How to Play Minecraft with Friends

There are several ways to play Minecraft together, and each one suits its own situation. If you and your friend are in the same flat, a local network is enough. If you're in different cities, TCLauncher rooms or your own server will help. Let's go through all three.

Way 1. Rooms: over the internet, no router or ports

Rooms are the easiest way to get together with a modded instance. The host picks their instance, friends get an exact copy of it with the e4mc mod, and everyone joins the host's world together. No server needed, and no router setup either.

What you need

• Sign in with your email in the “Profile” tab — rooms work through your profile.
• Add friends in the “Friends” tab: click “Add a friend” and enter the profile number your friend gave you.
• An instance with Fabric, Quilt, Forge or NeoForge — e4mc doesn't work without a mod loader. Create one in the “Instances” tab.

How to create a room

1. Open the “Rooms” tab and click “New room”.
2. Give the room a name, pick an instance and a world (or “No world — I’ll pick one in the game”).
3. Click “Invite a friend”. The invitation will arrive in their “Notifications”.
4. Your friend clicks “Accept”, and then everyone clicks “Play”.
5. Each person's launcher downloads the room's instance: everyone downloads the Modrinth mods themselves, while configs and everything else arrive as an archive. Whoever finishes first waits for the others.
6. When everyone is ready, the host's game starts straight into the world, and guests are dropped into it as soon as the host opens the world to the network (Esc → “Open to LAN”).

Your own instance stays unchanged — the room gets a copy of it. A room holds up to 16 players, or up to 32 if the host has “Premium+”.

Way 2. Your own server

A server is the right choice when the world should live longer than one evening or there are a lot of players. TCLauncher has the “Server” tab for this.

1. Click “New server” and set the name, version, core, port and memory.
2. Accept the Minecraft EULA — the server won't start without it; Mojang requires this.
3. Click “Start”. The server console is visible in the tab, and you can type commands in the field at the bottom: op, whitelist add, say.
4. Give your friends the address shown in the tab.

Which core to choose

• Vanilla — the standard Mojang server.
• Forge, NeoForge, Fabric, Quilt — for mods. Players need the same mods as the server.
• Paper, Purpur — faster cores with plugins. Players join with a regular vanilla client, without installing anything.

How your friends can reach the server

Rooms don't need the router, but your own server does: friends connect to your computer over the internet, so the router has to let them through. You set this up once, with port forwarding.

1. Find the port and your local address. The port is in the server settings — 25565 by default. While the server is running, the tab shows this computer's address “on your network”, something like 192.168.1.23.
2. Open the router settings. Type the router's address into the browser — usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 — and sign in; the password is often on a sticker on the router.
3. Forward the port. In the “Port Forwarding” section (also called “Virtual Server” or “NAT”) add a rule: port 25565, protocol TCP, to your computer's local address. Reserve that address for your computer in the router (“DHCP reservation”), otherwise it will change one day.
4. Allow Java in the firewall. On the first start Windows asks for permission — allow it, otherwise only you will see the server.
5. Give your friends the address. The tab shows the address “for players”: your external IP and the port. Copy it with the “Copy address” button. Your external IP is also shown on any “what is my IP” website.
6. Check it. The “Check from outside” button asks an external service whether the server can be reached from the internet.

You yourself join via localhost: most routers don't let you back in through your own external address, and that's not a fault. If the check fails even with the port forwarded, your ISP may be putting you behind a shared NAT (CGNAT) — ask them for a public IP address, or play in a room instead.

Playing with offline names? In the server settings, turn off “Licensed accounts only (online-mode)”. By default, the server only lets in licensed accounts.

Way 3. Local network (LAN)

If you're connected to the same router or Wi-Fi, you don't need a server:

1. Everyone launches the same game version (with mods — the same instance).
2. The host enters their world and presses Esc → “Open to LAN”.
3. Your friend opens “Multiplayer” — the world will appear in the list on its own.

Download TCLauncher — it's free, and the first launch takes just a few minutes.