Mineralogy Mod - Geology for Minecraft 1.9

     If you're looking to enhance your Minecraft experience, you should strongly consider checking out the Mineralogy mod by Dr. Cyano! While vanilla Minecraft has come a long way in create realistic biomes and geology, the types of rocks and environments that are available are still fairly limited. Mineralogy solves this problem by adding a wealth of new rock types and other features. The mod comes with custom texture packs in four different resolutions (up to 128x128) and includes a realistic re-texturing of some standard vanilla blocks such as the ores and sands.

       When you create a new world with this mod installed, the stone mix that normally populates the subsurface will be replaced with a wealth of new rock types in a distribution that mimics real-world geology. This attention to detail truly makes this mod worth checking out. You truly never know what you might find when you go mining! What better way to learn about the wonders of geology than with the Mineralogy mod and a high-resolution texture pack?

Compare a standard textured granite (lower left) and high-resolution Mineralogy textures

        The new types of rock span all of the major rock groups and add a great amount of variety! There are classic sedimentary rocks such as limestone, dolomite, shale, conglomerate, chert, and gypsum. There are new igneous rocks include pegmatite, basalt, rhyolite, pumice, and a complete re-texturing of the familiar granite, andesite, and diorite. Dr. Cyano even went so far as to add in the most common metamorphic rocks: slate, phyllite, schist, gneiss, marble, and amphibolite. These rocks in particular look incredible with the high-resolution texture pack. There are also totally new ores - nitrate, sulfur, and phosphorus. Their drops can be used to make different items including mineral fertilizer, which applies bonemeal over a much larger area and makes gardening a breeze!

A small sample of some of the new textures

      Not only does the mod include a whole set of new rock types with beautifully detailed textures, but nearly every new rock type has both polished and unpolished versions, as well as different bricks, stairs, and half-slabs. The half-slabs can even be placed vertically - this goes far beyond the customization that you can get in vanilla Minecraft!

       Another interesting feature is the ability to craft gypsum into drywall using paper. The drywall acts as an opaque glass pane and can be dyed into all 16 standard colors. Now you can paint the walls of a room whatever color you want without using a full block. With drywall you can give your builds more dimension and color and make modern houses look more realistic.

Drywall is a very nice feature!

      You may wonder how you craft items that require cobblestone (such as a furnace) if the subsurface stone is mostly replaced. To avoid this being an issue, Mineralogy introduces new crafting recipes that allow you to make stone from smelting gravel and cobblestone by crafting two gravel together with two stone. With all of the new rock types, why would you ever want to build with cobblestone again?

       In summary, the name might throw some people off – “Mineralogy” seems like it would be a boring mod. But in reality, the beauty and accuracy of the new blocks, texture packs, and world generation engine makes this mod a wonderful treat for anyone who is looking to enhance the quality and diversity of the 'rock blocks'. And for those who are interested in realistic geology in Minecraft, there really is no equivalent alternative. A more fitting name might be “Amazing Geology Enhancement Mod”!