Horse Buff — Guide

The horse stays where you leave it

A saddled horse in vanilla wanders. Dismount to mine a vein or fight something off, and by the time you turn around it has drifted several blocks away - or far enough that you cannot see it at all.

Horse Buff stops that: a horse wearing a saddle holds its position until you mount it again. Unsaddled horses still graze and wander as normal, so wild herds behave the way they always did.

Water and rafts

Horses swim. Ride into deep water and the horse stays at the surface and keeps moving instead of sinking under you, so a river is something you cross rather than something you go around.

A horse can also stand on a raft. Vanilla refuses this outright - it treats a horse as too large a passenger for any boat - so getting a mount across a large body of water normally means leaving it behind. Here the horse simply steps on and rides along.

Seeing past the armour

Barding is useful and also enormous. A horse in full diamond armour fills a good part of the screen directly in front of you, and the head sits right where you want to be looking.

While you are riding, your own mount's armour is drawn see-through. The armour still works and still protects the horse; it is only the drawing that changes, and only for the rider. Anyone else nearby sees a normally armoured horse, and it becomes solid again the moment you dismount.

The same treatment covers a llama's carpet and a horse's coat markings, so those do not obscure the view either. There is also a setting to nudge the head angle down a little if the neck still sits higher on screen than you would like.

Your inventory while mounted

Opening your inventory while riding gives you the horse's inventory, which is not usually what you wanted. Horse Buff adds a keybind that opens your own inventory instead, without dismounting.

The binding is set in the usual controls screen and starts on Left Alt. The normal inventory key still reaches the horse, so both are available.

No more bucking

A tamed horse still rears up from time to time, which throws your aim off and interrupts whatever you were doing. While you are the one riding it, that is switched off.

The practical effect is that fighting and jumping from horseback become predictable. You keep the crosshair where you put it.