Essential Alternatives¶
Essential sucks, click here to read why
Essential's new microtransaction system is predatory, purposefully designed to charge you more than what it would cost you prior to the new currency update. Essential now uses a new in-game currency in order to buy cosmetics, similar to Fortnite's V-Bucks. The amount of currency you can buy and the price of cosmetics is strategically placed so that you always have to buy more coins than you need to buy an item, forcing you to spend extra. This business practice is incredibly anticonsumer and profit driven, and is much different from their previous, respectable scheme where you paid directly for the item you wanted.
Essential also tries to market itself as a mod library. Because of this, if another mod wants to use something Essential offers, all users of the mod are forced to install Essential alongside the original mod. There is no way around this. If you are a mod developer, please look elsewhere for the features Essential offers. Their libraries, Elementa, Vigilance, and UniversalCraft can all be used individually without the need of Essential, should you need to use them. However, Polyfrost has alternative libraries that may be more useful, such as their UniversalCraft fork, OneConfig (Vigilance competitor), and PolyUI (Elementa competitor). I especially recommend avoiding Vigilance in general, due to its myriad of issues that are known and acknowledged by the Essential devs, yet have not been fixed even years later.
Essential has tracking and data collection. This information may be shared to third parties as can be read in their privacy policy, as well as what data they collect.
Lastly, Essential is a half-baked mod. Almost every promise for new features has yet to be delivered since and before its release. Additionally, the features Essential currently has are purposefully made to be worse than other mods. Most obvious of this is their built in zoom, which despite all of its features being copied from Patcher, most of its functionality and customization was not added as to make it "less intimidating and easier for new players". Instead of using these half-baked and random features that can easily break with other mods, you should just use the free and open alternatives that have more features and are able to provide better support.
Essential goes against the spirit of modern modding. There is no point for a mod loader when a singular mod tries to do everything, especially when it breaks everything else along the way. Using a mod loader means you have the freedom to use whatever mods you want. Don't feel tied down by Essential!
Don't feel forced to use Essential!
Essential Features¶
World Host¶
- Host World - Gaming32's World Host (does not require other people to use the mod, only the person hosting)
Pictures¶
- Pictures / Screenshot Manager - Spirit Studios's Snapper
Account Switcher¶
- Account Switcher - The-Fireplace's In-Game Account Switcher
Skin Changer¶
- Skin Changer - IMB11's Skin Shuffle
Chat Peek¶
- Chat Peek - ?
Essential Settings¶
Session¶
- Automatically Refresh Session - connorslade's Auto Reauth
Emotes¶
- Emotes - TheMek0's NoEmotecraft (this is a fork of KosmX's Emotecraft but updated to 1.21.x until the official version gets updated)
Cosmetics¶
- Cosmetics - Cosmetica-cc's Cosmetica
Quality of Life¶
Screenshots¶
- Screenshot Preview - Deftu's Screencapper
- Quick Actions - Deftu's Screencapper
- Post Screenshot Action - Deftu's Screencapper
- Screenshot Preview Duration - Deftu's Screencapper
- Screenshot Sounds - Deftu's Screencapper
- Screenshot Message - Deftu's Screencapper
Zoom¶
- Smooth Zoomed Camera - isXander's Zoomify
- Smooth Zoming - isXander's Zoomify
- Toggle To Zoom - isXander's Zoomify
Discord Integration¶
- Activity Status on Discord - CDAGaming_'s CraftPresence
- Join Requests through Discord - CDAGaming_'s CraftPresence
- Show Username and Avatar on Discord - CDAGaming_'s CraftPresence
- Show Joined Server on Discord - CDAGaming_'s CraftPresence