When Forge mod loader came out in 2012, it completely changed the game and how people mod. It made modding more accessible to everyone, and anyone could hop aboard the modding hype train. It marked the golden age of Minecraft modding. Sometime later, a new mod loader surfaced, and people bought into the hype just as much as they did with Forge. Fabric is a new mod loader that changed the modding game once again. Is Fabric safe to install, though?
Minecraft Fabric is completely safe to install if you download it from a trusted source. The best website to download it from is CurseForge, but you can also find it on other websites like Feed The Beast, a mod brand that focuses on delivering only the best and high-quality mods and modding tools to the community.
Now that you know that it’s generally safe to install Fabric on your computer, why would you want to do that if you already have Forge that works perfectly fine. What are the differences between the two, and what are some of the existing issues with Fabric? How and why did it come out? Let’s answer these questions in the rest of this article.
What is Fabric Installer?
When Mojang released the 1.13 update, the player base had problems updating their Forge mod loader because development was slow. This caused some player frustration because they couldn’t play modded Minecraft right when the new versions of the game came out. The most likely reason why this was is that Forge was a bloated mod loader. Its code was complicated, and for a good reason, Forge could take on the weight of loading the most complicated and detailed mods out there.
Although the benefits of Forge were undeniable, as a response to the slow updating times, a few players responded by creating Fabric, which was officially announced in 2018 but was created in 2016. The main difference between Fabric and Forge is that Fabric is version agnostic which means that it can be used with any version of Minecraft and even has the potential to be used with other Java-based games.
Undoubtedly, Fabric became a hit, but even now, there are only around 4000 mods available for Fabric, and you might find it challenging to find some of them. Looking at the CurseForge website, we can see the disparity between the Forge and Fabric mods since there are over 120 thousand mods on the website, and only a handful are made for Fabric.
This should not be a major deciding factor when thinking about switching to Fabric because the reality is, Fabric hasn’t been around for that long. Many mod devs actually prefer Fabric because it makes their life easier when it comes to updating the mods and creating them in the first place. Fabric is not without its cons either, so let’s look at some of them next.
Pros and cons of Fabric
The biggest benefit of Fabric is that it takes less time to update. It’s extremely fast and straightforward to use, but the downside is that it can’t load some of the heavier mods that Forge eats for breakfast. With Fabric, you won’t have to wait to get your mods into new game versions since Fabric is likely to get updated even when new snapshots come out.
Another big issue with Fabric is that it’s harder for different Fabric mods to be compatible. Playing the game with two or more Fabric mods might prove to be challenging or at least one full of lag. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. It depends on what type of player you are and how many mods you plan on using in your gameplay.
What are the differences between Fabric and Forge?
When it comes to development, older tends to be better only because the devs have gone through plenty of hardships to get to where they are in the present moment. Forge has been around almost as long as Minecraft and has faced many updates. It was fine-tuned to the point of nearly being perfect even though Fabric was made as a response to the flaws of Forge back when.
Forge’s operation is completely optimized and easily runs heavy-duty mods (think complete game overhauls that make it hard to recognize the base game). It still takes longer to update Forge when newer versions of the game come out, but the end product is far more stable, and you’ll hardly ever run into problems with it.
One last thing to note is that mod compatibility is out of this world with Forge. It makes sense for Forge to have this feature since it was made back when you had to manually connect the code of two or more mods to play the game with more than one mod. Mod loaders are usually made in response to a problem, and Forge aimed to solve what was wrong with mods then, and Fabric aimed to solve what was wrong with Forge.
One last thing to note is that you can’t run Forge and Fabric simultaneously. You also can’t download mods compatible with Fabric if you have Forge installed and vice versa. The decision of what mod loader you’ll use will likely be based on what mods you want to use in the end, and since Forge has more mods than Fabric, the decision will likely end up being Forge.
Why does Fabric Exist?
Fabric makes the lives of developers a little easier. If you’re someone that doesn’t hop on the hype train of new game versions right when they come out, you’ll have no problems choosing Forge as your primary mod loader, but if you are, Fabric might be the mod loader for you. If you’re curious about what mods you have available, simply typing in Fabric in the search bar of CurseForge mods can help you see what mods are available, or even better, you can click on the game version option and choose Fabric to see the full library of Fabric mods for Minecraft.
Websites you can download Fabric from
As I mentioned before, it’s best to download Fabric from trusted websites if you want a worry and malware-free experience, so let’s take a look at a few of the best websites to download Fabric from:
- fabricmc.net – Of course, it’s always best to download mod loaders directly from the developer’s website, so naturally, the one we’ll always recommend first is Fabric’s official website.
- CurseForge – I’ve mentioned CurseForge a bunch of times in this article, and for good reasons. It’s one of the safest websites to download mods from in general, and the same goes true for downloading mod loaders.
How to install Fabric
To install Fabric on your computer, you need the Fabric installer and the Fabric API. You can get away with not downloading the API, but most Fabric mods need both to run smoothly. You’ll download Fabric from the official website and the API from CurseForge. You’ll follow the download instruction for Fabric as they appear on the screen and then download the Fabric API and move it over to the mods folder located in %appdata% -> .minecraft folder.
