Vanilla Potions Expanded
Minecraft's brewing system has always felt a little unfinished. You can brew Swiftness, Strength, and Fire Resistance without much trouble, but what about Haste, Luck, or Dolphin's Grace? Those effects exist in the game, yet they have no standard Brewing Stand recipe. Vanilla Potions Expanded fixes that gap by turning eleven existing status effects into fully brewable potions, and it does so without adding custom effects, blocks, or a parallel crafting system.
This is a lightweight vanilla+ mod in the truest sense. Every potion it adds uses a real Minecraft effect, a thematic vanilla ingredient, and the familiar Brewing Stand you already know. The result feels less like a mod and more like content that should have shipped with the game.
What Vanilla Potions Expanded Adds
The add-on introduces brewable potions for eleven effects that normally lack a recipe: Haste, Mining Fatigue, Hunger, Levitation, Blindness, Glowing, Luck, Resistance, Absorption, Dolphin's Grace, and Withering. Each family supports normal and extended variants, and most also include a balanced level II version where a stronger potion actually makes sense.
- Normal and extended variants for all eleven potion families
- Level II variants where a strong potion remains useful and reasonable
- Full vanilla support for splash potions, lingering potions, and tipped arrows
- Rare normal-potion additions to themed village and structure chest loot
- Native potion and creative-inventory integration
- English (en_us) and Brazilian Portuguese (pt_br) localization
- Dedicated-server support
- No required JEI or REI dependency, both recipe viewers stay optional
How to Brew the New Potions
Step 1: Prepare Awkward Potions
Fuel a vanilla Brewing Stand with Blaze Powder, place up to three Water Bottles in the bottom slots, and add Nether Wart to the ingredient slot. This gives you Awkward Potions, the base for every recipe in the add-on.
Step 2: Brew a Normal Recipe
Keep the Awkward Potions in the bottom slots and drop the thematic ingredient into the top slot. Haste calls for a Golden Pickaxe, Luck uses an Emerald, Resistance needs an Iron Block, and Absorption requires a Golden Apple. Valuable or unstackable ingredients are consumed normally, so filling all three bottle slots at once is the most efficient approach.
Step 3: Choose Extended or Strong
Brew a normal potion with Redstone Dust to create its extended version, which stays at level I but lasts longer. Brew it with Glowstone Dust instead to create the strong version where one exists, which is level II. Extended and strong are separate branches, so there is no extended level II combination. Levitation, Blindness, Glowing, and Dolphin's Grace intentionally have no strong recipe, and Glowing uses Glowstone Dust as its base ingredient rather than its upgrade.
Splash, Lingering, and Tipped Arrows
After brewing any supported potion, you can push it through the standard vanilla pipeline. Brew the drinkable potion with Gunpowder for a Splash Potion, then brew that with Dragon's Breath for a Lingering Potion. In a Crafting Table, place one Lingering Potion in the center with eight Arrows around it to create eight Tipped Arrows. These conversions preserve the potion family and variant you selected, and tipped-arrow duration follows normal vanilla scaling.
Supported Versions and Loaders
Vanilla Potions Expanded for Minecraft supports Forge, Fabric, and NeoForge across several releases. Minecraft 1.16.5 and 1.20.1 run on Forge and Fabric, while 1.21.1 supports all three loaders. The 26.2 release covers NeoForge and Fabric. Minecraft 1.21.4 is intentionally not supported, so double-check your version before you download Vanilla Potions Expanded.
If you would rather skip manual file hunting, the foxygame.net launcher offers a curated add-on catalog where Vanilla Potions Expanded can be selected and installed in a single click. Fabric users still need the matching Fabric API installed alongside the mod. Place the required JARs in your instance's mods folder, and for multiplayer, install the add-on on both the client and the dedicated server. Never mix a Forge file with NeoForge or use a build made for a different Minecraft version.
Design Philosophy and Final Thoughts
The add-on stays deliberately focused. Powerful recipes use proportionally expensive ingredients, strong variants are omitted when level II would be meaningless, and every recipe lives inside the familiar Brewing Stand flow. There are no custom status effects, no mana systems, and no separate brewing stations to learn.
If you have ever wanted a Luck potion for a mining trip or a Resistance brew before a raid, Vanilla Potions Expanded delivers exactly that. It is survival-friendly, server-ready, and blends so cleanly into Minecraft that you may forget it was ever a mod.