More Overlays Updated guide for All the Mods 10 2.12

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

More Overlays Updated brings a few handy overlays back from NEI: a light-level and mob-spawn overlay, a chunk border overlay, and an item search highlight for JEI. If you build big bases or mob farms and are tired of guessing where monsters can spawn, this one is for you.^[1]

The pack ships version 1.24.2 of the NeoForge build for Minecraft 1.21.1, and it has been included since pack version 2.25 or earlier. The mod is client-side only, so it only changes what you see on your own screen.^[1][2]

What you get

• Light overlay and mob spawns: press F7 to toggle it. A yellow X marks blocks where monsters can spawn at night, and a red X marks blocks where monsters can always spawn.^[1]
• Chunk boundaries: press F9 to toggle it. It has three modes. The first shows red lines in the corners and a yellow line in the middle of the chunk. The second adds a green grid on the chunk edges. The third uses the green grid to outline a Minecraft region and shows the matching region save file in the top left corner.^[1]
• Inventory item search: double-click the JEI search field to turn it on. Items in the open inventory that don't match your filter get blacked out, and you can also search for custom named items.^[1]

Configuration

On NeoForge you can open the config from the main screen via Mods, then MoreOverlays, then Config. You can also edit config/moreoverlays.toml directly.^[1]

Where it fits in the pack

It's a quality-of-life utility rather than a progression mod. You don't craft anything with it and there's nothing to unlock, so you can use it from your first night.^[1]

Unverified The sources don't show this mod on the ATM Star path or in any quest, so it isn't a progression step.

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Good news: there's nothing to craft to get started with this mod. More Overlays Updated is a client-side mod that adds overlays you switch on with keys, so you can use it from the first minute in your world.^[1]

Your first steps, in order

1. Press F7 to turn on the Light Level / Mob spawns overlay. It shows a yellow X on blocks where monsters can spawn at night, and a red X where monsters can always spawn. Check this before you build your first base or light up a cave.^[1]
2. Press F9 to turn on the Chunk Boundaries overlay. Pressing it again cycles through three modes. The first shows red lines in the corners and a yellow line in the middle of the chunk. The second adds a green grid on the chunk edges. The third outlines a Minecraft region with the green grid and shows the matching region save file in the top left corner.^[1]
3. Double-click the JEI search field to turn on Item Search. Any item in your open inventory that doesn't match your filter is blacked out, so you can find things in a messy chest fast. You can also search for custom-named items.^[1]

Why this order

The light overlay comes first because it helps you keep your early shelter safe from mob spawns. The chunk overlay is next because it helps you plan farms and bases around chunk edges. Item Search is last, since it pays off once your inventory and storage fill up.^[1]

Changing settings

On Forge and NeoForge you can open the config from the main screen through Mods, then MoreOverlays, then Config. You can also edit config/moreoverlays.toml directly. On Fabric, the project page says a config file isn't available yet.^[1]

Unverified The F7 and F9 keys and the overlay behaviour above come from the mod's own project page. Whether this pack changes any key bindings or config values hasn't been confirmed. If a key does nothing, check your Controls settings.

More Overlays Updated has no machines, no blocks and no items, it's a client-side mod that draws three overlays on top of the world and your inventory screens. Everything it does is controlled by two hotkeys, a double-click on the JEI search bar, and the config file the pack ships. So "core mechanics" here means understanding how each overlay decides what to draw, and which knobs change that.^[1][3]

Light overlay and mob spawns

Press F7 to toggle the light overlay. It marks blocks you can see with an X: a yellow X where monsters can spawn at night, and a red X where monsters can always spawn. That's the whole readout: no numbers, just the two spawn states.^[1]

The scan is a box around you, not a sphere, and the pack leaves all four ranges at the mod defaults. It checks lightoverlay.hrange blocks out horizontally in each of north, east, south and west (16), lightoverlay.uprange blocks up (4) and lightoverlay.downrange blocks down (16). All four must stay above 0. If the overlay feels like it's stopping short on a big dark build, those are the values to raise, and the ones to lower if the scan is costing you frames.^[3]

What counts as "safe" is set by lightoverlay.saveLevel, the minimum light level at which no mobs can spawn. The pack keeps it at 1, the mod default, and it has to stay above 0.^[3]

How accurate the spawn check is

The overlay doesn't just read a light value: it runs several extra checks, and the pack leaves every one of them fully enabled. That gives you the most accurate result out of the box, at the highest performance cost.^[3]

• lightoverlay.ignoreLayer is false in the pack, so the overlay checks whether there's a 2-block space for a mob to actually stand in. Setting it to true skips that check and causes less lag.^[3]
• lightoverlay.ignoreSpawnList is false, so the overlay respects whether mobs can actually spawn there according to other mods and biome spawn lists, instead of going purely by light value. In a big kitchen-sink pack that's the setting that keeps the overlay honest about modded dimensions and biomes.^[3]
• lightoverlay.simpleCheck is false. Blocks can allow or disallow spawns for different entity types, and checking that properly isn't very performant. Flipping it to true increases performance but decreases accuracy.^[3]
• lightoverlay.finishedMigration is false and is an internal 1.18 migration flag: the config itself tells you not to change it.^[3]

Chunk boundaries

Press F9 to cycle the chunk boundary overlay. It has three modes rather than a simple toggle, so tapping F9 repeatedly walks you through them and back off.^[1]

1. The first mode shows red lines in the corners of the chunk and a yellow line down the middle.^[1]
2. The second mode adds a green grid on the edges of the chunk.^[1]
3. The third mode uses the green grid to outline a Minecraft region instead, and displays the corresponding region save file name in the top left corner.^[1]

How far the edges render is set by chunkbounds.radius, a radius in chunks that the pack keeps at the mod default of 1 (it must stay above 0). The middle line is controlled separately by chunkbounds.middle, which the pack leaves on. Set it to false if you only want the edges.^[3]

Inventory item search

The third overlay needs Just Enough Items (JEI) to work, because it borrows JEI's own search algorithm to match items. Double-click the JEI search field to activate it. Once it's on, type a filter and every item in the currently open inventory that doesn't match gets blacked out, the same trick NEI used to do.^[1]

That makes it an automation and sorting tool as much as a cosmetic one: open a wall of storage or a big modded machine GUI, type a name, and the matching slots are the only ones left lit.^[1]

The pack leaves the feature switched on via searchoverlay.search_enabled; setting it to false disables the double-click behaviour entirely. Both of the extra matching passes are also enabled: searchoverlay.custom_search makes it search the custom name of an item in your inventory, so things you renamed in an anvil still match, and searchoverlay.search_tooltip makes it search item tooltips too. Turning either off increases performance.^[1][3]

There's a cap on how much work it will do: searchoverlay.search_max_results is the maximum number of search results for item searching to stay active, and the pack keeps the mod default of 16,384 (the minimum allowed is above 256). Very broad searches that blow past that ceiling simply won't highlight.^[3]

Render settings

Every colour and line width lives under the rendersettings group, and the pack ships all of them at the mod defaults. Colours are plain integers in the range 0 to 16,777,215, so you can dial in whatever palette reads best against your shader pack.^[3]

• Chunk overlay: rendersettings.chunk_edge_color is 16,711,680 for the edges, rendersettings.chunk_grid_color is 65,280 for the grid, rendersettings.chunk_mid_color is 16,776,960 for the middle line, and rendersettings.chunk_line_width is 1.5.^[3]
• Spawn overlay: rendersettings.spawn_always_color is 16,711,680 for the X marking "spawns always possible", rendersettings.spawn_night_color is 16,776,960 for "spawns at night possible", and rendersettings.spawn_line_width is 2.^[3]
• Item search: searchoverlay.search_box_color is 16,776,960 for the search box once you've double-clicked it, searchoverlay.search_slot_color is 0 for the filtered-out slots, and searchoverlay.search_slot_alpha is 0.5 transparency on those slots (valid range 0.0 to 1.0).^[3]

You don't have to hand-edit the file. On Forge and NeoForge you can reach all of this from the main menu under Mods, then MoreOverlays, then Config, or edit config/moreoverlays.toml directly if you prefer. The mod is client-side only, so these are your settings alone and changing them won't affect anyone else on a server.^[1]

Everything for this mod lives in one file, config/moreoverlays.toml, and it is split into four groups: chunk bounds, the light overlay, the JEI search overlay and render settings. The mod is client-side only, so anything you change here affects your own game and nobody else's.^[1][3]

Good news first: every numeric option in this file is left at the mod's own default value in this pack, so you're tuning from a clean slate rather than undoing pack overrides.^[3]

How far the light overlay scans

The spawn overlay only checks blocks within a box around you, and those ranges are the settings you'll touch most if it feels too small or too laggy.^[3]

• lightoverlay.hrange is 16 and controls the horizontal range (north, east, south, west) of the overlay.^[3]
• lightoverlay.downrange is 16, covering how far down in Y the overlay looks.^[3]
• lightoverlay.uprange is 4, so it reaches much less far above you than below you.^[3]
• lightoverlay.saveLevel is 1, the minimum safe light level where no mobs can spawn.^[3]

Accuracy versus performance

The light overlay ships in its most accurate configuration here, which is also its most expensive. lightoverlay.simpleCheck is false, so the mod does the slower but more accurate per-entity-type spawn check; setting it to true increases performance and decreases accuracy.^[3]

• lightoverlay.ignoreLayer is false, meaning the overlay respects whether there's a 2-block space to spawn in. Turning it on means less lag.^[3]
• lightoverlay.ignoreSpawnList is false, so the overlay honours other mods' and biome spawn lists instead of only going by light value.^[3]

Chunk bounds

chunkbounds.middle is true, so you get the yellow line marking the middle of your current chunk, and chunkbounds.radius is 1, meaning edges are drawn for one chunk around you. Raise the radius if you want to see a wider grid while planning a build.^[3]

JEI search overlay

searchoverlay.search_enabled is true, which is what lets you double-click the JEI search bar to highlight matching items in your inventory. Set it to false to disable that behaviour entirely.^[3]

• searchoverlay.search_tooltip is true, so tooltips of items in your inventory are searched too. Turning it off increases performance.^[3]
• searchoverlay.custom_search is true, so anvil-renamed items match on their custom name. Turning it off also increases performance.^[3]
• searchoverlay.search_max_results is 16,384, the cap on results before item searching stops being active, and it can't go below 256.^[3]
• searchoverlay.search_slot_alpha is 0.5, the transparency of the slots that got filtered out, on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale.^[3]

Colors and line widths

The render settings section holds packed color integers, all accepting 0 to 16,777,215. Chunk edges use 16,711,680, the chunk grid uses 65,280, and the middle chunk line uses 16,776,960. For spawn markers, the X for "spawns always possible" is 16,711,680 and the X for "spawns at night possible" is 16,776,960. The search box color when double-clicked is 16,776,960 and filtered-out slots use 0.^[3]

If the lines are hard to read on your setup, bump the widths: rendersettings.chunk_line_width is 1.5 and rendersettings.spawn_line_width is 2.^[3]

All the Mods 10 2.12 ships More Overlays Updated 1.23.2 for NeoForge. The pack has included this mod since All the Mods 10 0.61 or earlier.^[4]

1.23.2 for NeoForge

This is the version you get in the pack, and its changelog is all about the config screen. Here is what it fixed:^[4][5]

• A crash after opening the config screen on NeoForge versions above 21.0.111 was fixed.^[5]
• The config background now displays correctly.^[5]
• Config comments now display.^[5]

Unverified The sources here show no pack changelog entries for this mod, so what changed for it between pack releases is unverified.