NHC+

Beta - not all desired features are present as they are not yet available for 1.20.4

want LESS features? check out NHC

NHC server:

• voice chat. (V)
• edit armor statues without the book. (O)
• have a higher render distance than the server.
• the server's resource pack is always enabled.
• use Armor Statues and Name Formatting Station in test worlds.

immersion:

• animations for eating, climbing ladders, switching items in your hands and more!
• better clouds for all occasions. (configured for the default shaders, has presets)
• improved weather and ripples on the water surface.
• wakes and splashes when entities move through or are dropped into water.
• underwater (chest) bubbles rise to the top and pop!

OptiFine features:

• shaders. (enabled by default. feedback on shader settings appreciated. configured to be vanilla-like.)
• zoom. (C)
• better grass and smart leaves.
• dynamic lighting.
• various toggles - details, particles and more.
• animated textures.
• connected textures.
• various custom colors.
• custom GUIs.
• custom item textures. (renaming)
• custom sky.
• custom splash screen.
• emmissive blocks/entity support.
• fixes gaps (see-through lines) in item models.
• entity texture/model features. (custom entity models or CEM, random entities)

fixes:

• outlines for double blocks, like beds or doors, are connected.
• some of Minecraft's older blocks, which all use the same default sound, now use newer block sounds.
• all leaves fall.
• it stops raining when you are above the clouds.
• Z-Fighting fixes via resource pack.
• eating sounds while eating cake.
• see your hunger bar while riding a mount.
• axolotl buckets match their contents.
• chat box is raised above armor bar.
• hotbar is raised 2 pixels.
• rebind the Narrator key. (off by default)
• no chat reports.
• access GUIs while standing in a nether portal, like the chat or your inventory.
• changing language no longer reloads all textures.
• no loading screen or fade out when reloading textures.
• no loading screen when quitting the game/saving a world.
• other various client bug fixes and improvements - not all of these patches are enabled by default.

tweaks:

• player heads in the chat.
• longer chat history.
• connected textures.
• tooltip previews for shulker boxes and maps.
• durability on tooltips without F3+H.
• use mouse wheel to move items.
• your hand will restock when you use your last item.
• sort your intentory. (middle mouse button)
• easier to read Statistics screen, with search bar.
• know how many items your fuel can smelt without mathematics.
• larger advancement screen.
• zoom. (C)
• Litematica to bring your creations to the server. (M)
• easily position schematics and take screenshots with free-cam. (F4)
• less F3 screen clutter.
• potion effect timers.
• a toggleable (F6), customizable (F7) HUD to display lots of useful info. (light level, bounding boxes, "info lines", (de)spawning spheres and more!)
• when entities wearing player heads/skulls take damage, the headwear flashes red as well.

performance:

• only render things you can see.
• some block entities use baked block models instead.
• reduced memory usage.
• optimizes all immediate mode rendering.
• Sodium's rendering.
• Lithium's optimized internal game server.
• reduced FPS when you are not focusing on the client.
• improved thread scheduling.

While some mods like Litematica, Free-cam, MiniHUD or MouseWheelie arguably do not make for a "vanilla friendly experience", they are powerful tools that ease repetitive gameplay. When playing on a long-term world and working on large scale projects, they can almost feel required.

Decided not to include Tweakeroo, since it may be too powerful, instead adding a handful of it's features in the form of other mods. While it does not directly conflict with this modpack, adding it to mods folder and enabling certain tweaks may cause issues.
Most settings can be changed with Mod Menu I have simply configured things to be vanilla-like/friendly.

full credit goes to the following creators for their creations.

special thanks to Cakeman, Doomdots and RememberNovember for the server pack.

datapacks:

• Armor Statues (by mukitanuki)
• Name Formatting Station (by mukitanuki)

resource packs:

• Enhanced Ping (by AWheelingNerd)
• Señor Bumbo Cacteeni (by ShamanDorn)
• Unique Dyes (by Spleedoodles)
• Fast Better Grass (by robotkoer)
• No Z-Fighting (by StormDragn77)

some other creators of immersive resource packs. (they are not included in the modpack)

BurntToast_, Chris_XENO, creepermax123, Fresh_LX, lanite, Reijvi

shaders:

• Complementary Shaders v4.7.2 (by EminGTR)

mods:

• Allow Portal GUIs - This mod allows you to open different guis inside of a nether portal (fe. chat or the inventory), which is impossible to do in vanilla minecraft.
• AppleSkin - Food/hunger-related HUD improvements
• Animatica - A mod implementing the OptiFine/MCPatcher animated texture format
• Armor Statues Companion - A mod companion for the Armor Statues Datapack
• Axolotl Bucket Fix - Makes the axolotl bucket item show the right axolotl type.
• Better Block Sounds - Updating old blocks with new, better block sounds.
• Better Clouds - Beautiful clouds in touch with the vanilla style
• Better Mount HUD - Improves the ingame HUD while riding a mount
• Better Statistics Screen - A Minecraft mod that improves the statistics screen and makes it more useful.
• BetterF3 - BetterF3 is a mod that replaces Minecraft's original debug HUD with a highly customizable, more human-readable HUD.
• Bobby - Allows for render distances greater than the server's view-distance
• Cake Chomps - Adds sound and crumb particles when you eat cake.
• Chat Heads - See who you're chatting with!
• CIT Resewn - Re-implements MCPatcher's CIT (custom item textures from optifine resource packs)
• Continuity - A Fabric mod that allows for efficient connected textures
• Debugify - Fixes Minecraft bugs found on the bug tracker
• Durability Tooltip - Durability Tooltip shows you the durability of an item!
• Dynamic FPS - Improve performance when Minecraft is in the background.
• Eating Animation - A mod that adds sprite animations for edible and drinkable items.
• Enhanced Block Entities - Reduce FPS lag with block entities, as well as customize them with resource packs
• Entity Culling - Using async path-tracing to hide Block-/Entities that are not visible
• [EMF] Entity Model Features - EMF is an, OptiFine format, Custom Entity Model replacement mod available for Fabric and Forge.
• [ETF] Entity Texture Features - Emissive, Random & Custom texture support for entities in resourcepacks just like Optifine but for Fabric
• FabricSkyboxes - Allows resource packs to define custom skyboxes.
• Fadeless - Remove fade out animations in Minecraft (1.20+)
• Falling Leaves - Adds a neat little particle effect to leaf blocks
• FastQuit - Lets you return to the Title Screen early while your world is still saving in the background!
• FerriteCore - Memory usage optimizations
• Freecam (Fabric/Forge) - A simple, standalone freecam mod.
• FuelInfo - Extended info for your vanilla fuel needs!
• Head in the Clouds - Make it not rain over the cloud level
• ImmediatelyFast - Speed up immediate mode rendering in Minecraft
• Iris Shaders - A modern shaders mod for Minecraft intended to be compatible with existing OptiFine shader packs
• lazy-language-loader - lazy-language-loader improves loading times when changing your language by only reloading the language instead of all the game resources!
• LambDynamicLights - A dynamic lights mod for Fabric.
• Litematica - A modern schematic mod written for Fabric (and LiteLoader on 1.12.x), with extra features for Creative mode work
• Lithium - No-compromises game logic/server optimization mod
• Main Menu Credits - Adds a way of adding information to the user's title screen.
• Make Bubbles Pop - Client-side mod that makes bubble particles pop and lets them rise realistically to the water surface.
• Map Tooltip - View maps from your inventory
• MiniHUD - A "mini F3" HUD mod, with light level, spawn & slime chunk overlays etc.
• Model Gap Fix - Fixes gaps in Block Models and Item Models
• ModernFix - All-in-one mod that improves performance, reduces memory usage, and fixes many bugs. Compatible with all your favorite performance mods!
• More Chat History - Increases the maximum length of chat history.
• More Culling - A mod that changes how multiple types of culling are handled in order to improve performance
• Mouse Wheelie - A "small" clientside mod featuring item scrolling, inventory sorting, item refilling and more!
• No Chat Reports - Makes chat unreportable (where possible)
• Not Enough Animations - Bringing first-person animations to the third-person
• Open Loader - An open source resource and data loader for Minecraft.
• OptiGUI - Custom inventory GUIs on Fabric&Quilt with OptiFine resource pack support&many more features
• Paginated Advancements & Custom Frames - Better advancements screen
• Particle Rain - Replaces rain with particle effects
• Polymer - Library for creating better server side content!
• Polytone - Customize Map Color, Block Colors, Colormaps and Block Sounds, Biome Colors, Dye Colors. Supports Optifine format. For Resource Packs
• Puzzle - Adds resourcepack features and a GUI to more conveniently configure OptiFine alternatives.
• Raised - Raises the hotbar so the selector is not cut off!
• Rebind Narrator - it's 2021 and you can't change the narrator key UPDATE: it's 2022 and you still can't change the narrator key UPDATE: it's 2023 and you still can't change the narrator key
• Reese's Sodium Options - Alternative Options Menu for Sodium
• Remove Reloading Screen - Makes resource packs load in the background, allowing you to do other things while waiting!
• Seamless - Connected outlines for Double Blocks like Beds and Doors!
• Shulker Box Tooltip - View the contents of shulker boxes from your inventory
• Simple Voice Chat - A working voice chat in Minecraft!
• Sodium - A modern rendering engine for Minecraft which greatly improves performance
• Sodium Extra - Features that shouldn't be in Sodium.
• Sodium Shadowy Path Blocks - Reintroduces vanilla-like smooth lighting to non-full blocks (e.g. dirt paths and how they have dark shading when directly next to a full block) when using Sodium.
• Status Effect Bars - Adds customizable bars to the status effects overlay to show the remaining duration of effects.
• ThreadTweak - Improve and tweak Minecraft thread scheduling. Fork of Smooth Boot for ≥1.20
• Visuality - Little visual improvements by adding a bunch of new particles.
• Wakes - Adds splashes and wakes while traveling on water
• Your Options Shall Be Respected (YOSBR) - Your options shall be respected.
• Zoomify - A zoom mod with infinite customizability.
• oωo (owo-lib) - A general utility, GUI and config library for modding on Fabric and Quilt
• Architectury API - An intermediary api aimed to ease developing multiplatform mods.
• Cloth Config API - Configuration Library for Minecraft Mods
• Fabric API - Lightweight and modular API providing common hooks and intercompatibility measures utilized by mods using the Fabric toolchain.
• Fabric Language Kotlin - This is a mod that enables usage of the Kotlin programming language for Fabric mods.
• FabricSkyBoxes Interop - FabricSkyBoxes Interoperability for MCPatcher/OptiFine Skies
• Indium - Sodium addon providing support for the Fabric Rendering API, based on Indigo
• MaLiLib - A library mod required for masa's client-side mods
• Mod Menu - Adds a mod menu to view the list of mods you have installed.
• SuperMartijn642's Config Lib - Config Lib makes dealing with config files just a bit easier.
• YetAnotherConfigLib - A builder-based configuration library for Minecraft.