Sodium in All the Mods 10: To the Sky

Sodium is a rendering engine replacement for Minecraft. It greatly improves frame rates and reduces micro-stutter, and it fixes many graphical issues. It does this without changing how the game looks, and it is designed to work well with the wider modding ecosystem.^[1]

This pack ships Sodium 0.6.13 for Minecraft 1.21.1, as the NeoForge build. It has been in the pack since version 2.0.0 or earlier.^[2]

Sodium is a client-side optimization mod. By design it only optimizes Minecraft's rendering code, so it won't speed up other parts of the game.^[1]

Settings and hardware

Official support covers desktop graphics cards with up-to-date drivers for OpenGL 4.5 or newer. Nearly all desktop cards that already run Minecraft (which needs OpenGL 3.3) should also work, but the Sodium team can't guarantee or support older cards. If you hit crashes or rendering bugs, update your graphics drivers first.^[1]

Where it sits in the quest book

The quest sources I was given don't show a quest for Sodium the rendering mod, so I can't place it in any chapter or group. That also means they don't show the ATM Star path using it. The name does appear in the "Mekanism: Reactors" chapter, but there it means the Mekanism coolant. The quest "Sodium Coolant" quest comes after "Fission Reactor Port" quest and covers using sodium as a reactor coolant instead of water, which is a different thing from this mod.^[3]

That chapter has 93 quests and the text of most of them isn't included here. The rest of its text is in the quest book itself.^[3]

Same as in the FTB StoneBlock 4 1.21.0 guide

Sodium is a bit different from the other mods in this guide. It adds no machines, items or crafting steps. It is a rendering engine replacement for Minecraft that improves your frame rate and reduces micro-stutter. So there is nothing to craft and no quest to finish here. Your first steps are about making sure it is working for you.^[1]

Step by step

1. Open the Video Settings screen in Minecraft. If Sodium is running, you will see its new user interface for changing settings there.^[1]
2. Leave the settings alone to begin with. By default, Sodium enables every optimization your system supports, which gives you the best experience it can.^[1]
3. Only change the performance and advanced video settings if you run into problems.^[1]

Check your hardware

Sodium officially supports desktop graphics cards with up-to-date drivers that support OpenGL 4.5 or newer. Most cards released in the past 12 years qualify. The mod's page gives these examples: Intel HD Graphics 500 Series (Skylake) or newer, NVIDIA GeForce 400 Series (Fermi) or newer, and AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series (GCN 1) or newer.^[1]

Older cards that already run Minecraft (which needs OpenGL 3.3) should also work with Sodium. The team says it cannot ensure compatibility or give support for them, and they may stop working with future versions.^[1]

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Sodium doesn't have machines, multiblocks, power, fluids or item automation. It's a rendering engine replacement for the Minecraft client. It's there to raise your frame rate and cut micro-stutter, and it also fixes many graphical issues in the base game.^[1]

What Sodium actually changes

By design, Sodium only optimizes Minecraft's rendering code. Other parts of the game, like world logic, aren't touched by this mod. Its developers point to their separate mods for that, such as Lithium.^[1]

It's built to stay compatible with the wider modding ecosystem without changing how the game looks, so you keep the normal block game feel.^[1]

Settings and defaults

By default, Sodium enables all optimizations your system supports, so you usually don't need to configure anything. The project page suggests changing performance-related or advanced video settings only if you run into problems.^[1]

To check that it's working, open the Video Settings screen in Minecraft. With Sodium installed, it shows Sodium's own redesigned interface for changing settings.^[1]

Hardware requirements

Sodium's official support covers desktop graphics cards with up-to-date drivers that support OpenGL 4.5 or newer. Nearly all desktop cards that already run Minecraft (which needs OpenGL 3.3) should also work, but the team doesn't guarantee support for older cards and they may stop working in future versions.^[1]

Unverified The project page's news item describes Sodium 0.9.x for a newer Minecraft version, including early Vulkan support. Which Sodium build this pack uses, and whether Vulkan applies here, can't be confirmed from the available sources.

There is no progression path or tier breakdown to follow for this mod. If you went looking through the quest book for it, the "Sodium" you'll run into is something else: it's the coolant in the Mekanism reactor questline, not this mod.^[3]

In the quest "Sodium Coolant" quest, sodium is an alternative to water as a fission reactor coolant. The quest says it is more efficient and reaches higher temperatures, but it is harder to get and reuse. You make it with a thermal evaporation plant, which turns water into brine, and then an Electrolytic Separator to split the brine. The quest comes after "Fission Reactor Port" quest, and "Boiler Ports" quest follows it.^[3]

Unverified No tier or progression information for the Sodium mod itself (its own quests, recipes or upgrade stages) was available for this pack version.

In the quest text shown to me, no quest asks for an item from the sodium namespace. The word "sodium" in the quest book refers to the chemical coolant from Mekanism, which is a different thing. If you came here looking for video settings, no quest I could read covers them.^[3][4]

Sodium as a fission coolant

The chemical shows up in the "Mekanism: Reactors" chapter, where the Sodium quests follow "Fission Reactor Port" quest. The quest text says a port left on Input Only will take in both Fissile Fuel and Coolant, as either Water or Sodium, and that Output Coolant will take out Superheated Sodium if Sodium is used. The chapter listing shows no prerequisite for that quest.^[3]

Here is how the Sodium-related quests chain together, in the order the quest book lists them:^[3]

1. "Sodium Coolant" quest comes after the Fission Reactor Port quest. It says Sodium can be used as a Coolant instead of Water, and that it is more efficient and gets higher temperatures but is harder to get and reuse. The quest uses a Thermal Evaporation Plant to turn Water into Brine, then an Electrolytic Separator to get Sodium. The tasks are Thermal Evaporation Block, Thermal Evaporation Controller, Thermal Evaporation Valve and the separator.^[3]
2. "Boiler Ports" quest comes after the Sodium Coolant quest and asks for a Boiler Valve. It says Superheated Sodium and Water will be added through separate Input Ports, the cooled Sodium taken out through an Output Port, and Steam through its own Steam Output Port. You use a Configurator to change the ports.^[3]
3. "Thermoelectric Boiler" quest comes after both Boiler Ports and "The Thermo part of the Thermoelectric Boiler" quest. It covers building the boiler. It says that once Superheated Sodium is in, the Boiler's temperature will start rising, and with Water the Sodium will cool down while the Water boils into Steam.^[3]

Sodium in the Mekanism chapter

The main "Mekanism" chapter also touches on Sodium. "Making Chlorine" quest comes after the Machines quest. You feed Water into a Thermal Evaporation Plant to make Brine, then put the Brine through an Electrolytic Separator to get Sodium and Chlorine. The quest says Sodium is helpful for Fission Reactors, but not for Ore Processing.^[4]

The rest of that chapter's quest text was not available to me. For anything else in it, check the quest book in game.^[4]

All the Mods 10: To the Sky 2.0.4 ships with Sodium 0.6.13+mc1.21.1, the NeoForge build. Sodium has been in the pack since 2.0.0 or earlier, so it is one of the long-standing mods here.^[2]

Unverified No pack changelog entries for Sodium were available, so what changed between earlier pack releases is unverified.

Sodium 0.6.13 changes

This is the version you get in 2.0.4. Here is what its own changelog lists, grouped by theme.^[2][5]

• Compatibility: better support for some NeoForge mods that use the Fabric Rendering API, and for some Fabric mods when they run on NeoForge through Sinytra Connector.^[5]
• World rendering fix: an incompatibility with Snow Real Magic! and some other mods that made holes appear in the world is fixed.^[5]
• UI fix: mods that use animated sprites in the user interface now get their sprites animated again.^[5]
• Developer options: certain developer options are now disabled in production, because other mods were modifying them unnecessarily.^[5]
• Marked incompatible: PojavLauncher, due to multiple severe and unresolved issues, and BetterEnd, because it enables code when Sodium is present that causes frequent and hard to understand crashes.^[5]
• New warning: you now get a warning when a resource pack tries to replace the shaders used by Sodium's improved cloud renderer.^[5]