5 Simple Ways Mojang Can Improve Minecraft’s Inventory!

If you’ve been playing Minecraft for a while, you’ll know the immense struggle with the inventory system. It fills up very quickly, and building can be rather tedious due to shuffling items. While solutions like the best Minecraft backpack mods help to an extent, they have their own issues. Since this is a giant part of the game, it’s something that needs to be fixed immediately. While I don’t have a cure-all, I do have some ideas on how to fix this. So with that, let’s talk about the five ways Mojang can improvement the Minecraft inventory system.

1. Increased Item Stacks

It’s well known that most Minecraft item stacks reach a limit of 64 in one slot. Furthermore, a lot of items can only be stacked to 16 or only 1. While this does make sense in the case of tools, I don’t see why items like buckets and cakes need to follow it. Besides these items, I feel the 64 item stacks can simply be increased to 128 or even just 99.

It’s possible that in the early stages of Minecraft development, the max stack size of 64 seemed fine. However, as the Minecraft 1.21 update edges along, it’s clear the game has grown by leaps and bounds. As such, it might be beneficial to examine old features and improve them in some way.

Interestingly enough, the Snapshot 24W12A introduced a lot of unique Minecraft commands and attributes, out of which the max stack size was very intriguing to many. It allows you to change the max stack size option for all items from 1 to 99.

However, this feature is available with the commands only while the cheats are enabled, so you cannot really use it in survival. Mojang was perhaps experimenting with opportunities. I certainly hope the item stacks will be reconsidered in the future for official implementation.

However, if they aren’t, there is another more straightforward solution – compressed blocks. These blocks would be storage blocks for stone, dirt, cobblestone, and other items you usually get in bulk. So, you could make a compressed cobblestone with 9 cobblestone in a crafting table.

This would allow you to carry 576 blocks in a single slot for a max stack size of 64. This idea is inspired by Compressed Blocks mod.

2. Improved Shulker Boxes

Shulker boxes are the most important inventory solution in the late game of Minecraft. They have an inventory size of a single Minecraft chest and keep their contents after they’re broken. This allows you to transport items around easily.

However, shulker boxes are not overly convenient to use. You must constantly place the box, shuffle items around, and break it. If you’re storing the box inside the ender chest, then there is even more placing and breaking, which is simply tedious and time-consuming.

Some of the most welcome shulker box quality of life improvements would be the ability to see the entirety of its contents by hovering over it. Furthermore, it would be amazing if you could just hold the shulker box and right-click on other inventory slots to automatically put items in it without placing the box in the world.

Though, what if the shulker was some kind of a filter instead? You’d be able to configure it so that it picks up certain items automatically instead of them ending up in the inventory. This would be fairly convenient when mining sand, dirt, or stone with a beacon.

While these ideas have been implemented in the game by some of the best Minecraft mods, the vanilla version sure deserves this kind of makeover.

3. Introduction of Backpacks

One of the simplest solutions to the inventory problem in many video games is backpacks. However, although Minecraft is one of the best open-world games, it doesn’t have this feature. Minecraft Backpacks would be craftable items you can make with basic resources. They would sit in a specific slot of your inventory and would provide a decent space.

They could also be upgraded in various ways to provide more inventory slots or certain abilities. The community has wanted backpacks for a long time, and mods offer great alternatives. There are many Minecraft backpack mods out there, which you can read in our linked guide above.

While you might be reminded of bundles, they mostly focus on storing random junk items that find their way into your inventory. Even though Bundles are an improvement, they aren’t a final solution.

Moreover, it would be game-breaking if backpacks behaved like shulker boxes so that some balancing would be necessary. This addition would definitely help with the early-game inventory troubles.

4. Better UI Elements

Apart from the simple lack of inventory space, Minecraft also suffers from inventory management issues. With so many items, it can be really difficult to stay organized. The chest monster sorting can be therapeutic, but it is also very time-consuming, tedious, and just frustrating. You could claim that if you stayed organized from the start, you wouldn’t run into this issue.

Nonetheless, the game should provide an easier way to clean up your mess. My first suggestion would be a very clear and obvious sort button in all containers’ inventories. You would click on it, and the contents would be shifted according to a specific condition.

Furthermore, a search bar would also be a brilliant addition. You’d be able to type in the item’s name, and it would be highlighted in the inventory. Besides these new UI elements, Mojang should also turn its attention to the way players interact with inventory items. The Shift key and mouse buttons combos are well executed, but this mechanic could also expand.

Take the Mouse Tweaks and Crafting Tweaks mods, for example. They modify the mouse inputs and also add useful UI buttons to make life much easier. This would be both not too difficult to implement and something that players would greatly appreciate.

5. Easier Building

Finally, we should examine the building side of Minecraft inventory problems. This is an especially important aspect, as inventory management becomes truly difficult while building with many different blocks. Your hotbar becomes a mess, and it’s not even big enough to hold the needed blocks.

So, you constantly need to open your inventory and shuffle items around before being able to continue building. If you’re a builder, you definitely ran into this obvious annoyance. The fix could be a brand-new UI element representing a wheel of sorts. Here, you would select the blocks of choice from your inventory and easily access them by opening the wheel with a keybind and clicking on a slot.

After that, the block stack will instantly appear in your hand, similar to a pick-block feature. This would save time and allow you to quickly swap items from the player or shulker box inventory into the hotbar.

Another simpler way to help with the building is to implement a brand new item that randomly places blocks from your hotbar. This yet another mod idea would greatly improve the texturing of paths or walls.

While not the most groundbreaking, these are some changes I believe Mojang can do to fix Minecraft’s infamous inventory issues. So, what do you think? How would you fix the inventory troubles in the game? Let us know in the comments below!