How to Thaumcraft 1.7.10 using ATLauncher

Here’s an alternative to using the Minecraft launcher to get modded Minecraft going.

  1. Download the ATLauncher. You’ll want to choose the version corresponding to your operating system.
  2. Make a new folder and move your downloaded ATLauncher.exe file there before you run it. You may also want to make a shortcut to this folder for easy access later on.
  3. ATLauncher should set itself up automatically.
  4. To get ATLauncher to download Minecraft into an instance (this is what the Minecraft launcher calls a profile) you’ll need to add your Mojang account. If you’re not prompted for these, then choose the Accounts tab on the right-hand side of the launcher and then enter your details. You have the option of having the launcher remember your password each time or not.
  5. If it isn’t already selected, choose your account from the drop-down at the bottom – it may currently say ‘Select an Account.’
  6. Choose the Packs tab on the right-hand side of the launcher. There are a lot, so you may have to scroll through quite a few.
  7. Scroll down until you find the Vanilla Minecraft pack, and click New Instance. You’ll now be prompted for an Instance Name and a version of Minecraft to install. So for example, you could enter ‘Thaumcraft on 1.7.10’ and pick Minecraft version 1.7.10 if that’s the combination you want to go for.
  8. Click Install. You’ll now be prompted to install some mods – Forge and Optifine. For this example, I’m going to pick Forge (Recommended) to play Thaumcraft. Optifine may work for you, or it may not. You can always come back and create another instance to try that out! 🙂
  9. The requested resources will now be downloaded and your instance should be created momentarily.
  10. Now choose the Instances tab and look for the instance with the name you picked. It will read Instance Name (Vanilla Minecraft 1.7.10) and have a picture of vanilla-looking trees.
  11. There are nine buttons for the instance.
    1. You can hit Play if you have all the mods you need for now, or to just test it out!
    2. There’s a Reinstall button if you want to re-install this particular instance – we just did that, let’s not.
    3. Update will let you update Minecraft to the latest version – again, since we want to stick to a particular version of Minecraft and Forge, let’s not.
    4. You can rename the Instance if you made a mistake or want to change the name to reflect what you use it for.
    5. You can make a Backup of the instance which you can later restore.
    6. You can Clone the instance, useful if you are planning to add a mod to the mix but you don’t want to use that mod with the saved games or servers on the original instance.
    7. You can Delete the instance. You will be prompted to confirm whether you want to do this.
    8. You can Edit Mods to change the modlist for this instance.
    9. You can also click Open Folder to open the folder for this instance.
  12. Well, the first problem is that the recommended version of Forge has not been installed by ATLauncher, it has instead installed a version which is months out of date. Click on Open Folder and you’ll find yourself in the folder for your instance. Now open the folder jarmods. Delete the forge-1.7.10-10.13.2.1291-universal.jar file you’ll find there.
  13. Now go and download a replacement for that file which is up to date. Enter files.minecraftforge.net in your browser.
  14. As of this post, there are versions of Forge for 1.8, 1.7 and all the way back to 1.1, but let’s get one for 1.7.10 – click on 1.7 and when you see 1.7.10 show in the menu under that, click that.
  15. This takes you to files.minecraftforge.net/maven/net/minecraftforge/forge/index_1.7.10.html and there you will see two boxes under the menu of versions. One will say Download Latest and the other will say Download Recommended. Unless you’re planning on trying out a mod which depends on a very new version of Forge, or you need a particular version to fix problems with your mods, you want to stick to the Recommended version.
  16. Under where it says Download Recommended, click Universal. Save this file to your Downloads folder and then copy it over to the instance folder inside jarmods.
  17. Now, you need to copy the name of that file, so click to highlight it and then click again to highlight the filename and press Ctrl-C (your operating system may vary) to copy it.
  18. Go back up one folder and you should see a file named instances.json. Right-click and select Open. You will be prompted to choose how to open it. You want to click the radio button which says Select a program from a list of installed programs (again, your operating system may vary). Select any text editor, Notepad is fine for this task.
  19. There’s a lot of JSON-formatted data in here, it helps ATLauncher to download and install libraries, or check for already installed libraries. The entry for Forge will be at the bottom. Change both the Forge version – it will currently read 10.13.2.1291 – and the filename, by pasting in the filename you copied earlier.
  20. Close and save instance.json.
  21. You should have no problems hitting Play to test out your installation of Forge, but it will probably prompt you to update to the latest version of Minecraft. Click No or Never ask again for this version.
  22. Now for the mods. To download Thaumcraft 4 for example, I visit the download page at www.curse.com/mc-mods/minecraft/223628-thaumcraft and click Download Now.
  23. If your Minecraft server host has made a private modpack (this is a pack of mods which work for that server and a particular version of Forge) you can download from the location they give you instead. You will need extract zipped files from a zipped modpack.
  24. To use these mods with the AT instance you’ve made, you have two choices. Just drop the mod files in the mods folder by clicking Open Folder in ATLauncher, or click Edit Mods to seek out mod files to add to the folder – there is an Add Mods button there which will bring up a file browser.
  25. If you chose to add files using Edit Mods and Add Mods then these mods will be disabled by default! Check the mods you want to use on the right-hand side of the Edit Mods window and click Enable Mod at the bottom. Now all your desired mods should be enabled.
  26. Dragged and dropped files do not show up in Edit Files, and are always loaded.
  27. You shouldn’t need to extract any jar files (these are the files with the Java icon) to get mods to work.
  28. Now click the Play button on the ATLauncher.
  29. If all goes well, you will see the Mojang splash but there will be some more loading going on, with a visual indication of what is going on. Then you will arrive at the Minecraft main menu! In the bottom left you should see the version of Minecraft you are using, the MCP version, and the Forge version, and the number of mods which are currently loaded. For this example I’ve chosen just Thaumcraft so this is 5.
  30. You can now either create a new single-player world for Thaumcraft 4, or connect to a server which runs it (your server’s host will tell you the IP address of the server).
  31. To connect to a new server, click Multiplayer and then Add Server. Enter (you can copy-paste) the IP address under where it says Server Address and then click Done. You should now be able to connect!