Return to Minecraft

I haven’t really touched minecraft for probably a year. Recently though, I found a new mod pack called Feed the Beast, quite by accident, and thought I would give it a try. Then I found a mod called Mo Creatures which I added into Feed the Beast and now I feel that Minecraft is a completely new game and one worth playing again.

So to start out, I want to explain that Feed the Beast is a mod pack that takes some of the most popular mods for Minecraft, gets permissions from the owners of the mods, then packages them all together and makes sure they work correctly together. Most of these mods are tech related mods like Buildcraft, IndustrialCraft, and RedPower. But it does include some other goodies like Thaumcraft and Biomes O’ Plenty to make life a little more interesting. To be honest, these second projects I have taken a liking to more than the tech related things which are only popular in order to automate the work of the game, these seem somewhat cheaty, yet somewhat necessary in order to play a lot of end game things.

I originally began playing the 1.4.x version of Feed the Beast (FTB), but wanted to play the newer versions of minecraft so I went and downloaded the beta version that they have running for 1.5.2. This version dropped a few of the mods that look to be unsupported in the future due to lack of development such as Red Power, but added a few other new ones like Natura and Tinker’s Construct. RedPower does look cool but I’d rather not get used to it if it won’t be in future editions anyway.

Here’s a list of the mods I think I like the most out of FTB and why I like them:

IndustrialCraft – A lot of people I feel like BuildCraft better but I personally like IndustrialCraft largely because the engines in this one are less work. For instance there are engines for wind, water, and solar as well as a nuclear reactor. While a lot of the machines designed in these two mods are made to give you less work, the tradeoff in build craft seems to be to give you work with constantly refueling stuff (though there are ways to automate that too granted). Still I like the place it and forget it attitude of IC, plus the wrench works better.

Forestry – Ironically this is a Buildcraft mod, but I love the bee aspect that it brings to the table. Weirdly enough I don’t like the auto-farming capability of it, they seem weird and kinda cheaty to me. I think perhaps one reason why I like this one more than buildcraft besides the bees is that there is an engine in it that lets you convert IndustrialCraft energy to Buildcraft so it offers a great bridge. It also has a few tree types and cans, both are good additions.

Biomes O’Plenty – I really really love this mod. It basically adds about 40 different biomes with all new tree types, bricks, and a few recipes to go with it. This is one of the big game changers. No it doesn’t specifically DO a lot, but it does make it feel different and like a more complete game. Unfortunately, this particular mod I think may have caused some crashing on the beta version of FTB and I had to disable it. On further retrospect, it may have been the fault of the skin I was using so I might just give BOP another try.

Thaumcraft – The magic mod for the game, it adds a whole bunch of magic items, spells, magic creatures, and some mechanics related to it. It really adds a new dimension to the game which unfortunately I haven’t figured out quite yet but it is really cool.

Natura – Again this adds a bunch of trees and plants and such into the game. One of my favs about this mod is the added trees that they put into the nether, in particular the one that grows upside down from the ceiling. Such a great idea!! This is a newer mod to FTB and was added for 1.5.2. They also added Tinker’s Construct which is an early game weapon mod system that is quite nice but I haven’t fully played with yet because it requires a smelter for the metals which requires me to go to the nether. Still a very cool mod just not as nice as Natura in my opinion.

Portal Gun – Ok I gotta say I feel this one is OP but it is just so cool. It is quite expensive to make, but it acts just like a portal gun so you can make your own teleportation doors. I cheated one in when I was playing around with the pack early on and it was awesome to just make a door at your home and then a door wherever you were messing around at one point so that travel time was nil. Awesome mod, just seems a bit much even at the cost, still is fun.

Xycraft – This mod makes my list largely because the blocks they put into the game are really cool. They have various types of glowing blocks that really do glow in the dark without giving off light. Very nice. It also weirdly adds into it Corn and Flax, I really like these additions, it just seems odd for the mod. Unfortunately this is another mod that hasn’t updated since 1.4. I hope it does again, doesn’t seem like the dev was done because it is awesome.

Dartcraft – I like Dartcraft for one reason and one reason only. Mob Drops. For everything you kill you get a 1% chance at having it drop a bag that acts like a treasure chest. This is really cool. There are some other nice features in dartcraft that I enjoy, it has a new ore called force which seems like you can use a lot of the times to stretch materials out. For instance, i believe I used instead of redstone in IC chips and got 2 chips instead of 1. It also has some equipment which do area of effects instead of just one block at a time. But I like the mob drops way better, it adds more fun to the game. This one is also new for 1.5.2 FTB.

Mo Creatures – This actually isn’t in FTB because the author won’t authorize anyone to put it in a mod pack. It’s too bad because this mod adds so much to the game. First of all it adds a ton of creatures, from bunnies and snails to ogres, Wraiths and golems (golems are really cool btw!). On top of just adding creatures, it does increase spawn rates a lot though. When you go out, there is stuff all over the place, it feels much closer to a living world. And to aid that, creatures do interact with each other as well. Wolves will kill cows for instance, raccoons will kill chickens. This unfortunately was another mod that I loved but disabled. My computer is in need of an update and lags quite a bit with this mod running, even after I cut the spawn rates of everything in half. But if you can run it, i’d highly suggest it!