Is Minecraft Distant Horizons 1.21 available for download?

Minecraft Distant Horizons has generated significant excitement among players by achieving what no other mod has: enabling high render distances without making the game unplayable. With the new Tricky Trials update out, players have started creating new worlds to enjoy the new features with higher render distances.

The Distant Horizons mod for the Minecraft 1.21 update has now been released. The mod is available for version 1.21, meaning players can now explore Tricky Trial update at impressive render distances.

This article will guide players on how to install the Distant Horizons mod for Minecraft 1.21 Tricky Trials update.

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Minecraft 1.21 Distant Horizons mod guide

Distant Horizons mod with shaders (Image via Mojang)

The Distant Horizons mod, as briefly explained earlier, increases the game's render distance to mind-boggling levels. The mod is capable of making the game run smoothly with over a hundred chunks enabled.

Before diving into further details, players should note that the Distant Horizons mod is still in the Alpha stage, which means it can be highly unstable for many users and is far from the end product that the developers have envisioned.

With that out of the way, let's learn how users can install the Distant Horizons mod in Minecraft 1.21:

Step 1: Download the Fabric installer.

Step 2: Launch the downloaded installer and click on the install button with version 1.21 selected.

Step 3: Download the latest version of the Distant Horizons mod from curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/distant-horizons

We recommend users use the Modrinth website for downloading mods as it has proven to be a safer option than most.

Step 4: Move the downloaded file to the game's mods folder. This can be located by pressing WIN+R and entering "%appdata%/.minecraft/mods".

After the file has been moved, open the game launcher and select the newly created Fabric 1.21 installation. Players can launch this installation to play the Distant Horizons mod.

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How to optimize Distant Horizons mod

Flying around with 128 chunks render distance (Image via Mojang)

Although the Distant Horizons mod is designed to run well with high render distances, players can further improve their framerates by introducing a few other Fabric mods.

Pairing the Distant Horizons mod with Sodium is an easy way to improve the game's smoothness. However, the mod requires the Indium mod to work with Sodium.

Therefore, to optimize it for more frames, players need to download both Sodium and Indium mods that are compatible with the same Minecraft version and install them following the same process mentioned above.

Additionally, since the above steps installed a Fabric mod loader, players have the option to install Iris shaders along with these mods to add shader support.