How to make a Better MC (BMC2) server

Better MC is the reference "Vanilla+" pack: 3.2 million downloads on Modrinth, over 280 mods, completely redesigned world generation, new bosses and creatures, hundreds of dungeons and structures — and waystones to travel between them.

It's the easiest pack to get a group to adopt, and the one whose server load comes from somewhere you wouldn't expect.

Why it's the simplest pack for a group

There's nothing to learn. No tech tree, no research to unlock, no mechanic to understand before you can play: it's Minecraft, bigger. A player who has never touched a modpack connects and knows what to do.

On a server of friends with very different experience levels, that's decisive — far more than any technical characteristic. A pack like Vault Hunters or All the Mods demands a learning investment not everyone wants to make.

The other consequence: a player joining late isn't left behind. There's no gated progression to catch up on, only a world to explore. It's the opposite of RLCraft.

World generation is rebuilt — what that implies

This is the structural point, and it has two effects worth knowing before you start.

You can't bring a vanilla world in, or take its world out. The terrain is generated by the pack's rules, with its biomes and structures. An existing world loaded under Better MC would keep its old chunks and generate new ones differently — the seam is visible and permanent. And Better MC's world, loaded without its mods, loses everything in it.

Chunk generation is the dominant cost. Every new piece of map builds bespoke terrain and rolls against hundreds of possible structures. That's far heavier than a vanilla world, and it's what eats the memory.

The real server trap: waystones

Here's this pack's distinctive characteristic, and it's written nowhere.

Waystones let everyone cross the map instantly. On a server, that means your players are no longer grouped together: four players, four corners of the world, four regions the server has to load and keep alive at once.

On a pack without fast travel, a group naturally stays close and the server only works on one region. Here, being spread out is the norm. It's the silent multiplier of load — and it's why a four-player Better MC server demands more than a four-player server of another pack.

The direct lever: simulation distance (3 to 32, default 10). It's the radius in which each inhabited area stays alive — and it applies around each player. Dropping it to 6 or 8 divides the work by more than you'd think when the group is scattered.

RAM: what the server actually gets

The pack's page states no official memory figure. The tier below is what we recommend, not a recommendation from its authors.

The number that matters isn't the machine's but the JVM heap (-Xmx), necessarily smaller: the operating system, Docker and Java's off-heap memory live beside it. Here, the heap is the smaller of "RAM − 2 GB" and "75% of RAM":

Take the 16 GB tier as soon as several of you are exploring separately. The creation screen warns you if you drop below what the pack asks: it compares heaps, not machine sizes.

Version, loader, and the client rule

Better MC (BMC2) targets Minecraft 1.20.1 on the Fabric loader. The Java version follows the Minecraft version — Java 17 from 1.18, Java 21 from 1.20.5, per the Minecraft Wiki. Here, both come from the pack: nothing to choose.

The pack is shader-compatible, which matters to your players but not to the server: shaders are purely client-side.

The usual rule, however, applies without exception: everyone installs the same pack, at the same version. 280 mods is 280 chances to mismatch, and the error message doesn't always say which one is missing. Check the version number, not the name.

First boot and backups

Expect 15 to 25 minutes on first boot: downloading, resolving 280 mods, configuration, then generating a bespoke world. Don't kill it thinking it crashed — later boots are quick.

The world is archived before every shutdown, with a save-all flush immediately before, and restored afterwards. An automatic backup runs every 30 minutes while you play, of which the last 5 are kept. Storage is free, server off included.

One detail worth knowing: on an exploration pack the archive grows faster than on a factory pack, because it's the explored chunks that weigh. The archive cap is 4 GiB — comfortably enough, but it isn't unlimited if you explore for months.

Create your Minecraft server and pick Better MC from the modpack list. Your first session is free.