Guidefor players4 min read
Alpha, Beta, Infdev and Classic modding: which project is which
BTW:CE, Back2Beta, BetterBeta, Legacy+ and three separate loaders all target legacy Minecraft, and none of them are the same thing. A map to which one covers your version and where its real wiki lives.
What this page is, and is not
Someone with an Alpha 1.2.6 or Beta 1.7.3 install has to already know the names Better Than Wolves: Community Edition, Back2Beta, BetterBeta and Legacy+ exist before they can even start comparing them. None of those names tell you their version range up front, and two of them target the same version for different reasons.
This page is the map, not the destination. Every project below already has its own actively maintained wiki, written by the people who actually build it. This page tells you which one is relevant to your version and sends you there. It does not try to re-document what those wikis already cover, because that copy would be redundant on day one and wrong within a year.
This is a live scene, not an archive, though not every project stays live
Legacy-era modding looks like nostalgia from the outside. From the inside it is mostly ongoing development, with real turnover. Better Than Wolves: Community Edition publishes changelog updates on a regular cadence, most recently reworking possession spawn eggs and how BTW's block and entity overrides are applied. Better Beta's wiki carries a substantive edit from March 2025 documenting version 3.3.5. The Legacy+ team's Beta Recrafted mod is in active development right now.
The same team's other flagship, Minecraft Infinite (formerly Infdev+), is the counter-example worth stating plainly rather than glossing over: it reached version 1.0.24 by the end of 2025 and kept updating through a rebrand in mid 2026, then its creator discontinued it on July 28, 2026, writing that they were no longer updating or supporting the mod and would not accept bug reports. A project can be genuinely active for years and still stop. Check a project's own repository or wiki for its current status before building around it, rather than trusting a snapshot like this one indefinitely.
Which era, which project
Match your Minecraft version against this table first. If two rows apply, read both entries before picking.
| Project | Version / era | What it actually is | Wiki or home |
|---|---|---|---|
| Better Than Wolves: Community Edition (BTW:CE) | Runs on 1.6.4, continuing a Beta-era mod | A community-maintained continuation of Better Than Wolves, a survival and tech total conversion. Original author FlowerChild opened the source to the community in 2021. | wiki.btwce.com |
| Back2Beta | Beta 1.7.3 | A bugfix and quality-of-life mod aiming to be the most polished, closest-to-vanilla version of Beta 1.7.3, not a content overhaul. | Minecraft Forum thread (no dedicated wiki; community and downloads run through Discord and this thread) |
| BetterBeta | Beta 1.7.3 | A content addon extending Beta 1.7.3 as if Notch had never shipped the Adventure Update, the successor to an earlier project called Continued Beta. | betterbeta.wiki.gg |
| Legacy+ (project family) | One mod per era, see below | A team of separate total-conversion mods, each imagining an alternate development path for one specific historical version rather than modernizing it. | legacyplus.miraheze.org, project hub at legacy-plus.dejvoss.cz |
Legacy+ is not one mod, it is five, each with its own status:
| Legacy+ mod | Targets | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Classic+ | Classic | Sunsetted in 2024, no longer supported |
| Indev+ / Minecraft Infinite | Infdev 20100630 | Renamed from Indev+ to Minecraft Infinite in mid 2026; discontinued by its creator on July 28, 2026, no further updates or bug reports accepted |
| Alpha Recrafted | Alpha | No longer developed or supported |
| Beta Recrafted | Beta | Actively developed now |
| A fifth, early-Release mod | Early Release | Announced, not yet started as of this writing |
Check the Legacy+ hub before committing to one of these, since sunsetted does not mean removed, it means the mod is stable and finished but will not gain new content.
The loader layer underneath
BTW:CE, Back2Beta, BetterBeta and Legacy+ are all content: total conversions or add-ons with one specific vision. If what you actually want is to run a mix of individual small mods on an old Minecraft version, the thing you need is a loader, and there are three of them covering different parts of the legacy range. Each community recognized the exact same naming confusion at this layer and built its own Mod Hub page to solve it, so this section sends you to those hubs rather than re-listing every mod they cover.
Legacy Fabric targets roughly 1.3 through 1.13.2, the stretch between the earliest non-Classic releases and the point where mainline Fabric picks up. Official site at legacyfabric.net, mod disambiguation hub at modwiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Legacy_Fabric_Mod_HUB.
Babric, also called Cursed Fabric, targets Beta 1.7.3 specifically, including the Better Than Adventure branch built on top of it. Mod disambiguation hub at modwiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Cursed_Fabric_Mod_HUB.
Ornithe reaches the furthest back, from the pre-Classic era up through release 1.14.4, and is the loader to reach for if you are modding something from before Beta 1.7.3 existed. Official project site at ornithemc.net, its own wiki at wiki.ornithemc.net, and a mod disambiguation hub at modwiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Ornithe_Mod_HUB.
If you are running one of the four content projects above, you generally do not need to touch these loaders yourself, BTW:CE already builds on Legacy Fabric internally, for example. Reach for a loader directly when you want a mods folder of your own choosing rather than someone else's total conversion.
Before you install anything
Confirm your exact version first. "Beta" alone is not specific enough, Back2Beta and BetterBeta both target 1.7.3 specifically and neither promises to work on a different Beta build. The version sorting guide covers why legacy version names do not compare the way you would expect, and all Minecraft versions in release order is where to check the exact name of what you are running.
Then go to that project's own wiki for install instructions. This page's job stops at telling you which one that is.
