Question about the Naga v2

I am looking at possibly purchasing the Naga V2 but given the cost I need to know if what I want to use it for will work?

I play an unhealthy amount of modded Minecraft. One of my complaints is that there are not enough ways to map keyboard keys without having multiple options mapped to the same keys. That brings me to my question.

The 12 button pad on the side of the mouse, can you use them as just additional buttons or do you have to use macros or map something from the keyboard to them?