The added interface element, placed in the top left corner by default, is a very simple display detailing the mod you are fighting. To activate it you need to hover over the mob with your reticle (the thing at the middle of the screen) and be relatively close to it (I found that 10-15 blocks was enough). The displayed element has a small portrait of the mob, the type (hostile, passive), the mob’s name, status effects and its health in points. This is a convenient system as it gives you the information you need easily, without cluttering the screen too much.

The other part of this mod is the damage indicator, which displays information about the damage you are dealing to a mob via a number that pops up next to them. This system is often used in many different RPG games from Torchlight to Borderlands. It is a cool way to display damage and doesn’t clutter up the interface at all.

While the mod is actually really simple, it does impact your gameplay style and improves the “feel” of the game. It isn’t that simple though, as it offers a significant amount of customization. First of all, you can actually set where the mob information panel shows up – there’s a setting panel that you can tinker with it.

Secondly, the mod also supports skins, of which there are several, that either accommodate the panel for it to fit in better with a texture pack or even remove some of its elements to make it cleaner and better. The one I liked was a Skyrim inspired one that removed everything but the name and HP bar, which was themed according to the game, making it a very clean and nice skin to use. Here it is:

The mod is also highly compatible. The mob preview as well as fonts work with any texture pack and the mod only requires Forge (a standard for modding nowadays) without overwriting any core files.

I recommend you give this mod a twirl if you were ever interested in the RPG aspects of Minecraft. You can get it here:

Click here to download the Hit Splash Damage Indicators mod!

Installation instructions:

1. Open minecraft.jar and delete the META-INF folder.
2. Install the Forge API.
3. Run Minecraft at least once.
4. Put the downloaded zip file in the mods folder located in your .minecraft folder.
5. Play!

As always, let us know how you liked the mod in the comment section below!

Version of mod reviewed: v2.7.0 for Minecraft 1.5.2.

To keep up with demand on information, Kingbogdz – the lead dev on the Aether, has been posting updates often and even streaming coding work. This has provided us with a lot of info on feature sets and additions to the mod, but doesn’t really tell all that much about the possible release. The team has been referring to the good old “soon” response when asked about the release, but in good news for people anxiously awaiting this mod, progress is being made, fast. Systems are being added and bugs are being fixed. Screenshots and information released is indicating the mod is in a good state.

The team seems determined to add a lot of complicated mechanics which they consider are crucial to the mod and I will detail later on. This is taking some time to develop and perfect, but will make for a much more interesting and hopefully stable release. I would recommend everyone excited about this mod use the previous release date – March 25th – as more of a state of mind than an actual date. You see, they know they’re going to release the mod on March 25th, they just don’t know when to put March 25th.

I joke, but I assure you that the release is coming soon and the materials available prove it. Now, if you’re only interested in the release date, feel free to surf away, since I will now talk about mechanics and features added recently to the mod. If that interests you as well, read on. It’s gonna be a fun ride.

Mentioned, but not pictured were bigger, complicated dungeons. Apparently this latest version will have bigger dungeons with more unique and useful loot accompanied by smarter, more interesting mobs. This system seems to be the adventuring core of the mod like strogholds and the Nether in vanilla.

The system I am personally most excited about is the party system. This mechanic has been mentioned before by Kingbogdz, but there weren’t any details about it available. We now know what it looks like and how it works. Parties are intended to make it easier for players to team up and defeat bosses and the newly bigger, badder dungeons.  The GUI for this system appears when you set it to appear (on, off or on in dungeons) on the left hand of the screen. You can see the other player’s names, heads (taken from their skin) as well as current health, armor and hunger. This should make coordination easier and allow for some interesting MMO-like gameplay.

Lots of flora and fauna has been added as well, making the world look lush and feel more alive.  Mod pack fans can also rejoice as the team has said that it is “something they are working towards”. This probably means less dependencies on new APIs and more compatibility all around!

Donators also get a special system with some visual goodies for their support of the mod. These goodies are special Moa skins and an Aether cape that can both be toggled via a menu. Once again these are both visual only so they do not affect gameplay in the slightest.

That’s all the info we have for you right now, but make sure you stay tuned for more news and a big feature of the mod once it does release (I feel like I’ve said this at least 4 times already). As always, sound off in the comment section below (now, this I KNOW I’ve said at least 126 times) and let us know:  How do you intend to spend your first few hours with the mod once it does finally come out?

First off I tried Ferullo’s gun mod. This is one of the more popular mods of the gun kind, and it adds a ton of weapons into the game. The mod itself has a remarkable number of guns, scopes and all kinds of parts and other stuff. There are scopes that activate when you zoom, a dedicated reload button, and even a nice shooting system with recoil taken in, making for a great shooting mechanic. The pictures look cool, and you can even see a really good minigun 3D model in our thumbnail.

However, this is not the case for all weapons.While there are lots of weapons and they all have unique properties and sounds, the visual front is astoundingly ugly. All of the guns are just flat, pixely, dark messes. You can’t even tell most of them apart if it weren’t for the inventory icons that are slightly less bad.  The flamethrower is so tiny that it looks puny and weak instead of the epic beast a flamethrower should be. It might work mechanically well, but the visuals are just not there, guns are too small, which is what caused me to back away from Ferullo’s Gun Mod and move onto the next contender.

Stefinus 3D Gun Mod looked great because it looked like it focused on the main draw I had with Ferullo’s Gun Mod – the visuals. With 3D models for all guns, the visual front here is pretty good. When aiming you get an aim-down sight or a scope depending on the weapon. Iron sights are decent, but the scope is disappointing, but passable.

The problem with this one lies in… well a lot of things, but mostly sound. Every gun has the same sound, and it’s not even a good sound. It’s sort of like a muffled fart followed by a weak pillow punch. This horrible sound kept repeating on and on with every weapon never changing never even slightly alterating, and it got frustratingly annoying within 5 minutes of playing with this mod. I can’t even imagine how annoying it would be to someone using it for hours. There are several other problems here: there aren’t many guns right now, the models could be even better with slight alterations and there are some weird bugs with the way guns are displayed in third person.

So Stefinus 3D Gun Mod went down the drain too. Both of these mods have some glaring issues that need to be fixed, but overall, if you simply must try one of them, try Ferullo’s Gun Mod. It certainly isn’t perfect, but at least it’s visual flaws can be overlooked while Stefinus 3D Gun Mod has too many glaring flaws that cannot be ignored. Get them here:

Download Ferullo’s Gun Mod right here!

Download Stefinus 3D Gun Mod here!

I hear rumors of another gun mod, GunCus, that might not disappointing me. Should I take a look? Tell us in the comment section below!

Installation instructions:

1. Install Minecraft Forge.
2. Run Minecraft and let Forge set up.
3. Download your respective gun mod from the links provided above.
4. Place the files from the download .zip into minecraft.jar.
5. Run the game and enjoy!

Version of mod reviewed:

• Ferullo’s – v2.7.0 for Minecraft 1.5.2
• Stefinus – v0.3.0 for Minecraft 1.5.2

Now, the mod itself is more of a system to add new structures, and if you look at it like that, it’s really not that interesting. However, it does come preloaded with a bunch of very interesting structures. In my travels, I encountered several, which all have unique uses in the game’s world.

Ruins like old broken-down houses and walls make exploration more rewarding and give the world that feeling of history and backstory you don’t quite know yet. Balloons grace the sky and make the world feel more alive and vivid with combinations of bright colors. Pirate ships spawn in oceans to make them more interesting to explore and less dull, though they provide no real challenge. Fountains and statues are scattered around the world adding a bit of beauty as well as mystery.

Giant towers pierce the sky and are filled with mob spawners as well as loot, making for an interesting gameplay addition not unlike dungeons in vanilla. Giant treehouses stand out in forests and make them more diverse. Even floating castles are here, and they make a very interesting location to visit, though I won’t spoil the surprise.

I could go on and on for even though I covered a lot of the structures included, there are more available to download online. People have been making their own structure templates for this mod for a while now, and some of them are very interesting. You can browse the mod’s thread on the forums to see some of them. A structure can easily be made for this mod by just making it in MCEdit, then converting it to ruins format with the provided converter. Hell, you could even download giant builds from PlanetMinecraft and use those in your world!

This is a very interesting mod. There’s not really a whole lot to talk about,  yet there is so much to see and even more to add on later. I recommend you give this mod a shot. You can get it here:

Download the Ruins mod here!

Installation instructions:

1. Open minecraft.jar and delete the META-INF folder.
2. Install the Forge API.
3. Run Minecraft at least once.
4. Put the downloaded zip file in the mods folder located in your .minecraft folder.
5. Play!

If you find some cool custom structures for Ruins, feel free to post them, as well as let us know how you liked the mod in the comment section below.

Version of mod reviewed: v1.5.1 for Minecraft 1.5.1.

Terrain with this pack is unique and very interesting. It strikes a surprisingly great balance between detail and smoothness. This pack clearly goes in for details with pebbles in the dirt and waves in the sand and therefore everything looks fantastic close up, but is somehow still very smooth and doesn’t have too much noise when looking at landscapes from far away. This is even before applying mipmapping via Optifine, which makes it even smoother. Blocks are stylish and that property passes onto all terrain, including caves.

When it comes to building exteriors, the pack is very hit-or-miss, varying from person to person. Building blocks like planks are very detailed and this causes a big visual departure from vanilla and most other texture packs. Some houses will look even better with this pack, while some will look horrendous even though they were fine on vanilla. For example, since planks are so detailed, using them too much will ruin the aesthetic of a house. Adjusting your architectural style will help make your homes more beautiful than ever, but I wouldn’t recommend using this pack on a server unless everyone else is using it as well, since this can result in a big shift in how various building styles work.

On the inside, this texture pack really shines. Chests, benches and furnaces are all extremely detailed and look fantastic. The interior really shines with this pack, regardless of the design. This might just be the standout feature of this pack.

Items look good and fit in with the pack, even though they shouldn’t. You see, while the pack is a mix of RPG and cartoon styles, the items are a mix of RPG and realism. It still fits well, so the style shift is not a problem. What is a problem, however, is a lack of textures for a huge percentage of the items. Even though the mod is version 1.0, which would imply it has all the textures for vanilla Minecraft, it is far from finished. It’s hard to take this against the mod in the long run since textures will be finished eventually, but it has to be stated. When such a simple thing is the biggest problem a pack has, it is just an indicator of how good the pack is.

The Nether is actually very good-looking and detailed, though a bit too dark for my tastes. It is modeled after the more grim interpretations of the Nether, which includes faces in soulsand and makes for an overall creepier experience.

The pack works wonderfully with shaders. There’s a special version that supports them, so it does not have to be done manually. Obviously since vanilla textures haven’t been finished yet, there is no mod support. The pack is available in 64x and 128x resolutions, satisfying most people’s needs. This is texture pack that can appeal to a big audience, and the only thing holding it back are the missing textures. It’s still worth a try, and you can get it here:

Download the Croma Hills texture pack here!

Be sure to leave your feedback and let us know how you liked the pack in the comment section below.

The horse mob is the biggest addition of not only this snapshot, but also the flagship for 1.6. There are several kinds of horses. Normal horses have lots of colors and patterns, making for a total of 35 possible combinations. In addition to these normal breeds, there are donkeys that spawn normally and mules that are the result of a horse and a donkey breeding. There are also skeleton and zombie horses in the code, however they do not yet spawn naturally. Since they cannot be tamed even if you spawn them via code editing, they could be added as hostile mobs later on, not unlike Mo’ Creatures which has hostile horses spawn during the night.

Taming a horse is fairly simple. You walk up to it and right click to sit on it. You will immediately be thrown off. You have to keep this up until the horse stops throwing you off and is then tamed, indicated by hearts like the ones that appear when breeding animals. A tamed horse will hang out nearby and can be saddled (new item called a horse saddle), armored with 3 tiered armor (iron, gold, diamond). Horses are the fastest method of travel for now, out speeding minecarts at full speed, though not all horses are the same speed, or jump the same height. Jumping is a mechanic that replaces your XP bar when riding. It’s fairly simple, just press space and try to release when the bar is as full as possible.

A new item, the name tag, allows you to name it in the anvil, then give that name to any mob via a right click. Named mobs do not despawn, meaning you can have a squid tank or a group of tiny pet slimes now.The update also introduces the leash, a new item that allows you to tether a mob to you to make it follow you. This is useful for making tamed mobs follow you, or even mess around with hostile ones. Finally, a we have a new block in the carpet. This simple addition allows you to make floors on your floors (I do realize how ridiculous this sounds) different from the ceiling below in a more compact fashion. Unfortunately as the carpet is a block, you cannot place anything on it, so chests and furnaces are out. It’s still a cool addition nonetheless.

Last and also least for now is a new launcher. It does not seem to do much differently from the current one except for some developer stuff, but it is still in early development so we’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.

You can read more about it and download this snapshot below:

Download the 13w16b snapshot here! [CAUTION: For advanced users only]

Stay tuned for more information as it comes out, and as always, feel free to discuss these new additions in the comment section below.

The meteors themselves have 5 types available. Those types are:

• Meteorite – a regular meteor that drops down and makes a fiery blast. It’s made of meteorite ore and is common. It cools off quickly, and when it cools down less meteorite chips drop from ore.
• Freezarite – a snowy meteor that’s a bit more rare than a Meteorite. It’s made of freezarite ore that melts into water over time. It’s blast creates ice and snow.
• Kreknorite – a rare fire meteor made of kreknorite ore that cools off to obsidian, and lava. It creates a Nether portal on impact.
• Unknown – a meteor made out of all other meteor ores, but mostly meteorite.
• Kitty Comet – a meteor that just makes a hole and spawns Comet Kitties. Yes, this mod adds SPACE CATS.

The meteors are a random occurrence and can actually do damage to your house if you’re not careful. That’s why there’s a meteor shield block in this mod that you can craft using some meteorite chips. It will charge up after a while, though you can speed that up using more chips or boost the range using some red meteor gems. Like a beacon in vanilla, it projects a beam of light into the sky. The beam is purple at first, but changes color according to the last meteor type blocked. A meteor shield test torch can be crafted and indicates if the area is protected by a shield.

There are also 3 meteor detectors, proximity, time and crash. Proximity tells you the closest meteor to you. The time meteor tells you the where the next meteor will fall. The crash one tells you where the most recently crashed meteor is, making it by far the most effective. There are also meteor summoners for each meteor type that let you summon a meteor on right click. I found that this allows for some SimCity fun because you can create a meteor shower that blows up and entire city.

Each meteor ore, Meteorite, Freezarite and Kreknorite, all drop their respective meteor chips (and a red meteor gem on occasion). These can each be used to craft a unique armor and tool set. Meteorite armor and tools are diamond strength, and have a magnetism enchantment that pulls drops to you. Freezarite armor allows you to freeze water as you walk on it, while freezarite tools have water buffs (underwater dig speed increase, automatically water crops, freeze enemies) All Freezarite stuff is very weak, but you can also use Freezarite to make icecream! Krenorite armor gives you fire immunity while a sword will set your enemies on fire. It is the strongest material in the mod.

I found this mod to be very enjoyable and recommend it to anyone that is at all interested in it. I do however have to warn you that some of the features can be considered unbalanced, depending on your game type and other mods you might have. Kreknorite meteors may be rare, but they can provide a free nether portal early on, and some of the armor buffs (water freezing and fire immunity) can be considered overpowered. You can get it here:

Download Falling Meteors Mod here!

Installation instructions:

1. Open minecraft.jar and delete the META-INF folder.
2. Install the Forge API.
3. Run Minecraft at least once.
4. Put the downloaded zip file in the mods folder located in your .minecraft folder.
5. Play!

Like always, feel free to let us know how you liked the mod in the comment section below!

Version of mod reviewed: v2.10.1 for Minecraft 1.5.1.

Ok, so let’s take it from the beginning. The basic horse types spawn in the wild. This is how you get your start. You tame a horse by feeding it an apple and then naming, saddling and riding it. You can grow a horse from baby to full-grown by feeding it bread or wheat. To breed, follow these 4 simple rules, courtesy of the DrZhark wiki:

1. The Horses cannot be more than 4 blocks away from each other.

2. There cannot be another Horse within 8 blocks of your breeding Horses.

3. You must feed both Horses Pumpkins or Mushroom Soup to begin the breeding process (love hearts will appear around your Horses, similar to how Vanilla Mobs breed).

4. You must leave them for around half a Minecraft day.

These basic horses are simple and don’t really differ much among each other except for their textures. There are 4 tiers of normal horses. If you just want to breed a regular horse with a specific texture, reference this chart, but keep in mind breeding is very random and while you will most likely get the desired breed, it might not. Just keep trying and you’ll get it in a few tries.

If you however are not satisfied with the puny normal horse breeds you need to breed a Zorse to be able to breed a more powerful breed. That is, unless you want a skeletal horse in which case just feed an essence of undead to a normal horse and wait for it to decay from zombie to skeleton state.

Now, back to Zorses. Zorses are the basis of  the very powerful special horses. As you might imagine, a Zorse is a mix between a horse and a zebra. Sound easy? It’s not. You see, a zebra is very rare (extremely so in my experience) and you can only tame it from a tier 4 horseback. This will take a while, but once you have a tamed zebra you can breed it with a horse to create the Zorse.

From this point on, we branch out a little. There are lots of special horses, all of which are faster than regular ones. While there is a clear winner considering stats, sometimes it’s not all about the stats and looks matter too. The first special horse and my personal favorite is Nightmare. This is a dark fire horse. If you whip it, it leaves a trail of fire. It looks very, very cool. You get it by feeding a Zorse an essence of fire. Nightmares spawn naturally in the Nether, but are hostile and cannot be tamed there. Feeding a Nightmare an essence of light will get you an Unicorn which , needless to say, has a horn, sparkles, and goes really fast.

Next up is the Bathorse. This one is also a hostile mob, it spawns during night and in caves. It can fly and is completely dark. Hostile ones cannot be tamed, but feeding an essence of darkness to a Zorse will get a friendly one for you. Feeding it an essence of light above cloud level (height y150) will create a Pegasus, an even faster flying white horse with the ability to carry an inventory (like Donkeys). Feeding a Pegasus an essence of darkness above cloud level will result in a Black Pegasus which is immune to fire.

Now for the rarest of all horses, a magnificent triumph of breeding glory – the Fairy Horse! This one is created when a Pegasus and a Unicorn mate, so there’s a long way to go on the breeding path to get to it. The unicorn is even consumed during the breeding (no, I don’t understand why either). It cannot be grown with food, so you must wait for it to grow up. It is the fastest runner and flier in the mod. You can even color it with all kinds of dye to make it  even more special.

If you’re not satisfied with living horses, you might be interested in the ghost horse types. While these fellows cannot really be bred they are closely tied to breeding. To get a Ghost Horse you need to kill a special horse, and there is a chance (1/10 according to the DrZhark wiki) that a ghost horse will be created. If that special horse was a Pegasus, you will get a Ghost Pegasus which can also fly. Ghost horse types float above ground and are as fast as the horse they came from.

And… that’s about it! If you don’t already have Mo’ Creatures and want to get it, you can download it here:

Download the Mo’ Creatures mod now!

Be sure to leave any feedback in the comment section below, and while you’re down there, feel free to tell us your favorite horse breed.

Along with the vignette covered, filtered Instagram pic, we’ve got some indirect news about the patch.

First of all, Jeb called it the “main 1.6 feature“, so I wouldn’t count on the Mod API making it’s debut. This isn’t really news since the thing has been stuck in development for a while now. This also means that it won’t be another Adventure Update or anything like that since they’re marketing a new mob as the main feature. Expect a lot of bugfixes and probably some new items.

There was also a public “big thanks” given to the famous DrZhark, the modder that created Mo’ Creatures. This doesn’t really confirm anything, but since the mob in the picture looks exactly like DrZhark’s horse mobs in the mod, it’s almost certain they’re borrowing features from the mod. Here’s a quick recap of how horses work in Mo’ Creatures, taken directly from our Mo’ Creatures Guide:

Horses are animals that spawn in most areas of the world. There are 44 different kinds, a lot of which are secret, have to be bred and don’t spawn in the wild. Taming a horse with an apple, hay or sugar, and putting a saddle on it, will allow you ride it. Right-clicking mounts the horse, crouching dismounts. Different horses are faster, and you can make them faster by feeding them. Breeding horses is one of the more complicated systems in the mod, but it’s rewarding to learn since you can obtain all kinds of cool and fast secret horses. This chart explains it nicely, but it only scratches the surface. You can craft armor and bags for horses as well.

Again, this isn’t confirmed, but it’s looking likely horses will be very similar to this. Here’s a picture of how Mo’ Creatures horses look for comparison:

I’m personally looking forward to this since Minecraft has desperately needed a horse mob ever since the Adventure Update, so this is very welcome. People are already bursting with excitement on the forums and on Reddit, and I reckon we’ll see more emphasis on exploration in this update now that travel to uncharted lands (as opposed to oceans for boats) is easier.

There is no confirmed release date for 1.6 as of yet, but stay tuned for more information as it appears. There have been no snapshots for 1.6 yet, so there should be plenty of new information as soon as the first one releases.

What feature do you want to see in Minecraft 1.6? Are you looking forward to the horses in Minecraft 1.6? Sound off in the comment section below.

When we look at living room decorations we have plenty of cool new stuff to play with. Couches of 5 different colors (black, red, green, white and brown) are available and connect nicely so that you can arrange them into any shape you wish and still have the hand-rests at the end. A coffee table is available to give that modern, sleek look. Chairs and regular tables are available too, in wood or stone variants. There’s also carpet of 5 colors (the same ones as the couches). You can actually sit on couches and chairs by right clicking, which is a nice touch, but would be cooler if the mod supported multiplayer.

On the kitchen side of things, there’s a fridge 2 blocks high in which you can store things, a freezer that actually freezes things if you provide an ice pack, and an oven with furnace capabilities and a top part for looks. There’s a cabinet for looks and storage capabilities. Finally, there’s some bedroom stuff with a bedside cabinet that can be used to craft AND store things, a lamp with redstone capabilites, and blinds and curtains with toggle-able states that can be used to darken the room.

That’s all for actual content, but it’s very much worth noting that the mod supports any texture pack you throw at it and uses regular textures like wool and wood. This is great news for a lot of people since they don’t have to look for texture plugins for the mod to fit into their world. I used the mod with Sphax’s PureBDCraft, since it’s my favorite pack, and it worked beautifully. The mod’s compatibility is commendable since it does only require ModLoader and overwrites no files.

I recommend this mod to anyone looking for more options in interior design for their houses, and know I will personally be using it from now on. If you too would like to treat yo self to some great new furniture for your house, you can download the mod below:

Download MrCrayfish’s Furniture Mod here!

Tell us how you liked the mod in the comment section below.

Version of mod reviewed: v2.7 for Minecraft 1.5.1.