So, it took about four days over four weeks, but we finished off all of the content Minecraft has to offer. Well, all of the content that Vanilla Minecraft has to offer, and only as far as achievable gameplay is concerned. Sure, we didn’t make a full-sized replica of the USS Enterprise, or any other amazingly huge and impressive constructions, but we did beat the Ender Dragon and the Wither. We even did it without cheating at all!
So, what do we do now? Mod the ever-living shit out of it!
Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. We’re not actually doing any modding ourselves. That requires way too much free time and entirely too much talent. Besides, why do it ourselves when so many more capable (and more free) individuals have already taken care of it?
Kiokri and I are not new to Minecraft mods. We used to roll on a Feed The Beast server a couple years back, and it was good times. The steady hum of machinery filled each of our virtual abodes while we dominated the landscape with jet packs, solar arrays, and automated quarries. We automated so many things that the game practically played itself. All we had to do was reap the produce and go exploring.
This time, we’ve decided to go with The Crack Pack on ATLauncher. Why? Well, primarily because it has all of the things we really want while keeping the Minecraft version as recent as possible. This is very important. After all, if our technological and magical domination occurs in a world without horses, what’s th
e point?
The Crack Pack seems to have something for just about everyone; machines for the industrialist, computers for the organizer, and even furniture for the Homemaker. It has grinding gizmos, wacky whatsits, and techno transjigamarigs. It has magical spells, mystical structures, and mythical stories. It even has a kitchen sink!
In fact, there’s so much new stuff that is all crammed into the poor world generating scripts that there’s barely any open space left. When I first spawned into the world, I couldn’t see more than a few blocks in front on me for all of the vibrant foliage. Admittedly, we did start in some sort of magical forest, which is apparently well known for its dense and colorful vegetation. It doesn’t disappoint.
Of course, I’m used to playing a modded Minecraft, so there were few jarring surprises for me. For the rest of the group, however, things were a bit more exciting in our first few minutes. I’ll illustrate with a conversation with Kamriell:
Yeah, that’s about right.
With so many mods and so much more content, it’s easy to become daunted and overwhelmed. So, for the most part, we’ve each chosen a specific mod to pursue and stuck with it. For me, it’s Thaumcraft, and go figure that I picked the mod that gives the most homework. Seriously, at least 75% of what I’ve done thus far for this mod has been studying and research. I feel like I’m getting another masters.
Let me explain, for those of you unfamiliar with the mod. Thaumcraft adds a magical system which permeates everything in the world. This energy, called Vis (or Essentia, I’m not really sure what the difference is), comes in six basic, primal aspects: earth, water, air, fire, order, destruction (sound familiar?). From these, through combining two aspects to make a new one, we get a whole tree of aspects which is as populated as it is annoying. Each of these aspects has a Latin-derived name, meaning that I can’t describe what I’m working on without sounding like an eager understudy for a Harry Potter movie. I’ve pretty much eschewed the Latin names for a simpler verbal schema:
Doggy + Brain = Clones
Bubble + Zeus’s Hand = MAGIC!
Now, if you can get through the long hours of peering at things through a purple hexagon and scribbling down notes in your Thauminomicon, you can start doing some
pretty impressive stuff. A successful Thaumaturge can turn ores into double-producing ores (which seems to be a theme with these mods), create golems which do menial tasks, and craft items of immense power and usefulness. Of course, this would all be wonderful if I had the time to use any of it. Most of my Thaumcraft day is spent refilling my wand, cooking things for their aspects, and studying surprisingly complex recipes.
So far, in fact, my biggest accomplishment has been a pair of golems that I gave to Hinkabear for her birthday. They are supposed to automatically harvest her vast farm for her, but they only act on certain plants, so they’re mostly just for show at this point. Still she seems happy with them.
Ac
tually, Hinkabear’s birthday was kind of a thing for us. We all made her stuff and had a little party in her garden. It went off wonderfully and without a hitch! Ok, if you haven’t learned this yet, you soon will: nothing our group does goes off with out a hitch.
It started with JV3r8 dying in the Nether to an unbelievable number of skeletons. Cassyus, feeling brave and generous, decided to help him recover his grave. Cassyus was carrying his present to Hinkabear, so I’m sure you can imagine how well that went. Before long, the entire crew was in the Nether fighting way too many skeletons while trying to get our comrades’ valuables back. We all ended up dying; some of us did so several times. It wasn’t until Kiokri came in with his admin god mode enabled that we were able to recover everything. It was spectacularly terrible.
Cassyus said we would leave the Nether and never speak of it again.
Whoops.
Have fun!
With the exception for the need for so much glowstone, I would have said the same about the Nether. Truth of the matter is, the dudes started the Nether and never actually secured the portal. Nor did anyone mention that the Pigmen hate the fact that one may mine ‘their’ ores. So in climbing to the top of the first hill to see where I was, I did get a few ores. And the number of Pigmen and skeletons at the top was staggering.
Needless to say, much rage ensued with a TPK (total party kill) until the admin ‘fixed’ it. Still have no clue why so many skeletons spawn in that area. So I decided to call that Nether portal a total loss.
But since I wanted the ores there, I did make another portal for myself. Several thousand meters away from the original. Since then I have successfully installed a small Big Reactor multiblock and have had 2 successful quarries operating to bedrock.
But still, the need for glowstone meant that I needed to fly. So Simply Jetpacks was the next mod I was after. It started easy enough, but then there was the other real need for a lot of Ender Pearls. Still, with a level 3 Jetpack, I was able to gather quite a bit of glowstone. The quarries worked flawlessly for other rare resources.
So the Ender Pearl Problem. Not a quick solution as it did take two days over the weekend gathering the random bits, finding a broken spawner and such to get it working. But I now have two different kinds of Enderman spawners and a grinder. And an endless supply of ender pearls that get fed into the ME network that I have quantum tunneled back to my place in the overworld.
Good days.
Not sure how big the Twilight Forest is, but that will likely be the next target of a quarry.