Getting Started

This page takes you from the main menu to your first night in Nytheria. It is for new players who have already installed the pack (see Installation). It covers the world type, the keys you need, the journal, the helper mods and the habits that save your items. The detailed first-night plan is on Your First Days. <!-- src: M §1; IA §1 page list -->

Before you start#

You need the pack installed with 10 GB of memory set (8 GB is the minimum). Shaders are off by default, so the first view looks like normal Minecraft until you press K. <!-- src: M §4.3, §4.2 -->

Read this first, because it prevents most early mistakes:

• The quest book gates its chapters. The first quest is Find Me in the chapter One Leaf. <!-- src: Q §1.5, §2.1; IA §8 #11 -->
• L opens the journal, not the plain FTB Quests book. <!-- src: CQ §1.6; IA §8 #10 -->
• Several actions share one key. Hold the key to see a wheel; tap it to repeat your last pick. <!-- src: CQ §1.2 -->

Create your world#

New worlds use the BetterX world type, which the pack forces on the world-creation screen. The default difficulty is Normal. <!-- src: W Key facts, §1.3 Overworld (force_default_world_preset); M Re-confirmed unchanged (difficulty normal); CQ §1.1 (defaults.json difficulty normal) -->

The Overworld itself is not generated by BetterX. Its biomes come from Terralith and Oh The Biomes We've Gone, which the pack injects into the vanilla terrain generator. The Nether and the End are generated by the BetterX generators from WorldWeaver: Remastered and BCLib: Remastered. <!-- src: W §1.3 Overworld, Nether, End; IA §8 #3 -->

The world has nine dimensions in eight realms. You start in the Overworld, and the other dimensions have their own portals; Dimensions lists them all. The book does not lock the dimensions themselves. <!-- src: W §1.1; Q §7 side points -->

Learn the keys that matter#

Nytheria ships its own key layout through Polybind. A fresh install gets the pack's keys; if you change a key yourself, a later pack update does not overwrite it. <!-- src: CQ §1.1 -->

How the wheel works: press the key and hold it for a moment (about 0.18 seconds) and a circle of actions opens. Move to one and let go. A quick tap repeats the last action you picked on that key. <!-- src: CQ §1.2 (holdThresholdMs 180, tap repeats last) -->

Chat is T. You type the slash yourself, because the pack does not bind chat-with-slash. <!-- src: CQ Changed (Advancements and chat-command keys unbound) -->

The full list is on Controls. <!-- src: IA §1 -->

Open the journal#

Press L or use the journal tab on the survival inventory. Before you have found the journal, the screen shows only the torn leaf. After that it has four sections, which you open with the keys 1 to 4: The road so far, Her pages, Purse and wares, and Fires and titans. <!-- src: CQ §1.6; Q §6 journal screen -->

The first quest is Find Me in One Leaf. The prologue is played on your first night: you light a campfire after dark with the torn leaf in your inventory, and the fire answers with a direction and a number of paces. Follow it to the fallen spruce and open the chest under it, where the journal is. <!-- src: Q §2.1 One Leaf, §6 Prologue; IA §4.1 Open -->

Finishing Under the Spruce opens most of the book: First Fire, The Marked Road, the five Hearth and Home chapters and Titans of Nytheria. Other chapters open later through gate quests. Work done early still counts, but a quest completes only after the quests it depends on. See The Quest Book. <!-- src: Q §2.1 One Leaf, §1.5, §1.3 -->

Use the helper mods#

The pack ships many small helpers. These are the ones a new player meets first.

• Recipes. EMI is the only recipe viewer. Click an item and press R for its recipes or U for what it is used in. Right click shows uses, left click shows recipes. <!-- src: CQ §2.1 (EMI keys; only recipe viewer) -->
• What am I looking at. Jade 🔍 shows a box for the block or creature you aim at, and AppleSkin shows food values in tooltips and on the hunger bar. <!-- src: CQ §2.3 -->
• Maps. Xaero's Minimap and Xaero's World Map draw the minimap and the world map. Waystones you discover appear on them as waypoints, and the minimap hides the hostile-mob radar by default. <!-- src: GWS §1.1, §1.2, §1.3 -->
• Trees. FallingTree fells a whole tree at once. Hold Shift while you chop to break a single log. <!-- src: CQ §2.5 (FallingTree: whole tree, sneak disables) -->
• Crops. Right click a crop with a hoe to harvest it. <!-- src: CQ §2.5 (Right Click Harvest requireHoe true) -->
• Sleeping. Early Bedtime lets you sleep from tick 11,500, earlier than in vanilla. <!-- src: CQ §2.6, §2.6 note on vanilla value -->
• Biomes. Nature's Compass finds biomes without XP cost and never breaks. <!-- src: GWS §2.4 -->

Keep your inventory tidy#

The pack has several inventory helpers, and they work without setup. <!-- src: CQ §2.2 -->

• Sorting. ClientSort adds sort buttons and sorts with the middle mouse button. A plain click uses creative order, Shift sorts by quantity, Ctrl alphabetically and Alt by raw id. <!-- src: CQ §2.2 (clientsort.json sort orders) -->
• Moving stacks. Inventory Essentials adds bulk transfer, bulk drop, shift-drag, and automatic refill of tools and stacks. Mouse Tweaks adds drag and scroll-wheel tweaks. <!-- src: CQ §2.2 -->
• Pick-ups. Highlighter marks newly picked-up items in the inventory, and Pick Up Notifier shows a log of items and XP at the bottom right. <!-- src: CQ §2.2 -->
• Shulker boxes. Shulker Box Tooltip previews what is inside a box without opening it. <!-- src: CQ §2.2 -->

Travel and teleporting#

Waystones are the main way to move around. They generate in the Overworld, the Nether and the End, about one every 25 chunks, and villages in desert, plains, savanna, snowy and taiga biomes get one. <!-- src: GWS §2.1 Wild generation -->

A trip costs experience points, not levels. In the same dimension it costs about one point per 100 blocks and never more than 27 points. A change of dimension costs 27 points. Scrolls, warp plates, trips to global waystones and trips to a Fleeting Memorial are free. See Waystones. <!-- src: GWS §2.1 Costs, Important correction; IA §8 #4 -->

Three commands help early: /sethome saves a home (you can have three), /home takes you there and /back returns you to your previous position, also after a death. /home and /back have a short cooldown and a three-second warm-up. <!-- src: GWS §2.2, §4.1 -->

Playing with friends#

You can play with friends in three ways: open your singleplayer world with e4mc, which posts a public address and needs no port forwarding, run your own server, or rent one. Multiplayer explains all three. <!-- src: GWS §3.1 -->

Everyone starts in a personal team. To share quest progress, create or join a party with the team screen or /ftbteams party create <name>. Rewards are still claimed by each player. <!-- src: GWS §3.2 -->

Voice chat comes with Simple Voice Chat. Most of its actions share the slash key on a wheel. Push-to-talk needs a key of its own, because a wheel pick cannot be held down. Set one under Controls. <!-- src: CQ §1.4 (slash row); IA §8 #23; CQ Unverified 4 -->

Protect your items#

Dying is not the end of your things. A grave appears where you died and keeps your items and experience. Right click it to collect them. Death, Graves & Respawning explains the rules, including what happens to a grave after 24 hours. <!-- src: GWS §3.6, §3.8; CQ §2.6 -->

Chests in structures use Lootr Remastered. Every player gets their own loot from a chest, so you do not need to race for it. You can break a Lootr chest while sneaking, but breaking it takes the loot chance away from other players. <!-- src: W Key facts, §3.2, §3.3; GWS §3.7 -->

Items are never consumed by quests, so you can use the same food or tool to finish many quests. <!-- src: Q §5 -->

Your first hour#

A short checklist that gets you started: <!-- src: Q §7, §2.1; CQ §1.6 -->

1. Check your keys: L for the journal, H for abilities, M for the map.
2. Gather wood and stone while it is light.
3. After dark, light a campfire with the torn leaf and follow the answer.
4. Open the chest under the fallen spruce and read the journal.
5. Make a bed and a first home, then save it with /sethome.

The same steps with the quests that go with them are on Your First Days. <!-- src: GWS §2.2 (/sethome), §4.1 -->

Common problems#

• L does nothing. The journal screen only does something when the server has sent the story to you; wait for the world to finish loading and try again. See Troubleshooting. <!-- src: CQ §1.6; Q Unverified 7 -->
• A key opens a wheel instead of acting. That is the shared-key wheel. Hold, pick, release. <!-- src: CQ §1.2 -->
• I cannot use an Eye of Ender. The pack disables the vanilla eyes; the End has its own eyes. See The End Portal & the 16 Eyes. <!-- src: W §1.3 End; IA §8 #16 -->
• Low frame rate. Keep shaders off and read Performance & Shaders. <!-- src: M §4.2 -->

See also#

• Your First Days - a night-by-night plan for the first sessions
• Progression Route - a suggested order for the whole pack
• The Quest Book - how the 27 chapters are organised
• Controls - every key and wheel
• Death, Graves & Respawning - what happens when you die
• Waystones - teleporting and what it costs