Two weeks and some days later…

After starting “The Crack Pack 2,” I think it is fair to say we have collectively made use of 70% of the content in some fashion. From the very practical Applied Energistics storage system, to Tinker’s Constructs awesome variety of armors, tools, and weapons with Metallurgy 4’s vast amount of raw materials. There is a lot to do and still more for us to get into!

Hi, this is JVerb by-the-way. I’m the resident server breaker and strip-miner. So take everything I say here with a grain of salt, because a lot of what I do in games is needlessly large, complex, and time consuming. Why? Because games exist to be beaten. Well, to be honest, if Minecraft has taught me anything, it is that getting there is most of the fun. Let’s take a look back at the past two weeks.

It all started for me here. Well, below here where I first found myself, right by the spawning point. And I got to work with only my vanilla Minecraft knowledge of “go down, get all the stuffs, and profit.” It was at this point that I had been warned after-the-fact that the elemental shards were probably things that I shouldn’t mine, but only after getting quite a few. Still, things were going well. Until I found out a few things from Kiokri. First, there was a mining dimension where I could mine everything and not have really bad things happen to the overworld. Second, that quarries existed.

Not long after, I found myself churning out fuel from a refinery and making combustion engines, getting ready to make my first quarry in the mining world. In fact, once I had done so, I pretty much set up shop in the mining world for about a week-and-a-half. The first thing I learned about was there are things called Big Reactors, and of course, I had to have one! A few YouTube videos later, thanks to the MindCrafters, I had my first successful 1-by-1-by-1 reactor running. It was great. I didn’t need to refine fuel from oil and could ditch combustion engines forever.

In the middle of it all, Kiokri and Kamriel were talking about storage. Ender Chests and things like that. Looking about in the NEI I happened to locate something called Applied Energistics 2. A few Google searches later, I had found what I was looking for–a way to store and organize everything! Because pipes to a lot of chests is well and good and all, but a single network of storage drives that sorts everything seemed like a dream. Needless to say, another few videos later, several hours of waiting about for the crystals to grow that the basic network is made of, some flying about with a jetpack to find the needed presses to make the computer chips, and a bit longer to build a new Big Reactor passed before I had my first ME Network. And it only got better from there.

With all of the materials, I was able to just explore everything I wanted to in the mod pack. I made several quantum singularities to network and share my wealth with those who wanted it, an automatic enderman farm which Stanford nicknamed the “Ender-Blender,” mining lasers which turn energy into rare materials, actively cooled reactors which power massive and super efficient turbines, and totally awesome jetpacks. I have to say, out of everything, the Simply Jetpack mod is one things that I am not sure if I could live without. Being able to fly about at server-breaking speed (quite literally Kiokri’s server console will spam ‘JVerb has moved illegally’) is quite awesome.

As with almost anything I do in Minecraft, getting resources to get more resources is just a thing. Let it happen. Several 63-by-63 quarries later running in parallel, I decided to move out from the mining world and find a new place in the overworld. I kept my AE2 network hub by spawn and moved far, far away and started building way high in the sky. After visiting and seeing what everyone else was doing, I learned a few awesome things. Chisel make even basic materials look awesome, and Carpentry blocks add that really aesthetic touch to everything that vanilla blocks are missing. So I went to work making a large, floating, and self-sustaining platform.

First thing I made after the basic platform was the reactor. Not just any big reactor, but a small, compact 5-by-5-by-3 to power 4 massive turbines. Then came the hiding of as much cable as possible with Ender IO’s facade blocks and the installation of yet another AE2 network connection. Then the basic equipment went in wings of the building. Finally the upper living structures, trick doors, elevator blocks, and 4 mining lasers with laser foci to pull enough fuel to keep the big reactors running. About 4 hours after installing the lasers and fixing a Tesseract feeding issue to the ore processing unit, I found out that I didn’t think I could run out of fuel. So, I went about adding input-output tesseracts to every big reactor for fuel and waste.

Currently, I still have some Thaumcraft to work through, Witchery to start, Galacticraft to rocket through, and many more mods to explore. So, the end-game for this sort of open world environment. I have just about everything I could need to do so and could, thanks to Ender Quarry, get whatever raw materials I may need super quickly if I didn’t already have enough of it on hand. Still, a few things I am left wanting from this mod packs.

Chunk loaders that work better than World Anchors. Quarries from Build Craft and World Anchors from Railcraft seem to work just as well as one another, or in other words, leave much to be desired. I’m not sure if the server attempts to unload or re-load chunks as players come and go, but there seems to be some real anomalies in how they work, or don’t. Walking away and finding power has been consumed but not generated is not great. Perhaps most frustrating is the instabilities of the AE2 quantum network where it blinks off for a moment.

I also want bees. Growthcraft offers the simple bee, but I want to make super bees, with radiation and work to breed into something even better. From what I hear, this can be quite the infuriating process, but an undertaking that I want to try. I’m sure that making mead with this in game isn’t what I really want, but something that I’m sure I’d try anyways given the presence of perhaps getting super bees and stuff.

And in the end, I think I would like to start a new pack with new things to explore simply to start again. This, keep in mind, is only my second Minecraft experience, so I think I can do the next start even better. Some key things I will be looking to do when we decide to restart the world is to get a Tinker’s Construct hammer ASAP. I have the goal of only making Big Reactors and making the AE2 growth accelerator before making my first ME drive and network. I want to get an enderman farm up sooner to get the Ender Quarry before I finish 3 conventional quarries. I want to get automated farms and animal herds up around the same time. And I want to give everyone access to the AE2 network so we can all reap the rewards collectively.

 

Lastly, I want to play as a group again. Two hours after starting the current world, the group scattered to the wilds. Only now have we began to group together more regularly thanks to playing with portals. Having everything and taking the time to explore everything I want to know is fun, but I can’t help but think that I am playing on a server so we can all play together. I mean, we are doing this in place of D&D night. Something we all grouped together to do for having fun with our outrageous characters in an improbable story over much laughter and side stories from the week.

I’m not sure if a new mod would help this last point, but, as the resident strip miner, I think it may be worth a try? Still, at least next time I will not hap-haphazardly research forbidden stuff in Thaumcraft and end up with an amazing amount of warp/flux/whatever and forego constant fighting with Eldritch guardians in my home. Who am I kidding, I probably will!

Oh and if you never want me to write something so boring again, leave a comment and tell Stanford or Kiokri to write something!