I enjoyed Skyblock and have been trying to figure out a mod pack for a similar experience but stranded on an endless ocean. One of the things that bugged me with Skyblock was that I could so easily lose items or fall to my doom, and since being on water with ItemPhysic solves most of that, and I find fishing to be relaxing, then I figured I'd go from there.
However, the starting part seems to be a bit slower than I expected, and I'd like any advice for how to balance the game better, while sticking to my general style. Here is what I have so far:
0. Worldgen
Flat world, 63 water over 1 bedrock. You spawn on the bottom of the ocean unfortunately, and Air Overhaul makes drowning happen faster, so you can't get to the surface normally; to compensate for that, Starting Inventory adds a Splash Potion of Water Breathing.
HarvestCraft creates water gardens with little bits of food here and there, and Et Futurum gives empty water temples (no guardians or anything), but I don't think anything else really alters the underwater landscape. I'm hoping at some point to come across a mod or other setup that makes it all ocean biome but not flatworld, so it's still all water and no land but the underwater is interesting again.
1. Starting Supplies
On normal (hard) mode you start with a lilypad, dirt block, and from Ex Nihilo, a sifter and two compost bins (wooden barrels), plus an enchanted fishing pole (Lure, Unbreaking, Mending -- it never breaks, and catches things faster). Once you hit the surface, you put down the lilypad, stick the dirt under it, and have your starting island. You fish up goodies to put in the compost bin to make your dirt (seven fish makes one dirt).
Easy mode starts you with a bucket of lava for a better island and faster access to stone, plus a stack of dirt to shortcut the early stages.
2. Mod List
Here's what I've got so far:
B3M (Longer Day/Night Cycle) to give a nice, relaxing feel to the in-game time progression.
ItemPhysic to ensure that many items float in water instead of sinking. Also it just looks cooler.
BattleHearts to make combat less of a focus, and Natural Absorption to reduce the attrition of incidental fall damage and such.
Starting Inventory since I don't want to make a custom map; you can do this on any map variation.
Air Overhaul / Drowning Overhaul to make you be more careful underwater; Deep Sea Diving to lift that restriction later in the game.
Thirst Mod because it feels unrealistic to be stranded on the ocean without thirst being a factor. I'm having a bit of trouble tweaking it but I want to have the ocean water be bad, juices be good (they refill hunger too, of course), rain water be great, and tea be one of the best options.
Spice of Life so you pay more attention to the type of food you're eating. The variety of fish from HarvestCraft means this isn't really a factor that makes it hard to survive (though definitely don't eat raw vanilla fish, one of the mods make them nasty). Hunger Overhaul makes hunger more of a factor as well.
Hunger in Peace in case you want to tackle this map without any mobs.
Or, if you do want to tackle mobs, Special Mobs to make them more interesting. It'll be a while before you see them anyway.
Better Rain because I hate vanilla weather.
Better Foliage because why did no one ever tell me this mod made the trees look this good?
Ex Nihilo because how else would you get all the stuff you need?
Scotts Tweaks for, if I recall, fewer squid. There's always too many squid!
Realistic Torches for a neater feel to the torch mechanics.
Flint Instead of Wood, so you can get makeshift tools with minimal resources once you've managed to get gravel. I am debating about shifting the Ex Nihilo progression a bit, and/or cutting out normal stone tools (wooden tools are already gone).
The Camping Mod to give some survival items like a tent and campfire, although I tweak the recipes because The Camping Mod seems specced toward camping as a luxury vacation in the mid to late game.
Improving Minecraft, for all the neat things it does, including adding recipes for a lot of things you can't normally create -- such as name tags, and since zombie villagers are the only way to get villagers, I want you to be able to do that early and easily.
HarvestCraft to give a bunch of food options and more interesting crops and fishing, and Cooking for Blockheads to help you know what sort of items you can craft.
Tinkers Construct with Tinker Tweaks so tools get pushed back a bit in the tech tree. I'm debating how heavily to modify it.
Bibliocraft for interesting storage options (I'm debating about adding Better Storage or one of the other variants as well) and some more decorations. Lost Books gives interesting things to read and things to put in the bookshelves (assuming those two work together).
Not Enough Items so it's easy to figure out what's going on.
MineTweaker and MineTweaker Recipe Maker because I'm very picky about recipes that don't make sense to me. ZZZZZ Custom Configs might take the place of these if I can figure out how to make it work, because I intend to alter the fishing percentages for better and faster progression.
Et Futurum to grant some 1.8 and 1.9 blocks to my 1.7.10 build, as well as, most notably, giving the player a truly unbreakable fishing pole.
Hardcore Questing Mode so I can (potentially) create a sort of walkthrough for my pack. Might eventually omit this, depending on how much time and effort it takes.
Did I miss anything? Not sure.
Anyway, I've looked through a couple other Skyblock mod packs, and most of them have content I don't care for, such as a lot more mechanical bits, or magical stuff like growing ores as plants. I prefer to stick fairly closely to a "realistic" method, despite the obvious crazy that is Ex Nihilo.
I also don't want to mess with redstone/command-block anything (on my end -- players can do whatever they want). And I wouldn't mind sprucing up the ocean with a few mobs, though I am highly averse to Mo' Creatures (it has gotten far too complex for my tastes), and the player needs to be able to reliably get from the bottom of the ocean to the top without getting killed (unless there's a mod that makes spawning in the ocean spawn you at the top instead of the bottom? I would love adding a mod like that!).
If there's any existing mod that lets you define how the world should generate as far as biomes and land mass size, I would like to hear about it. It would be neat to couple this mod pack with "spawn in the middle of deep ocean, but eventually you'll come across tiny islands far apart that can be of any biome" or something like that.
So, with that in mind... any tips? tricks? critiques? Any info you think I should look over? Existing mods I haven't run across yet? I appreciate any help you could throw my way.
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My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
0. TerrainControl should be able to what you want(and much more). I've never used it myself, but Biome Bundle was made using it, and it looks impressive. You'll want version 2.6.3 for Forge.
1. Perfect Spawn allows you to make the player spawn in an exact location.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please don't PM me asking for help, I will just redirect you to the appropriate forum, where there are others who are far more skilled than me.
I enjoyed Skyblock and have been trying to figure out a mod pack for a similar experience but stranded on an endless ocean. One of the things that bugged me with Skyblock was that I could so easily lose items or fall to my doom, and since being on water with ItemPhysic solves most of that, and I find fishing to be relaxing, then I figured I'd go from there.
However, the starting part seems to be a bit slower than I expected, and I'd like any advice for how to balance the game better, while sticking to my general style. Here is what I have so far:
0. Worldgen
Flat world, 63 water over 1 bedrock. You spawn on the bottom of the ocean unfortunately, and Air Overhaul makes drowning happen faster, so you can't get to the surface normally; to compensate for that, Starting Inventory adds a Splash Potion of Water Breathing.
HarvestCraft creates water gardens with little bits of food here and there, and Et Futurum gives empty water temples (no guardians or anything), but I don't think anything else really alters the underwater landscape. I'm hoping at some point to come across a mod or other setup that makes it all ocean biome but not flatworld, so it's still all water and no land but the underwater is interesting again.
1. Starting Supplies
On normal (hard) mode you start with a lilypad, dirt block, and from Ex Nihilo, a sifter and two compost bins (wooden barrels), plus an enchanted fishing pole (Lure, Unbreaking, Mending -- it never breaks, and catches things faster). Once you hit the surface, you put down the lilypad, stick the dirt under it, and have your starting island. You fish up goodies to put in the compost bin to make your dirt (seven fish makes one dirt).
Easy mode starts you with a bucket of lava for a better island and faster access to stone, plus a stack of dirt to shortcut the early stages.
2. Mod List
Here's what I've got so far:
Did I miss anything? Not sure.
Anyway, I've looked through a couple other Skyblock mod packs, and most of them have content I don't care for, such as a lot more mechanical bits, or magical stuff like growing ores as plants. I prefer to stick fairly closely to a "realistic" method, despite the obvious crazy that is Ex Nihilo.
I also don't want to mess with redstone/command-block anything (on my end -- players can do whatever they want). And I wouldn't mind sprucing up the ocean with a few mobs, though I am highly averse to Mo' Creatures (it has gotten far too complex for my tastes), and the player needs to be able to reliably get from the bottom of the ocean to the top without getting killed (unless there's a mod that makes spawning in the ocean spawn you at the top instead of the bottom? I would love adding a mod like that!).
If there's any existing mod that lets you define how the world should generate as far as biomes and land mass size, I would like to hear about it. It would be neat to couple this mod pack with "spawn in the middle of deep ocean, but eventually you'll come across tiny islands far apart that can be of any biome" or something like that.
So, with that in mind... any tips? tricks? critiques? Any info you think I should look over? Existing mods I haven't run across yet? I appreciate any help you could throw my way.
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
0. TerrainControl should be able to what you want(and much more). I've never used it myself, but Biome Bundle was made using it, and it looks impressive. You'll want version 2.6.3 for Forge.
1. Perfect Spawn allows you to make the player spawn in an exact location.
Please don't PM me asking for help, I will just redirect you to the appropriate forum, where there are others who are far more skilled than me.
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Oceancraft - because its a ocean modpack