Veinminer++: The Smart Vein Mining Add-On for Minecraft
Few things in Minecraft feel as satisfying as clearing an entire ore vein with a single swing. Veinminer++ turns that wish into a polished, server-friendly reality. Hold Sneak while you break a block, and the add-on mines the whole connected vein — any block your tool can actually collect, not just ores. Because breaking is staggered across ticks, even a massive deposit or a towering giant tree never freezes your world.
What Makes Veinminer++ Different
Plenty of vein mining mods exist, but Veinminer++ is built around a shared code path, so it behaves identically on Fabric and NeoForge. That means no matter which loader you prefer, the rules, shapes, and config options stay consistent. The add-on supports Minecraft 26.1.x, with 26.2 support planned, and requires Java 25. On Fabric you need Fabric Loader and Fabric API, with Cloth Config bundled and ModMenu optional for a config button. On NeoForge, Cloth Config is the only dependency.
If you would rather skip manual file juggling, the foxygame.net launcher offers a one-click install for Veinminer++, pulling the correct build for your loader and keeping it updated automatically between sessions.
How to Use Veinminer++
Activation is refreshingly simple. Hold Sneak (crouch) while breaking a block, and the add-on takes over. Press [ to cycle to the previous shape or ] for the next one. The active shape appears on your action bar, and a 3×3×3 box briefly draws an xray-style edge guide so you always know what is about to break.
Mining Shapes
- Vein (default): Follows connected matching blocks — ore veins, a run of logs, or any like-for-like blocks.
- 3×3×3: An oriented cube in front of you, with depth following where you look.
- Spread (opt-in): Same as Vein but with a much larger cap, ideal for clearing big deposits.
Features That Respect Your Tools and Your Server
Tool awareness is where Veinminer++ shines. The add-on uses your held tool's real mining ability, so any vanilla or modded pickaxe, shovel, or axe works. A block that would not drop for you is never broken — your iron pickaxe simply skips obsidian instead of wasting durability on it.
Smart ore matching groups related blocks by tag, so a vein of mixed variants, such as stone and deepslate ores of the same metal or a single log species, is followed as one unit. Tree felling comes with a safety net: break a log to fell the whole tree, including tall 2×2 giant trees, but smart-tree detection only fells when leaves are attached. Your log cabins and wood-block builds stay intact. Felling an isolated tree also clears its canopy, dropping the same loot leaves give on decay — saplings, sticks, and apples — at no durability cost.
Optional toolless mining lets soft blocks like dirt, sand, and grass be vein-mined by hand or any item, which is great early game or for saving durability. Flip it off to require a tool. Performance stays smooth thanks to capped block counts and a lenient per-tick stagger that spreads work out instead of spiking a single frame. Durability cost per block is adjustable from 0 percent to 150 percent, Unbreaking still applies, and felling stops one hit before your tool would break.
Configuration and Installation
Everything is adjustable in-game through a Cloth Config screen via ModMenu on Fabric, or the built-in mod list on NeoForge. You can tune caps for each shape, tree size, blocks-per-tick stagger rate, durability cost percentage, the smart-tree and leaf-cleanup toggles, the tool requirement, the Spread mode toggle, and an always-on edge guide.
To get started, download Veinminer++ from your preferred mod source, drop it into your mods folder, and install it on both the client and the server for multiplayer worlds. If you are wondering how to install it without hunting down dependencies, a launcher with an add-on catalog can handle the loader matching and auto-updates for you. Veinminer++ is released under the MIT License, so it is free to use, modify, redistribute, and include in modpacks.
Final Thoughts
Veinminer++ for Minecraft strikes a rare balance: it feels generous without feeling cheaty, and it stays performant even on busy servers. Whether you are strip-mining for diamonds or clearing a forest for a build, the tool-aware logic and thoughtful safety nets keep your resources and your builds protected. Install it once, and you will wonder how you ever played without it.