Welcome to /mcg/

You're here because for some odd reason you're the type of guy who reads the sticky instead of lurking; or maybe you're the kind of faggot who doesn't lurk but posts something retarded that lurking/reading this would fix and you got this spammed at you for it.

This is an older, forgetten version of the mod FAQ and may be outdated, though still pretty relevant to 1.7.

Welcome to /mcg/

General Intro

Since you should already know at least something about minecraft, and what it is due to its spread, there's not much worth in talking about it. The purpose of this is to be succinct.
Autistic voxel building game with big modding community.
Something to note is that the acquisition of minecraft by microsoft has not actually changed anything about the main game (java pc version), as no one cares about consoles, mobile, or win10.
/mcg/ is essentially only focused on the modding bit now.

Why is Vanilla (Current) Shit

Vanilla, at least in beta 1.7.3, was a good solid sandbox.
Many faggots feel like beta 1.8 was the beginning of the end, the adding of hunger was a survival game mechanic in a game that wasn't really a survival game at the time.
It's also half assed, and just kind of annoying.

From there, things varied between worse and better, but after the formation of mojang most people agree the game's development took a downturn.
The massive faggot Notch who probably smells was a /v/irgin and didn't know much about hiring people, Mojang is staffed by the community members who kissed up the best.
Needless to say this has not gone well; mostly because they're all retarded, and every one of them has a different vision of the game leading to a total mess of features.
So people play with mods, because modders are usually one person so the chance of them screwing up their ideas isn't as high, and unlike the community groups notch drew from modders are slightly more skilled, so their shit tends to be better.

Why 1.7.10 is Preferred

1.7.10 is what /mcg/ considers to be the best modding platform.
It's got an assload more mods (and the mods it has are bigger too) due to the massive timegap between the release of 1.7.10 and when 1.8.9 became moddable.
Most people also hate the "combat" update because it made something already considered annoying worse instead of improving it, which modders have done.
In addition post 1.7.10 have serious performance issues when modded, due to forge for those versions being unoptimized because the current faggot in charge is lazy.

Essentially just all around better, so versions past that are usually called meme versions. But they are secretly better, we’re just to autistic to play better versions because muh mods. 1.5 is superior

How to Optimize Minecraft

In 1.7, install FastCraft and never look back.

For meme versions, read this:

Massive memory consumption is improved by FoamFix, it's not at 1.7.10 levels yet but it's closer to them than meme versions modded alone at this point. Generally, 4GB of RAM in your computer should be enough to run anything but kitchen sinks with FoamFix. 6GB should run any modpack.
Heightened CPU/GPU resource consumption is also a problem. This also affects 1.7, but everyone uses FastCraft so nobody can tell. FoamFix helps a little bit, but not to any truly groundbreaking degree. A major way to improve this on certain (most?) configurations is to disable mipmapping. You can turn off terrain animation (instead? I believe either of the two should have a similar FPS-improving effect, if I identified the issue correctly)

BetterFPS can also optimize certain aspects of the game. Most notably, it will optimize the math routines in Minecraft to rely on CPU-based approximation over large lookup tables - this can bump performance very high on machines with low amounts of CPU cache, but may even slightly decrease FPS on machines with a lot of CPU cache. Your mileage may vary, make sure to test with both. (OptiFine's "Fast Math" does the same thing, but BetterFPS in meme versions also has a few additional optimizations for some specific functionality in the engine.)

Finally, if you don't mind the odd rendering glitch/Z-fighting and/or want finer control over the rendering/shaders/better resource pack functionality, install OptiFine. Modders might tell you they don't like it, but that's mostly because (a) the developer never gave anyone redistribution rights and (b) it's a massive pain to debug an issue in a mod that happens with OptiFine only so they hate getting bug reports for it as they can usually do little about them. It doesn't cause as many issues as rumored. Read the "HOW TO OPTIFINE" section for further details.

I DON'T WANT TO GIVE MICROSOFT $25 DOLLARS, HOW DO I PIRATE

Fair enough, they're cunts; however, pirating minecraft is not worth the effort.
Because of its popularity, the vast majority of downloads will be compromised.
Your best bet is looking for, or making (https://github.com/MultiMC/MultiMC5/blob/develop/api/logic/minecraft/auth/flows/AuthenticateTask.cpp this is what you'd have to rewrite) , a fork of the multimc launcher, as the game itself doesn't actually DRM on it, only the launcher does. If you do manage to find or make a good fork please share it, in the spirit of things.
Or just install Minetest and support an alternative to Microsoft if you really hate them that much. However, I know you don't and that this is probably an excuse.

WHAT LAUNCHER YOU SHOULD BE USING AND WHY MULTIMC IS IT

MultiMC is very full featured open source launcher, it makes managing modded minecraft instances easy as piss.
The vanilla launcher is really trash for modding in general, and the twitch one is cumbersome bloatware. Sure it "just works" but it doesn't have the features you need to properly control your shit.
It features links to all relavent folders, easy management of mods, instance importing (on the beta/development branch as of 10/1/17, this works on the .zips you download from curse, so you don't need the twitch launcher to install curse modpacks) and exporting, savefile management, texturepack management, a way to pastebin crashlogs with a since button, and more.
It's like Mod organizer (the original, not 2) but for minecraft

WHY YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR OWN MODPACK, GENERAL MODPACK DESIGN, WHY FTB ARE NIGGERS, AND HOW TO DOWNLOAD TWITCH PACKS WITH MULTIMC

Making your own modpack rather than downloading one is important. And it really isn't that hard.
Controlling your own configs is a great way to learn about the game's inner workings, and you can also control your own experience.
Use wordpad or notepad++ to edit your configs, unless you have a better option.

Most premade modpacks tend to be kitchen sinks and have all the same popular mods that people all know d have played with, and only try to offer a unique experience by occassionally shifting things up.
This is bad modpack design, it'll cause you to burn out quickly, and a billion different things that all do the same thing is just not good for you or the game.
You have to learn to sacrifice a unique feature of a mod that is the only thing you use from that mod because the rest of it does the exact same thing as another mod you prefer.
Theming your pack is a great way to create a good one, don't include mods that don't fit with what you're going with unless they're critical to making something not shit.
It's good for you and your experience.

If you do decide to use a premade, avoid ftb.
They're incompetent, I can recall one anon who made a pack with the exact same mods as a ftb pack but with configs he made instead, and he had an inexplicable (and rather large) fps gain.
Any other premade modpack assembler would be preferable, even just some random nobody who made a pack for the twitch launcher.

If you want to download a twitch launcher pack without using their cancer launcher (they are just a host after all, there's probably some good shit on there), just switch to the beta branch of multimc (unless it's gone live now), download the .zip for the modpack off of curse, and make a new instance in multimc importing from the .zip

How to Optifine

Modmakers and modpack makers will generally tell you optifine is the devil.
This isn't true, the reason why they say that is because it is a coremod, and changes a lot of shit. As a result it makes crashlogs harder to read for them, so they just say "it bad"
They can get away with this because optifine is complicated as fuck, and needs config work to figure out a good setup for your system, it doesn't just work out of the box.

Some general pointers for most systems are:

everything in the performance tab should be turned off, everything there is mostly for single core cpus - SOME SETTINGS ARE ON BY DEFAULT CHECK TO MAKE SURE -
- Chunk updates default setting so far has not caused me any problems so I've not messed with it.
do not use multicore chunk loading, it causes GUI flickering and other bugs (in 1.7, it can even cause crashes - can be reproduced quickly with BuildCraft pipes and Tinker's Construct smelteries; however, this should not be an issue on 1.9+ as Mojang themselves do multicore chunk rendering there).

When you hover over an option in the video settings menu optifine gives you, it tells you things. The rule of thumb is do not use anything that sounds like it enables system based stuff, it causes problems.

Mods

MANDATORY MODS

optifine
fastcraft (1.7.10)
COFHcore
NotEnoughItems and codechickencore (1.7.10 - becomes JEI addon for more features instead of standalone mod post 1.7.10)
JustEnoughItems (1.8+)

BAD MODS (performance/bugs/whatever, not opinions)

JABBA (adds 5 minutes to startup, unconfirmed rumors of world corruption) Use storage drawers instead, better and more utility features.
Anything by reika. Aside from being a massive faggot, his mod's central library changes way too much in hacky ways for idiotic reasons like wanting things to render in the inventory in 3D, and the mods themselves tend to be laggy. (not too familiar with his shit to offer alternatives)

SOME RECOMMENDED SHIT (UNFINISHED)

tech mods
magic mods
- the list of thaumcraft addons and links to forks/patches (mostly forkanon's stuff but hobo has done some too)
qolshit
worldgen/exploration

I WANT X WUT MODS I GET (UNFINISHED)

description goes here

dramashit (UNFINISHED)

i.e. why curse/twitch/forge/mojang/ftb are faggots (this will always stay at the end, maybe even on a seperate thing if at all. It is important that people have the option to learn about it but it's not necessary for them to learn, as there's plenty of good reasons to avoid them without getting into drama [botnet, not as configgable, retards, etc.)

Old FAQ, kind of a clusterfuck but still has some sort of useful stuff as of now

/mcg/'s Modding FAQ

( aimed at 1.7 and prior versions )
This is where, like, uh, we answers commonly asked questions for modding Minecraft, such as how to set up modded clients with Forge, what launcher to use because the vanilla launcher blows, and whatever other bullshit that might be helpful like recommended mods and tweaks.

Q: Why play Minecraft?

A: Because it's the only good sandbox game that allows making your own shit with mods that give tech and magic

/ Modding and Lawnchairs /

Q: How do I install mods?

A: With a properly set up launcher its drag-and-drop. Alternatively, see the Q below.

Q: Do I still need to modify the Minecraft .JAR?

A: No.

Q: Where do I start when modding Minecraft?

Modding for the inexperienced is best done through a downloadable Modpack, or a group of mods that have been packaged together and made easily accessible. The most common place to start is the Feed the Beast launcher, as it contains several different mod packs, allowing you to try different genres of mods all in the same place. Feed the beast is found here: http://www.feed-the-beast.com/
Technic and ATLauncher are other options for getting pre-built packs. All three have generally good packs of varying size, performance and themes.
If you want to create your own modpacks, or want a launcher that is more stand-alone, then you should use multi MC

Q: What the fuck is Multi MC and why is it GOAT

Multi MC can create its own instances and monitor FTB ones in via its configs.
You can group instances of clients–modded or vanilla. it supports back to something like beta versions of MC and allows you to install Forge directly in through managing an instance instead of having to install it into the vanilla launcher and fuss with it.
Java arguments, ie RAM settings, can be modified per-instance in its super simple interface
tl;dr It's great go get it and flip through its settings. it also has a cat in its background.
Note: On some Linux distros it doesn't play well with Mojang's broken SSL servers

Q: My computer is a toaster how do I make the game work?

Install Fast Craft for 1.7.10. For 1.6.4 and below, install OptiFine.
If your CPU has low amounts of L2 cache, FPSPlus/BetterFPS will do wonders.
Immibis's guide to running Infinity Evolved with less than 2GB of RAM used total: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/guide-how-to-run-infinity-evolved-with-1-0gb-ram-allocation.149222/
Terrain generation mods will probably cause slowdowns, except that some of the ones which override generation completely actually speed it up by being coded better than Mojang's. Remember - experiment!

/ Mods /

Q: What is the best version for modded Minecraft?

A: The one which has your favourite mods! Other than that, 1.10.2 has the most content, but some of the most memorable Minecraft experiences happened in the 1.8-1.9 era. 1.11.2 is slowly coming up, but it will take a few months before it will be worth considering for modpacks.

Q: How do all these mods work? Please don't tell me it's harder than vanilla.

A: No, not really. Look into in-game books for the mods which have them (that is, the good ones) and wikis for the ones who don't (that is, the less good ones).

Q: Too many keybindings.

A: That's… not a question.

Scroll to the bottom with all the 'key_<whatever>' entries. Set them all to 0 and reset your keybindings manually ingame. This way, things you never use are unbound and things you DO use will be bound to the keys you want instead of having nine keys trying to use 'B'.
NotEnoughItems maintains its own keybinds config because ChickenBones so you'll have to remap the useless keys to like, F7 while ingame.
In 1.9+, you can use modifiers (Ctrl, Alt, etc.) for keybindings.~ This might make it a bit easier for the keys you use once a century.

Q: Which mods cause problems?

Decocraft is bad on RAM as it loads all its models and they stay loaded, which chews up memory. (500-600MB)
If you use Galacticraft and Buildcraft, the two oil types are probably generating everywhere, and you'll be aggravated pleased to hear that GC oil is not actually interchangeable with BC oil in the BC refinery - this is because the devs seem to be unable to properly cooperate on API decisions. You could make a Minetweaker script to make it usable in the Refinery, oun's Hr just turn GC oilgen to 0. Note that BC's fuel works in rockets just fine, so you don't even need GC oil.
iChun's Hat's mod, on top of being a literal meme, gobbles memory for reasons to keep its hats readily accessible to murder your eyes, though not as badly as Decocraft.
Reika's DragonAPI overrides ItemBlock handling for some of Reika's features in a way which breaks any world saved with DragonAPI unless DragonAPI is present. Be careful.
Streams, while aesthetically beautiful (very much so), pre-generates every chunk a river is on if at least one of the chunks a river is on is generated. This takes ages.

Q: What mod adds fireworks to achievements I just shat myself after opening my inventory

A: EnderCore. Check for a BetterAchievements line, set that to false.

A: bspkrsCore.cfg, showMainMenuMobs

Q: What is this channel bullshit in Applied Energistics

A: Turn off channels in the config, problem solved. But do give it a try, please.

/ Shooting Trouble /

If you're using Optifine, stop, and try doing whatever you are doing again. If removing Optifine solved the problem, Optifine was the issue. You can try mitigating it by disabling hardware/system dependent options like Fast Render or multi-core chunk loading. Otherwise, ask in the thread.
Sometimes, broken ISBRH/TESR code will change the GL state for all things rendering after it, causing the strangest glitches you've ever seen. The former is fixed in 1.8 because the move to lists of quads also happens to make it impossible to break the state, but the latter may be an issue forever (unless Mojang makes the GlStateManager useful?)

Q: HELP IT CRASHED WHAT DO

A: Post in the thread with a little blurb about what you were doing at the time and post the crash report on pastebin or something, link that in your post. Some anon will probably try to help.