Minecraft 1.21.11 & 26.3 · NeoForge · Preview

Mothlight

Mothlight adds the Lumen, a glowing moth you tame, raise and eventually ride, plus 48 wild moths that turn up in the biomes they belong to. Catch them with a net, keep them in jars, draw them in with a moth sheet and breed new ones.

Screenshots

What it does

See it in action

Forty seconds of Mothlight, all shot in game with Lensbridge.

A glowing Lumen companion and 48 wild moths.
Moth sheets, nets, jars and rearing jars.
Flying a saddled Great Lumen, and gliding without one.

The Lumen, your companion moth

Tame a Lumen with glow berries and it follows you through the night.

Each Lumen has a wing pattern and a glow colour; eyes, tail and pattern glow in the dark.
Vesper is the rare charcoal form with red eyes, 1 in 256, or 1 in 4 in the Deep Dark.
It chimes when a hostile mob gets close, and can leave a glowing trail back to a home you mark.

48 wild moths

44 real species and 4 originals, each spawning where it lives and at the time of day it flies.

Luna and Comet moths with long trailing tails, the huge Atlas, Io and Polyphemus eyespots.
Hawk-moths that hover at flowers by day, a Herald in dripstone caves, a Ghost Moth over swamps at dusk.
New in 0.4.0: sixteen more, from the rainbow Madagascan Sunset Moth to the Echo Moth of the Deep Dark and the Voidwing of the End.
They perch on bark and leaves, and bats hunt them at night.

The Moth Hood and Moth Shawl

Woven from Moth Silk: a ragged shawl that opens into wings, and a hood with antennae and big moth eyes.

The shawl spreads into wings whenever you are in the air, and glides like an elytra.
Press G and the hood's eyes slide down as goggles. Moth vision outlines moths and caterpillars in the dark.
Weave four wing scales into either one and it takes on that moth's wings and colours. Twelve moths so far.
The Mothman look comes from a Vesper you have tamed, with eyespots that glow at night.

Moths with tricks of their own

Some species take more than a quick swing of the net.

The Red Underwing rests grey and hidden on bark, flashes red hindwings when you come close, then darts off.
The Echo Moth hears you coming unless you sneak.
The Voidwing blinks away from a net swung at it in flight. Wait until it rests.

Wild moths perched on a tree trunk at night

A wild that breeds without you

Wild moths lay eggs where they rest, and the caterpillars grow up, spin cocoons and emerge by themselves.

Find a wild caterpillar and scoop it into a Rearing Jar, or feed it glow berries to keep it.
They eat nothing and damage nothing. Server owners can turn it off.

Mothing

Set up a moth sheet by a lantern at night and see what flies in.

Moth Net, Moth Jar and a 3×2 Moth Sheet.
Jarred moths shed wing scales you can use as dyes and in potions.
Breed wild moths, and catch every species for the Lepidopterist advancement.

The Moth Journal open at the Luna Moth page

An illustrated Moth Journal

Every species you catch gets its own page in a field guide that fills in as you go.

The moth itself on every page, with where and when to find it, how it behaves and a real-world fact.
Species you haven't caught yet show as a silhouette with a hint.
A guide to the mod, a page for every Lumen look, and an index to jump anywhere.
Rewards every eight species, and a Moonlit Phial for a silver-white Lumen when you've found all 48.

Watch the whole metamorphosis

Scoop a caterpillar into a Rearing Jar and raise it to an adult.

Feed it leaves and it grows through four sizes, then spins silk and forms a cocoon.
The moth climbs out and pumps its wings up to full size.
A Lumen raised in a jar comes out already tamed to you.

Fly a Great Lumen

Feed a grown Lumen Lantern Nectar until it grows huge, saddle it and fly.

Steer with the mouse: look down to dive, up to climb.
No saddle? Grab its legs and glide down from a cliff, holding it over your head.
Warm air over a campfire lifts a glide back up, and glides go farther at night.
No fall damage while riding or hanging on.

How to install

There is a build for Minecraft 1.21.11 and one for Minecraft 26.3: download the one that matches your game. The steps below use 1.21.11; for 26.3, pick 26.3 instead (NeoForge 26.3.x needs Java 25, which the launchers set up for you).

1. Get Minecraft 1.21.11 with NeoForge

Pick the launcher you use. Each one sets up NeoForge for you.

Prism Launcher

Add Instance → Minecraft 1.21.11 → Mod loader NeoForge (latest) → OK.
Right-click the new instance → Folder, then open the mods folder (create it if it isn't there).

CurseForge app

Minecraft → Create Custom Profile → version 1.21.11, loader NeoForge → Create.
On the profile, click ⋯ → Open Folder, then open mods.

Modrinth App

+ (Create instance) → 1.21.11, loader NeoForge → Create.
Open the instance → ⋯ → Open folder, then open mods.

Official Minecraft launcher

Download the NeoForge installer for 1.21.11 (21.11.x) from neoforged.net and run it → Install client.
Start the neoforge profile once in the Minecraft launcher, then close the game.
Open your .minecraft/mods folder: %APPDATA%\.minecraft\mods on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/mods on macOS, ~/.minecraft/mods on Linux.

2. Add Mothlight

Click Download latest build on this page and put mothlight-<version>.jar in that mods folder. Don't unzip it.
Start the game. Mothlight's items are in the creative inventory, and Lumens and wild moths spawn at night.

3. Playing on a server

Mothlight is needed on both the server and every player's game.
Install a NeoForge 1.21.11 server (the same installer → Install server), put the jar in the server's mods folder, and restart it.

Updating

Delete the old mothlight-…jar from mods and add the new one. Back up your world first; this is a preview.