Anarchy's Vanity Blocks: Decorative and Storage Blocks for Minecraft
Every seasoned Minecraft player knows the pain. You have spent dozens of hours building a sprawling base powered by IndustrialCraft 2, Thermal Expansion, or BuildCraft. Your chests are overflowing, but not with treasure. They are stuffed with identical stacks of copper ingots, tin nuggets, and assorted ores that all look the same. The visual clutter is real, and the storage chaos is overwhelming. The creator of Anarchy's Vanity Blocks faced this exact dilemma and decided to craft a solution. This add-on does not try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it quietly fills a hundred small gaps in the vanilla and modded experience, offering a treasure trove of new textures for builders and a practical system for hoarders.
Three Pillars of Utility: Storage, Decor, and Mechanics
The core philosophy of VanityBlocks is simple. It focuses on three distinct areas: compact resource storage, aesthetic building materials, and a handful of clever mechanical blocks. Everything is highly configurable, ensuring that your server or single-player world does not get bogged down with unnecessary entities or lag-inducing features. You decide what to include and what to leave out.
Compact Storage for Vanilla and Modded Materials
Gone are the days of messy chests. The mod introduces standard "block" forms for items that are notoriously difficult to organize. Here is a glimpse of what you can pack away:
- A block of coal that acts as a potent fuel source for 72 operations.
- Blocks for charcoal, bones, leather, sugar cane, and even Ender Pearls.
- A block made from Blaze Rods that emits light and burns indefinitely, much like Netherrack.
- Compact arrow blocks for archers who like to keep their quivers full.
For those deep into tech mods, the storage options expand significantly. You can now create neat, stackable blocks from copper, tin, bronze, nickel, invar, electrum, platinum, and osmium. Forestry fans are not left out either, with dedicated blocks for apatite, honey, honeydew, and peat. The peat block is a standout, capable of smelting a whopping 100 items, making it a fantastic alternative to traditional coal.
Marble and Grand Building Materials
Builders rejoice. The world generation now includes two distinct types of marble: pristine white and the elegant Ashford Black. Each type is available in brick, chiseled, tile, and pillar variants, complete with slabs, walls, and stairs. This allows for the construction of monumental structures without needing to hunt for a separate marble mod. Additionally, you can craft clay bricks, lapis lazuli bricks, and even a block of white soul sand. This particular block has a mischievous trait: it causes players and mobs to sink and drown if they stand on it, an effect that is fully configurable in the settings.
Curtains and Hidden Hatches
One of the most innovative features is the fabric curtain. These two-block-high panels adopt the texture of almost any adjacent block, be it stone, wood planks, or a modded metal. They are perfect for creating seamless walls or hidden entrances. The only exceptions are blocks with interfaces, like furnaces, chests, and pistons. Curtains come in two orientations and can be toggled with a simple crafting recipe. A similar principle applies to the hidden hatch, which copies the texture of the block it is placed on, becoming nearly invisible. This is an ideal tool for creating secret passages on multiplayer servers.
Illumination and Ambiance
Lighting gets a major upgrade. The mod expands the redstone lamp family with color variants, crafted by simply combining a standard lamp with a dye. There is also a full-size lava lamp block with a mesmerizing animated texture and a stone frame, perfect for adding a cozy, industrial vibe to any room. For a more menacing look, a glowing block of Netherrack surrounded by cobblestone provides an eerie, hellish light source.
Installation, Compatibility, and Loaders
Getting started is straightforward. VanityBlocks operates on the Forge loader and supports Minecraft versions 1.6.4 and newer. For those on 1.6.4+, the mod uses a continuous integration system via Jenkins, making build numbers easy to track. If you prefer a more automated approach, you can use a launcher that allows you to download mods directly from the menu and automatically selects compatible versions. This is a lifesaver when you want to quickly test a new build or assemble a server pack. To install, simply drop the downloaded file into your mods folder. For a hassle-free experience, many players choose to download Anarchy's Vanity Blocks: Decorative and Storage Blocks for Minecraft through such a launcher, which handles the dependencies for you.
Utility Items and Hidden Mechanics
Beyond storage and building, the mod adds a few quality-of-life items that are surprisingly handy:
- The Smelting Core: A block that completely destroys any item, block, or liquid fed into it via transport pipes. Perfect for automated garbage disposal in complex tech setups.
- Mugs of Milk and Water: These consumables grant effects like regeneration, speed, or cure poisoning. A simple way to heal up while exploring.
- Rupees: A Zelda-inspired currency that server admins can distribute to players as rewards for achievements or events.
World Generation and Configuration
Exploration is rewarded. Marble veins generate naturally in the Overworld, and underwater ruins with dungeon loot can occasionally spawn. The spawn rate is configurable, allowing you to set the rarity, such as a 1 in 100 chance per chunk. The configuration file is your best friend. You can disable any block you do not want, alter recipes, or bypass nerfed recipes from other mods. This level of flexibility ensures that Anarchy's Vanity Blocks: Decorative and Storage Blocks for Minecraft integrates seamlessly into any modpack, no matter how tightly curated.
Final Verdict
Anarchy's Vanity Blocks is not a massive, sprawling mod with hundreds of pages of guides. It is a neat, curated collection of solutions for everyday problems. It cleans up the visual noise of identical ingots, gives builders access to beautiful marble and camouflage blocks, and adds a few delightful extras like a currency system and healing mugs. While development is currently paused, the open-source nature and Jenkins server mean the community can always pick up the torch. If you appreciate concise improvements that do not bloat your modpack, this is a mod worth trying. It is a subtle but significant upgrade to the core Minecraft experience, proving that sometimes the smallest additions make the biggest difference.