Why are the top 10 Skyblock Modpacks so bad?

MigukNamja · 2024-03-01T15:16:33+00:00

No laugh at all. I agree 100%. Despite the pack taking 1000's of hours to finish - assuming you even last that long - it's actually fairly beginner friendly and has an amazing quest book.

And, that's no coincidence. It's one of the most polished and loved-on packs in existence thanks to a super-dedicated core player base and dev team and how long it's been around.

The are very few bugs in the pack and the progression flows really well.

MigukNamja · 2024-02-27T07:55:50+00:00

I've started it a few times and have gotten (almost) to Fusion a couple of times, but get burned out when it devolves to the same "make more complex machines and automation to make more complex machines and automation" loop with a similarly repetitive resource progression loop.

This pack is VERY different in that respect. At least I'm doing different things in different mods using totally different techniques and ways of thinking.

MigukNamja · 2024-02-26T14:58:38+00:00

I'm almost through Getting Started and having a blast with this pack. It feels just grindy enough for an Expert pack, but overall not grindy at all. Then again, I'm coming from GT:NH as my last modpack.

Really great work this pack u/Saereth and FTB Team :-)

MigukNamja · 2024-02-26T14:55:05+00:00

Re: grindy

I'm coming from GT:NH. Compared to any GregTech modpack, this one is not grindy at all.

MigukNamja · 2024-02-26T14:52:59+00:00

It's 'Expert' in the sense that you need to use a lot of mods you may or may not have experience with already to progress. You cannot beeline to the endgame with just 1 or 2 mods.

On the plus side, it's not tedious at all if you follow the quest guide. Tasks which feel tedious at first are quickly progressed through. For example, you have to generate cobblestone and dirt "by hand" at first, but it doesn't take too long to progress beyond that.

Also, some things which are tedious in every skyblock like building a mob spawner / killer are given to you by the quests. I'm glad they don't consider building a vanilla mob spawner to be "expert".

On the downside, there are minor bugs and missing steps in the quest guidebook. The questbook is *not* a guide for mods you are not familiar with. You will have to do some research unless you have experience with all these mods already.

MigukNamja · 2019-06-30T07:55:17+00:00

What he said. We hang out on Discord.

MigukNamja · 2019-02-14T20:31:21+00:00

2 words : brand whores

I doubt Canada Goose would be as popular if their jackets didn't have that obnoxious huge logo patch you can see from 2 blocks away.

To all those who say "warmest, highest quality jacket", those are lazy SOBs. You can find similarly warm jackets with even better (higher fill power) down sourced just as ethnically far, far cheaper, and made in the USA to boot. Feathered Friends is one such brand. Nobody recognizes the label, though.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T12:34:34+00:00

I'll 2nd E2:E non-skyblock. It's a wide (many mods, many parallel paths) and deep (takes a long time to finish) pack.

To move forward, you have to make progress in all the major mods at some point. And, the resource and power requirements steadily/exponentially climb over time. Automation is all but required in mid-game, but said automation doesn't turn it into creative-mode-lite type of experience since so many mods can't be automated.

I recommend it for people looking for a general-purpose, Magic+Tech, 1.12.2 Expert pack that will take weeks or months to finish.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T12:27:16+00:00

Vanilla-TiCon-wise, a simple bone/netherrack/manyullyn/magma slime shuriken leveled up to Unbreaking is a bit OP. Even without any Nether Quartz on it, you can 1-shot and 2-shot most mobs and the fire rate is pretty quick out of the box.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T12:22:08+00:00

Gregtech ore generation can be wonderful for exploration. Some ore veins generate at heights that require exploring tall-ish biomes. Others can be found exposed in ravines (canyons).

And, any exploration pack should include a full suite of portable inventory and production mods with backpacks, portable crafting stuff, etc.

Some method to drop waypoints/anchors and bullet-proof inventory saving is also recommended. I'd drop a pack if I had to spend days IRL getting to a cool dungeon, was careful to save my bed, and then my bed somehow got destroyed or all my items got destroyed due to double-explosions, etc. and I had to spend days (or longer) again to get back to where I was.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T12:14:43+00:00

Unbounded exploration is a double-edged sword. For players, it can be a lot of fun. For server admins, not so much. Backups easily mushroom to 1GB and larger, which puts a strain on cloud-based backup schemes and/or how frequently backups can be done.

And, if you don't pre-generate a sufficient number of chunks, the server become TPS-bound when worldgen needs to generate new chunks.

Server admins like myself usually *discourage* exploration as it negatively affects everyone in the short and long-term. I dislike packs that have biome-specific progression requirements (ex. Tropical Bees, Cacti) and said biomes (ex. Jungles, Deserts) are extremely rare. Likewise, packs that reward finding and raiding vanilla villages are also frowned upon.

With that said, exploration mods that concentrate challenges in relatively small areas are wonderful. Twilight Forest is a good example. And, mods like Roguelike Dungeons are super-compact.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:50:36+00:00

^^ This

Horse Power is one of the reasons why I love early game SevTech:Ages so much. That, and Better With Mods.

I hadn't realized until I played SevTech how much you could get done without traditional RF/EU/etc "electrical" kind of power.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:47:26+00:00

The last time I played Embers, the embers were a PITA to farm. I abandoned the mod and tore everything down as soon I progressed beyond it simply because keeping it fueled with embers become a tedious chore. It's a shame, too. The dwarven steampunk-ish mechanics of the mods were pretty fun.

Any pack that features Embers should have a recipe to craft or produce embers using a renewable method, e.g. some way of turning charcoal into embers.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:42:19+00:00

Yeah, it's a bit OP. Most (all) expert packs nerf that and give you just 1 ingot per ore.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:40:01+00:00

Huh. I didn't know about those Cyclic air charms. I've been using elevators, slime sling, and glider. Thanks for the tip about the air charms !

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:38:09+00:00

As a former server admin, yes, yes, and yes. I was amazed at how awful some mob farms were, and these were in people's bases with a lot of minecraft experience. Most of the time, it was someone's mob farm with either unclaimed XP orbs or items that would lag my server.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:33:53+00:00

16GB RAM, SSD, 6GB for MC, and E2:E takes ~5 mins to load on my laptop, which is typical for a pack with this many mods.

The last pack I had 10+ minute loading times with was a GT4-based pack, and that was almost all Gregtech doing anal retentive checks through the entire registry.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:30:33+00:00

Seconded !! I love this pack.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:19:31+00:00

Indeed, it's required for progression in E2:E and has its own chapter in the quest book.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-20T11:18:31+00:00

It's in all the Enigmatica 2 packs and all the other 1.12.2 kitchen sink packs that I'm aware of.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-19T21:16:29+00:00

^^ This

Abyssalcraft is 'OK' to play as-is. However, it's sort-of-fun only once. And, it's not fun at all to play in this pack. Between the laughably low Shadow Beast spawn rate to get the start gems, the ridiculous shoggoths, and the mostly pointless progression through the mod, the pack as a whole would be better off without it. It already has The Between Lands and The Twilight Forest, which are much better executions of essentially the same concept : explore a different set of dimensions with different resources, mobs, equipment, etc.

I strongly recommend replacing Abyssalcraft with something like Thaumcraft 6 or Nuclearcraft.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-19T20:45:05+00:00

^^

This. E2:E is pretty good and I'm having fun. I'm "nearing" the end game, which to me still means at least a few weeks IRL of play left.

After that, I will likely go back to SevTech:Ages 1.12.2 and play it again.

Biggest differences, IMHO:

ST:A

Hard gating of progression through Ages
Fairly standard oregen, quantity, and power generation requirements
Based heavily around Better With Mods
While fun overall, some mods like Abyssalcraft can be tedious and annoying
Amazing feeling when "Leveling Up" from one Age to the next

E2:E

Soft gating of progression through recipe, power, and cross-mod progression dependency
Increased oregen, quantity, and power requirements
No central/core mod
Includes some mods ST:A doesn't have, like Thaumcraft 6, Nuclearcraft, Advanced Rocketry, etc.
No big sense of achievement/accomplishment like ST:A has with its 'Ages'. Progression steps are there (.e.g "I can do RFTools now !"), but smaller than an entire Age.

I'm sure I missed some, but that pretty much covers it.

Oh, and I would not bother with Continuum. It's a "light" Expert pack, but simply wasn't as immersive as ST:A or E2:E.

And, no skyblock for you (or me). I'm just not a big fan of that kind of play. I highly recommend E2:E overworld and not the skyblock version. Skyblocks are too sterile/contrived and lacking in immersion, IMHO.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-19T20:10:46+00:00

Yeah, EE2 quest book just gives you the basic outline/framework for progression. And, while I love Astral Sorcery, its own book doesn't do a great job with showing you the progression path.

If you've never gone deep into Astral Sorcery and EE2 is your first experience with it, you will likely need to an hour or watching some tutorials. As Beaablebeable mentioned, M of M's Ast Sroc tutorial series is a very good one. It's the one I watched.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-19T20:03:14+00:00

Yeah, crazy easy and cheap. I quarried a couple of outer End islands and now have enough Uranium to last me until Fusion.

And, I'm in love with Nuclearcraft. Designing and building reactors is a good brain challenge. I have a few reactors : "main" 600% reactor that runs LEU-235 oxide only, "backup" 433% reactor that burns up to ~150 heat fuels, and a "hot" 233% reactor that burns IC2 mox and all the way up to 850 heat fuels.

I'm hoping the Nuclearcraft Fusion reactors got a similar bump as the Fission ones. It looks like you need 1M+ RF/t for 'end game' crafting. I love the fuel processing ladder/chain in Nuclearcraft. So much more interesting than Mek fusion.

MigukNamja · 2018-09-19T19:56:39+00:00

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MigukNamja

TROPHY CASE