard of or played Skyblock, it’s a gamemode where the endlessly generated minecraft terrain stops being quiet so endless. In fact, it’s just about exactly the opposite of that: there isn’t any terrain to speak of!
The goal of Skyblock is the same as with any other playthrough: Defeat the End Dragon, except for one “small” change, you have to do it from a island floating over an endless sea of void. Of course, as with most gamemodes, speedrunners and experienced players have all but figured the gamemode out. So, if you’re a fan of Skyblock but want to take it to the next level, then this modpack is for you!
Skyfactory 4 not only offers the same satisfying feeling of vanilla Skyblock but it also does it in a unique way — with prestige systems, quests, technological progression, and more! However, the reverse is also true: if you haven’t played Skyblock but do like modded minecraft then this is also perfect for you as it offers all the mods you are already used to, but this time, incorporated into a fun and challenging gamemode!
Overview
Sky Factory is a modded Minecraft modpack that offers the same fun playstyle as normal Skyblock, except with the added benefits of mods and content. If you have ever played vanilla Minecraft Skyblock before, you might be wondering how it’s even possible to play it in modded! After all, all those modded blocks and entities have to spawn somewhere1
But the developers of skyfactory have overcome this problem by introducing a very satisfying and rewarding mechanic, by adding sieving. Sieving is exactly what Skyblock needs for it to be viable in modded; as now you can sieve blocks (such as dirt and sand) to gain valuable ores which in turn fills in the crafting recipes for modded blocks and machines.
Skyfactory 4 also does a great job with adding full automation into the modpack for a truly new experience for all the progression, optimization – minded folk that are so common within the Skyblock fanbase.
Mods / Gameplay
Skyfactory 4 offers a complete overhaul of the vanilla resource gathering mechanic; unlike other Skyfactory versions, sieves are no longer the only way to gather resources. You now have the option to use trees — yup, trees! — to grow whatever resources your heart desires.
Alongside a seamless Skyblock experience, Skyfactory’s talented dev team has also introduced an achievement tree as a side goal. The achievement tree offers a great deal of rewards in the form of prestige points, which can be used to activate some rather interesting rewards. One of these rewards includes the “parabox”, which is a magical box that can control time and also generate more prestige points!
You can also spend prestige points in the Skyfactory rewards shop for rewards that range from useful to downright incredible.
Conclusion
All in all, Skyfactor 4 is a fantastic modpack for anyone who enjoys games in which you optimize factory functions and advance through technological stages slowly. It hits all the spots that make a kitchen-sink modpack good.
On the note of SkyFactory, this fourth edition to the modpack series also provides a smoother and more unique experience compared to their previous packs!
Hexxit
Overview
Enjoy the adventuring and exploring part of Minecraft, but vanilla just isn’t cutting it anymore on your fiftieth playthrough? More likely than not, you’ll be able to find what you are looking for, within the Hexxit modpack.
Hexxit is described as a dungeons and dragons-esque based pack, that focuses on bringing all the fun aspects of RPG games right into our favorite block game. Thanks to this carefully crafted and curated modpack, you can now embark on a classic fantasy adventure within the familiar confines of Minecraft. There are some other cools things to take a look at such as the minecraft minigames section of our website.
Spend your time exploring and clearing dungeons, spires and ruins full of loot and rare treasures!
Mods / Gameplay
Hexxit aims to fill a niche by adding on to the current aspects of adventure and exploration that Vanilla Minecraft does so well. It introduces a new collection of mods that elevate Minecraft into a one stop shop for all your RPG needs.
The pack puts the thrill of the journey above all and stays true to the RPG code of Discover, Defeat and Loot! For one, this pack adds 3 full pages to the achievements tab, each new achievement encouraging players to chase a life full of adventuring and excitement. These achievements are sure to add countless of hours to your playtime, and that’s not even counting all the wondrous mods that the modpack actually adds!
The beauty of hexxit is though there is a achievement tab you aren’t bound by any time gates that might hold you back for days on end until you let your machines churn out the resources needed — which might sound real familiar to anyone who’s played a technological modpack. In Hexxit, the only thing that could possibly hold you back is your gear and the only way you can get better gear is to explore!
Conclusion
Hexxit stays true to the original, wanderlust feeling of playing Minecraft, but adds in tons of RPG aspects that reward explorers and adventurers heavily. If you are looking for an additional challenge to Minecraft without changing far too much about the game, then this is the modpack you have been looking for.
Another important plus for this pack is the fact that it only comes with 55 mods! This means that it isn’t nearly as big as some other popular packs; and so its will be easier to run this on older generations of computers and systems.
Compact Claustrophobia
Overview
As the name may hint, this pack puts you and your friends in various compromising, very tiny spaces! If you are severely claustrophobic, then you may want to skip out on this pack. For the rest of us though, Compact Claustrophobia is a challenge that we’ll never forget. The modpack, similarly to skyblock packs such as Project Ozone 2 and SkyFactory, takes the freedom and the endless world of Minecraft away from you However, unlike Skyblock, it also takes away all of your space and leaves you stuck inside a box, struggling to obtain resources.
Gameplay / Mods
Compact Claustrophobia comes with a very interesting premise that’s made possible by its core mod: Compact Machines. While words won’t do how interesting this mod is justice, I’ll give it a shot just so as to convince you to give this pack a shot!
Compact Machines lets you create a room that can be anywhere from 3x3x3 to 13x13x13 — going up in increments of 2 — but each room only takes up one block of space in the “real” world. Huh??? I know, it’s confusing, but bear with me! To enter these rooms you must use the personal shrinking devices, which are given to you at the start
Due to this mechanic, you can create a sort of an inception – esque series of rooms in rooms in rooms to comprise your base. That’s all I’ll say about it — I highly recommend going in and figuring it out by yourself, it’s extremely rewarding!
Now that you know about the mod, you can also expect to throw away all the current knowledge you have about how to play Minecraft. After all, you can’t punch a tree for wood if there are no trees around!
You start off in a tiny bedrock box with only 2 things: a compact machine beneath your feet and a personal shrinking machine in your hands. Hopefully, from this, you can piece what your first step is! After entering the machine, you’ll find that you start off in a 3x3x3 room, the smallest one possible. From then on, you’ll have to somehow get resources to expand you ever – so – small base.
You might be wondering how you get resources if you are stuck inside a box! Well, the answer to that is the unique mechanic added called “scavenging”. You can punch walls with your fists to get your first few resources, though as you play along you will be able to craft yourself some tools. These tools are vital in playing an important part in the scavenging process!
Each tool can be used on different blocks for different resources. Naturally, this modpack really and very quickly teaches you all about the value of space; you wont be given any more space for free unless you earn it!
Aside from the unique way to start and the interesting and unique solutions you’ll be force to come up with to obtain resources we have always been taking for granted, this pack offers a very rich and clear quest line for players who prefer goal – oriented gameplay. The questline was clearly well – thought – through, as it is extremely logical and can act as a guide to provide clear instructions for players who are stuck on the next step.
Conclusion
Compact Claustrophobia offers a completely new challenge to Minecraft that hasn’t been seen in other modpacks yet. This modpack turns the whole game into almost a puzzle, where you’ll need to calculate how to use your compact machines to give you the most efficient use of space. If you are looking for a challenging mod pack that just makes tons of sense and has never been done before, then look no further!
Download Compact Claustrophobia
Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons
Overview
Do you like the roguelike dungeon video game genre? Does your monkey brain go brrr when you’re exploring in Minecraft and you find an unraided temple with some loot hiding in it? Are you tired of the non – stop tech talk in most of these Minecraft modpacks (what the heck is an Applied Energistic??) Then this pack was tailor – made for you!
Similar to the previously mentioned Hexxit, this pack focuses on bringing you a brand new feeling of exploration and adventuring. However, unlike Hexxit, it also provides a complete overhaul of what it feels like to play Minecraft. Spend all of your time adventuring, looting and fighting for your life! Push your way through hordes of mods to get ahold of all that gleaming, shimmering treasure, improving your skills and gear along the way. We recommend taking a look at some of the best Minecraft skins to get ideas and concepts for the general gameplay withing Minecraft.
Gameplay / Mods
This pack rewards you for inventing time into exploring your worlds. You can claim and complete quests to gain small prizes, or risk your life exploring dangerous dungeons to gain tremendous rewards. Naturally, this mod brings about tons of custom dungeons and new structures to conquer, which generate naturally throughout your world to find.
In addition to this, it also brings about tons of new and undiscovered dimensions, with the addition of 6 new dimensions for a total of 9 dimensions you will never be tired of exploring! Now of course, dimensions are meaningless if they don’t provide a good challenge or new mobs. With Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons, each new dimension brings you a new challenge to overcome, new mobs to face and new terrains to chart as your own.Face nameless shadows in the darkness of the Betweenlands or explore the Twilight forest to face magical and mystical creatures!
On top of all the adventuring you have access to a unique RPG-style spell system, unlike many other mods the spells in this pack are easy to use and come with no strings attached! Simply find the spellbooks and use the spells; the more you use the spell, the stronger it becomes!
Conclusion
With the addition of a few more key mods, such dimensional doors (magical door that may take you to either a challenging puzzle with great rewards or a dangerous trap) and ice and fire which adds the, our favourite mythical creature, the dragon, this mod has a little of everything for the avid RPG player. Of course, these are all just fractions of what this mod pack has to offer! This pack is truly the perfect blend of magic, adventure and fantasy mods all while staying true to RPG focus throughout. It’s a great modpack to try if you don’t want to deal with all the tech filled packs or simply if you want to turn your Minecraft playthroughs into a adventure packed roller coaster.
Download Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons
Enigmatica 2: Expert (E2E)
Overview
Enigtmatic 2: Expert (E2E) is actually one of my favorite packs, and I ohpe that I can convince you to give it a try to see why! This pack is extremely niche, and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who’s only just beginning to get into modpacks. For the modpack veteran, however, this modpack is challenging enough that if you manage to complete it (I certainly haven’t) you should get a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion!
This pack is tailored not for your everyday modpack player, but for those who seek for the most difficult of packs, without anything becoming overly tedious or repetitive. E2E does not hand out anything for free; in fact, it tweaks the regular modpack recipes we know so that not only is everything harder to get, but everything also becomes more expensive to craft!
Besides being a huge drain on your resources, the modpack also makes mobs more challenging to tame, fight and kill. E2E really doesn’t let up on the challenge! Of course, it’s not all just horrendously difficult gameplay! The pack has a fully fledged questing system that’ll make you constantly question if you really want to do whatever you are planning. Why not also check out the Minecraft building tips and ideas here.
In order to complete this pack successfully, you need to really grind your gears and make use of all the mods provided to you. This mod pack also calls for you to make use of automation. Thanks to the recipes being so much more demanding, you will need to start automating minor tasks very early on to gain the massive amounts of resources required to get through this pack!
About the mods
The pack offers all the mods you might see in a kitchen sink pack; if yo’ve played something like Skyfactory or Project Ozone 2 before, you’ll probably have seen these before. However, the difference here is that unlike other packs, after finishing E2E you WILL know how to use every mod in the pack like the back of your hand.
The goal of Enigmatica 2: Expert is simple, complete the questline. However, that’s most certainly easier said than done. E2E offers gated progression. This is normally not a plus side to modpacks but in this rare case where the devs have carefully thought out the progression and marketed it towards veteran modpack players, it certainly is!
Through the gated progression mechanic, you are forced to snail your way through the questline by conquering every mod. The only reason this works is because this mod is focused towards all the modpack experts who speedrun through any and all Minecraft modpacks, giving these folks a refreshing new challenge that’ll actually force them to wrack their brains for a little.
Alongside the progression tree, you are given over 650 quests to accomplish and claim rewards from. Unfortunately, the rewards might not be a good as you’d hope after the gruelling tasks of obtaining them; but it makes sense, in a pack where the devs expect you to earn everything through your own hard work and toil.
On top of all these existing hurdles already, the monsters of this pack are more fierce and stronger than ever. You may have played other packs with mods such as Ice and Fire dragons, and beaten them up fairly easily …. but it would be a silly mistake to take on that same dragon in E2E without the proper preparation and gear, or they’ll be having player for dinner.
Tougher mobs make exploration more dangerous and challenging but it does come with the added benefit of increased drop chances, plus better rewards for defeating them! Naturally, if you get tired of the earth you can also adventure into space and come across greater challenges and greater rewards on other planets!
Conclusion
Being labeled an expert pack, Enigmatica 2: Expert expects you as a player to go through tons to hurdles and challenges. On the plus side it greatly increases your playthrough time of this pack and along the way teaches you about mods that you might have never cared to look into otherwise.
E2E offers a great range of mods from all your favourite tech mods, such as Mekanism, Applied Energistics 2 and Thermal Expansion, to all you favourite magic mods, such as Astral Sorcery, Botania and Blood Magic.
At the end of the day, yes! This is a brutal modpack that will bite back if you don’t proceed with caution, after all it is a expert pack, but I personally think it’s well worth its weight in gold as an intricately and creatively pieced together challenge.
That being said, if you like what you see with the mods and the style of this pack but aren’t quite ready to get into hours and hours of problem-solving, the same pack creators do have an Enigmatica 2 pack. This pack follows a similar goal of gated progression and quests but is toned down to a level wherein everyone can have a challenge and fun at the same time!
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! If you’re a modpack veteran thumbing through the internet in search for your next pack, we hope that we’ve helped you found something in this list for yourself.
And if you’ve never loaded a mod in your life, we hope that we’ve convinced you to give it a go! It’s truly like a brand new game packed into the familiar and fantastic Minecraft gameplay. Dont forget to visit our very own Team Visionary Minecraft Build Shop for some interesting additions to the game.
