⚠️ Important Notice

GECKOLIB IS A REQUIRED DEPENDENCY FOR THIS MOD.
Please make sure it is installed before running Icy's Better Horses.

NOTE

I'm a newer mod developer, and Better Horses is one of my first major projects. I'm still learning—especially with 3D modeling, animations, and pixel art/texturing—so some assets are still rough around the edges. If you have experience in modeling, texturing, animation and want to help improve the mod, feel free to join the Discord or Patreon and reach out.

Icy's Better Horses

Better Horses is a Minecraft mod designed to make horses feel like true long-term companions rather than disposable early-game transport. The mod focuses on fixing vanilla frustrations around horse travel, improving mobility, adding meaningful progression systems, and introducing utility mechanics that make investing in a horse worthwhile.

Ownership System

Once a horse is fully tamed, it becomes marked as owned by the player.

Owned horses unlock:

• A Radial Command Wheel (opened with Ctrl + Right Click)
• A Horse Whistle (press P) to instantly call your horse to you

Radial Command Wheel Commands

• Follow → Horse follows the player
• Stay → Horse remains in place
• Return Home → Horse returns to its assigned home location
• Set Home → Assign a home location for your horse

Bonding System

Inspired by Red Dead Redemption, horses now feature a Bonding System that ranges from 0–100.

Every 20 bond levels grants stat bonuses:

• Increased movement speed
• Increased jump height

Bond Gains

• Naming your horse with a Name Tag → +10 Bond
• Feeding your horse a Golden Apple → +2 Bond

This system rewards long-term care and makes your horse progressively stronger over time.

Travel & Movement Improvements

Water Traversal

Horses:

• No longer sink in water
• Move significantly faster across water

Auto-Ride System

Press W twice quickly to activate Auto-Ride Mode.

While active:

• The horse automatically moves forward
• Movement is controlled using your mouse
• No constant WASD input required

To disable Auto-Ride:

• Press any W/A/S/D key to return to manual control

Forest Traversal Fix

Vanilla horses often get stuck in forests due to dense leaf collision.

This mod solves that by making:

• Leaves passable while mounted
• Dense forests far easier to travel through

This significantly reduces traversal frustration.

Multiplayer Riding

Horses can now be ridden by two players at once.

This allows:

• Cooperative exploration
• Faster multiplayer travel
• Easier transportation of teammates

New Equipment & Items

The mod introduces several new horse-focused items.

Upgraded Saddle

The Upgraded Saddle unlocks:

• 5 special equipment slots
• Additional customization options

It can also be combined with a chest to give horses:

• Their own storage inventory

Hitch Post

The Hitch Post allows players to tether their horse to a fixed point.

Features:

• Prevents movement entirely
• Only works on horses owned by the player
• Cannot be used on random wild horses

Medkit

The Horse Medkit acts as an emergency survival tool.

When horse health drops below 50%:

It automatically activates and grants:

• Regeneration
• Instant Health
• Resistance

This gives your horse an additional survival buffer during dangerous situations.

Horse Hooves

Craftable horse hooves provide environmental stability.

Effects:

• Prevent sinking in powdered snow
• Improve movement stability
• Reduce fall damage

Stabilizer

The Stabilizer is advanced horse equipment designed for dangerous terrain.

When the horse experiences a major fall:

• Jets of steam activate
• Mechanical wings deploy
• Fall damage is reduced or completely negated

This allows for much smoother cliff traversal and protects horses from accidental deaths.

Additional Features for Version 26.1.2

(coming soon for other versions)

- Increased horse step height by 10%, allowing smoother traversal over paths and full blocks without getting stuck.
- Reduced mounted block break speed penalty by 80%.
- Mounting a horse no longer forces the player's view direction to change — the horse rotates instead.
- Added independent camera movement while the horse is stationary, allowing up to 90° of free look before the horse follows the rotation.
- Improved downward visibility by making the horse nearly disappear when looking down.
- Improved rider visibility by lowering the horse head position and rotating it forward while mounted.
- Using an upgraded saddle on a horse in Creative Mode now instantly tames the horse.

Support the Project

Support the project on Patreon and join the Discord community to help make Better Horses even better.