Minecraft: The Best Difficulty Mods For A More Challenging Game
This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy something we may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. (Learn more).Have you mastered the craft of Minecraft?
Then it might be time to add some challenge to the game.
Perhaps your chest full of goodies is getting to your head after hours and hours of playtime…
Depending on how well you fare, these difficulty mods will either knock your ego down a peg, or grow it big enough to qualify as a new boss!
11. Naturally Charged Creepers
Supported Versions: 1.14-1.16
Charged creepers are the four-leaf clovers of Minecraft:
They’re rare (and also green).
Given how brutal the aftermath of a charged creeper explosion is, the rarity makes sense.
If you enjoy the risk of having your property blown up, give Naturally Charged Creepers a try! Also, stay away from the boiler room.
The mod makes charged creepers commonplace by allowing them to spawn naturally.
If you think a gang of skeletons is scary, try a gang of charged creepers.
10. Deadly World
Supported Versions: 1.5, 1.7, 1.12
The naturally generated world of Minecraft poses some threats.
You might bring your dog with you to a desert temple and have it accidentally step on the pressure plate, causing you both to get blasted into pieces.
You might dig straight down and… well, you know the rest.
Let’s be honest though: digging straight down has been memed about enough for most players to know that it’s a bad idea.
But you can still make your world feel deadly by installing this aptly-named mod.
According to the creator, Deadly World adds scarier world-generation features such as mines, silverfish veins, lava pockets, and “things that shoot arrows everywhere.”
Not sure what that last one entails… but it sounds scary.
9. Zombie Awareness
Supported Versions: 1.10-1.12
Hostile mobs can see the player from up to 16 blocks away, whereas zombies drool over your delicious brain from up to 35 blocks away
Zombie Awareness increases this range even further for zombies, as well as some other mobs.
You’ll feel like a celebrity being bombarded by paparazzi with the way you’ll have a horde of sleep-deprived admirers chasing you.
The mod gives your undead admirers sudden bursts of energy, causing them to spontaneously move faster, perhaps as a symptom of their sleep deprivation.
Zombies are also given some brains of their own.
Lights, explosions, and pistons will all cause them to investigate. Just like in The Walking Dead, these zombies are drawn to action and cool sounds!
As for you, the player, you get to bleed.
If you get hurt, that is.
And if you’re low on health, you might just bleed out.
8. Reskillable
Supported Versions: 1.10-1.12
Let’s say you spawn into a village and immediately find a chest with some diamonds.
Maybe you’re thinking about crafting a diamond pickaxe.
With Reskillable installed, you should be thinking about crafting a wooden pickaxe instead – because that’s all you’ll be able to use.
At least until you reach a high enough level to use the diamond one.
Reskillable adds levels for various skills in the game.
So you must reach a certain level in a skill tree before being able to use certain items. Like if you want to use that diamond pickaxe, you need to be at least level 16 in mining.
And the mod doesn’t just stop there.
Some items and blocks cannot be used or mined until reaching a certain level.
Also, if you kill a sheep, it’ll exact its revenge on you by refusing to drop wool.
They’re cool with you shearing them though. Sure, they’ll be robbed of their luxurious coat of wool, but they’ll be thankful for getting to keep their life.
Guess you’ll be spending some sleepless nights trying to acquire shears!
7. The Spice of Life
Supported Versions: 1.10-1.12
Once you’ve settled down, how many different types of food do you carry, really?
If you’re like me, the answer is one.
I love bread, okay?
If I had the diet that my Minecraft character has, I would get sick of bread real quick.
The only constant in life is that novelty is exciting – and The Spice of Life is a mod that acknowledges this idea, even in name.
With Spice of Life, eating the same food again and again restores less hunger points.
Spice things up a bit and try something new!
6. More Difficulty Levels
Supported Versions: 1.12
If you’re reading this list, playing on “hard” probably feels like a walk in the park.
More Difficulty Levels will still make Minecraft feel like a walk in the park.
Just, you know, a walk without limbs.
The mod adds seven new difficulty levels to make the game feel like hell in every dimension.
The game is made more difficult by buffing mobs and making nights longer (or permanent on increased difficulties).
5. Dehydration
Supported Versions: 1.16-1.17
You know what’s weird?
That there are water bottles in Minecraft, but you don’t actually need to drink them.
Food is more important than water in the game. But in reality, dehydration kills a human much faster!
If worrying about the state of your health and hunger bar doesn’t get your heart racing, then you may be interested in a mod that adds a thirst bar too.
Dehydration is sure to cause some type of hypochondria.
Partly because you’re stranded in the desert with nothing to drink except a lake of lava, and partly because, well, you’re dehydrated.
4. EnvironmentZ
Supported Versions: 1.16-1.17
Gone are the days of taking a nice stroll in the freezing snow completely nude.
Gone are also the days of running through the desert completely covered in Netherrite, a material literally from the depths of hell.
EnvironmentZ introduces a new boss, much more intimidating than the Elder Guardian, the Wither, and the Ender Dragon combined.
This boss is… the temperature of your surroundings.
If your environment is too hot, take your armor off to avoid overheating.
If it’s too cold, the mod introduces ways to protect against freezing too.
For example, you could carry hot stones. Or you could use polar bear fur to insulate your armor.
Just don’t tell PETA!
3. Dynamic Darkness
Supported Versions: 1.12
Dynamic Darkness removes the minimal light level, which means that darkness has the potential of getting even darker.
You might gaze into the darkness and see a set of eight glowing red eyes gaze back.
The mod also lets you modify light levels emitted by the moon, allowing you to turn your moon into a valuable friend that helps with the whole darkness issue.
2. Bloodmoon
Supported Versions: 1.10-1.12
Unlike Dynamic Darkness, this mod turns the moon into an enemy, rather than a friend.
Every night there will be a small chance of the moon turning red.
No, the moon isn’t embarrassed. The red moon is a bloodmoon, which means there will be more monsters that’ll spawn quicker and closer to you.
Monsters underground won’t be affected, so during Bloodmoon, treat caves as trenches.
And really, what’s more intimidating than battling a horde of mobs?
Battling a horde of mobs as an insomniac, which is what Bloodmoon turns you into.
You cannot rest when there’s a scary red moon nearby (and by nearby, I mean hundreds of thousands of miles away).
But if the insomniac lifestyle is too taxing for you, this feature can be turned off.
And to add to the creepiness factor (as if the blood-red moon isn’t creepy enough), black fog appears during Bloodmoon, contrasting against the red moon.
Red and black look great together so at least your potential death will look pretty.
1. Grue
Supported Versions: 1.10-1.12
Perhaps Dynamic Darkness was too easy for you.
You gazed into the darkness and eight glowing red eyes gazed back at you. Or they did, before you ripped them out and used them to brew potions of poison.
In that case, Grue might be worth checking out.
It introduces the monster Grue, named after the monster from the Zork Trilogy, a game series popular in the 80s.
This thing is essentially an evil god of darkness. It spawns if the light level is 2 or below.
Let’s say Grue appears in front of you.
What instinct would you trust: fight, flight, or freeze?
If you chose fight, well, remember when I declared Grue an evil god of darkness? Yeah, you can’t kill Grue.
Not like that, anyway.
And he only deals infinite damage so good luck surviving him.
If you chose freeze, tough luck for you because standing still will only make more Grues spawn.
Great, now you’re dealing with polytheism, except all the gods want to kill you. One of the seven deadly sins is sloth, after all.
Flight is the right call.
It’s cowardly, but cowards survive.
After all, if darkness is the absence of light, then of course you need light to make a god of darkness burst into flames!
Someone get Grue a role in the next vampire flick.