Pet Vault: Store, Summon and Manage Every Tamed Pet in Minecraft
Anyone who has spent a few hundred hours in a survival world knows the problem: your base slowly turns into a zoo. Wolves pile up by the door, cats claim every chest, and that one horse you tamed three biomes ago is still standing in a hole somewhere. Pet Vault solves that clutter with a single item and a radial menu, letting you store, summon and manage tamed companions and mounts without building a stable for every last parrot.
This guide covers what the add-on does, which loaders and Minecraft versions it supports, how to install it, and how to get the most out of its config options.
What Pet Vault Does
Pet Vault adds a compact storage system for player-owned creatures. Instead of leaving your tamed mobs scattered across the world, you register them to a personal vault and call them back whenever you need them. Each player can store up to 10 companions by default, a number you can raise to 16 in the config.
The mod supports any creature built on vanilla's TamableAnimal or OwnableEntity systems, which means wolves, cats, parrots, horses, donkeys, mules, llamas, allays and pets added by other mods all work without extra setup. Everything is bound to your player data rather than the item, so losing your locket never costs you a single stored animal.
Core Items
- Keeper's Locket — the central item. Keep it in your inventory, right-click a tamed companion to register it, and right-click a summoned one to permanently unregister it. The animal stays in the world.
- Life Crystal — crafted from a golden apple and four emeralds. Consuming it permanently unlocks passive healing, regenerating 1% of max health every 3 seconds while stored.
- Soul Crystal — crafted from a totem of undying and four emeralds. Consuming it unlocks pet revive: a fallen companion returns at full health after a 5-minute recovery period.
- Golden Bone and Keeper's Magnifier — creative-only debug tools for instant taming and inspecting vault data.
Radial Menu Controls
Press V by default to open the radial menu, which displays every stored companion with its name, health and status. The controls are quick to learn:
- Left-click a slice to summon or store a companion.
- Shift plus left-click to summon and immediately mount a rideable pet.
- Ctrl plus left-click to force-summon directly in front of you.
- Right-click to toggle bodyguard mode, which auto-summons the pet when you take damage.
- Shift plus right-click to select a slice, then shift plus right-click a second slice to swap their order.
Supported Versions and Loaders
Pet Vault for Minecraft ships for 1.20.1, 1.21.1 and 26.1.x, with builds for NeoForge, Forge and Fabric. Fabric installations require Fabric API. Note that 1.20.1 has no NeoForge build, so plan your modpack accordingly.
Equipment slot integration depends on the version. Curios is supported on 1.21.1 and planned for 26.1.x, while Trinkets works on 1.20.1 and 1.21.1. On 26.1.x the Trinkets slot relies on the community rewrite known as Trinkets Updated, since the original is no longer maintained for that release. The locket works perfectly from your inventory regardless, so none of these are mandatory.
How to Install Pet Vault
If you are wondering how to install the add-on, the process is standard for Minecraft mods. Install the matching loader for your game version, drop the Pet Vault jar into your mods folder, and launch the game once so the config file generates at config/pet_vault-common.toml. Fabric users should confirm Fabric API is present before starting. If you would rather skip manual file management entirely, the foxygame.net launcher handles the whole process for you: browse its add-on catalog, click install on Pet Vault, and it resolves the correct loader and version automatically while keeping everything updated between sessions.
Configuration and Data Pack Options
Most settings live in the common config and apply after a world reload. You can adjust the storage cap, the number of simultaneously summoned pets, healing rates, and the revive timer. Two options deserve special attention.
Some entities have no ownership concept in vanilla, such as iron golems. Adding their IDs to the storableEntities option or the pet_vault:storable tag lets you store them on a first-come, first-served basis, and summoning one stamps it as yours so nobody else can re-store it while it is out. Auto-riding is opt-in as well: add entity types to the pet_vault:auto_rideable tag or the extraRideableEntities option to enable shift-click mounting for them.
Data packs can also ship their own exclusions through the pet_vault:excluded tag, which is handy for modpack authors who want to block specific mobs without editing config files by hand.
Practical Tips and Common Questions
Stored pets are tied to your player data, so another player picking up your locket gains nothing. Healing and revive timers continue counting while you are offline, which means a pet that died before you logged off is usually ready the moment you return.
One clever detail involves unloaded chunks. Minecraft only keeps entities loaded near players, so a pet left behind can end up in an unloaded chunk. When you try to store it, the mod force-loads that single chunk, waits up to roughly ten seconds for the pet to reappear, stores it, then releases the chunk again. You will see a "Recalling..." message during the process. It rarely fails, and even then the vault slot simply falls back to its stored state, so nothing is permanently lost.
Final Thoughts
Pet Vault turns one of survival Minecraft's messiest problems into a two-second menu click. With passive healing, pet revival, bodyguard mode and broad mod compatibility, it fits naturally into both vanilla-plus worlds and heavily modded packs. Grab the Keeper's Locket, register your first wolf, and give your base a little breathing room.