Loving mods but hating to spend time managing their installation, I have quickly adopted playing Minecraft in the context of the Technic Pack. Partly out of necessity but mostly out of a sense of wanting to create a maximal experience, I have been trying to sort out all of the various things that can be done in Minecraft as Technic Pack and how they relate to one another and how a kind of loosely linear gameplay (walk-through) might be recommended. I am still a noob but I have played enough of the game and watched enough lets plays and tutorials to begin to get a sense of an emergent game experience that might help to make a trail for other noobs to follow to sort out all of the vast possibilities.
I found it helpful to conceive of playing Technic Pack in phases as follows:
Phase I: Things you can do before settling down in a "home site"
Phase II: Things you can do initially in your homesite (manual resource accumulation, basic farming, etc)
Phase III: The "Glowstone" Revolution: Prepare for and travel to the Nether, get glowstone and begin crafting those things which require it
Phase IV: ...
Such is my experience in the game that I have played enough to create a play-worthy Phase I and Phase II walk-through. I have drafted a phase III but have not played it out (I'm still relatively new to the game).
Wanting to incorporate as many aspects of play as possible, I have found that my goal is no easy task. So I've taken the idea to the forums so that others can contribute/comment/seek inspiration. The goals are:
1. Make use of each mod and of each feature in vanilla Minecraft and the mods.
2. Order the experience in a way that creates a varied experience (a little of each mod at a time)
3. Order the experience in a way that makes sense so that a previous goal feeds into the completion of a later goal
4. Group about 10 to 20 goals together into a phase to provide a sense of order to the progression of tasks/goals
5. Design the experience to include the many sandbox aspects of game play so that player creativity is encouraged
What follows is just a listing of steps to take without a deeper explanation/tutorial on how to do it. What I hope to provide or inspire is that others use this to augment more detailed walk-throughs that tend to focus on specific mods without weaving them together. My focus is on the whole picture. However, I am also hampered by a lack of experience. As a result I will continue to work on this phase-based design but I hope others will make suggestions or there own master list of tasks to complete in Technic Pack Minecraft.
(I've removed my first draft of Phase I from this original (now editted) post.)
11. Outposting: Explore your world in 200x200 block sectors around your base shelter. Establish underground shelters/outposts in each and explore the sector noting the locations of oil springs (Industrial Craft), obelisks (Thaumcraft) and other noteworthy resources. Appraise the aesthetic value of the various biomes and landscapes you encounter.
I've had more time now to play the game and make improvements to my Phase I walk-through as well as bring my Phase II into a clearer focus. Phase I remains a time when game play emphasizes exploration over development, but Phase II begins the process of building a secure "homesite" where one can build without too much interference from creepers and other destructive mobs. Within the perimeter of the homesite farms and factories can begin to be raised. Phase III is slowly taking shape as the phase which incorporates the first move to another world, the Nether as well as starting the process of a mobile platform (Redpower frame based caterpillar drive) for even later phase BuildCraft pumps and quarries that can be moved rather than built and rebuilt.
Here is a revision of my Phase I as well as the current form of my Phase II walk-through of Technic Pack:
Phase I - Searching for a Place to Call Your Own
1. Basic Tools: This is the basic axe, pickaxe, shovel and crafting table goal from Vanilla Minecraft
2. Shelter/Outpost: This is my first bit of architecture, the underground shelter (designed to be cheap, quick and Mo' Creatures' ogre avoidant) which is the initial base of operations
3. Basic Melee Weapons: Using just wood and stone craft certain of the Balkon's Weapon Mod weapons for use. Later you recraft those you prefer.
4. Oak Tree Farm/Shelter Fence: To keep a ready supply of wood (and enable my conservationist gaming principles) I construct a dense oak tree farm around the entrance to my initial shelter. This is a Vanilla Minecraft tree farm dual purposed as a protective screen around the base camp.
5. Basic Hunting & Gathering: Build up a supply of food while you explore your immediate surroundings to a roughly 100 block square radius around your base camp. Craft a tree tap and fishing pole. Kill as many creatures and conservatively harvest as many resources as you can. This is an all mods that supply new mobs/plants and blocks experience
6. Basic Mineshaft: Building down from the underground shelter, dig in layers a mine shaft until you acquire "lots" of iron and coal. I have specified a particular architecture that uses ladders. Craft Equivalent Exchange's low covalence dust and Divining Rod
7. Basic Armor: Using leather (vanilla cow), iron, sharks teeth (Mo' Creatures), Crocodile Skins (Mo' Creatures) and/or Furs (Mo' Creatures) craft a full suit of armor.
8. Advanced Mineshaft + Branching: Continue the mineshaft started in 6. but now go for diamond after upgrading your mining tools to iron. Make Equivalent Exchange's medium covalence dust and Divining Rod and start checking the shaft walls for high value ores with the Divining Rod. Reach a lava lake or bedrock and/or obtain some diamonds
9. Cavern Expedition: Find the nearest above ground cavern entrance, stock up on torches and exploit fully the resources of the cavern leaving no mob unharvested. Note coordinates of any spawners for a later time when you are ready to establish a mob farm.
10. Outposting: Explore your world in 200x200 block sectors around your base shelter. Establish underground shelters/outposts in each and explore the sector noting the locations of oil springs (BuildCraft), obelisks (Thaumcraft) and other noteworthy resources. Appraise the aesthetic value of the various biomes and landscapes you encounter.
11. Choose Home Site: Having thoroughly explored the immediate countryside and sampled its dangers and bounties, choose a place to commit to a lasting base of operations. Now you are ready for phase II
Phase II - Home Sweet Home
1. Basic Homesite Tower: Build a tower that will eventually reach into the sky but will first reach down into the depths of the earth. Every 5 blocks in elevation is a three block high room with a two block thick floor. Dig one floor into the earth for the supply chests and bedroom. Below this will be the site of a logistics network room filled with various machines and automated crafting tables and power generators. Surrounding the central tower will be a grid of 8 x 8 blocks with torches used to plot them. Each square will contain a farm or other project. Maximal use of vertical space helps to ensure that as much as possible is done in a small chunk space.
2. Oak Tree Farm: In the first 8x8 area build an oak tree farm for manual harvesting.
3. Homesite Mineshaft: Dig down to bedrock and manually obtain ores and other resources at the base of the Homesite Tower. Dig out a portion of the logistics network room.
4. Mine Sand, Clay & Gravel: Spend some time accumulating these resources for use later in crafting or decorating.
5. Cobblestone Fenceline: Build a protective fence around your homesite grid. The fence prevents mobs from entering and seeing you. Spiders can't climb over the cobblestone block, slab and wooden fence design. Dig pits to trap mobs in and shelters to back into in the case of Endermen attack (ala Paul Soares Jr's Let's Play series). Create secure gates and water ports in each of the four main directions.
6. Wheat Farm: In another 8x8 area establish a wheat farm harvested manually. This will prepare for acquiring animals for their farms.
7. Rubber Tree Farm: In another 8x8 area plant your own Industrial Craft rubber trees. Prune the leaf blocks away excepting those on top of the trunk for easy access to sticky resin sites.
8. Alloy Furnace: Set up this Redpower furnace as the first easy installation in the underground logistics area to create wiring needed for a basic factory. The underground logistics area is attached to the homesite mineshaft at a level underground below the surrounding landscape. It is an area that will house a later logistics sorting, crafting and requesting system.
9. Fence and Ladder Factory: In an 8x8 area build an efficient Fence and Ladder factory using BuildCraft pipes and automated crafting tables. Wire the redstone engines with Redpower red alloy wire and connect to switches for control of this dual crafting system ready to convert wood blocks to fencing and ladders which will be needed in the next steps in quantity. This factory is independent of the underground logistics area for now and will give the player an opportunity to become acquainted with basic BuildCraft automation.
10. Avenues: Construct avenues which allow easy access in each of the four directions from the homesite tower to gates or ports around the perimeter of the homesite. Use a 3 wide ladder system to move vertically and create underground tunnels to preserve surface land availability.
11. Cow, Pig, Chicken and Sheep Farm: Setup these farms in separate 8x8 areas. Note: After first implementing this step I've found that I am loosing animals to what I assume are both occasional predators and through escapes (I assume this occurs because one animal gets on top of another and jumps the fence) so I am comtemplating a more secure, perhaps, underground farming system in the future to prevent this.
12. Infinite Water Source, Tall Grass and Flower Farm: I take one of my 8x8 areas and make an infinite water source. Then I use the rest of the "lawn" to use bonemeal on and collect any seeds (wheat and flax) or flowers that might spring up. This way I can leave the grass and flowers in the surrounding countryside alone. I get indigo flowers this way as well as the yellow and red ones.
13. Sugar Cane Farm: With my local inifinite water source it is easy to setup a sugar cane farm.
14. Ore Processing Room: This is basically an Industrial Craft effort but it has a specific design in an underground level (the aforementioned underground logistics area (probably below about 60)) directly below my homesite that places it in the chunk most often loaded and allows it to work while I farm and do most of my other crafting and such. I craft a basic Generator, Macerator and Extractor and connect them together with Copper wire to a Batbox for power storage. Also, I have an Electric Furnace nearby to speed up the smelting process.
15. Advance Melee Weapons: Part two of Balkon's Weapons Mod, essentially just craft everything that is a melee weapon not included in Phase I. Try out these more difficult to produce weapons and see which one's you like.
16. Talisman of Repair: With a sugar cane farm and a reliable source of paper, make a talisman to start to automate the repair of your tools. You have to watch out though because tools from other mods tend not to get repaired this way even if they are repaired when manually adding covalence dust on the crafting table.
17. Cavern Expedition: Suit up for a long dungeon hack and accumulate all the resources you can. Find a decent cavern system that yields gold and lava pools where there may be diamonds. Reserve obsidian mining for Phase III and don't use your diamonds on a pickaxe just yet.
In my slow and steady way I continue to make progress and I have now sketched out a Phase III which centers around the acquisition and use of glowstone. Will update when I have a good outline.
Yes, I learned about the Mo-Creatures despawning early on. It was distressing to say the least. So I've got that configured...however, I still have found that I will loose some animals at random times. I suspect that this is due to aggressive mobs that prey on cows and chickens (and ?sheep) that can spawn nearby when I am not looking and catch animals near the fence. I believe that I have witnessed a cat killing a chicken through a fence (not absolutely sure, my memory is "creative"). I've definitely seen a wolf or two near my cow and sheep pens. I also believe I have just missed seeing a cow or sheep jump a fence off the back of another cow/sheep. Again I don't have video footage...
I have created a mostly underground chicken coop recently. I place fence on the ground and at the 3rd block just below the ceiling (this is actually the case with my cow and sheep farm where escapism has been an occassional problem) and found that chickens can fly up and through fencing under certain circumstances. I saw this when I held some wheat and the chickens navigated their way around to a place where an external dirt stair met with the wooden fence and they flew up and out! I excuse all of this behavior as I know that farm animals are notorious for finding their way out of their pens. Just part of a healthy dose of chaos when farming.
I'm currently playing through my phase III and enjoying it so far. I will avoid posting until I have more confidence that the current draft of phase III is fairly solid. I've already made some minor tweaks moving at least one step to an earlier phase (Pumpkin Farming to be started before the sand, gravel, clay mining which often involves going underwater (could wear a pumpkin helmet for breathing)). But that is what this walk-through is all about, adjusting steps so that they fit together into an organic whole so that each activity fits into a greater experience.
Since it is taking so much time for me to complete the next phase, I thought I would add a note...I managed to get some glowstone from the Nether. Back at my home site, I've set up an underground animal pen and have found that so far I have not lost any animals. This was particularly easy to do after creating the Philosopher's Stone (which requires glowstone) as I can convert the floor from dirt or stone to grass easily.
I also implemented a second simple step into Redpower2 by using a Not Gate to create a better mob trap. In phase III I have a task where I punched some holes in my home site's fence and used pressure plates and pistons to trap a mob that tries to wander through. I tried a pushing piston that knocks a mob back over a hole that appears when a sticky piston contracts at the same time--the Not Gate keeps the sticky piston extended to cover the hole until the mob triggers the redstone signal. I added a Redstone lamp to the top of the fence so that I could see if a mob has been captured from the top of my home site tower. This appears to work well and now I can distribute these mob traps all around the perimeter of my homesite and whenever night comes I can take a moment to ascend my homesite tower and scan the perimeter for trapped mobs!
I have a few more tasks to complete before I will post my Phase III "Glowstone Revolution".
Just as I was drawing near to completion of Phase III I really started to wonder about whether Technic Pack was going to get updated. I then saw that direwolf had a mod pack under Feed the Beast and I decided to make the switch as there were mods that I really wanted to play that are not available in Technic...then I see that Technic is dropped because there is no need to maintain a non-server version of Tekkit. But Tekkit is even more sparse.
Having moved to Direwolf20's Feed The Beast modpack, I have taken a fresh look at my approach...I've decided that I could get more mileage out of this project if I took a more "modular" approach.
Instead of trying to design a walk-through for the mod pack as a whole I decided to break up the walk-through into separate "roadmaps". Each mod or aspect of the vanilla game can be addressed in a roadmap which details the order of projects one can complete. While many mods are focused on augmenting one aspect of the vanilla game and can be covered by a single roadmap, I found that the vanilla game requires an array of roadmaps dedicated to each of its many facets.
By breaking up the vanilla game and its mods into separate roadmaps this allows for someone to optionally adopt walkthroughs as they see fit or as they have modded their installation of minecraft. This also makes it easier for community participation with different people can contribute walk-throughs for each component. Putting the various roadmaps together I will explain in a new post on designing walk-throughs for minecraft and its mods.
I found it helpful to conceive of playing Technic Pack in phases as follows:
Phase I: Things you can do before settling down in a "home site"
Phase II: Things you can do initially in your homesite (manual resource accumulation, basic farming, etc)
Phase III: The "Glowstone" Revolution: Prepare for and travel to the Nether, get glowstone and begin crafting those things which require it
Phase IV: ...
Such is my experience in the game that I have played enough to create a play-worthy Phase I and Phase II walk-through. I have drafted a phase III but have not played it out (I'm still relatively new to the game).
Wanting to incorporate as many aspects of play as possible, I have found that my goal is no easy task. So I've taken the idea to the forums so that others can contribute/comment/seek inspiration. The goals are:
1. Make use of each mod and of each feature in vanilla Minecraft and the mods.
2. Order the experience in a way that creates a varied experience (a little of each mod at a time)
3. Order the experience in a way that makes sense so that a previous goal feeds into the completion of a later goal
4. Group about 10 to 20 goals together into a phase to provide a sense of order to the progression of tasks/goals
5. Design the experience to include the many sandbox aspects of game play so that player creativity is encouraged
What follows is just a listing of steps to take without a deeper explanation/tutorial on how to do it. What I hope to provide or inspire is that others use this to augment more detailed walk-throughs that tend to focus on specific mods without weaving them together. My focus is on the whole picture. However, I am also hampered by a lack of experience. As a result I will continue to work on this phase-based design but I hope others will make suggestions or there own master list of tasks to complete in Technic Pack Minecraft.
(I've removed my first draft of Phase I from this original (now editted) post.)
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumOil springs are Buildcraft, not IC2.
Here is a revision of my Phase I as well as the current form of my Phase II walk-through of Technic Pack:
Phase I - Searching for a Place to Call Your Own
1. Basic Tools: This is the basic axe, pickaxe, shovel and crafting table goal from Vanilla Minecraft
2. Shelter/Outpost: This is my first bit of architecture, the underground shelter (designed to be cheap, quick and Mo' Creatures' ogre avoidant) which is the initial base of operations
3. Basic Melee Weapons: Using just wood and stone craft certain of the Balkon's Weapon Mod weapons for use. Later you recraft those you prefer.
4. Oak Tree Farm/Shelter Fence: To keep a ready supply of wood (and enable my conservationist gaming principles) I construct a dense oak tree farm around the entrance to my initial shelter. This is a Vanilla Minecraft tree farm dual purposed as a protective screen around the base camp.
5. Basic Hunting & Gathering: Build up a supply of food while you explore your immediate surroundings to a roughly 100 block square radius around your base camp. Craft a tree tap and fishing pole. Kill as many creatures and conservatively harvest as many resources as you can. This is an all mods that supply new mobs/plants and blocks experience
6. Basic Mineshaft: Building down from the underground shelter, dig in layers a mine shaft until you acquire "lots" of iron and coal. I have specified a particular architecture that uses ladders. Craft Equivalent Exchange's low covalence dust and Divining Rod
7. Basic Armor: Using leather (vanilla cow), iron, sharks teeth (Mo' Creatures), Crocodile Skins (Mo' Creatures) and/or Furs (Mo' Creatures) craft a full suit of armor.
8. Advanced Mineshaft + Branching: Continue the mineshaft started in 6. but now go for diamond after upgrading your mining tools to iron. Make Equivalent Exchange's medium covalence dust and Divining Rod and start checking the shaft walls for high value ores with the Divining Rod. Reach a lava lake or bedrock and/or obtain some diamonds
9. Cavern Expedition: Find the nearest above ground cavern entrance, stock up on torches and exploit fully the resources of the cavern leaving no mob unharvested. Note coordinates of any spawners for a later time when you are ready to establish a mob farm.
10. Outposting: Explore your world in 200x200 block sectors around your base shelter. Establish underground shelters/outposts in each and explore the sector noting the locations of oil springs (BuildCraft), obelisks (Thaumcraft) and other noteworthy resources. Appraise the aesthetic value of the various biomes and landscapes you encounter.
11. Choose Home Site: Having thoroughly explored the immediate countryside and sampled its dangers and bounties, choose a place to commit to a lasting base of operations. Now you are ready for phase II
Phase II - Home Sweet Home
1. Basic Homesite Tower: Build a tower that will eventually reach into the sky but will first reach down into the depths of the earth. Every 5 blocks in elevation is a three block high room with a two block thick floor. Dig one floor into the earth for the supply chests and bedroom. Below this will be the site of a logistics network room filled with various machines and automated crafting tables and power generators. Surrounding the central tower will be a grid of 8 x 8 blocks with torches used to plot them. Each square will contain a farm or other project. Maximal use of vertical space helps to ensure that as much as possible is done in a small chunk space.
2. Oak Tree Farm: In the first 8x8 area build an oak tree farm for manual harvesting.
3. Homesite Mineshaft: Dig down to bedrock and manually obtain ores and other resources at the base of the Homesite Tower. Dig out a portion of the logistics network room.
4. Mine Sand, Clay & Gravel: Spend some time accumulating these resources for use later in crafting or decorating.
5. Cobblestone Fenceline: Build a protective fence around your homesite grid. The fence prevents mobs from entering and seeing you. Spiders can't climb over the cobblestone block, slab and wooden fence design. Dig pits to trap mobs in and shelters to back into in the case of Endermen attack (ala Paul Soares Jr's Let's Play series). Create secure gates and water ports in each of the four main directions.
6. Wheat Farm: In another 8x8 area establish a wheat farm harvested manually. This will prepare for acquiring animals for their farms.
7. Rubber Tree Farm: In another 8x8 area plant your own Industrial Craft rubber trees. Prune the leaf blocks away excepting those on top of the trunk for easy access to sticky resin sites.
8. Alloy Furnace: Set up this Redpower furnace as the first easy installation in the underground logistics area to create wiring needed for a basic factory. The underground logistics area is attached to the homesite mineshaft at a level underground below the surrounding landscape. It is an area that will house a later logistics sorting, crafting and requesting system.
9. Fence and Ladder Factory: In an 8x8 area build an efficient Fence and Ladder factory using BuildCraft pipes and automated crafting tables. Wire the redstone engines with Redpower red alloy wire and connect to switches for control of this dual crafting system ready to convert wood blocks to fencing and ladders which will be needed in the next steps in quantity. This factory is independent of the underground logistics area for now and will give the player an opportunity to become acquainted with basic BuildCraft automation.
10. Avenues: Construct avenues which allow easy access in each of the four directions from the homesite tower to gates or ports around the perimeter of the homesite. Use a 3 wide ladder system to move vertically and create underground tunnels to preserve surface land availability.
11. Cow, Pig, Chicken and Sheep Farm: Setup these farms in separate 8x8 areas. Note: After first implementing this step I've found that I am loosing animals to what I assume are both occasional predators and through escapes (I assume this occurs because one animal gets on top of another and jumps the fence) so I am comtemplating a more secure, perhaps, underground farming system in the future to prevent this.
12. Infinite Water Source, Tall Grass and Flower Farm: I take one of my 8x8 areas and make an infinite water source. Then I use the rest of the "lawn" to use bonemeal on and collect any seeds (wheat and flax) or flowers that might spring up. This way I can leave the grass and flowers in the surrounding countryside alone. I get indigo flowers this way as well as the yellow and red ones.
13. Sugar Cane Farm: With my local inifinite water source it is easy to setup a sugar cane farm.
14. Ore Processing Room: This is basically an Industrial Craft effort but it has a specific design in an underground level (the aforementioned underground logistics area (probably below about 60)) directly below my homesite that places it in the chunk most often loaded and allows it to work while I farm and do most of my other crafting and such. I craft a basic Generator, Macerator and Extractor and connect them together with Copper wire to a Batbox for power storage. Also, I have an Electric Furnace nearby to speed up the smelting process.
15. Advance Melee Weapons: Part two of Balkon's Weapons Mod, essentially just craft everything that is a melee weapon not included in Phase I. Try out these more difficult to produce weapons and see which one's you like.
16. Talisman of Repair: With a sugar cane farm and a reliable source of paper, make a talisman to start to automate the repair of your tools. You have to watch out though because tools from other mods tend not to get repaired this way even if they are repaired when manually adding covalence dust on the crafting table.
17. Cavern Expedition: Suit up for a long dungeon hack and accumulate all the resources you can. Find a decent cavern system that yields gold and lava pools where there may be diamonds. Reserve obsidian mining for Phase III and don't use your diamonds on a pickaxe just yet.
In my slow and steady way I continue to make progress and I have now sketched out a Phase III which centers around the acquisition and use of glowstone. Will update when I have a good outline.
I have created a mostly underground chicken coop recently. I place fence on the ground and at the 3rd block just below the ceiling (this is actually the case with my cow and sheep farm where escapism has been an occassional problem) and found that chickens can fly up and through fencing under certain circumstances. I saw this when I held some wheat and the chickens navigated their way around to a place where an external dirt stair met with the wooden fence and they flew up and out! I excuse all of this behavior as I know that farm animals are notorious for finding their way out of their pens. Just part of a healthy dose of chaos when farming.
I'm currently playing through my phase III and enjoying it so far. I will avoid posting until I have more confidence that the current draft of phase III is fairly solid. I've already made some minor tweaks moving at least one step to an earlier phase (Pumpkin Farming to be started before the sand, gravel, clay mining which often involves going underwater (could wear a pumpkin helmet for breathing)). But that is what this walk-through is all about, adjusting steps so that they fit together into an organic whole so that each activity fits into a greater experience.
Thanks for the comment!
I also implemented a second simple step into Redpower2 by using a Not Gate to create a better mob trap. In phase III I have a task where I punched some holes in my home site's fence and used pressure plates and pistons to trap a mob that tries to wander through. I tried a pushing piston that knocks a mob back over a hole that appears when a sticky piston contracts at the same time--the Not Gate keeps the sticky piston extended to cover the hole until the mob triggers the redstone signal. I added a Redstone lamp to the top of the fence so that I could see if a mob has been captured from the top of my home site tower. This appears to work well and now I can distribute these mob traps all around the perimeter of my homesite and whenever night comes I can take a moment to ascend my homesite tower and scan the perimeter for trapped mobs!
I have a few more tasks to complete before I will post my Phase III "Glowstone Revolution".
Having moved to Direwolf20's Feed The Beast modpack, I have taken a fresh look at my approach...I've decided that I could get more mileage out of this project if I took a more "modular" approach.
Instead of trying to design a walk-through for the mod pack as a whole I decided to break up the walk-through into separate "roadmaps". Each mod or aspect of the vanilla game can be addressed in a roadmap which details the order of projects one can complete. While many mods are focused on augmenting one aspect of the vanilla game and can be covered by a single roadmap, I found that the vanilla game requires an array of roadmaps dedicated to each of its many facets.
By breaking up the vanilla game and its mods into separate roadmaps this allows for someone to optionally adopt walkthroughs as they see fit or as they have modded their installation of minecraft. This also makes it easier for community participation with different people can contribute walk-throughs for each component. Putting the various roadmaps together I will explain in a new post on designing walk-throughs for minecraft and its mods.