More Culling is a client-side rendering mod for Minecraft: Java Edition that changes how the game decides which block faces, leaves, framed items and paintings are worth drawing. The build you need depends on the exact Minecraft release you play rather than on one universal latest version.
More Culling is a client-side rendering mod with a narrow job. It looks at what Minecraft is about to draw, works out which parts you cannot possibly see, and skips them. No new blocks, no new items, no overlay. On a good day you notice nothing except a higher frame counter in the scenes that used to drag it down.
Culling is the decision not to draw something. Every frame the game assembles a list of geometry for your GPU, and anything it can prove you will not see is cheaper left off that list. Minecraft already does this: the face where two stone blocks touch is never rendered, because a full block hides a full block.
The catch is how narrow that rule is. The project's wiki puts the limit plainly: the game "only supports culling non-full block faces against full blocks". Slab against slab, stair against stair, bamboo against bamboo. Those faces are drawn even when nothing can see them, which in a storage room lined with barrels is a great many triangles rendered into the inside of a wall.
More Culling widens the rule. It compares the voxel shapes of neighbouring blocks, and if one block's face is fully covered by its neighbour's, that face is dropped whether or not either block is a full cube. One detail keeps this honest: culling is only safe if the neighbour is opaque, so on launch and on every resource pack change the mod scans block textures to find which faces are genuinely transparent. Without that step, culling against glass would let you see through the world, which is the difference between an optimisation and an X-ray exploit.
What it does not touch matters as much. This is a rendering mod, so it changes nothing about mob AI, redstone, chunk loading, world generation or tick processing. If your problem is a server struggling with a mob farm, this is the wrong mod.
More Culling pays off in proportion to how many faces you are drawing that nobody can see. Dense decorative builds, large storage rooms, item frame walls, big glass structures and heavy forest cover are where it earns its place. Open landscape at a modest render distance gives it little to remove, and if your frame rate is limited by something other than geometry, culling geometry will not move it.
There is no honest universal figure, and anyone quoting a percentage for this mod made it up. The project's own benchmarks do show large gains, but in scenes chosen to be thick with hidden geometry, such as a bamboo forest or a wall of maps. Read them as a demonstration of where the effort goes, not a forecast for your world.
Sodium rewrites the renderer itself: how chunks are built, batched and submitted to the GPU. It is the broader mod and usually the larger single gain. More Culling is narrow by comparison, changing what counts as invisible, so it adds decisions Sodium does not make rather than replacing the ones it does. Entity Culling is a third thing again, using line-of-sight tests to decide whether entities and block entities are worth rendering. None of the three replaces another.
More Culling and Sodium are built to be used together, and the project's guidance is to leave Sodium's culling options enabled. Compatibility is version-sensitive, because Sodium changes internal rendering APIs between releases. Keep both on current builds for the same Minecraft version and it is rarely an issue. If you hit a crash naming a Sodium class, check that exact combination rather than assuming the two never work together. The same caution applies to Distant Horizons.
On a wider setup these layer with Lithium for game logic, FerriteCore for memory use and ModernFix for startup time.
More Culling is client-side: install it in your own game, not on a server, and it will not stop you joining one that lacks it. It runs on Fabric, Quilt and NeoForge, with Fabric and Quilt sharing a file. There is no official Forge build.
Every current file declares exactly one required dependency, Cloth Config API, the library its settings menu is built with. It has to match your Minecraft version and loader, so an existing copy built for a different version will not do. Fabric API is not listed as required, though most Fabric setups end up with it for other mods anyway.
The version number tracks the Minecraft release a file targets rather than one progression, so the newest file is not automatically yours. Minecraft 26.3 currently has More Culling 1.9.0-beta.1 on the beta channel, which describes that mod build and not the game, and Minecraft 26.2 has 1.8.1 as a full release, both for Fabric and Quilt as well as NeoForge. Support reaches back much further, and the download table on this page maps every current file to its Minecraft version, loader and release channel.
Aggressive culling has one characteristic failure mode: something disappears that should not have. A face vanishes, a block looks hollow, part of a modded model is sliced off. The cause is nearly always a mismatch, because More Culling decides what to cull from a block's culling shape, and a modded block declaring a full cube while its model is a thin panel will cull its neighbours as though it were solid.
Turn off the one feature matching the symptom rather than the whole mod, change one setting at a time, and note which mod the block came from. More Culling can also be told to skip a specific mod's blocks. One exception: Gap, Depth and Random are meant to thin a canopy, so leaves disappearing under those modes is the feature working.
Two features were removed in September 2024 and have not returned: Powder Snow Culling, over conflicts with Sodium, and Entity Model Culling, which caused bugs and added little alongside Sodium. Guides still listing them describe a version you cannot install.
Two projects share the name without being it. MoreCullingExtra is a genuine companion mod built on More Culling's API, but it is separate, and installing one does not install the other. More Culling Reforged is an unofficial Forge port of Minecraft 1.20.1 by a different author. The mod itself is written by FxMorin, licensed GPL-3.0-only, and distributed through Modrinth, which every row of the download table links to directly.
Two files, one folder. The only real way to get this wrong is to download a build for the wrong Minecraft version or the wrong loader.
Then open the More Culling Downloads section on this page, filter it by version and loader, and click Download on your row. It takes you to the official Modrinth file. The filename is a useful second check: current files read moreculling-fabric-26.2-1.8.1.jar, that is loader, Minecraft version, then mod version.
More Culling is client-side only. It changes what your computer draws, and a server draws nothing, so there is no reason to put it on one. You can still join servers that do not have it.
mods folder. On Windows the default is %appdata%\.minecraft\mods. Prism, MultiMC and similar keep a separate folder per instance, and that is the one to use.mods folder.Do not mix the two families. A Fabric JAR will not load on NeoForge or the reverse, and the same goes for Cloth Config.
There is no splash screen. Open the mod list and find More Culling: a config button that opens a page of culling options means both it and Cloth Config loaded. Failing that, search logs/latest.log for moreculling, which will also name a missing dependency.
NoSuchMethodError. One mod is built against a different version of the other. Update both for your Minecraft version.New to this? The mod installation guide covers loaders and the mods folder properly, and mods that are not working covers a game that refuses to start.
No builds match these filters.
It is a client-side rendering mod that skips drawing geometry you cannot see. Vanilla Minecraft only culls block faces against full blocks, so slabs, stairs, bamboo and similar shapes keep rendering faces buried inside other blocks. More Culling compares the actual voxel shapes of neighbouring blocks and drops those hidden faces as well.
Four areas: hidden block faces, leaves inside a canopy, item frames (including maps in frames and the back faces of framed items), and paintings. It is purely a rendering mod, so it does not touch mob AI, redstone, ticking, chunk loading or world generation.
Yes. It is marked client-side required and server-side unsupported, which follows from what it does: it changes what your own computer draws. Install it in your client, not on a dedicated server. You can join servers that do not have it, and it does not need to match anything the server runs.
Yes, and it is the only required dependency on current files. Cloth Config API is the library the settings menu is built with, so the mod will not load without it, and the Cloth Config build has to match your Minecraft version and loader. Fabric API is not listed as required, although most Fabric setups have it for other mods anyway.
All three. Fabric and Quilt share the same file, because Quilt loads Fabric mods. NeoForge gets its own build, usually published the same day. The two are not interchangeable, and the loader name is in the filename if you need to check what you downloaded.
Not an official one. NeoForge is not a substitute despite the shared ancestry, and a NeoForge file will not load on Forge. A separate project called More Culling Reforged exists as an unofficial Forge port for Minecraft 1.20.1, by a different author, and is not maintained by the More Culling project.
Yes, on matching versions, and the two are meant to be run together: the project advises leaving Sodium's own culling options enabled. Compatibility is version-sensitive, because Sodium changes internal rendering APIs between releases. Keep both on current builds for the same Minecraft version, and treat a crash naming a Sodium class as a version mismatch rather than proof the two never work together.
It can, in scenes where the game was drawing a lot of geometry nobody could see, and there is no honest universal figure for how much. Expect a real benefit in dense builds, storage rooms, item frame walls and heavy forest, and very little in open terrain. If your frame rate is limited by something other than geometry, culling geometry will not move it.
Usually because a block's culling shape does not match its model, which is common with modded blocks: a thin panel declaring a full cube will cull its neighbours as though it were solid. Turn off the single feature matching the symptom rather than the whole mod, change one setting at a time, and note which mod the block came from. More Culling can also be told to skip a specific mod's blocks.
The one matching your exact Minecraft version and loader, not whichever file is newest. Minecraft 26.3 currently has 1.9.0-beta.1 on the beta channel, which describes that mod build and not the game. Minecraft 26.2 has 1.8.1 as a full release. Both cover Fabric and Quilt as well as NeoForge. The download table on this page maps every current file to its version, loader and release channel.
Sodium is a client-side optimization mod for Minecraft that replaces the game's rendering engine with a faster, modern one. It significantly improves frame rates and reduces micro-stutter without changing how the game looks or plays, and it stays compatible with a wide range of other mods.
A client-side mod by RaphiMC for the rendering work Sodium leaves alone: entities, block entities, particles, text, maps and the HUD, which Minecraft rebuilds every frame. It batches that drawing into fewer GPU calls, adds targeted fixes, and needs no other mods.
A client-side performance mod by tr7zw that skips drawing mobs and block entities such as chests and signs when a wall or floor hides them, using visibility tests on a separate thread. It changes only what your own game draws, not how entities behave on the server.