I am relatively new to this Forum, so I might be stepping over certain written or unwritten rules here and ignoring certain posting conventions.
Also my right hand types faster than my left one, so there might be odd typoes that I missed to correct.
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As much as I enjoy Vanilla Minecraft, this game is notorious for its mods and without mods it's just too easy sometimes, even on hardcore. It gets slow after a while and you end up having nothing to do other than to build houses in new places and grinding XP for enchantments.
That's when you'll want to play some mods, but I vigorously disagree with the modpack-creators general rule "More mods=better", some mods completely throw you out of the experience by messing up the worldgen, adding ridiculous stuff everywhere and setpiece structures, that extend all the way to the build limit. Some other mods just make the game irresponsibly much easier, invalidating all the effort you would normally require without these mods, or make minecraft just a completely different game. Also more mods get your inventory flooded with nonsense and cause undeniable lag, big modpacks(150+) even cause the toughest machines to lag.
Examples for such mods are the popular IC2 and Buildcraft, which are both fun to play, but admittedly break the game completely by basically taking over it themselves(Literally indestructible 100% protection armor? Quarries, that completely destroy everthing, blowing 10diamonds per minute in your chests?) and doing stuff a player would do while you don't do anything anymore? Mods like that make you feel powerful but aren't actually fun to people who wanted to enjoy that, what vanilla minecraft always gave them.
The child mods of TConstruct and actually admittedly, as much as I enjoy that mod, TConstruct itself, because it makes vanilla crafting pretty pointless, because it's own way of crafting is cheaper and more effective. (Even though smelting is so much fun)
What I am looking for are mods like Thaumcraft! It adds to the game without breaking it and while it's items are slightly better and more versatile than vanilla items it is very hard to obtain them and impossible if you don't rtfm. It also adds a nice bit of challenge to the game.
Speaking of rtfm: I particularly like mods that don't require NEI to be properly played (as in there are hundreds of unique crafting recipes that you could never have known or guessed just by using the mod, being forced to use a wiki or NEI every 10seconds like with IC2).
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While I don't enjoy massive modpacks like DNS and FTB they are occasionally good sources for examples of mods that I would or would not like:
Good examples:
- Thaumcraft of course! Sitting in my study room, learning about alchemy and developing new magical instruments... Only the magical forests and sometimes overspawning Thaumcraft Structures are somewhat obnoxious at times.
- Witchery - I know little about it other than its very opaque and somewhat Thaumcraft-ish, it seems to be self-explanatory, as it adds these books to the village libraries. But I do not yet know what that mod is capable of.
- Biomes O' plenty - It's actually not all that necessary, but it optically adds a lot to the game and the Poison Ivy makes it a bit more interesting to walk around in forests. It also adds some edible berries, but they are not as crazy as the natura berries.
Bad examples:
- Whatever this mod is that makes mobs occasionally wear strange hats, it barely alters gamepla,y but it's so ridiculous, that it breaks any possible immersion.
- Railcraft, Computercraft, EnderIO, rftools- simply because they inflate the chests drop tables to the point at which the chances for vanilla chest items drop below half their original values and get replaced by mostly useless items(Maybe useful for someone who focuses on these mods, but game-breaking for everyone else)
- Power creep mods that at early points in the game add very powerful tools and very powerful enemies, forcing you to focus on these mods and rendering other mods pretty useless.
If nice people can help me with this I can create myself my own modpack that is very lightweight but very enjoyable especially for hardcore-gamers!
TL;DR : Want mods that make survival more interesting and don't annoy me. More like Thaumcraft, less like IC2.
(also not an avid poster so can't speak for posting rules...)
I actually agree with you, from what I've seen of BC and IC they are not what I want; I have not really used them, so I can't be much more specific than judging by others' LPs.
I think I want to build contraptions rather than special blocks, perhaps? (redstone stuff!)
And I like obstacles in my game, that I then overcome w/ my contraptions.
But that's just me.
Besides BOP and Natura, there's also Highlands which has pretty neat world gen (only recently updated to 1.7.10, so I haven't used for a while).
Unsure if this is really up your alley, but Underground Biome Constructs is a mod that adds more types of stone and automatically creates variants of ores to fit in them.
Gneiss bit of world-gen, but admittedly pointless.
Planning to try it out myself soon though, to see how it feels.
Hardcore Ender Expansion may be something to take a look at, as even though it adds a lot of things, 99% of them are in the End which is normally empty.
I have not played in it as I haven't gone to the End yet, but I can say that there is nothing changed in Nether or Overworld gen.
Special Mobs is very cool, it adds special variants to the vanilla mobs like Gatling Skeleton, Fire Creeper, King Ghast, etc.
Makes mobs more interesting without being game-changingly styled or deadly (looking at you Lycanite's Mobs...)
Also configurable!
The author also has Utility Mobs, adding more golems (ala snow golem or iron golem) if vanilla-esque defense is what you're looking for.
Since you mentioned Thaumcraft, figure I'd point at more magickal-ness to check-out.
I would very highly recommend Botania, a natural-magic mod, it has a lovely in-game manual and is generally very slick; like Thaumcraft it can be quite powerful in interesting and creative ways.
The only world-gen it adds are flowers.
Another magic mod I am into is Blood Magic, whose conceit is that all your power comes from blood (aka damage), either yours or someone else's; it is less jack-of-all trades than Thaumcraft, but not everything needs to be... I mean seriously, how many ways to double ores are there nowadays?
Also has Bosses, if you're into combat.
No manual (yet! He's working on it) nor world gen.
As for tech-mods... hmm, most add extra metals and their own tech-tree and if I understand you right, that's part of what ticks you off?
(Plus lack of in-game help.)
The only light-weight tech mod I know of is Factorization, it mostly adds simple yet useful automation like an auto-packer to craft blocks from ingots.
It does have more complex/powerful automation in the form of a robot, somewhat similar to Thaumcraft's golems.
Though I haven't played a survival game with it yet, so I can't be sure about the feel...
It has a manual, though not as slick as Thaumcraft or Botantia.
It adds Silver and Dark Iron as world-gen.
Not a tech mod, but I also never leave the house without BiblioCraft which, though it has some useful tools, is mostly a display mod.
It feels so natural to have shelves, bookcases, and tool-racks that I am always surprised when certain items (wands for example) display wrong.
This mod makes me want cool things, just some I can display them!
Messing with hunger mechanics makes things more interesting for me, gives you a strong motivation and goals.
Hunger In Peace is the simplest and does just what it says on the tin (normal health/hunger regen in Peaceful mode), but it is a must for things like Blood Magic to keep balance.
Not particularly useful if never in peaceful though...
Spice of Life encourages players to eat a varied diet, and is extremely customizable (you can even change the equation in the config); it really is up to the mod-pack author how invasive it feels.
Helps to have more food available
Haven't found a "more food" mod that I quite like yet...
Pam's Harvestcraft is cool and really well done, but just too big and open for me; I'd have to tweak it to give it flow or limits...
Growthcraft looks cool, with interesting mechanics and a limited scope; however it doesn't have an in-game book, an up-to-date wiki (last I checked), nor NEI integration (besides basic crafting obviously).
There is a manual (as in pdf), but it is no longer updated.
Still going to try it out and see how it feels.
Not quite a food mod, but AgriCraft would be essential to me for integrating more plants into a game, as it is all about farming, with high compatibility and configurability.
It adds a plant breeding system, with which one can make any plant better (grow faster,more output, etc) or breed new ones; similar to Forestry, though AgriCraft does not add new plants on its own, using the config you can integrate most anything though.
It has the ability to breed up resource crops (like magic-crops or TC's bushes), but this can be turned off.
Really small mods that can add a lot:
Iron Chests just feels right, upgradable 1-block-sized chests of the various tiers of materials that hold more stuff.
It is so simple that its been MC version independent for a while.
Ender Storage is by NEI's author ChickenBones, it makes ender chests only share with the chest with same label of 3 colors, and then extends the idea into ender pouches (chest that's useable in inventory) and tanks.
I'm not really a fan of instant item transport, so I don't use this; however this is still a brilliant little mod.
Also by ChickenBones, Translocator is short range, quick item/liquid transport with filtering capabilities.
Powerful enough to be useful even in mod-heavy packs (fast filterable 1-block sized transport), limited enough to not be a game-changer (hopper does near same thing), slick visual effects too... love this little thing.
Side notes:
Witchery is apparently meant for PvP, from what I hear... I know I've never gotten far in it as I'm 99% single-player (#forever alone).
Making a modpack? Minetweaker is your friend, even a simple change can alter balance completely. I just found it and its Twu Wuv.
I'll have a look at all of them, but Iron Chests and Translocator are already going in a pretty wrong direction I think. Also HarvestCraft has a tendency to make food matters very simple sometimes. I'm glad about your suggestions though.
What I am particularly looking for is immersion. It gets created by a mods using ingame manuals and hiding instructions inside the lore while making the world a more mysterious, dangerous, in any case more interesting place.
And it gets destroyed by having to pause just to look up what the hell you are doing and by ridiculous mod failures appearing on your screen or just unrealistic mechanics("Realistic" does not mean "true to life" but "making sense in itself" this includes not biting othermods).
...Okay. Spice of Life and HarvestCraft might be good mods, but they shift the game nearly to the point at which food is all that matters and they flood your inventory very quickly.
Doesn't make it all that much harder, just much more tedious, as much as I like the concepts of these mods.
Sorry for being so unclear, it's actually pretty hard to say what exactly I want.
I would go with adding some of the Thaumcraft addons, if you want a nice varied experience:
Thaumic Tinkerer is an excellent addon that doesn't become a gamebreaker until you're at endgame anyways.
Automagy is a great alternative to redstone and automation that can get really fun and entertaining (watch the golems run all over doing your bidding!!!) You can check out an example of automated cake production using TC and Automagy on my youtube channel linked in my sig.
Thaumic Horizons adds a few cool items and revolves more around using magic to alter/create living stuff rather than golems.
As for others:
Botania is all about magic flowers, and by itself is an excellent mod. Thaumcraft and Botania go together well and have some cross mod compatibility. However, late game Botania becomes somewhat broken....
Witchery adds a new level of PvP to the game. It does have PvE elements to it, but a lot of the later game stuff feels like its directed at a PvPish environment. That said, I enjoyed the circle magic very much so.
Biomes O plenty adds a much needed boost to world gen.
Chocolate Quest (formally Better Dungeons) will give you some extra stuff to do, but the loot you find tends to be worth more than the effort took to get it, though that may have changed. I've not played it in a bit.
Chisel will let you make a variety of blocks from vanilla blocks. It's aethestic more so than gameplay, but if your peeps like building, Chisel'll add a new layer of design strategy.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You can modify chickens so that, instead of laying eggs, they lay live bees. Dwarf Fortress: crimes against nature simulator.
I already got Biomes 'o' plenty, I think it makes the world more engaging and gives you a lot more see without altering the game.
Chisel sounds nice, but It used to get along badly with Thaumcraft, because you could get normally rare chiseled blocks for their aspects simply by transforming other blocks. But that was Thaumcraft 2 xD
Yea that's changed quite a bit as of TC4. And actually, Chisel now can use the Arcane Stone to make different magical looking blocks. But yea, I'd suggest looking at Chocolate Quest if you want to add some more survival type stuff.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You can modify chickens so that, instead of laying eggs, they lay live bees. Dwarf Fortress: crimes against nature simulator.
First of all:
I am relatively new to this Forum, so I might be stepping over certain written or unwritten rules here and ignoring certain posting conventions.
Also my right hand types faster than my left one, so there might be odd typoes that I missed to correct.
---
As much as I enjoy Vanilla Minecraft, this game is notorious for its mods and without mods it's just too easy sometimes, even on hardcore. It gets slow after a while and you end up having nothing to do other than to build houses in new places and grinding XP for enchantments.
That's when you'll want to play some mods, but I vigorously disagree with the modpack-creators general rule "More mods=better", some mods completely throw you out of the experience by messing up the worldgen, adding ridiculous stuff everywhere and setpiece structures, that extend all the way to the build limit. Some other mods just make the game irresponsibly much easier, invalidating all the effort you would normally require without these mods, or make minecraft just a completely different game. Also more mods get your inventory flooded with nonsense and cause undeniable lag, big modpacks(150+) even cause the toughest machines to lag.
Examples for such mods are the popular IC2 and Buildcraft, which are both fun to play, but admittedly break the game completely by basically taking over it themselves(Literally indestructible 100% protection armor? Quarries, that completely destroy everthing, blowing 10diamonds per minute in your chests?) and doing stuff a player would do while you don't do anything anymore? Mods like that make you feel powerful but aren't actually fun to people who wanted to enjoy that, what vanilla minecraft always gave them.
The child mods of TConstruct and actually admittedly, as much as I enjoy that mod, TConstruct itself, because it makes vanilla crafting pretty pointless, because it's own way of crafting is cheaper and more effective. (Even though smelting is so much fun)
What I am looking for are mods like Thaumcraft! It adds to the game without breaking it and while it's items are slightly better and more versatile than vanilla items it is very hard to obtain them and impossible if you don't rtfm. It also adds a nice bit of challenge to the game.
Speaking of rtfm: I particularly like mods that don't require NEI to be properly played (as in there are hundreds of unique crafting recipes that you could never have known or guessed just by using the mod, being forced to use a wiki or NEI every 10seconds like with IC2).
---
While I don't enjoy massive modpacks like DNS and FTB they are occasionally good sources for examples of mods that I would or would not like:
Good examples:
- Thaumcraft of course! Sitting in my study room, learning about alchemy and developing new magical instruments... Only the magical forests and sometimes overspawning Thaumcraft Structures are somewhat obnoxious at times.
- Witchery - I know little about it other than its very opaque and somewhat Thaumcraft-ish, it seems to be self-explanatory, as it adds these books to the village libraries. But I do not yet know what that mod is capable of.
- Biomes O' plenty - It's actually not all that necessary, but it optically adds a lot to the game and the Poison Ivy makes it a bit more interesting to walk around in forests. It also adds some edible berries, but they are not as crazy as the natura berries.
Bad examples:
- Whatever this mod is that makes mobs occasionally wear strange hats, it barely alters gamepla,y but it's so ridiculous, that it breaks any possible immersion.
- Railcraft, Computercraft, EnderIO, rftools- simply because they inflate the chests drop tables to the point at which the chances for vanilla chest items drop below half their original values and get replaced by mostly useless items(Maybe useful for someone who focuses on these mods, but game-breaking for everyone else)
- Power creep mods that at early points in the game add very powerful tools and very powerful enemies, forcing you to focus on these mods and rendering other mods pretty useless.
If nice people can help me with this I can create myself my own modpack that is very lightweight but very enjoyable especially for hardcore-gamers!
TL;DR : Want mods that make survival more interesting and don't annoy me. More like Thaumcraft, less like IC2.
I made a D flip-flop!
(also not an avid poster so can't speak for posting rules...)
I actually agree with you, from what I've seen of BC and IC they are not what I want; I have not really used them, so I can't be much more specific than judging by others' LPs.
I think I want to build contraptions rather than special blocks, perhaps? (redstone stuff!)
And I like obstacles in my game, that I then overcome w/ my contraptions.
But that's just me.
Besides BOP and Natura, there's also Highlands which has pretty neat world gen (only recently updated to 1.7.10, so I haven't used for a while).
Unsure if this is really up your alley, but Underground Biome Constructs is a mod that adds more types of stone and automatically creates variants of ores to fit in them.
Gneiss bit of world-gen, but admittedly pointless.
Planning to try it out myself soon though, to see how it feels.
Hardcore Ender Expansion may be something to take a look at, as even though it adds a lot of things, 99% of them are in the End which is normally empty.
I have not played in it as I haven't gone to the End yet, but I can say that there is nothing changed in Nether or Overworld gen.
Special Mobs is very cool, it adds special variants to the vanilla mobs like Gatling Skeleton, Fire Creeper, King Ghast, etc.
Makes mobs more interesting without being game-changingly styled or deadly (looking at you Lycanite's Mobs...)
Also configurable!
The author also has Utility Mobs, adding more golems (ala snow golem or iron golem) if vanilla-esque defense is what you're looking for.
Since you mentioned Thaumcraft, figure I'd point at more magickal-ness to check-out.
I would very highly recommend Botania, a natural-magic mod, it has a lovely in-game manual and is generally very slick; like Thaumcraft it can be quite powerful in interesting and creative ways.
The only world-gen it adds are flowers.
Another magic mod I am into is Blood Magic, whose conceit is that all your power comes from blood (aka damage), either yours or someone else's; it is less jack-of-all trades than Thaumcraft, but not everything needs to be... I mean seriously, how many ways to double ores are there nowadays?
Also has Bosses, if you're into combat.
No manual (yet! He's working on it) nor world gen.
As for tech-mods... hmm, most add extra metals and their own tech-tree and if I understand you right, that's part of what ticks you off?
(Plus lack of in-game help.)
The only light-weight tech mod I know of is Factorization, it mostly adds simple yet useful automation like an auto-packer to craft blocks from ingots.
It does have more complex/powerful automation in the form of a robot, somewhat similar to Thaumcraft's golems.
Though I haven't played a survival game with it yet, so I can't be sure about the feel...
It has a manual, though not as slick as Thaumcraft or Botantia.
It adds Silver and Dark Iron as world-gen.
Not a tech mod, but I also never leave the house without BiblioCraft which, though it has some useful tools, is mostly a display mod.
It feels so natural to have shelves, bookcases, and tool-racks that I am always surprised when certain items (wands for example) display wrong.
This mod makes me want cool things, just some I can display them!
Messing with hunger mechanics makes things more interesting for me, gives you a strong motivation and goals.
Hunger In Peace is the simplest and does just what it says on the tin (normal health/hunger regen in Peaceful mode), but it is a must for things like Blood Magic to keep balance.
Not particularly useful if never in peaceful though...
Spice of Life encourages players to eat a varied diet, and is extremely customizable (you can even change the equation in the config); it really is up to the mod-pack author how invasive it feels.
Helps to have more food available
Haven't found a "more food" mod that I quite like yet...
Pam's Harvestcraft is cool and really well done, but just too big and open for me; I'd have to tweak it to give it flow or limits...
Growthcraft looks cool, with interesting mechanics and a limited scope; however it doesn't have an in-game book, an up-to-date wiki (last I checked), nor NEI integration (besides basic crafting obviously).
There is a manual (as in pdf), but it is no longer updated.
Still going to try it out and see how it feels.
Not quite a food mod, but AgriCraft would be essential to me for integrating more plants into a game, as it is all about farming, with high compatibility and configurability.
It adds a plant breeding system, with which one can make any plant better (grow faster,more output, etc) or breed new ones; similar to Forestry, though AgriCraft does not add new plants on its own, using the config you can integrate most anything though.
It has the ability to breed up resource crops (like magic-crops or TC's bushes), but this can be turned off.
Really small mods that can add a lot:
Iron Chests just feels right, upgradable 1-block-sized chests of the various tiers of materials that hold more stuff.
It is so simple that its been MC version independent for a while.
Ender Storage is by NEI's author ChickenBones, it makes ender chests only share with the chest with same label of 3 colors, and then extends the idea into ender pouches (chest that's useable in inventory) and tanks.
I'm not really a fan of instant item transport, so I don't use this; however this is still a brilliant little mod.
Also by ChickenBones, Translocator is short range, quick item/liquid transport with filtering capabilities.
Powerful enough to be useful even in mod-heavy packs (fast filterable 1-block sized transport), limited enough to not be a game-changer (hopper does near same thing), slick visual effects too... love this little thing.
Side notes:
Witchery is apparently meant for PvP, from what I hear... I know I've never gotten far in it as I'm 99% single-player (#forever alone).
Making a modpack? Minetweaker is your friend, even a simple change can alter balance completely. I just found it and its Twu Wuv.
I'll have a look at all of them, but Iron Chests and Translocator are already going in a pretty wrong direction I think. Also HarvestCraft has a tendency to make food matters very simple sometimes. I'm glad about your suggestions though.
What I am particularly looking for is immersion. It gets created by a mods using ingame manuals and hiding instructions inside the lore while making the world a more mysterious, dangerous, in any case more interesting place.
And it gets destroyed by having to pause just to look up what the hell you are doing and by ridiculous mod failures appearing on your screen or just unrealistic mechanics("Realistic" does not mean "true to life" but "making sense in itself" this includes not biting othermods).
I made a D flip-flop!
Might I suggest Botania? It has it's own manual, but it is slightly OP. Take a look, who knows...
Are you tlaking about keywords for mods or actually specific mods that you are recommending?
Because the names are pretty generic and there are no links or names.
I made a D flip-flop!
Okay, think I understand better.
Though, I can't think of many immersive mods that I use... I look for something slightly different.
Sadly, obtuseness is the norm for Minecraft in general...
Hmm.
Perhaps more adventure oriented mods like Nevermine or Twilight Forest?
Haven't played through myself, as not quite my style.
Have you checked out Quest Modpacks, like Blightfall or "Agrarian Skies"?
They are not quite what you're asking for, I think, but the defined story-line, flow, and difficulty may help give some ideas (or mod suggestions).
Blightfall uses the neat idea of an entire world that Thaumcraft's taint has taken over, for example.
Modpacks are usually not what I am looking for, because they usually contain a lot of stuff that ruins it.
I made a D flip-flop!
I didn't find Survival Mod or Timescale. I found MoMobs though and eh...I don't think I wanna have that right now.
I made a D flip-flop!
...Okay. Spice of Life and HarvestCraft might be good mods, but they shift the game nearly to the point at which food is all that matters and they flood your inventory very quickly.
Doesn't make it all that much harder, just much more tedious, as much as I like the concepts of these mods.
Sorry for being so unclear, it's actually pretty hard to say what exactly I want.
I made a D flip-flop!
I would go with adding some of the Thaumcraft addons, if you want a nice varied experience:
Thaumic Tinkerer is an excellent addon that doesn't become a gamebreaker until you're at endgame anyways.
Automagy is a great alternative to redstone and automation that can get really fun and entertaining (watch the golems run all over doing your bidding!!!) You can check out an example of automated cake production using TC and Automagy on my youtube channel linked in my sig.
Thaumic Horizons adds a few cool items and revolves more around using magic to alter/create living stuff rather than golems.
As for others:
Botania is all about magic flowers, and by itself is an excellent mod. Thaumcraft and Botania go together well and have some cross mod compatibility. However, late game Botania becomes somewhat broken....
Witchery adds a new level of PvP to the game. It does have PvE elements to it, but a lot of the later game stuff feels like its directed at a PvPish environment. That said, I enjoyed the circle magic very much so.
Biomes O plenty adds a much needed boost to world gen.
Chocolate Quest (formally Better Dungeons) will give you some extra stuff to do, but the loot you find tends to be worth more than the effort took to get it, though that may have changed. I've not played it in a bit.
Chisel will let you make a variety of blocks from vanilla blocks. It's aethestic more so than gameplay, but if your peeps like building, Chisel'll add a new layer of design strategy.
You can modify chickens so that, instead of laying eggs, they lay live bees. Dwarf Fortress: crimes against nature simulator.
I already got Biomes 'o' plenty, I think it makes the world more engaging and gives you a lot more see without altering the game.
Chisel sounds nice, but It used to get along badly with Thaumcraft, because you could get normally rare chiseled blocks for their aspects simply by transforming other blocks. But that was Thaumcraft 2 xD
I made a D flip-flop!
Yea that's changed quite a bit as of TC4. And actually, Chisel now can use the Arcane Stone to make different magical looking blocks. But yea, I'd suggest looking at Chocolate Quest if you want to add some more survival type stuff.
You can modify chickens so that, instead of laying eggs, they lay live bees. Dwarf Fortress: crimes against nature simulator.