So the weekend is almost over, and it was rather eventful for my friend and myself: last night she "ate" three withers as if they were nothing! Nah, not really eating but defeated three of them (I may have done a wee bit of trolling / teasing ;)) and even managed to capture one too! Well, it left us feeling really satisfied about setup and considering that several mod authors have started threads here I couldn't resist the urge to vent a little about our favorite collection of mods.
See, we don't use any modpacks but instead rolled our own setup. It started with a basic collection which I had collected over the years and past December things kinda got out of hand when I finally set up a private Forge LAN server for both of us to play on. That seriously rekindled our passion for Minecraft after having taken a break for at least a year and we also started looking out for other, more modern, mods which might help to "complete" our setup. We believe we came up with something really awesome and so I felt like sharing.
For context: we're both casual players and our intent was to go for a "Minecraft+" experience. Meaning that it's perfectly fine to get sidetracked a bit with other things to pursue, but in the end it should still be about Minecraft and the hunt for the Ender dragon, and everything beyond that. We're playing on Minecraft 1.18.2 (seems the forum tags are a bit outdated?) because some mods only support up to this version.
Hope you guys can enjoy this one
Tinkers Construct
This mod is all about creating and enhancing your gear in completely different ways. Forget about "just" crafting a pickaxe on a crafting table... that's so old fashioned Instead you could also focus on building tool parts which when combined can get you the actual tool (or item). Meaning? Crafting a pickaxe no longer means just placing 2 sticks and 3 materials (wood, stone, iron, diamond...) but instead you now need a pick head, tool handle and a tool binding. You can create these parts using the so called part builder by selecting a pattern (made from planks & sticks) and then providing the material to make the part.
The cool part is that these materials are no longer limited to just the few I mentioned earlier. Naah... you could also consider making a tool from bone, or flint or maybe some kind of material that got added by other mods. Best of all: all these materials have specific attributes which can make their usage even more appealing. Bone tends to splinter and thus cause more damage, wood tends to (slowly!) heal itself a bit over time whereas flint can make a tool jagged.
And then we get to the metals and the smelting part... Forget about a furnace that only melts stuff into ingots. How about smelting metal so that you get a liquid which you can mold into specific items using casts? Tinkers can really make both the early and mid game a lot more interesting.
Thermal Expansion ("Thermal series")
The only problem with Tinkers construct is that it doesn't add any new materials to your world, it doesn't support "worldgen". Which can be a problem because a lot of the fun with modded comes from having more materials and metals than in the vanilla game. For example... while copper may not be very useful it can become a lot better if you combine it with tin: tin and copper get you bronze, which is a pretty resiliant metal. Yups: metals like tin, lead, silver, nickel are added by the Thermal series, and thus can also be used with Tinkers Construct.
But it gets better... there's a reason why this is now a series of mods: cultivation, expansion, foundation, innovation and integration all add a wide variety of things to your game. Ever got bored with only having wheat, carrots and potatoes to farm? Beetroot? Naah, how about having the ability to grow corn, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, rice and even spinach? Of course this also means you get a lot of new food items to craft as well! Like a tasty sandwich or a healthy salad. It even has sushi rolls!
Next are several machines which can help you be more productive. For example... as we all know a furnace will keep on burning no matter what even if you don't have any items in there; this could potentially be a waste of fuel. Enter the redstone furnace: a machine which uses energy to smelt items (which can be generated by a dynamo) but it'll only use this during smelting: as soon as there aren't any more items it'll turn off and conserve power.
Botania
My gf's absolute favorite. This mod allows us to tap into the "natural energies" of Minecraft called mana; which we can use for a wild variety of things. You start by picking up flowers within the world: these mystical flowers can give you petals which can be used in a magical basin called the petal apothecary and it allows you to 'summon' special flowers into the world. Generating flowers can be used to create mana whereas functional flowers can tap into this mana to "do" things. For example... grew tired of getting harassed by creepers every so many times? Nothing which a Tigerseye can't fix!
And are you still using iron armor? Why not dip some armor into a mana pool so that you'll get manasteel? This is a mystical material which is stronger than metal and can even use mana to repair itself! As you progress into your game you may even be able to get your hands on terrasteel: this allows you to craft terra armor which is even more powerful than netherrite armor!
Some of the things I really admire about Botania is the way you progress into the mod but also how it can severely enhance your gameplay. Brewing for example can also be done using mana you know, and by doing so you'll tap into some really impressive new feats. I mean... why carry around 3 potions when you could have four portions of said potion all neatly collected in one single vial? Of course you're going to need mana glass for this
But it also tries to really blend in with nature so to speak. For example: a so called drum of the wild can be used to make all the crops around it drop their items, as if they were being harvested. How to collect all of this you wonder? That's nothing which a so called Hopperhock flower can't handle, at the cost of some mana of course.
Mekanism
While 'Thermal' adds several interesting new devices to use its focus is pretty broad: it adds a ton of everything. Thing is... I really enjoy so called "tech mods" so I was looking for something a bit more extensive, this is where Mekanism comes into play. This mod is all about adding exciting technology to the world of Minecraft. I previously mentioned a redstone furnace, but even that gets you only so far... how about having the ability to process your metals so that you'll get more material out of them? For example... if you were to purify your raw metals using pure oxygen you'd get 2 clumps out of one raw ore. Of course the only problem now is that these clumps are so dense that you can forget about melting them "just like that": you'll need to crush them. Unfortunately this will result in the material to degrade a little: curing a metal clump like this would get you dirty metal dust, but not to worry: an enrichment chamber can take care of that problem for you.
This is just a brief example of how you could use multiple machines to seriously increase your ore production. All at the cost of energy of course, which you're going to need to generate somehow. Luckily enough Mekanism provides several ways to generate power, but... it can also utilize some of the mechanics from the Thermal series, win win!
Create
Both Thermal and Mekanism provide machines which can automate certain tasks and process materials, but in the end it's all about processing items. So how about making things actually more around in the world? For example, one of the things which are pretty difficult to make is a door which can slide open and close. In fact... sliding things are impossible because the best you'll get are so called sticky pistons which can push and pull single blocks. Pistons can often also move other pistons but... it's all about moving single parts.
That's where Create can come in... Create dives into the unique aspect of propulsion: using kinetic energy which can be used to make some of its machinery "do" things. For example... if you were to make a water wheel, then place a water block on top of it the water would start to flow downwards. This will then make the wheel spin: attach a shaft to it and you'll have a rotating bar which you can connect to other machines. Like a press for example: place a metal ingot underneath it and it'll press the ingot into a sheet.
You could also consider using dried kelp to make a mechanical belt: connect a belt to two shafts and you get a real working conveyor belt which can be used to move items around. What good this will do you, you wonder? Remember me talking about harvesting crops earlier on? You could consider making a harvester using Create which could then move over your farmland to automatically harvest and collect any crops on it. It's even possible to fully hide it!
When my friend wants to automatically farm her crops she merely uses a "tablet" (a portable redstone link) after which a part of the mountain next to her field disappears into the ground, together with 2 sides of her surrounding fence. Then a harvester moves over the land back and forth after which everything gets moved back into place. It'll be as if nothing happened, other than all the crops now gone
This mod takes Minecraft into places you've never experienced before! Has a bit of a learning curve though.
Ars Nouveau
Botania hints a bit at using mysical items but while it sometimes may feel like you're doing something magical, for example when creating a rune which represnts one of the four elements, fact remains that in the end it's all about using devices which use mana to "do" stuff. So why not dive into something fully magical? This mod is all about giving you magical abilities to "do" stuff, and the best part is that this "stuff" can be pretty much anything you can imagine!
It all boils down to creating a spellbook which allows you to build up spells. A spell consists of a form to tell it what to target, an effect which tells it what it should do and both can be augmented to enhance or change the overal effect. Of course there is a bit more to this: while you can use some forms and effects right from the getgo you'll need to unlock all the rest. This is done by providing certain items at a scribes table: if you have enough XP then the items can be used to create a glyph: this glyph can then be used to unlock a specific feature in your spellbook. There are three tiers by default and each of those tiers also needs to be unlocked.
So... what can you do with all this? For starters... you could make a spell which targets you ("self" form) and then uses the magelight effect: this will result in you getting night vision. If you augment this with "extend time" then the effect will last longer. Exchange the self form with a projectile and now you'll have something like the magelight spell in Skyrim: you can shoot a ball of light somewhere to temporarily light up an area. Exchange the magelight effect with a heal effect and now you can heal your friends or any mobs around you. Once you get your fingers behind all these mechanics then there's pretty much nothing impossible anymore...
I was walking with my friend in the nether after having finished a pathway made from stone brick between two nether portals: one at her base and the other near an end portal when we suddenly spotted a pocket of nether crystals. The only problem: they were on the other side of a small ravine, with a huge lava lake underneath. I commented that it would be tricky to pass that gap when she simply casted a spell using her spellbook and sure enough: it simply mined out the area for her: it gave her all the drops and even applied a fortune effect! "Convenient"
EvilCraft
Ars Nouveau as well as Botania pretty much focus on "positive magic", so I figured that we should also be able to tap into the "darker" side of things which is where this mod comes into play
It taps into the "forbidden" mechanics of blood magic, in specific: collecting and using blood to craft and fuel devices which can do "unnatural things". I really love the mechanics and progression in this mod: it all starts when you manage to mine some "dark gems". There is a lot of power in these gems which will quickly manifest when you crush them: crushed dark gem is an incredible fuel source. However, the main idea is to make yourself a so called 'blood extractor": if you keep this in your inventory it'll collect blood samples every time you kill a mob or monster; provided they have blood on them of course. Collect enough and you'll be able to dip a dark gem into blood basin (= 5 blocks of blood together): this will get you a dark power gem which is the beginning of everything.
See: EvilCraft allows you to build a device which can use blood to infuse items. Items like a book which will turn into a blook: a blood drenched icky book. Sounds pretty useless, eh? Well... if you place a blook and an enchanted item into a purifier (which is a basin which needs to be filled with blood) then you will be able to exact a random enchantment from that item; this gives you an enchantment book and of course the item back.
This mod also allows us to play "Mob buster" If you kill a mob then its spirit will remain in the overworld for a while. With the right tools you can capture this spirit and later on "cook" it to get even more drops out of your mobs All at the cost of plenty of blood of course. Are you sure that you're going to keep a nearby village alive, or are you just going to slaughter them all to get more blood?
Applied Energistics 2
As one can hopefully imagine you will get a ton of new items to collect and use with all these mods: where are you going to store all of that?!!! This is where AE2 can come into play: it adds "alien" technology to the world of Minecraft which allows us to craft storage devices which we can connect in a network. You can then use this to store insane amount of items in basically one single block, now referring to a so called "ME Drive" which can contain up to 10 storage units which can house either items or fluids, and insane amounts of those. An 8k storage unit for example can contain 63 different types of items, but can store up to 8000 items in total! And the best part is that this collection can be accessed at any point in your network, you'll even be able to set up a wireless connection so that you can be away from your base as well.
Ice & Fire: Dragons
Playing with modded Minecraft can be a tremendously satisfying experience. For example... it took my friends weeks (well, several gaming sessions during the week) and a lot of effort before she managed to enhance her mana production in order to summon enough terrasteel for upgrading her manasteel armor and making some terrasteel items. Terrasteel armor is pretty much one of the best armors you can get in the game, it provides a lot of perks (like always regenerating health even if your hunger bar isn't full) and it's basically fully on-par with netherrite armor (actually better). A terrablade is a sword which can also shoot bursts of mana in order to attack hostiles at a distance. Ars Nouveau even provides a mechanic which allows you to attach a spell to a sword (or armor piece) which when used can be randomly cast. Like, say, a healing spell Of course, healing yourself is nothing which the Ars Nouveau spellbook can't handle, and don't get me started on its ability to cast fireball spells
Nasty effects like fire or poison? Nothing which an invigorating pendant filled with blood can't handle. Uh oh! Are you falling from a great height?!! Either cast slow fall on yourself, or maybe 'bounce'. But if that's not available there's always the cirrus amulet which allows you to double jump and thus negate fall damage (when timed correctly) or... how about a magical belt of levitation?
Needless to say: eventually you can become pretty overpowered with these mods. Sure, you worked hard to get there but the fact remains... Last night I trolled my friend Aya a little and released 2 more withers after she had defeated the first one. She never saw it coming, and it took a bit more effort, but she didn't even come close to dying.
This got us thinking.. maybe it was time to try and add more hostile mobs to our game. Which is when we discovered this one... being both quite into fantasy and such this was a no brainer.
Ice & Fire adds a ton of mythological creatures to the game of Minecraft, including dragons! And some of these critters are seriously dangerous, even in a modded game with enhanced perks like ours! For example... if you try to take on a gorgon (like Medusa?) then you actually risk dying from being turned into stone. Besides becoming a statue this will have a nasty side effect: all your items will be gone! Lost "inside" your statue, even if you're using mods that are supposed to save these.
A cyclops is a huge giant with one eye, and if he catches you he will literally pick you up and bite your head off... auch!
And then, of course, dragons! These come in three variants and go through 5 stages of growth in their life. Trying to fight one of the matriarchs in order to hopefully, maybe, obtain a dragon egg won't even come close to the danger you'd take from fighting a wither!
Seriously... if you enjoy fantasy culture and would like to add some more mystique and mythology to your game then look no further...
And there you have it!
Next to this collection we also use a few support mods but this story is getting long enough already, it's time for me to start working some more on my upcoming Mekasuit
I started playing Minecraft all the way back to 1.8, though 1.7.10 was the real version I played first but soon after there was the upgrade. And I / we kept playing but if you really want to enjoy something you should also take breaks. Though... the introduction of copper and the decrease of iron had a negative effect on the both of us and we kinda stopped playing for a long(er) time.
Before last December I think neither of us have played Minecraft intensively for well over 2 years!
Yet here we are... Last Holliday season I finally took a check off my bucket list and set up a (private) Forge LAN server, allowing my gf and me to both play modded Minecraft. As I hoped the modded part seriously refueled our interest in the game; we even expanded our custom collection of mods with a few more "modern" ones.
It has nothing to do with being alone or not. It has to do with distance.
Distance from other existing portals... as such: if OP is alone in that area and thus there aren't any other portals in the overworld around him... a mere relocate in the nether wil work.
I've played with several resource packs in the past which would apply both randomization as well as customization to certain mobs; one of which being the creeper which would get a different color based on where you were. Yellow'ish in deserts, gray in caves and so on. Yes, it's different and somewhat easier to overlook them, but at the same time I've never really been a fan either.
Because many creepers are easy to overlook, not so much because of their looks but rather their behavior.
Although those three things needed addressed, I think they were WAYYYY too heavy handed in how they did it.
What did they do?
[I'm going to put these in order of how much they suck]
A.) The books villagers offer are not identified until you purchase them. Meaning, you'll likely lock in a crappy enchantment and have to kill and replace that villager in order to reroll. (Ridiculous, heavy handed, and unnecessary)
That's not something I can reproduce. First I tried this on my modded setup (1.18.2) and looked up an existing librarian: the available book was fully named, I could tell exactly up front what enchantment I was getting.
Of course because I play with mods I figured that this could have been caused by one of those. So... I just fired up a vanilla game (1.20.4), placed a lectern and spawned a villager (using a spawn egg) and sure enough: when setting up a trade I can see up front what enchantment(s) I'm getting.
So now I cannot help wonder: are you sure you're not playing with certain mods which for some reason gave you this impression?
Also...
> B.) Which enchantments you can get are divided by the different (Biome based) village types. (This sucks, but I get it)
That conclusion doesn't seem correct either, according to the wiki this is fully decided at random, see note 9 on that page. And this is once again something I actually reproduced, though it was by accident. On my modded server (1.18.2) I found a librarian villager in a forest biome, and it provided an enchanted book with Efficiency V. Right now I'm in my singleplayer redstone world (desert biome) and as said: I just spawned a villager. Guess what book I'm getting?
Dunno how you came to some of your conclusions but they don't appear to be correct.
Why not just check out CurseForge to see what mods are popular and which themes may interest you?
See, just getting a bunch of mods together is something everyone can do: just download 'm, make sure you got their dependencies right and then, well, play. Thing is though: it's a much better idea to try and find mods which can more easily co-exist and maybe even interact with each other. But that is really a task of its own, and once again it also depends on what kind of mods, or themes, you like to play with.
Over the past years I collected my own favorite bunch of mods and well... it's 52 mods in total, a very small collection in comparison to some of the modpacks out there, but these work nicely together, don't overlap too much and all in all gives us a very solid "Minecraft+" gaming experience.
I'm currently having this problem, where I'm trying to get my world (with already set up NPCs) on my multiplayer server, but when I start the server and join, the NPCs are not there. Both world files are identical and I just don't know how to fix it.
I cannot help you with this one since I haven't use this mod for quite a while but I'd like to point your attention to a possible alternative... if you play with a somewhat recent version of Minecraft then it's quite easy to set up some NPC mobs yourself using a datapack.
The main things to look out for is to use the "NoAI:true" NBT property when you summon a mod so that it doesn't start running around on its own. I also suggets to 'tag' it so that it's easier to address them again: Tags:["mycustommob"].
After all this you can actually use the advancements system to make them "do" something, if you want to make an NPC talk when someone interacts with it, then all you need is a (hidden?) advancement which reacts to the "minecraft:player_interacted_with_entity" trigger, see this wiki page for more info on that. What I usually do is use a function as the "reward" in which I make the NPC talk (using something like /execute as @e[tag=mycustommob] run say "Help, the creepers are attacking!"), and after that I use the /advancement command to revoke this current advancement so that it can be triggered again (in other words: when the player interacts with the NPC it will once again say its line or do its thing).
This can become tricky as a regular player because these portals are "linked". And the range of this mechanic is quite a few blocks (though I am not sure from mind how much). So if you're relatively alone in that area you should be fine if you remove the nether portal and relocate it: the moment you rebuild & re-activate it this should link back to your portal in the overworld.
However... if you're in an area where more people maintain a nether portal then there is a small risk that the new / moved nether portal will link to someone elses.
So... I'm well aware that this is a somewhat older thread but still wanted to use a forum vs. Discord because I don't really do Discord. I have an account but meh... and since it was your official mod repository on CurseForge that got me here...
Anyway... last weekend I set up a private LAN server running Forge for both my gf and myself. We went over our mod collection (we don't use packs but set up our own preferences) and decided that some mods had to go since we no longer really used 'm. Which got me the idea to add something new.
Because Botania is also part of our mod collection (next to several "tech mods") we wanted something that would also focus on "magic" a little bit.
well, that's where I found EvilCraft and boy it is something else!
I'm really impressed and happy with this critter. The gameplay is pretty balanced I think; see, you do get some "heavy" options like a wearable crafting table (Botania 'only' has the halo which you need to actually use), but at the same time you don't get any outrageously overpowered weapons. There is a balance here IMO.
And of course the progression. I really enjoyed going through the bowls of promises and using JEI to find out how to proceed in order to get better upgrades; on first glimpse I assumed that I had discovered an error in the documentation, but nope!
... speaking of which.. I also really appreciate the way in which the book has been set up! I mean... surely it's not "trolling" when someone who merely wrote down his discoveries doesn't do that in the "best" sequence? It's not uncommon to make a discovery only to come up with something better later on. Yet if you, as unknowing player, follow the book to the letter at first... I really appreciated that experience (referring to blood chest vs. infuser).
My only small gripe is that the version I'm using doesn't seem to support Tinker' tools with the blood chest; you can't repair any of those items. But we're still on MC 1.18 (Forge 40.2.14) because of some "other mods"; it's a minor issue really, doesn't stop us from having fun!
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Hi gang!
So the weekend is almost over, and it was rather eventful for my friend and myself: last night she "ate" three withers as if they were nothing!
Nah, not really eating but defeated three of them (I may have done a wee bit of trolling / teasing ;)) and even managed to capture one too! Well, it left us feeling really satisfied about setup and considering that several mod authors have started threads here I couldn't resist the urge to vent a little about our favorite collection of mods.
See, we don't use any modpacks but instead rolled our own setup. It started with a basic collection which I had collected over the years and past December things kinda got out of hand when I finally set up a private Forge LAN server for both of us to play on. That seriously rekindled our passion for Minecraft after having taken a break for at least a year and we also started looking out for other, more modern, mods which might help to "complete" our setup. We believe we came up with something really awesome and so I felt like sharing.
For context: we're both casual players and our intent was to go for a "Minecraft+" experience. Meaning that it's perfectly fine to get sidetracked a bit with other things to pursue, but in the end it should still be about Minecraft and the hunt for the Ender dragon, and everything beyond that. We're playing on Minecraft 1.18.2 (seems the forum tags are a bit outdated?) because some mods only support up to this version.
Hope you guys can enjoy this one
Tinkers Construct
This mod is all about creating and enhancing your gear in completely different ways. Forget about "just" crafting a pickaxe on a crafting table... that's so old fashioned
Instead you could also focus on building tool parts which when combined can get you the actual tool (or item). Meaning? Crafting a pickaxe no longer means just placing 2 sticks and 3 materials (wood, stone, iron, diamond...) but instead you now need a pick head, tool handle and a tool binding. You can create these parts using the so called part builder by selecting a pattern (made from planks & sticks) and then providing the material to make the part.
The cool part is that these materials are no longer limited to just the few I mentioned earlier. Naah... you could also consider making a tool from bone, or flint or maybe some kind of material that got added by other mods. Best of all: all these materials have specific attributes which can make their usage even more appealing. Bone tends to splinter and thus cause more damage, wood tends to (slowly!) heal itself a bit over time whereas flint can make a tool jagged.
And then we get to the metals and the smelting part... Forget about a furnace that only melts stuff into ingots. How about smelting metal so that you get a liquid which you can mold into specific items using casts? Tinkers can really make both the early and mid game a lot more interesting.
Thermal Expansion ("Thermal series")
The only problem with Tinkers construct is that it doesn't add any new materials to your world, it doesn't support "worldgen". Which can be a problem because a lot of the fun with modded comes from having more materials and metals than in the vanilla game. For example... while copper may not be very useful it can become a lot better if you combine it with tin: tin and copper get you bronze, which is a pretty resiliant metal. Yups: metals like tin, lead, silver, nickel are added by the Thermal series, and thus can also be used with Tinkers Construct.
But it gets better... there's a reason why this is now a series of mods: cultivation, expansion, foundation, innovation and integration all add a wide variety of things to your game. Ever got bored with only having wheat, carrots and potatoes to farm? Beetroot? Naah, how about having the ability to grow corn, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, rice and even spinach? Of course this also means you get a lot of new food items to craft as well! Like a tasty sandwich or a healthy salad. It even has sushi rolls!
Next are several machines which can help you be more productive. For example... as we all know a furnace will keep on burning no matter what even if you don't have any items in there; this could potentially be a waste of fuel. Enter the redstone furnace: a machine which uses energy to smelt items (which can be generated by a dynamo) but it'll only use this during smelting: as soon as there aren't any more items it'll turn off and conserve power.
Botania
My gf's absolute favorite. This mod allows us to tap into the "natural energies" of Minecraft called mana; which we can use for a wild variety of things. You start by picking up flowers within the world: these mystical flowers can give you petals which can be used in a magical basin called the petal apothecary and it allows you to 'summon' special flowers into the world. Generating flowers can be used to create mana whereas functional flowers can tap into this mana to "do" things. For example... grew tired of getting harassed by creepers every so many times? Nothing which a Tigerseye can't fix!
And are you still using iron armor? Why not dip some armor into a mana pool so that you'll get manasteel? This is a mystical material which is stronger than metal and can even use mana to repair itself! As you progress into your game you may even be able to get your hands on terrasteel: this allows you to craft terra armor which is even more powerful than netherrite armor!
Some of the things I really admire about Botania is the way you progress into the mod but also how it can severely enhance your gameplay. Brewing for example can also be done using mana you know, and by doing so you'll tap into some really impressive new feats. I mean... why carry around 3 potions when you could have four portions of said potion all neatly collected in one single vial? Of course you're going to need mana glass for this
But it also tries to really blend in with nature so to speak. For example: a so called drum of the wild can be used to make all the crops around it drop their items, as if they were being harvested. How to collect all of this you wonder? That's nothing which a so called Hopperhock flower can't handle, at the cost of some mana of course.
Mekanism
While 'Thermal' adds several interesting new devices to use its focus is pretty broad: it adds a ton of everything. Thing is... I really enjoy so called "tech mods" so I was looking for something a bit more extensive, this is where Mekanism comes into play. This mod is all about adding exciting technology to the world of Minecraft. I previously mentioned a redstone furnace, but even that gets you only so far... how about having the ability to process your metals so that you'll get more material out of them? For example... if you were to purify your raw metals using pure oxygen you'd get 2 clumps out of one raw ore. Of course the only problem now is that these clumps are so dense that you can forget about melting them "just like that": you'll need to crush them. Unfortunately this will result in the material to degrade a little: curing a metal clump like this would get you dirty metal dust, but not to worry: an enrichment chamber can take care of that problem for you.
This is just a brief example of how you could use multiple machines to seriously increase your ore production. All at the cost of energy of course, which you're going to need to generate somehow. Luckily enough Mekanism provides several ways to generate power, but... it can also utilize some of the mechanics from the Thermal series, win win!
Create
Both Thermal and Mekanism provide machines which can automate certain tasks and process materials, but in the end it's all about processing items. So how about making things actually more around in the world? For example, one of the things which are pretty difficult to make is a door which can slide open and close. In fact... sliding things are impossible because the best you'll get are so called sticky pistons which can push and pull single blocks. Pistons can often also move other pistons but... it's all about moving single parts.
That's where Create can come in... Create dives into the unique aspect of propulsion: using kinetic energy which can be used to make some of its machinery "do" things. For example... if you were to make a water wheel, then place a water block on top of it the water would start to flow downwards. This will then make the wheel spin: attach a shaft to it and you'll have a rotating bar which you can connect to other machines. Like a press for example: place a metal ingot underneath it and it'll press the ingot into a sheet.
You could also consider using dried kelp to make a mechanical belt: connect a belt to two shafts and you get a real working conveyor belt which can be used to move items around. What good this will do you, you wonder? Remember me talking about harvesting crops earlier on? You could consider making a harvester using Create which could then move over your farmland to automatically harvest and collect any crops on it. It's even possible to fully hide it!
When my friend wants to automatically farm her crops she merely uses a "tablet" (a portable redstone link) after which a part of the mountain next to her field disappears into the ground, together with 2 sides of her surrounding fence. Then a harvester moves over the land back and forth after which everything gets moved back into place. It'll be as if nothing happened, other than all the crops now gone
This mod takes Minecraft into places you've never experienced before! Has a bit of a learning curve though.
Ars Nouveau
Botania hints a bit at using mysical items but while it sometimes may feel like you're doing something magical, for example when creating a rune which represnts one of the four elements, fact remains that in the end it's all about using devices which use mana to "do" stuff. So why not dive into something fully magical? This mod is all about giving you magical abilities to "do" stuff, and the best part is that this "stuff" can be pretty much anything you can imagine!
It all boils down to creating a spellbook which allows you to build up spells. A spell consists of a form to tell it what to target, an effect which tells it what it should do and both can be augmented to enhance or change the overal effect. Of course there is a bit more to this: while you can use some forms and effects right from the getgo you'll need to unlock all the rest. This is done by providing certain items at a scribes table: if you have enough XP then the items can be used to create a glyph: this glyph can then be used to unlock a specific feature in your spellbook. There are three tiers by default and each of those tiers also needs to be unlocked.
So... what can you do with all this? For starters... you could make a spell which targets you ("self" form) and then uses the magelight effect: this will result in you getting night vision. If you augment this with "extend time" then the effect will last longer. Exchange the self form with a projectile and now you'll have something like the magelight spell in Skyrim: you can shoot a ball of light somewhere to temporarily light up an area. Exchange the magelight effect with a heal effect and now you can heal your friends or any mobs around you. Once you get your fingers behind all these mechanics then there's pretty much nothing impossible anymore...
I was walking with my friend in the nether after having finished a pathway made from stone brick between two nether portals: one at her base and the other near an end portal when we suddenly spotted a pocket of nether crystals. The only problem: they were on the other side of a small ravine, with a huge lava lake underneath. I commented that it would be tricky to pass that gap when she simply casted a spell using her spellbook and sure enough: it simply mined out the area for her: it gave her all the drops and even applied a fortune effect! "Convenient"
EvilCraft
Ars Nouveau as well as Botania pretty much focus on "positive magic", so I figured that we should also be able to tap into the "darker" side of things which is where this mod comes into play
It taps into the "forbidden" mechanics of blood magic, in specific: collecting and using blood to craft and fuel devices which can do "unnatural things". I really love the mechanics and progression in this mod: it all starts when you manage to mine some "dark gems". There is a lot of power in these gems which will quickly manifest when you crush them: crushed dark gem is an incredible fuel source. However, the main idea is to make yourself a so called 'blood extractor": if you keep this in your inventory it'll collect blood samples every time you kill a mob or monster; provided they have blood on them of course. Collect enough and you'll be able to dip a dark gem into blood basin (= 5 blocks of blood together): this will get you a dark power gem which is the beginning of everything.
See: EvilCraft allows you to build a device which can use blood to infuse items. Items like a book which will turn into a blook: a blood drenched icky book. Sounds pretty useless, eh? Well... if you place a blook and an enchanted item into a purifier (which is a basin which needs to be filled with blood) then you will be able to exact a random enchantment from that item; this gives you an enchantment book and of course the item back.
This mod also allows us to play "Mob buster"
If you kill a mob then its spirit will remain in the overworld for a while. With the right tools you can capture this spirit and later on "cook" it to get even more drops out of your mobs 
All at the cost of plenty of blood of course. Are you sure that you're going to keep a nearby village alive, or are you just going to slaughter them all to get more blood? 
Applied Energistics 2
As one can hopefully imagine you will get a ton of new items to collect and use with all these mods: where are you going to store all of that?!!! This is where AE2 can come into play: it adds "alien" technology to the world of Minecraft which allows us to craft storage devices which we can connect in a network. You can then use this to store insane amount of items in basically one single block, now referring to a so called "ME Drive" which can contain up to 10 storage units which can house either items or fluids, and insane amounts of those. An 8k storage unit for example can contain 63 different types of items, but can store up to 8000 items in total! And the best part is that this collection can be accessed at any point in your network, you'll even be able to set up a wireless connection so that you can be away from your base as well.
Ice & Fire: Dragons
Playing with modded Minecraft can be a tremendously satisfying experience. For example... it took my friends weeks (well, several gaming sessions during the week) and a lot of effort before she managed to enhance her mana production in order to summon enough terrasteel for upgrading her manasteel armor and making some terrasteel items. Terrasteel armor is pretty much one of the best armors you can get in the game, it provides a lot of perks (like always regenerating health even if your hunger bar isn't full) and it's basically fully on-par with netherrite armor (actually better). A terrablade is a sword which can also shoot bursts of mana in order to attack hostiles at a distance. Ars Nouveau even provides a mechanic which allows you to attach a spell to a sword (or armor piece) which when used can be randomly cast. Like, say, a healing spell
Of course, healing yourself is nothing which the Ars Nouveau spellbook can't handle, and don't get me started on its ability to cast fireball spells 
Nasty effects like fire or poison? Nothing which an invigorating pendant filled with blood can't handle. Uh oh! Are you falling from a great height?!! Either cast slow fall on yourself, or maybe 'bounce'. But if that's not available there's always the cirrus amulet which allows you to double jump and thus negate fall damage (when timed correctly) or... how about a magical belt of levitation?
Needless to say: eventually you can become pretty overpowered with these mods. Sure, you worked hard to get there but the fact remains... Last night I trolled my friend Aya a little and released 2 more withers after she had defeated the first one. She never saw it coming, and it took a bit more effort, but she didn't even come close to dying.
This got us thinking.. maybe it was time to try and add more hostile mobs to our game. Which is when we discovered this one... being both quite into fantasy and such this was a no brainer.
Ice & Fire adds a ton of mythological creatures to the game of Minecraft, including dragons! And some of these critters are seriously dangerous, even in a modded game with enhanced perks like ours! For example... if you try to take on a gorgon (like Medusa?) then you actually risk dying from being turned into stone. Besides becoming a statue this will have a nasty side effect: all your items will be gone! Lost "inside" your statue, even if you're using mods that are supposed to save these.
A cyclops is a huge giant with one eye, and if he catches you he will literally pick you up and bite your head off... auch!
And then, of course, dragons! These come in three variants and go through 5 stages of growth in their life. Trying to fight one of the matriarchs in order to hopefully, maybe, obtain a dragon egg won't even come close to the danger you'd take from fighting a wither!
Seriously... if you enjoy fantasy culture and would like to add some more mystique and mythology to your game then look no further...
And there you have it!
Next to this collection we also use a few support mods but this story is getting long enough already, it's time for me to start working some more on my upcoming Mekasuit
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!
2
It depends...
I started playing Minecraft all the way back to 1.8, though 1.7.10 was the real version I played first but soon after there was the upgrade. And I / we kept playing but if you really want to enjoy something you should also take breaks. Though... the introduction of copper and the decrease of iron had a negative effect on the both of us and we kinda stopped playing for a long(er) time.
Before last December I think neither of us have played Minecraft intensively for well over 2 years!
Yet here we are... Last Holliday season I finally took a check off my bucket list and set up a (private) Forge LAN server, allowing my gf and me to both play modded Minecraft. As I hoped the modded part seriously refueled our interest in the game; we even expanded our custom collection of mods with a few more "modern" ones.
And we're still playing
0
Distance from other existing portals... as such: if OP is alone in that area and thus there aren't any other portals in the overworld around him... a mere relocate in the nether wil work.
0
I'm not too sure about this one to be honest...
I've played with several resource packs in the past which would apply both randomization as well as customization to certain mobs; one of which being the creeper which would get a different color based on where you were. Yellow'ish in deserts, gray in caves and so on. Yes, it's different and somewhat easier to overlook them, but at the same time I've never really been a fan either.
Because many creepers are easy to overlook, not so much because of their looks but rather their behavior.
0
That's not something I can reproduce. First I tried this on my modded setup (1.18.2) and looked up an existing librarian: the available book was fully named, I could tell exactly up front what enchantment I was getting.
Of course because I play with mods I figured that this could have been caused by one of those. So... I just fired up a vanilla game (1.20.4), placed a lectern and spawned a villager (using a spawn egg) and sure enough: when setting up a trade I can see up front what enchantment(s) I'm getting.
So now I cannot help wonder: are you sure you're not playing with certain mods which for some reason gave you this impression?
Also...
> B.) Which enchantments you can get are divided by the different (Biome based) village types. (This sucks, but I get it)
That conclusion doesn't seem correct either, according to the wiki this is fully decided at random, see note 9 on that page. And this is once again something I actually reproduced, though it was by accident. On my modded server (1.18.2) I found a librarian villager in a forest biome, and it provided an enchanted book with Efficiency V. Right now I'm in my singleplayer redstone world (desert biome) and as said: I just spawned a villager. Guess what book I'm getting?
Dunno how you came to some of your conclusions but they don't appear to be correct.
1
Worst case scenario a repeating commandblock...
/execute if @e[type=minecraft:spider,distance=..20] run kill @s
Of course this may cause you some other issues such as drops now appearing around the structure. Well, that can be fixed as well if need to:
/execute if @e[type=minecraft:spider,distance=..20] run data merge entity @s {DeathLootTable:"minecraft/vex"}
Maybe this is a bit overkill but... it works. Oh: you need to use the second command before the first one, obviously. Hope this can help too!
0
Why not just check out CurseForge to see what mods are popular and which themes may interest you?
See, just getting a bunch of mods together is something everyone can do: just download 'm, make sure you got their dependencies right and then, well, play. Thing is though: it's a much better idea to try and find mods which can more easily co-exist and maybe even interact with each other. But that is really a task of its own, and once again it also depends on what kind of mods, or themes, you like to play with.
Over the past years I collected my own favorite bunch of mods and well... it's 52 mods in total, a very small collection in comparison to some of the modpacks out there, but these work nicely together, don't overlap too much and all in all gives us a very solid "Minecraft+" gaming experience.
Sometimes less = more.
0
I cannot help you with this one since I haven't use this mod for quite a while but I'd like to point your attention to a possible alternative... if you play with a somewhat recent version of Minecraft then it's quite easy to set up some NPC mobs yourself using a datapack.
The main things to look out for is to use the "NoAI:true" NBT property when you summon a mod so that it doesn't start running around on its own. I also suggets to 'tag' it so that it's easier to address them again: Tags:["mycustommob"].
After all this you can actually use the advancements system to make them "do" something, if you want to make an NPC talk when someone interacts with it, then all you need is a (hidden?) advancement which reacts to the "minecraft:player_interacted_with_entity" trigger, see this wiki page for more info on that. What I usually do is use a function as the "reward" in which I make the NPC talk (using something like /execute as @e[tag=mycustommob] run say "Help, the creepers are attacking!"), and after that I use the /advancement command to revoke this current advancement so that it can be triggered again (in other words: when the player interacts with the NPC it will once again say its line or do its thing).
Maybe food for thought?
0
This can become tricky as a regular player because these portals are "linked". And the range of this mechanic is quite a few blocks (though I am not sure from mind how much). So if you're relatively alone in that area you should be fine if you remove the nether portal and relocate it: the moment you rebuild & re-activate it this should link back to your portal in the overworld.
However... if you're in an area where more people maintain a nether portal then there is a small risk that the new / moved nether portal will link to someone elses.
Hope this can help!
0
So... I'm well aware that this is a somewhat older thread but still wanted to use a forum vs. Discord because I don't really do Discord. I have an account but meh... and since it was your official mod repository on CurseForge that got me here...
Anyway... last weekend I set up a private LAN server running Forge for both my gf and myself. We went over our mod collection (we don't use packs but set up our own preferences) and decided that some mods had to go since we no longer really used 'm. Which got me the idea to add something new.
Because Botania is also part of our mod collection (next to several "tech mods") we wanted something that would also focus on "magic" a little bit.
well, that's where I found EvilCraft and boy it is something else!
I'm really impressed and happy with this critter. The gameplay is pretty balanced I think; see, you do get some "heavy" options like a wearable crafting table (Botania 'only' has the halo which you need to actually use), but at the same time you don't get any outrageously overpowered weapons. There is a balance here IMO.
And of course the progression. I really enjoyed going through the bowls of promises and using JEI to find out how to proceed in order to get better upgrades; on first glimpse I assumed that I had discovered an error in the documentation, but nope!
... speaking of which.. I also really appreciate the way in which the book has been set up! I mean... surely it's not "trolling" when someone who merely wrote down his discoveries doesn't do that in the "best" sequence? It's not uncommon to make a discovery only to come up with something better later on. Yet if you, as unknowing player, follow the book to the letter at first... I really appreciated that experience (referring to blood chest vs. infuser).
My only small gripe is that the version I'm using doesn't seem to support Tinker' tools with the blood chest; you can't repair any of those items. But we're still on MC 1.18 (Forge 40.2.14) because of some "other mods"; it's a minor issue really, doesn't stop us from having fun!
So yeah, wanted to share. Love your mod!