Building But Better: 250 Blocks and Six Items
Building But Better is a pure block mod. This guide covers what it adds and the fastest route through its catalogue.
Two hundred and fifty blocks, six items
256 pages, of which 250 are blocks. Six items in a mod this size means essentially nothing here is carried, worn or consumed — the entire mod is material to build with.
Almost one recipe per block
255 crafting recipes against 250 blocks. That near one-to-one ratio tells you each block has a single way to make it, with no alternate routes and no tier ladder.
Stonecutting covers a third
92 stonecutting recipes. For stone-family blocks the cutter converts between variants directly, which is far faster than gathering ingredients again for each one.
The practical split: 92 blocks are cuttable, the rest are crafted. If a variant is not appearing in the stonecutter, it is one of the crafted ones rather than missing.
One smelting recipe
A single smelting recipe in a 256-page mod is a curiosity worth noting — the furnace plays no part here at all.
No structures, no progression
The mod generates no worldgen structures and gates nothing. Every block is available from the first crafting table given its base material, so the difficulty is choosing rather than unlocking.
This line is 1.20.1 only
The build is 2.0pre4 on Forge, a pre-release, and there is no 1.21.1 version. A pack on the newer line cannot include it.
How to use it
Decide the material before you start placing. With 250 blocks and only 92 of them stonecutter-convertible, changing your mind about a wooden or specialty block later means recrafting rather than converting.
Keep a stonecutter on site for the stone families — that is where the mod is cheapest to experiment with.
The ratio is the description
Two hundred and fifty blocks, 255 crafting recipes, 92 stonecutting recipes, one smelting recipe and six items. That is the entire mod stated in five numbers.
Compare it with a decoration mod that leans on the stonecutter, where cutting recipes often outnumber crafting ones. Here crafting outnumbers cutting nearly three to one, which means most of this catalogue is assembled from ingredients rather than converted from a parent block.
What that costs you in practice
Every block outside the 92 cuttable ones is a separate gather-and-craft. There is no bulk conversion and no way to reroll a wall into a different material cheaply. Prototype a small section before committing to a large build, because changing the material later is the expensive direction.
No dependencies
The mod uses only vanilla recipe types — crafting, stonecutting and smelting. Nothing here needs a partner mod installed to function, and nothing it registers can conflict with a machine or occupy a bench.
Building But Better