Minecraft has its own unique look and feel, but since it’s been around for over 14 years, you might be seeking a way to refresh your experience. Texture packs are the perfect solution. giving you all kinds of unique effects ranging from drastic gameplay changes to stunning environmental overhauls.
Trying to find the right resource pack can be tough when there are so many different options to choose from. It’s a lot easier to decide what’s right for you when you’re only looking at the overall top choices, so here are the 15 best Minecraft texture packs for 1.21.
Best texture packs for Minecraft 1.21
1) Fresh Animations
This is one of the most downloaded resource packs for Minecraft, with over 25 million installations on CurseForge, and if you install it, it’s easy to see why. The Fresh Animations pack overhauls how animations look with the goal of making all mobs move, feel, and appear more dynamic.
2) Dramatic Skys
The Dramatic Skys resource pack brings an unmatched level of realism and beauty to the skies of your Minecraft world. This pack features vibrant sunsets, endless twinkling starry skies, twisting tornadoes, artistic auroras, and so much more. It has just about every type of sky and sky occurrence you can think of.
Minecraft skies are decent without this pack, but with it installed, they become an absolutely breathtaking feature you never want to look away from. There’s so much more depth and detail throughout the world with this pack.
3) Stay True
Stay True is the perfect resource pack to use if you only want to change the look and feel of the game ever so slightly. This pack doesn’t massively alter anything about the game, and instead subtly implements small visual changes to provide an overall better design that still fits well with vanilla Minecraft.
This pack is one of my personal favorites because I prefer for my game to stay fairly similar to the intended art style. The changes are small but beautiful, and give the game an overall more vibrant, diverse, and lively feel.
4) Mandala’s GUI – Dark mode
I’m an absolute sucker for dark mode on anything and everything I can get it on. It just makes things so much more appealing and easy to look at for me, so Mandala’s GUI – Dark mode is one of my must-haves.
This resource pack focuses on how your UI looks rather than the world of Minecraft outside of it. All buttons and menus are given an overhaul with simple dark colors. This pack doesn’t affect anything outside of how the UI looks which makes it a great pack to pair with other mods.
5) Visible Ores
Mining can be one of the most frustrating experiences in Minecraft, but Visible Ores make sit a lot more tolerable. It’s easy to miss and overlook ores when you’re in a vast cave, deep in the mines, or traversing through dangerous territory like the deep dark biome, but this pack ensures you’ll never accidentally wander past a precious ore again.
The Visible Ores pack causes all mineable ores to glow. This makes them easier to spot regardless of how and where you’re mining. It works with shaders too, so you can use your favorite one without being frustrated by how tough many of them make it to see ores.
6) Sapixcraft
The Sapixcraft pack has a unique, cartoon-y style. This is a great option if you want to give Minecraft a total redesign with a completely different feel. It’s also super HD, making everything look extremely clean and detailed.
7) Mob plushies
One of the biggest issues I run into when playing Minecraft is not having enough items to decorate interiors with, but the Mob plushies pack provides plenty of adorable items perfect for making your home feel more lively.
This pack already has plenty of plushies modeled after various mobs like the Creeper, Breeze, Enderman, Blaze, Witch, and so many more. More plushies are planned for this pack too, so hopefully we’ll also end up getting Creaking and Warden plushies.
8) Excalibur
Excalibur has a pretty rustic and medieval feel to it which makes it a superb option if you’re trying to build some type of kingdom or village in a charming style. This pack replaces 99 percent of the vanilla Minecraft textures—just about everything you see with it installed has been redesigned to fit this style. This includes mobs, building blocks, flowers, and so much more.
9) Misa’s Realistic
The Misa’s Realistic pack focuses on giving Minecraft a more realistic design. The style of this one is somewhat inspired by old RPGs, so it’s a great pack to install if you enjoy a more lifelike look for the game. It does a great job of implementing intricate detailing while still keeping all items completely recognizable.
10) Better End Cities
End Cities are possibly the toughest structures to find in Minecraft, but for all the work you have to put in, they can sometimes be a bit of a letdown. The Better End Cities pack aims to fix this by making them more intricate. This pack redesigns them to have a more complex look and adds additional chests throughout so you can obtain more powerful loot.
11) Faithless
The Faithless pack overhauls the entire look of Minecraft while retaining the signature vanilla experience. It aims to provide a nostalgic feel and also includes many references to iconic creators throughout. It’s got a fun and funky feel to it and is a great option if you want to give the game a unique redesign.
12) Fancy: GUI Overhaul
The regular UI might be getting old for you or have a few features you don’t like, so the Fancy: GUI Overhaul pack might be exactly what you’re looking for. This pack redesigns all menus, the hotbar, your hearts, crafting containers, and just about every other type of UI feature you can think of.
My favorite part about this pack is how each menu matches the block it’s for. It’s super simple and clean, but adds some really nice details to the activities you spend a lot of time doing in Minecraft.
13) Dokucraft
If you’re a fan of older RPGs, Dokucraft is a great option for you. This pack is inspired by many old-school RPGs like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and integrates a nostalgic, gritty, fantasy style into Minecraft.
This pack is for the adventurers who explore as much of each Minecraft world as possible with specific goals and quests in mind. If you’re more of a builder, this one’s probably not for you unless you’re building something that fits in this RPG-inspired style.
14) Xray Ultimate
The Xray Ultimate pack is currently the most downloaded texture pack on CurseForge with over 50 million installations, and is a favorite among many Minecraft players. It’s a bit cheat-y, but it’s certainly regarded as one of the best options, which is why it has to be included on this list.
With this pack installed, the world around you essentially becomes an x-ray that pinpoints the locations of all nearby ores. You can see past all the blocks that would normally be in your way to find exactly what you’re looking for whether it be diamonds, gold, or iron.
15) Faithful
The Faithful pack is a simple but powerful pack that aims to retain Minecraft’s base look while simultaneously giving it a higher resolution. This is a great pack for you if you want to remain faithful to the core style of the game while also improving the detailing within it.
Now that your game looks and feels better, you can hop in and start playing. As you enjoy the best texture packs, you also might consider working on obtaining the best Mace enchantments, befriending all the Wolf variants, finding and beating the Creaking, and customizing your gear with armor trims.
