Thursday, January 14, 2016

Delving into Minecraft -- Again

In my recent recap of 2015, I mentioned my last Minecraft series, the City Builder Challenge, died a death of ennui. Rather than trying to do something in vanilla, which always seems to end with me getting bored, I'm going to play a modded game. How modded? Very.

I'm going to be running the DireWolf20 pack for Minecraft 1.7.10, using the Feed the Beast Launcher. That should give me one or two things to do. How many mods are in this pack? A LOT. Here's the list.

  • AOBD 2 by ganymedes01
  • Applied Energistics by AlgorithmX2
  • Baubles by Azanor
  • Bdlib by bdew
  • BiblioCraft by Nuchaz
  • Big Reactors by Erogenous Beef
  • Binnie's Mods by Binnie
  • Biomes O' Plenty by TDWP_FTW, Adubbz
  • Blood Magic by WayofTime
  • Botania by Vazkii
  • Buildcraft by CovertJaguar, SirSengir, Krapht, cpw, spacetoad, asiekierka
  • Carpenter's Blocks by Mineshopper
  • ChickenChunks by Chickenbones
  • Chisel 2 by warlordjones, tterrag1098, TheCricket26, Drullkus
  • CodeChickenCore by Chickenbones
  • CodeChickenLib by Chickenbones
  • CoFH Core by CoFH team
  • Compact Solars by cpw
  • ComputerCraft by Dan200
  • Custom Main Menu by lumien231
  • DenseOres by RWTema
  • EJML Core by Peter Abeles
  • Ender Tech by Drayshak
  • Ender Zoo by CrazyPants
  • EnderCore by tterrag
  • EnderIO by CrazyPants
  • EnderStorage by Chickenbones
  • Extra Utilities by RWTema
  • Factorization by neptunepink
  • FastCraft by Player
  • FlatSigns by Myrathi
  • Forestry by SirSengir
  • Forge Multipart by Chickenbones
  • FTB Utilities by LatvianModder
  • FTBLib by LatvianModder, jaredlll08
  • Funky Locomotion by RWTema
  • Gendustry by bdew
  • Guide-API by TehNut
  • Hat Stand by iChun
  • Hats by iChun
  • Help Fixer by matthewprenger
  • iChunUtil by iChun
  • IndustrialCraft 2 by IC2 Dev Team
  • INpure Core by denoflionsx
  • Inventory Tweaks by Kobata
  • IronChests by cpw, progwml6
  • JABBA by ProfMobius
  • JourneyMap by techbrew
  • Magic Bees by MysteriousAges
  • Mantle by mDiyo, progwml6
  • McJtyLib by McJty
  • MineFactory Reloaded by skyboy026, powercrystals
  • MineTweaker by StanH
  • Modular Powersuits by MachineMuse
  • Morph by iChun
  • Morpheus by quetzi
  • Mystcraft by XCompWiz
  • Natura by mDiyo
  • NEI Addons by bdew
  • NEI Integration by Tonius
  • Not Enough Items by Chickenbones
  • Not Enough Keys by Mr_okushama
  • NotEnoughCodecs by Mikeemoo
  • Nuclear Control by shedar
  • Numina by MachineMuse
  • Obsidiplates by Myrathi
  • Open Peripheral by Mikeemoo
  • OpenBlocks by Mikeemoo, boq
  • OpenModsLib by Mikeemoo, boq
  • OpenPeripheral Core by Mikeemoo, boq
  • PneumaticCraft by MineMaarten
  • Portal Gun by iChun
  • Project Red by MrTJP, Chickenbones
  • Railcraft by CovertJaguar
  • Redstone Arsenal by CoFH team
  • Resource Loader by lumien231
  • RFTools by McJty
  • Steve's Carts 2 by Vswe
  • Steve's Factory Manager by Vswe
  • Thaumcraft by Azanor
  • Thaumic Exploration by Flaxbeard, nekosune
  • Thaumic Tinkerer by pixlepix, nekosune, Vazkii
  • Thermal Dynamics by TeamCoFH
  • Thermal Expansion by CoFH team
  • Thermal Foundation by CoFH team
  • TiC Tooltips by squeek502
  • Tinker's Construct by boni, mDiyo
  • Tinker's Mechworks by mDiyo
  • Translocators by Chickenbones
  • Twilight Forest by Benimatic
  • Waila by ProfMobius
  • Waila Harvestability by squeek502
  • Wireless Redstone CBE by Chickenbones
  • Witchery by Emoniph

Yeah, if I get bored with this, I should probably give up on Minecraft. My initial plan for this game is to build an efficient base with some good automation, and then start branching out into some of the mods I haven't explored before, such as Blood Magic, Witchery and Thaumcraft. I may also take a stab at defeating the Ender Dragon, something I've never bothered with before. On the tech side, I'll probably build an Applied Energistics system, and set up a fairly extensive workshop. Oh and I'll be automating a bunch of farms for trees, food and animals.

A Green and Pleasant Land
Let's dive in. I took a couple of stabs at game seeds, before settling on this one. It's a nice meadows biome, with a jungle and an arid region close by. Right away you can see the difference between the modded version of the game and vanilla. First, there are all kinds of flowers around, courtesy of Botania. Off to the left, you can see a HUGE tree in the distance -- I guess I'll need to figure out what that's from at some point. There's also a mysterious sky island overhead, which is made of slime blocks. More on that later. Of course, things aren't all so pretty. A short distance away, I found this.

Ominous - DUN DUN DUN!
No, it's not nighttime. It's an ominous woods biome. I'm not sure what that means, and I'm going to leave it alone for now. Oh, speaking of ominous, I did tweak a couple of settings in the mod pack. I turned Thaumcraft's taint spreading way down because it's not something I want to deal with. I also turned Ender Zoo's dirt slime spawn rate down too, because I find them very annoying.

Mandatory Cowering in the Dirt Hole on the First Night
My goal for the first couple days is to get a simple base up and running. It needs three things, a bed, a food source, a mine and a safe workspace. OK, four things. I want to get ore doubling up and running pretty quickly, so I can minimize the time I spend digging for rocks. So.... (a few Minecraft days later).
First Base
Base secured. The basic structure in the background is a double 9x9 building, because what else would you build using DireWolf20's mod pack? I have a small hand-harvested farm running, plus a nice little barnyard with chickens, cows and sheep next to the house. There's not much inside yet, although I did put together a Sag Mill and Alloy Smelter system (Ender IO) to do ore doubling and processing. These devices use RF power, so I also built two Survival Generators (Extra Utilities) to keep them running. They're very underpowered, so ore processing is super-slow, but that's OK right now. It's all automatic, and the generators are very fuel efficient.

I guess I should also mention I suffered my first death very early on in this game. I was mining in the depths and found a zombie spawner. It would have been OK, except for the fact that I'd run out of torches, so I couldn't get the room lit to stop the spawns. A trip back to the base for a new (iron) sword and things are under control.

Score - Zombies 1, Mark 11. I win?
The chests had a couple of cool things, including my first Ender Pearl and some armor. If you look near the top of this screenshot, you'll notice some weird plants in the ceiling. Those are Oreberry Bushes (Tinker's Construct), plants that grow metals. I may set up a big metal farm if I can figure out how to automate metal berry harvesting.

My early goals are accomplished. I have a basic base with secure food sources, a mine and ore processing up and running. Next up, I'm going to get a Smeltery (Tinker's Construct) up and running so I can make some better tools and weapons, and do a little exploration. I'm not 100% wedded to this location as a permanent base. Obviously, I'll be doing more mining and resource gathering too. I probably need to clear a little more land for a real tree farm, and I should get some other plants, sugar cane, potatoes, cactus and such, growing too. I may also need to give some thought to base protection. There are some nasty monsters roaming around at night!

Oh, one thing I am going to try and do with this series is to provide links to stuff I build or use. If I miss something or don't explain how something works, feel free to leave a comment.

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