While playing Minecraft, it’s hard to overstate how frustrating it used to be to navigate the procedurally-generated terrain.
The in-game maps you could make often pale in comparison to the Minecraft map mod options, with two main competitors: JourneyMap and Xaero’s Minimap, but which one is the superior offering?
Is JourneyMap or Xaero’s Minimap & World Map the Best Minecraft Map Mod?
Xaero’s Minimap and World Map are arguably the best pair of map mods, offering a streamlined presentation of the generated world in Minecraft. The mod boasts toggle options for Cave Mode and several quality-of-life improvements to gameplay.
However, the only disadvantage is you must install both Xaero’s Minimap and Xaero’s World Map mods to get the full experience. This adds an intuitive minimap along with showing mobs when you press ‘M’ to view the world map.
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Both map mod options have a similar offering in both the topographical and cave map options, but it’s just a simple matter of navigating the map menu. Xaero’s feels more like a user-friendly, clean interface while retaining the waypoint options which are almost identical to those found in JourneyMap.
JourneyMap’s differences lie in some better customization options and control over viewing the map during the day or nighttime.
Which Mod Has the Better Minimap?
I would argue that JourneyMap has a slight edge here, as it constantly has the same orientation allowing you to always know what direction you’re going in the world. Xaero’s is excellent and fluid as well, but is smaller, and it’s one of the weaker elements of that mod combo.
So while Xaero’s Minimap and Xaero’s World Map combined make for a better user experience, JourneyMap has potentially greater freedom of customization and a better minimap. While this hardly disqualifies Xaero’s, JourneyMap is packed into one mod instead of 2, making it a more efficient choice, if slightly less elegant and easy to use.
