Xaero's Minimap in All the Mods - Gravitas

Xaero's Minimap puts a small map of the terrain around you in the corner of your screen, showing nearby players, mobs and other entities, and lets you drop waypoints to mark the places you want to find again. The pack ships version 23.8.2 for Forge 1.18.2.^[1][2]

The big selling point is that it looks like vanilla Minecraft, so it blends into your HUD instead of fighting with it. It was the first rotating square minimap for Minecraft, and you can switch it to a circle shape or lock the rotation so it stays north-up with a direction arrow for your character instead.^[1]

It is mostly a client-side mod, so everything here is about your own game. Installing it server-side is optional and only adds extras like world identification.^[1]

Who it's for

Basically everyone. If you build a base, go mining, or wander off looking for a structure, waypoints save you from getting lost. You can make practically an infinite number of them, they render both on the minimap and out in the world, and a skull-shaped deathpoint is created automatically every time you die so you can walk back to your stuff.^[1]

Underground it switches to cave mode automatically, so the map keeps working while you're tunnelling. It also has toggles that are genuinely handy in a modded pack: a chunk grid, a slime chunk overlay that marks slime-spawning chunks in green, and a custom light overlay for spotting mob-spawnable blocks.^[1]

Where it fits in the pack

There's no progression to it. The minimap is available from the moment you load in, there's nothing to craft or unlock, and no quests in this pack involve it. It isn't on the ATM Star path either, so treat it as a quality-of-life tool you set up once and forget about.^[2]

It also pairs with Xaero's World Map: by default the minimap reuses the map textures the world map mod generates instead of making its own, which improves performance when you run both.^[1]

There's nothing to craft here. Xaero's Minimap is mostly client-sided, so the map is already running in the corner of your screen the moment you load into a world, showing the nearby terrain plus players, mobs and other entities around you. Your "first steps" are all about setup, not recipes.^[1]

Step 1: put the map where you want it

1. Left-click and drag the minimap to move it around the screen, or use the "Change Position" setting screen, which can place it anywhere on the screen and even shift it by a single pixel. That can be useful when you're playing with other UI mods.^[1][3]
2. Pick a shape and size: the minimap can be square or circular, with several size options including automatic, and several zoom levels.^[1]
3. Choose a block color mode. Vanilla uses the colors of vanilla Minecraft maps, while Accurate uses block texture and biome colors. There's a separate setting to enable biome colors in Vanilla mode too.^[1]

Step 2: set up your info display

Open the Info Display Manager next. This is where you turn on the readouts under the minimap: current coordinates, facing angles, dimension, biome, weather, light level, game time, real time and more. Click and drag the entries to reorder them so the ones you actually care about sit at the top.^[3]

There are extra readouts worth knowing about while you're in there, including Overworld Coordinates, Light Overlay Status, Manual Cave Mode Status and Highlight Info for things like claims. If you enable a background for an info type, the Text Background Color and Info Display Background Opacity settings control how it looks.^[3]

Placing waypoints

Waypoints are the real reason to run this mod. You can place your own markers that show up both on the minimap and out in the game world, so you can find your way back to bases, portals and anything else you've marked, or navigate to specific coordinates. Some setups also allow teleporting to a waypoint.^[1]

By default only the distance to the waypoint closest to your crosshair is shown. If you'd rather see distances for several waypoints at once, turn on Multiple Waypoint Distances, and use the "Distance to WP" setting to control which waypoints are eligible in the first place.^[3]

A couple of server-side notes

• If you're playing on a simple server with a single world, with no separate lobby, game mode or minigame worlds, disable multiworld detection. On that kind of server it only causes problems. Installing the mod on the server side also prevents these issues.^[3]
• If you also run Xaero's World Map, the two are compatible, and by default the minimap uses the map textures generated by the world map mod instead of making its own, which improves performance when you're using both mods.^[1]

Xaero's Minimap isn't a machine mod, so there's no power, no fluids and no crafting to worry about. It's a client-side interface mod: it draws a map of the terrain around you in the corner of your screen, shows nearby players, mobs, entities and items, and lets you mark places with waypoints you can find again later.^[1]

Because it's mostly client-sided, everything here works from your own settings screens and key binds. Installing it on the server side is optional and only adds extra features like world identification.^[1]

The minimap itself

The map keeps the vanilla Minecraft look on purpose, so it blends into the rest of your HUD. It was the first rotating square minimap for Minecraft, and you can switch it to a circle shape or lock its rotation so it stays north-up with a direction arrow showing which way you're facing instead.^[1]

You get multiple size options (including automatic) and multiple zoom levels. You can place the map anywhere on the screen using the "Change Position" setting, nudging it by a single pixel if you need to dodge another mod's UI. In-game, left-click and drag to move the minimap around.^[1][3]

Two block color modes control how terrain is drawn: Vanilla, which uses the colors of vanilla Minecraft maps, and Accurate, which uses the colors of block textures and biomes. There's a separate setting to enable biome colors while still using Vanilla mode. Map shading is tuned with the "Terrain Depth" and "Terrain Slopes" settings.^[1]

Cave mode

The map works above and below ground thanks to automatic cave mode, which also kicks in inside buildings. The mod looks for a "solid roof" above you to decide when to switch, and you choose how big that roof check is. A roof size of 3x3 or larger stops cave mode from triggering when you're standing under log blocks while chopping wood.^[1]

There's also a manual cave mode, and you can add a Manual Cave Mode Status readout to the info display so you always know which mode you're in.^[3]

Entity radar and categories

Surrounding entities can be drawn as colored dots or as icons (usually heads). Entities are organized into sub-categories; pick a sub-category and open its Settings to configure things like dot color, names and icons.^[1][3]

Waypoints

Waypoints are the real workhorse of this mod, and you can have a practically infinite number of them. They render both on the minimap and out in the game world. Press B to create a new waypoint and U to open the waypoints list, where you can add or edit single or multiple waypoints at once, sort them, and view waypoints belonging to other sub-worlds and dimensions.^[1]

Waypoints come in local and global flavors. Local waypoints are affected by the "Max WP Draw Distance" option, while global ones are not. The intended pattern is one global waypoint marking a big region and a handful of local ones inside it, so that only the global marker shows up when you're far away and your screen stays clean.^[1]

You can also sort waypoints into sets and switch your current set with a key binding, and hide all waypoints or just specific ones. Waypoints can be shared into game chat with other players on the server from the waypoints list.^[1]

Waypoints can be teleported to, but that requires permission for the teleportation chat command. By default only the distance to the waypoint closest to your crosshair is shown; the "Multiple Waypoint Distances" setting lets several in-game waypoints show their distance at once, while "Distance to WP" controls which waypoints are eligible to show a distance in the first place.^[1][3]

The info display

Underneath the minimap sits a stack of information readouts that you control from the Info Display Manager, reachable through Information Settings. It can show your current coordinates, facing angles, dimension, biome, weather, light level, game time, real time and more. Click and drag the entries in the manager to change the order they appear in.^[3]

• Overworld Coordinates, handy for lining up Nether portals without doing the math yourself.^[3]
• Light Overlay Status and Manual Cave Mode Status, so toggles you can't otherwise see are visible at a glance.^[3]
• Highlight Info, which covers things like claims.^[3]
• Custom Waypoint Sub-World, showing which sub-world your waypoints are currently filed under.^[3]

Info types that support a background have a Text Background Color option, and the Info Display Background Opacity slider controls how strong those colored backgrounds are.^[3]

Multiworld and sub-worlds

On servers with separate lobby, game mode or minigame worlds, the mod tries to detect which world you're in so your waypoints follow you correctly. If you're on a simple server with a single world, turn multiworld detection off, because on those servers it only causes issues. Installing the mod server-side should also prevent those problems.^[3]

You can connect or disconnect a selected sub-world to or from the current automatically detected one. Only connect sub-worlds that come from the same sub-server or world save, for example the two sides of a vanilla Nether portal. Sub-worlds already connected to your current one always sit at the top of the list and are marked with an asterisk.^[3]

Working with the world map

The minimap is compatible with Xaero's World Map, and by default it uses the map textures the world map mod generates instead of generating its own. That's a straight performance win when you're running both together.^[1]

Server-side controls

If the mod is installed on the server, admins get server-sided configs with an in-game UI screen to control in real time how players use the mod, and these can be based on ranks and permissions via the xaero.minimap.enforced_server_profile permission node. FTB Ranks, Odyssey Roles, LuckPerms and general permission APIs are supported.^[1]

Map access can also be gated behind an item. Adding minimapItemId:minecraft:compass anywhere in the config file binds the minimap to the compass, so it won't display unless you have that item in your hotbar or equipped.^[1]

Finally, there are potion effects for restricting the mod on a server or map: xaerominimap:no_minimap, xaerominimap:no_entity_radar, xaerominimap:no_waypoints and xaerominimap:no_cave_maps. They're neutral effects by default, and appending _harmful to the effect ID (for example xaerominimap:no_entity_radar_harmful) gives you the harmful variant.^[1]

Two editions of the mod exist for multiplayer rule reasons, full and fair-play, with fair-play designed for fair PVP.^[1]

Unverified Which edition of the mod the pack ships, and whether any of these server-side restrictions or potion effects are actually used in the pack, is not covered by the available sources. No config files for this mod were found in the pack, so all settings described here are the ones you change yourself in-game.

The sources for this guide don't show any in-pack recipes or quests that combine Xaero's Minimap with other mods. What the mod's own page does say is that it is mostly client-sided. Installing it on the server is optional and only adds a few extras, such as world identification.^[1]

Unverified No cross-mod recipes or quests involving Xaero's Minimap were found for this pack. That means none were confirmed, not that none exist.

Playing alongside other UI mods

You can place the minimap anywhere on the screen with the "Change Position" setting, even shifting it by 1 pixel. The mod's page says this is useful when you're playing with other UI mods.^[1]

I can't show you this pack's exact Xaero's Minimap settings here. No config files for the mod are available for this pack, so I can't confirm which values the pack changed from the mod defaults. What I can tell you is which options the mod offers, based on its project page.^[1]

Settings worth a look

• Minimap size: there are multiple size options, including an automatic one.^[1]
• Zoom: the mod offers multiple zoom options.^[1]
• Shape and rotation: there is an option for a circle-shaped minimap. A separate setting locks the minimap's rotation and uses a direction arrow instead.^[1]
• Entity display: surrounding entities, including players, mobs and items, can show as dots with a custom color or as icons (usually heads).^[1]
• Cave mode: the minimap can display the surrounding blocks both above ground and below ground.^[1]
• Waypoints: you can place your own waypoints, visible on the minimap and in the game world, with optional teleportation.^[1]

Unverified Which of these options the pack changes from the mod defaults, and the exact values it uses, could not be confirmed from the available sources. Check the in-game settings screen to see what you actually get.

Xaero's Minimap has been in the pack since All the Mods - Gravitas 1.1 or earlier. The version in All the Mods - Gravitas 4.0 is 23.8.2, built for Forge 1.18.2.^[2]

The mod's own changelogs for 23.4.1, 23.4.3, 23.4.4, 23.5.0, 23.6.0, 23.6.2, 23.6.3 and 23.8.2 are listed for this guide, so you can read them on the mod's release pages.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]}

Unverified The details of what each of those releases changed could not be confirmed, because the changelog text wasn't available. The pack changelogs also have no entries for this mod, so there is nothing confirmed about pack-specific changes to it.