Astral Wiki

Installing Mods

Welcome to this guide on how to install mods for Minecraft. This will go over two very different launchers. Prism and Modrinth. I would advise against using CurseForge, and thus, I will not be going over the installation method for this launcher. I will go over why this launcher is not recommended in a future segment.

Why Use a Third Party Launcher?

While the default launcher works perfectly fine, getting mods running on it can be a bit tricky. This is mainly because of how the launcher works. Third party launchers like Prism, Modrinth, and yes, even Cursefroge separate the different “profile” from another one. The default launcher doesn’t do this, which creates issues when you want to play multiple modded versions of the game.

Which Launcher?

There are two main launchers to choose from, Prism Launcher and Modrinth. Both of these can do the same thing, it just depends on which one you want to use.

Prism Launcher

Before I get started, I would urge you to go and read the wiki for this launcher, as it has everything that I will be providing here.

Installation & Setup

This guide will reference the Prism Launcher Wiki

  1. Go to the prism launcher website and click download, for whichever operating system you’re using.
  2. Install Java, I would suggest following this guide on the Wiki.
  3. After you have installed Java, run the installer for Prism Launcher or open it if you have already done this.
  4. Once you select your language, it should auto detect your installed Java version(s).
  5. Once you are finished with the setup, click the account button on the top right of the application and click “manage accounts” then click “add microsoft” and go through that set up.

Now that you have Prism Launcher and your account set up, it’s time to create an Instance.

  1. Click “Add Instance”
  2. If you want to grab an already created modpack published on Modrinth or CurseForge, select those two on the side, and find which pack you want to install. I would suggest “Fabulously Optimized” if you’re looking for a modpack for optimizing the game.
  3. If you wish to create an instance with whichever mods you want, then select the game version of your choice. At the time of writing the current version is 1.21.8. Once that’s selected, on the lower right side of the menu, click on Fabric, this is a mod loader. Then click the version with the star next to it. Then click “ok”
  4. Run the newly created instance
  5. If you want to add mods into the instance, right click it and click “edit” then click “Mods”
  6. click “Download Mods” to bring up a menu that shows a list of mods you can install.

Some mods require a dependency. the main mod that fabric requires is called Fabric API. One of the biggest performance mods is called Sodium, and the mod that adds support for shaders is called Iris.

Modrinth

Modrinth is a launcher similar to CurseForge. You can download mod and modpacks from Modrinth. This launcher is much more simple then Prism, but can lack in the easy installation of modpacks from CurseForge.

Installation & Setup

  1. Go to the Modrinth App download page
  2. click the download button and install it to your system
  3. on the top right of the application where it says “playing as” click the “not signed in” button and near that should be a button to click to log in
  4. On the left side of the screen, there should be some buttons. If you want to download a modpack from Modrinth click on the “discover content” button. If you want to create your own instance, click the “create new instance” button.
  5. If you downloaded a pre made modpack, it should appear on the left sidebar or in the library. If you decided to create your own instance it will be in the same area. if you want to add mods to it click on the “install content button”

After setting up the modpack of your choice or creating your own, you could be ready to click play

Note that this launcher does have ads, but from my understanding its to support mod developers.

Why shouldn’t you use CurseForge?

The short answer is that it is bloated as it serves as a modding platform for other games. which makes it a bit heavier to run. when running an instance it will open the regular Minecraft launcher which adds another step into the process of actually just running the game. For a more technical reason, it doesn’t allow you to set individual java arguments, which can make playing multiple modpacks at a time a bit of a pain as you should be changing how many gigabytes of ram a modpack should be using.

It has ads, not sure if I really need to say anything more haha