Player walkthrough

Every manual action you ever take as a player, in one place — what triggers it, the exact command, and what it does. If you just want to install and play, follow Get started; come back here when you want the “what do I actually have to run by hand?” reference.

Table of contents

Manual vs automated — the one-screen summary

You run three things by hand, ever. Everything else happens automatically when you click Play or quit the game.

Action You do it? How
First install Manual (once per PC) Paste the one-line installer into PowerShell
Play / version check Automatic Prism runs nz check before every launch
Backup on quit Automatic Prism runs nz backup after every session
Update when prompted Manual Double-click Update Craft to Exile 2 on your Desktop
Move to a new PC Manual (rare) Run nz migrate after installing on the new PC
Offline / bypass the gate Manual (rare) Set one environment variable

Everything runs through a single small program, nz.exe, that the installer drops in two places:

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\NegativeZone\nz.exe — your personal copy (use this for ad-hoc commands).
  • %APPDATA%\PrismLauncher\instances\Craft to Exile 2\.negativezone\nz.exe — the copy Prism’s launch/exit hooks call automatically.

The legacy PowerShell client channel is retired. Use the nz commands below; archived scripts remain available to maintainers only for recovery of old immutable installs.

1. First install (manual, once per PC)

Why — get Java 17, Prism Launcher, and the Craft to Exile 2 modpack onto a new PC and wire up the version-check / automatic-backup hooks.

Prerequisites

  • Windows 10/11 with a paid Minecraft Java Edition account.
  • 8 GB+ total system RAM (the modpack instance ships pinned to an 8 GB allocation).
  • winget (ships with Windows 10/11; otherwise install App Installer).

How — press Windows key → type powershell → Enter, then paste:

irm https://github.com/camcast3/MinecraftInfra/releases/download/nz-latest/install.ps1 | iex

What it does

  1. Installs Java 17 (Temurin) + Prism Launcher via winget (skips either if already present).
  2. Downloads nz.exe to %LOCALAPPDATA%\NegativeZone\nz.exe.
  3. Runs nz setup: pulls the modpack zip from Azure (SHA-256 verified), installs it as the Craft to Exile 2 Prism instance, writes the .negativezone-version marker, wires Prism’s PreLaunchCommand (nz check) and PostExitCommand (nz backup), and drops an Update Craft to Exile 2 launcher on your Desktop.

Notes

  • Safe to re-run. On an existing install it builds and validates a sibling replacement, preserves your worlds/waypoints/settings, swaps atomically, and keeps the previous version as .bak plus a launchable Craft to Exile 2 (old) rollback instance.
  • Still on an old PowerShell-script install? Re-running the one-liner above is the whole migration. Details: Replacing a legacy install.
  • Override the binary/manifest with NEGATIVEZONE_NZ_EXE_URL / NEGATIVEZONE_MANIFEST_URL, or skip the winget step with NEGATIVEZONE_SKIP_WINGET=1 (admins/testing only).
  • Full walk-through, including a manual fallback: Get started.

2. Play (automatic — no action)

Why — stop you joining with a mismatched modpack version (which would fail at the Forge/FML handshake).

How — nothing. Prism runs this for you as the PreLaunchCommand:

"…\Craft to Exile 2\.negativezone\nz.exe" check

What it does — reads your .negativezone-version, fetches the server’s latest-version.txt, and compares them:

Installed vs server Result
Match Silent pass — game launches
Behind / ahead Hard block with MODPACK VERSION MISMATCH and update instructions
Server unreachable (offline, 404, 5xx) Fails open — launch allowed

Notes — when blocked, the console tells you to run nz update; the easy way is action 4 below. See Updates for the full block anatomy.

3. Backup on quit (automatic — no action)

Why — keep rolling snapshots of your personal state (waypoints, maps, options, shaders, tuned configs) so a bad update or crash is recoverable.

How — nothing. Prism runs this as the PostExitCommand after every session:

"…\Craft to Exile 2\.negativezone\nz.exe" backup

What it does — at most once per 3 days of play, copies a curated allow-list into %APPDATA%\PrismLauncher\instances\Craft to Exile 2\.negativezone\backups\<yyyyMMdd-HHmmss>\, keeping the 3 newest. A fresh snapshot is also forced right before every update.

Notes — tune or disable with user environment variables (restart Prism to apply):

Variable Purpose Default
NEGATIVEZONE_BACKUP_DAYS Days between snapshots (0 = every exit) 3
NEGATIVEZONE_BACKUP_RETAIN Snapshots to keep 3
NEGATIVEZONE_BACKUP_INCLUDE_SAVES 1 to also snapshot single-player worlds unset
NEGATIVEZONE_BACKUP_DISABLE 1 to disable entirely unset

Restore details: Backups.

4. Update when prompted (manual)

Why — a new modpack version shipped and the launch-time check is blocking you (or you just want to pull the latest).

Prerequisites — close Prism completely first (the update touches instance files Prism holds open).

How — double-click Update Craft to Exile 2 on your Desktop. That’s it.

Prefer a terminal? Open a new PowerShell window and run:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\NegativeZone\nz.exe" update

What it does

  1. Auto-detects the Craft to Exile 2 instance and refuses to run while Prism is open.
  2. Forces a pre-update safety snapshot.
  3. Builds the update in a separate sibling folder, delta-syncing it with packwiz-installer against the server’s SHA-pinned pack.toml.
  4. Verifies the staged instance, preserves declared personal state, and swaps it into place atomically. The version marker is written only after success.

Notes

  • Safe to re-run / no-op aware — if you’re already current it does nothing.
  • A full checksum-verified backup is kept outside the live instance, and an interrupted update is recovered from its transaction journal on the next run.
  • Refuses downgrades unless the admin sets allowDowngrade in the manifest.
  • Deep dive: Updates.

5. Move to a new PC (manual, rare)

Why — carry your keybinds, video/shader options, and Xaero/JourneyMap waypoints from an old install to a freshly installed one.

Prerequisites — run the first-install one-liner (action 1) on the new PC, and have the old instance folder reachable (copied over, on a USB drive, etc.).

How — in PowerShell:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\NegativeZone\nz.exe" migrate

It auto-detects Prism/CurseForge instances and prompts you to pick the source (old) and destination (new). You can also pass paths explicitly:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\NegativeZone\nz.exe" migrate --from "D:\old\Craft to Exile 2" --to "$env:APPDATA\PrismLauncher\instances\Craft to Exile 2"

What it does — previews a plan, then copies options.txt, optionsof.txt, optionsshaders.txt, hotbar.nbt, and the journeymap / XaeroWaypoints / XaeroWorldMap folders. Anything it overwrites is first moved to a _migration-backup-<timestamp>\ folder, so it’s reversible.

Notes

  • servers.dat is not copied (the pack ships its own server entry).
  • Mod configs under config/ are not bulk-copied — port them one mod at a time if needed (bulk-copying across versions can crash the game).

6. Offline / bypass the gate (manual, rare)

Why — launch a known-mismatched client on purpose (e.g. play a single-player world while the server is down).

How — set it once in your user environment, then restart Prism:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('NEGATIVEZONE_SKIP_VERSION_CHECK', '1', 'User')

What it does — nz check prints one line saying it’s bypassed and lets the game launch regardless of version.

Notes — the multiplayer server still kicks you at the FML handshake if your mods don’t match; this is for offline/dev use only. Undo by setting the value to an empty string and restarting Prism.

7. Send logs to the admin (manual, when asked)

Why — something went wrong and the admin asks for your logs.

How — in PowerShell:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\NegativeZone\nz.exe" support

What it does — bundles nz.log (the full-detail record every nz command writes to .negativezone\nz.log), the installed-version marker, instance.cfg, and a short environment summary into nz-support-<timestamp>.zip on your Desktop. DM that single file to the admin.

Notes

  • Want to watch a command in detail live? Add --verbose (e.g. nz update --verbose). nz.log always has the full detail regardless of the flag.
  • --quiet shows errors only on the console.

Where to go deeper

Topic Page
First install (friendly + manual fallback) Get started
The launch-time check & updating in detail Updates
Snapshots, rollback, restore scenarios Backups
Something went wrong Troubleshooting