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All of our projects and content is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3.0.


Getting started with Minecraft Modding

In order to start modding Minecraft, you will have to choose a mod loader.

There are various mod loaders to choose from such as:

NeoForge Fabric Quilt Forge

Some of these loaders benefit more than others in certain scenarios but for the most part the two main loaders have historically been Fabric and Forge.


What mod loader should I use?

Fabric / Quilt

Fabric is very lightweight and useful if you are struggling for performance. If you have a low-end computer Fabric doesn't use a lot of resources which makes it easy to run on some older or less equipped devices. There are popular mods such as Sodium which improves performance on low-equipped devices. This popular mod is only available on the Fabric, NeoForge, and Quilt loaders and cannot be used by Forge.

Quilt is a fork of Fabric and it is a work in progress attempting to make it an easier mod loader for developers to make their mods on. Some developers are slowly adopting Quilt but as of writing this, Quilt is not mass adopted and we would still recommend using Fabric, but we will be keeping a close eye on the project.

If you are more of a Vanilla+ player or will not have heavy modpacks I would recommend Fabric.


NeoForge / Forge

For various reasons (explained here) nearly the entire dev team of Minecraft Forge separated from the owner LexManos and the original Forge project due to conflicts and established NeoForge. NeoForge is the successor to Minecraft Forge and more mod developers are starting to support it as well as continuing support for Minecraft Forge.

NeoForge and Forge are more meant for bigger mods/modpacks and are less constrained when it comes to performance. Expect bigger bulkier modpacks to be NeoForge/Forge only but the catch is you will need the hardware to support it.


Our personal favorite at Blueberry Tech is the Fabric loader mostly because of the performance gain and also the widespread mod support.


Installation

Installing Java

Before we go installing mod loaders and mods we need to make sure we have the basics covered.

Minecraft is a game that was written in the programming language Java this means that naturally the game supports Java mods. You have to make sure you have Java installed on your machine before anything happens.

All recent versions of Minecraft come packaged with the correct version of Java, but you may find that you need to install Java separately.

  1. Minecraft Version < 1.17 requires Java 8
  2. Minecraft Version 1.17-1.17.1 requires Java 16
  3. Minecraft Version 1.18-1.20.5 requires Java 17
  4. Minecraft Version > 1.20.5 requires Java 21

Installing the mod loader

Once you have Java installed and have chosen the mod loader of your choice you will have to install that on your computer before you begin installing individual mods. For this guide we will be installing the Fabric mod loader.

  1. Close all instances of Minecraft that are open on your computer.
  2. Download and run the loader file, in this case we will be downloading the Fabric installer which comes in a .jar file. You can download that from here if you haven't already.
  3. Once you run the file, you will pick the version of Minecraft you want to install it for then click install at the bottom.
  4. Note: When you run the installer make sure you install the client version

  5. Now you can launch the Minecraft Launcher and you will notice a new profile that says Fabric Loader with the version you installed. If this profile is there then you can move onto the next step.
  6. Note: In order to add mods to your game you have to make sure that the mod you downloaded is compatible with the Minecraft version you installed the mod loader for. As an example, if you installed the 1.17.1 version of Fabric, but are trying to use a mod for 1.20.2 you will run into incompatibility issues.

  7. Next we will be adding a mod to our game, different operating systems have different install locations of the .minecraft folder so I will list all of them.

    Windows

    • To easily access this folder you can press WIN + R and the 'run' box will appear, you can enter %appdata% in this box and it will bring you to the AppData folder on your computer. You will then see the .minecraft folder. If not then you will have to enable hidden files and folders. When you're in File Explorer you can navigate to the bar at the top where the 3 dots are and select Options. Click the View tab and toggle 'Show hidden files, folders, and drives' to yes.

    MacOS

    • You can use spotlight to easily find the Minecraft folder. Please press SHIFT + Space to start a spotlight search and paste this path in it to open the folder. ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft

    • If you cannot see the folder because it is hidden you can press Command + Shift + . to enable hidden files and folders.

    Linux

    • ~/.minecraft
    • or

    • /home/{user}/.minecraft

  8. Now that we have installed our mod loader correctly and have identified our mod folder, why don't we install a mod! For this example I will be installing a very popular performance mod for Minecraft called Sodium.
  9. Sodium can be installed here, they are also available to download from CurseForge. When you download the file make sure you make sure you are installing based on the correct mod loader and version. I enjoy using Modrinth because they make it very easy to filter and identify which you are installing for!
  10. In our case we installed a Fabric version to 1.21.4 so we will be installing the Fabric 1.21.4 version of Sodium. Once this finishes installing please place it in your mod folder directory located in step 5.
  11. Once you place it into the mods folder, you can start Minecraft and make sure you click play on the Fabric profile and you will load in with the Fabric Mod loader and the Sodium mod! You can replicate steps 6-8 for any other mod you may find but beware on the mod loader and versions. There are also some mods that have incompatibility with other mods please read the mod description to identify any of these issues.
  12. If you have anymore questions or find a mistake with this guide, please email us at [email protected]

Thank you for reading! Good luck modding! ~ Riley

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