Modular Drones
Most Minecraft companions are one-trick ponies. A wolf fights, a cat loafs around, and an iron golem guards a village until it wanders into lava. Modular Drones throws that formula out the window by letting you construct a flying helper out of ordinary blocks, then shrink it down and carry it in your pocket. The design you build is the design you get, and every block you choose shapes what your drone can actually do.
What Makes Modular Drones Different
This add-on is a fork of rearth's Buddy Drones, originally built for the CurseForge "The Future" modjam. Since then it has grown into its own project with fresh features, rebalanced abilities, and quality-of-life improvements. The core idea stays wonderfully simple: build a drone from regular Minecraft blocks, shrink it, equip it, and watch it hover beside you as a loyal companion.
Because the block list determines the behavior, you are effectively programming your drone with a crafting grid. Rotors keep it airborne. A dispenser grants ranged attacks. A beacon unleashes a powerful beam. A magnetic lodestone turns it into a tireless loot collector. Stack these abilities and you get a companion tailored to exactly how you play.
Abilities You Can Mix and Match
- Rotors: essential for flight, so your drone can hover alongside you.
- Dispenser: gives your drone ranged attacks to fight off hostile mobs.
- Beacon: fires a powerful beam at whatever threatens you.
- Lodestone: magnetically pulls in dropped loot so nothing goes to waste.
- Light sources: illuminate dark caves while you dig.
- Mining components: let your drone dig right next to you.
The beauty is in the combinations. A mining drone with a lodestone becomes a self-sufficient tunnel machine, hauling ore into your inventory while you focus on the next vein. Swap in a dispenser and it doubles as security when skeletons show up.
How to Install Modular Drones for Minecraft
Modular Drones is a Fabric mod, and it runs best on modern Minecraft releases such as 1.20.x and 1.21.x. Always check the documentation site for the exact supported versions before you download Modular Drones, since the project updates regularly and compatibility can shift between releases. You will need Fabric Loader and Fabric API installed first, plus a matching version of the mod itself.
Step-by-Step Setup
- Install Fabric Loader for your chosen Minecraft version.
- Drop Fabric API into your mods folder.
- Place the Modular Drones jar alongside it.
- Launch the game through your Fabric profile and confirm the mod loads.
If you would rather skip the manual juggling, the foxygame.net launcher handles the whole routine for you: it detects your installed Minecraft version, matches it against a curated add-on catalog, and installs Modular Drones in a single click, keeping everything updated automatically afterward.
Re-Materializing and Perfecting Your Design
One of the smartest touches is that your drone is never locked in. You can re-materialize it at any time to edit the block layout, swap components, and refine your build. Early designs are rarely your best ones, and the freedom to iterate means you can tune a fighter into a miner, or a loot vacuum into a mobile light source, without losing progress.
Full documentation and a getting-started guide live on the project's documentation site, covering every block interaction and ability combination in detail. New players should start there before experimenting, since a few component rules are not obvious from the tooltip alone.
Final Thoughts
Modular Drones turns companion management into a genuine building project. Instead of taming a mob and hoping for the best, you design a machine that mines, fights, lights, and collects exactly the way you need. Whether you are a redstone tinkerer or a survival player who just wants a helping hand underground, this add-on rewards creativity with a companion that truly feels like yours.