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:
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.
-
Minecraft Version < 1.17 requires
Java 8
-
Minecraft Version 1.17-1.17.1 requires
Java 16
-
Minecraft Version 1.18-1.20.5 requires
Java 17
-
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.
-
Close all instances of Minecraft that are open on your computer.
-
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.
-
Once you run the file, you will pick the version of Minecraft
you want to install it for then click install at the bottom.
Note: When you run the installer make sure you
install the client version
-
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.
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
Return to Home