I’ve personally been playing Minecraft for a very long time, and for the past 4 years I don’t think I’ve played fully vanilla Minecraft (no mod loaders, no modifications) since. In fact, I don’t plan to either.
Here is a list of mods which I use every single time I play Minecraft, a short explanation on what they do, and an image to show what it does (if applicable).
All of these mods barely modify the actual gameplay of Minecraft, keeping it as vanilla as possible. They’re either optimisation mods or quality of life mods which make it seem like Mojang actually puts effort into Minecraft by making it a polished, full-fledged game.
Remember to read how to install mods using Prism Launcher first!