Welcome to pack making. "Wow, this is harder than I thought" may as well be our official motto.
Haha yeah your not wrong, it's like a minefield, one small change breaks everything. and when you don't notice it till much later finding out what broke it is the hardest part! i have been so tied up in this add-on pack. Just balancing everything, and sometimes the smallest change affects things in such a unintentional way, Not to mention none of the mods are supported anymore so getting help with them is without question impossible, though i am picking up java scripting fast enough, i have been repacking most mods to suit. most mods are available for source download so it was easy..... well, not easy. but doable.
At the moment i had revamped the quest book to incorporate the new mods, and also removed a tonne of making life easy things. Balancing has been first priority. While making it more of a challenge i am finding a balance between challenge and impossible leading to rage quit. so far i am up to number 19 attempt at surviving. ruling out my own stupidity. "runs outside without sync shell" spider dropbear style kills me.. *sighs* creates new world... only 4 deaths were due to impossible survival.. the rest were what i call stupidity deaths. I am hoping i will have a Alpha version available for testing within the next week. if you or any would care to try their luck. It is without a doubt insane. i am barely able to survive in it.
my goal of course is to prevent players reaching that level where you have everything and your basically not required to be there anymore. so if you were always needed to for something you would want to be there to do it. I have tried to restrict most forms of automation. it's just like them tedious game on your phone where you need to tap tap tap on the little thing to get coins or food or wood or whatever it may be, these games don't have automation. so you keep going back. now finding a balance between being tedious and challenging is what i am working on.
So i'll keep working on it. hopefully get something out soon.
Leo.