Immersive Lanterns Mod Guide: Wearable Dynamic Lighting with Physics
Immersive Lanterns lets you wear Lanterns and Soul Lanterns as accessories that dangle from your belt, emit dynamic light as you explore, and swing with realistic pendulum physics. It works with Iris and Oculus shaderpacks for colored lighting effects.
Overview
Immersive Lanterns solves a classic Minecraft dilemma: choosing between a Shield and a Torch in your offhand. Instead of sacrificing defense for visibility, you can equip a Lantern or Soul Lantern as a wearable accessory that hangs from your character's belt. The Lantern provides full brightness (light level 15) as you move through dark caves and nighttime terrain, freeing up both hands for combat and building.
What sets this mod apart is its attention to visual detail. Equipped Lanterns swing with realistic pendulum physics based on your movement, responding to walking, sprinting, jumping, and crouching. The mod also features full compatibility with Iris and Oculus shaderpacks that support custom dynamic lighting, so equipping a Soul Lantern with a shader like Complementary will cast blue-tinted light around you. You can browse all items this mod interacts with using the tabs on this page.
Prerequisites
Immersive Lanterns requires two dependencies to function. First, you need the Accessories mod (or Curios on older versions), which provides the accessory slot system that allows you to wear the Lantern. Second, you need Sodium Dynamic Lights (or Embeddium Dynamic Lights on Forge/NeoForge), which handles the actual light emission from your equipped Lantern. Without the dynamic lights mod, the Lantern will still appear on your character visually but won't illuminate the area around you.
If you use Iris or Oculus with a shaderpack that supports custom dynamic lighting (like Complementary Shaders), equipped Lanterns will emit colored light matching the block type. A Soul Lantern will cast blue light, while a regular Lantern casts warm orange light. This is handled automatically with no extra configuration needed.
Getting Started
- 1
Install the Required Mods
Make sure you have Accessories (or Curios) and Sodium/Embeddium Dynamic Lights installed alongside Immersive Lanterns. All three mods need to be present for the full experience of visible wearable lighting.
- 2
Craft or Find a Lantern
Obtain a regular Lantern or a Soul Lantern through normal vanilla crafting. A Lantern requires 8 Iron Nuggets and a Torch, while a Soul Lantern uses 8 Iron Nuggets and a Soul Torch. Both types work as wearable accessories.
- 3
Equip the Lantern
Hold the Lantern and crouch (Shift) + right-click to equip it into your Accessories slot. The Lantern will appear hanging from your character's belt on the right side by default. You can also open the Accessories inventory screen to manage your equipped items directly.
- 4
Explore with Hands-Free Lighting
Head into a cave or venture out at night. Your equipped Lantern emits light level 15 (the maximum), illuminating the area around you as you move. Switch to third-person view (F5) to see the pendulum physics in action as the Lantern swings and bounces with your movement.
Supported Lanterns
The mod supports two vanilla Lantern types as wearable accessories: the standard Lantern and the Soul Lantern. Both emit light level 15 when equipped as accessories via the dynamic lights system. The visual difference between them matters most when using shaderpacks: a regular Lantern casts warm, orange-toned light, while a Soul Lantern emits the cool blue glow associated with Soul Fire. Functionally they are identical in terms of brightness.
No new items or crafting recipes are added by Immersive Lanterns. It works entirely with vanilla Lanterns, simply giving them a new purpose through the Accessories slot system.
Pendulum Physics
The signature feature of Immersive Lanterns is its pendulum physics system. When equipped, the Lantern simulates realistic swinging behavior based on your character's movement. Walking, sprinting, and jumping all cause the Lantern to swing forward and back along the Z-axis, while strafing causes lateral X-axis movement. The physics respond to the direction you're facing, so the swing always looks natural relative to your character's orientation.
Crouching triggers a distinct animation where the Lantern gets an initial kick of about 22.5 degrees forward and 18 degrees sideways, simulating the jolt of suddenly stopping and bending down. The swing angles are clamped to a maximum of 60 degrees in either direction to prevent wild spinning. A damping factor of 0.98 gradually brings the Lantern back to rest, creating a smooth, satisfying deceleration.
The Lantern also accounts for leg movement and body rotation, following the sway of your character's walking animation. This is a purely visual, client-side effect with zero performance impact on gameplay. The physics are disabled when any menu or screen is open, and they pause during Iris/Oculus shadow rendering passes to avoid visual artifacts.
The Lantern's position on your character automatically adjusts based on whether you're wearing Chest or Leg Armor. The offset shifts slightly outward when armor is detected, preventing the Lantern model from clipping into bulkier armor models.
Configuration Options
Immersive Lanterns provides four client-side configuration options that let you customize the Lantern's appearance and behavior. These settings are found in the mod's client config file, which can also be edited through mod config menus if you have a config UI mod installed.
Client Config Settings
| Left-Handed Lanterns | false (default) — Moves the Lantern to the left side of your character instead of the right |
| Back Lanterns | false (default) — Moves the Lantern to the back of your character instead of the front hip |
| Enable Lantern Swinging Physics | true (default) — Toggles the pendulum physics animation on or off. No performance impact. |
| Lantern Bounciness | 1.0 (default, range: 0.1–10.0) — Controls how strongly movement affects the swing. Higher values = more dramatic swinging. |
Dynamic Lighting Details
When a Lantern is equipped, the mod registers a dynamic light handler on the Player entity type. This handler emits light level 15 (maximum brightness, equivalent to a placed Lantern block) whenever a Lantern or Soul Lantern is detected in the player's Accessories slot. The light moves with you in real time, making it invaluable for cave exploration where you don't want to stop and place Torches every few blocks.
For players using Iris or Oculus, the mod includes a special mixin that intercepts the shader's held item detection. It redirects the offhand item check to report the equipped Lantern instead, which is how shaderpacks like Complementary and BSL can display the correct colored light. This means you don't need to hold the Lantern in your hand for shader lighting to work; it reads directly from the Accessories slot.
Without Sodium/Embeddium Dynamic Lights installed, the Lantern will still render visually on your character and the physics will work, but it will not actually emit any light. The dynamic lighting is handled entirely by the separate dynamic lights mod. Make sure it's installed and that dynamic lights are enabled in its settings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Immersive Lanterns work with Iris/Oculus shaders?
Yes. Immersive Lanterns has built-in Iris and Oculus compatibility. It includes special mixins that make shaderpacks with custom dynamic lighting (like Complementary, BSL, and others) recognize the equipped Lantern and emit the correct colored light. A Soul Lantern will cast blue light and a regular Lantern will cast warm light when using compatible shaders.
Why isn't my equipped Lantern emitting light?
You most likely don't have Sodium/Embeddium Dynamic Lights installed, or dynamic lights are disabled in that mod's settings. Immersive Lanterns only handles the visual rendering and accessory slot integration. The actual light emission depends entirely on the dynamic lights mod being present and active.
Can I move the Lantern to the other side or to my back?
Yes. The mod config has two positioning options: 'Left-Handed Lanterns' moves it from the right hip to the left, and 'Back Lanterns' moves it behind your character. These are client-side settings that only affect your own view in singleplayer, or how your Lantern renders for you specifically.
Does the Lantern physics affect performance?
No. The physics simulation is purely cosmetic and runs a simple pendulum calculation per render frame. The mod author confirms it has no performance impact. If you still want to disable it for any reason, set 'Enable Lantern Swinging Physics' to false in the config.
Does this mod add any new items or recipes?
No. Immersive Lanterns adds no new items, blocks, or crafting recipes. It works entirely with vanilla Lanterns and Soul Lanterns, adding the ability to equip them as accessories. Just craft a standard Lantern or Soul Lantern and crouch-right-click to equip it.
Does the Lantern work with Curios instead of Accessories?
The mod supports both Accessories and Curios. It detects which accessory API is available at startup and registers accordingly. If Accessories is installed it uses that system; otherwise it falls back to Curios. You only need one of the two mods installed.