Finding Info In-Game — Quick Reference

With 284 mods, no wiki keeps up. Almost every question you’ll have is answerable without leaving the game — usually in about four seconds. This card covers the tools and which question each one answers.

JEI — the recipe oracle

Just Enough Items is the most important mod in the pack. The item panel down the right side of your inventory holds every item from every mod, and two keys do most of the work:

  • Hover an item and press R → how to make it (recipe).
  • Hover an item and press U → what it’s used for (uses).
  • A → bookmark it, so it stays pinned while you go gather materials.
  • In the JEI panel you can also left-click an item for recipes and right-click for uses.

The habits that separate people who “get” modpacks from people who bounce off them:

  • Dig down through recipes. Inside a recipe view, press R on any ingredient to see how that’s made. Repeat until you hit something you own. Backspace (or the back arrow) walks you back up. This is how you plan a build in a mod you’ve never touched.
  • Cycle recipe types. Many items have several recipes — crafting, smelting, a Create mixing recipe, a Mekanism machine. Tabs along the top of the recipe window switch between them; the arrows page through variants.
  • Click a machine to learn it. Press U on any machine or workstation block and JEI shows every recipe that block can perform. That’s a complete manual for an unfamiliar machine.
  • Search by mod. Type @ plus a mod name in the search bar (@create, @mekanism) to browse just that mod’s items — the fastest way to see what a mod actually adds. # searches tooltip text instead of names, and a leading - excludes matches. Hover the search field or check JEI’s controls screen for the full prefix list.

Tooltips that answer specific questions

  • Jade — the overlay at the top of your screen naming whatever block or mob you’re looking at, which mod it’s from, and often its state (machine progress, container contents, growth stage, mob health). “What is this and whose mod is it?” is a free question.
  • AppleSkin — hover any food: exact hunger and saturation restored, previewed on your own HUD. Ends all guessing about whether a meal is worth cooking.
  • Enchantment Descriptions — enchanted books and gear explain in plain language what each enchantment actually does. With dozens of modded enchants in this pack, read these.
  • Curios slots — the button next to your character model opens the trinket slots, and each slot’s tooltip tells you what belongs there.

In-game manuals shipped by the mods

Several mods include their own documentation, and it’s the most version-accurate source that exists — written by the mod author, matching exactly the version we run:

  • Create’s Ponder — hold W while hovering any Create item for an animated in-world demonstration of how that block works. Nothing else in modded Minecraft comes close. If you take one habit from this page, take this one.
  • Patchouli guidebooks — Patchouli is the engine several mods use for craftable in-game manuals. JEI-search “guide”, “book”, or “manual” to see which ones exist and how to craft them.
  • Apotheosis: the Chronicle of Shadows — the real manual for affixes, gems, enchanting stats, and spawner modifiers.
  • Ice and Fire: the Bestiary — the official monster manual for dragon stages, taming, and materials.

Two places people forget to look

  • The advancements screen doubles as a progression guide. Many mods add their own advancement trees that lay out what to do next in that mod, in order. Open it when you’re not sure what your goal is.
  • The Mods list on the title screen shows every installed mod with its description and links to its homepage and issue tracker. That’s how you identify “what mod added this thing” and find its official page — no searching required.

When you do go outside the game

Check the Mod reference cards here first: each one names what a mod does and links its primary source (author wikis and docs before anything else). Two cautions when searching the wider internet: videos and wikis often cover a different mod version than ours, and this pack’s addons change balance and loot in ways no showcase reflects. In-game tooltips and JEI always win a disagreement with a website.

Related: every category card in the Mod reference section links each mod’s primary documentation.