First, comments / gripes / grousing (about grout, etc): Ever had to work in a vacuum? It's not pleasant. Either with yes men or no team, you need to be devil's advocate for everything which takes it's toll on you. Us griping about content changes matters. I go over the top sometimes, but it's genuinely how I feel. Another pack that I don't care about? Yeah, you won't hear me complaining about it cause I have no vested interest. This is a real fun pack, so we're not DEMANDING anything, we're complaining to get our voices heard. that's it. Iskandar makes final decisions and if his decision is different than ours so be it. If we feel that strong about a setting or something, we can change it each time after update. I think every complainer has heaped praise on the pack at some point in time or another.
Second, special mobs: As far as the mobs are concerned, except for those damn baby skel thief mobs and the pig zombie vampire ones, I've been able to handle or be handled by the rest throughout. Wall off base, even if you do, spiders get in. plank/fence your wall, no spiders. yay. now we have flying mobs with ghasts (saw my first one this morning pick up a skel then drop him [TOO HEAVY OFF!] to his death which was funny). There is no safety within your base unless you glass dome it or something. Then you got ender creepers and special endermen. I wouldn't say there's every any safety, but you need to just be able to react and run like hell somewhere. If it's an ender creeper, you might want to run outside your base or go sleep or who knows. but there's no absolute safety within base, and I think that is best for this pack (until something bad happens to me then I reserve the right to bitch and moan and demand change
).
The city: I didn't goto city at beginning. I think it was day 20 or more? I now use infogamexl so if I was, I'd be more precise. I had wood armor, the gun with about 2-3 clips. A slightly leveled dagger and got pwned in first building because I was unprepared for the ferocity at which those pigs come out and shoot at you and stab at you and errrr moving on. I came back with a spare set of armor in case I "soiled" the first. I met my first blaze got heatstroke and nearly died. Both initial forays I used zans to zip back and forth since I was so nope. I setup camp in one building and built a ton of chests, used the elevators to get up there and lit both up/downstairs as well as close off holes. put door on it with pressure plate so it acted as mini base. Brought water bottles, setup furnace, brought 2 stacks of dirt, etc... brought a bed and from there was able to use that as base but night time beeline to that base as quick as possible. You get stuck out there at night and a world of hurt is waiting for you. Be sure to have a sync shell setup back at real base and prepare for when sync ports you into a wall so use aromabackup occassionally (set to 24 hours if need be, then manually run a backup by saving/exiting game if you want less cheaty.
I get a knapsack early on. After I got a bunch of gold nugs, I was able to make a golden bag of holding or two. Fill those up as often as possible with everything, don't count loot while out in city, just grab grab grab. Come back sleep, repeat. As you block off areas and destroy spawners, those become alot less hostile during day. Make a hang glider, use it to get to inaccessible spots or pillar up.
I have a full stack of ammo or more, now. Look at post page or two back from last night at loot. That is the noteworthy and morvy stuff only. I have probably 4-5 double chests of other stuff that basically allows me to skip alot of grinding back at base, etc..
Oh yeah, food. I got grapes, peanuts, soy, and rice in a 4x4. I finally got a potato too so I setup a farm for that and onions but was only able to make 4 different foods which I would go through while looting.
Your first priority is to use that invar to make anything, even boots, so you can get some fire protection enchants on them, then the blazes aren't so bad anymore.
Now, if you decide to play podonnel style, just walk into middle of city, take off your armor, drop your weapons, curse at the pigs and lack of a donut shop and duke it out mano y mano and slurp the marrow from their bones. get the adulation from their women and babies or whatever, I forget the quote
ME? I wear nikes and will switch out to my puma's in a pinch. I RUN LIKE THE WIND away from everything and anything. Normally, if I play MC, an errant skel hits me as I'm bedding for the night, I'll go out there amongst him and his buds and destroy him for the insult. Now? meh. so what. I'll be making broth out of your cousin tonight, so yeah, PBBBBTTTTTTT!