[1.6.4] Surg's Skyblocks

[Surgonan]

Description
This pack is a variation of the famous Skyblocks style game play.
It revolves around the Ex Nihilo mod and its compatibilities.
It adds many mods, while still keeping that vanilla Skyblocks feel.

Pack Code
SurgSkyblocks

Pack Information
Title: Surg's Skyblocks
Version: 1.0.5
Pack Author: Surgonan
Author's Websites:
https://www.youtube.com/user/surgonan

Adding/Removing mods is not supported in this pack.
Removing mods will break the recipes and adding mods will likely break the progression of the pack.
If you think a mod should be included in the pack please post in this thread explaining why.

Please be sure to direct all support to this thread, the FTB Team will not be providing support for this pack.
General feedback is always welcome as long as it is constructive.

If you are unsure how to use any mods listed, please see my YouTube videos.

Spoiler: Mod List

Applied Energistics by AlgorithX2
Ars Magica 2 by Mithion
Bibliocraft by Nuchaz
Bibliocraft Addons By Nuchaz
Buildcraft by SirSengir
CodeChickenCore by ChickenBones
CoFHCore by TeamCoFH
EnderStorage by ChickenBones
Ex Nihilo by Crowley
Ex Aliquo by Zerokyuuni
ExtraUtils by RWTema
Factorization by Neptunepink
Forestry by SirSengir
Jabba by ProfMobius
IC2 by IC² Dev Team
InventoryTweaks by Kobata
Iron Chests by CPW
Mekanism by Aidancbrady
MinefactoryReloaded by Skyboy026
MobiusCore by ProfMobius
Natura by mDiyo
NEI Plugin for Forestry by mistaqur
NotEnoughItems by ChickenBones
OpenBlocks by Mikeemoo
PowerCrystalCore by Skyboy026
ProjectRed by Mr_TJP
Rei's Minimap by ReiFNSK
Thaumcraft by Azanor
Thaumic Tinkerer by Pixlepix and Nekosune
ThermalExpansion by TeamCoFH
TConstruct by mDiyo
TMechworks by mDiyo
WAILA by ProfMobius

Installation

1. Download FTB Launcher​
2. Click on Private Packs​
3. Insert "SurgSkyblocks"​
4. Scroll down and launch Surg's Skyblocks​

​

Spoiler: Change Log

v1.0.5

• Added Iron Chests
• Added Jabba
• Added Mekanism Generators
• Added Mekanism Tools
• Updated Ex Nihilo to 1.29
• Updated Extra Utilities to 1.0.3c
• Updated Thermal Expantion to 3.0.0.5
• Updated Ex Aliquo to 0.10.5
• Updated Mekanism 6.0.4.35
• Updated Open Blocks to 1.2.7
• Updated Project Red to 4.3.5
• Updated TConstruct to 1.5.5.1
• Updated TMechworks to 0.1.6
• Updated Thaumic Tinkerer to 2.3.140

v1.0.4

• Added NEI Plugins
• Updated Ex Nihilo to v1.28
• Updated Extra Utilities to 1.0.3b
• Updated Ex Aliquo to 0.9.2
• Updated Factorization to 0.8.34
• Updated Mekanism to 6.0.4.32
• Updated MineFactory Reloaded to 2.7.6
• Updated NEI to 1.6.1.9
• Updated Ender Storage to 1.4.3.6
• Updated Code Chicken Core to 0.9.0.9
• Updated Project Red to 4.3.2.26
• Updated Thaumcraft to 4.1.0g
• Updated Thaumic Tinkerer to 2.3.137

v1.0.3

• Added Thaumcraft 4 (4.1.0f)
• Added Thaumic Tinkerer (2.3-130)
• Added Rei's Minimap (3.4_01)
• Removed Opis (Resource hog)
• Updated Ex Nihilo to 1.27
  • Changed the sieve so that the blocks that it can sift are no longer hardcoded, this means modders can add pretty much any combination of "block to item" recipe that they want to.
  • Rewrote the sieve's particle effects to accomodate the change above.
  • Fixed a bug where the sieve would emit particles when right clicked even if it was empty.
  • Implemented a form of protection from auto-clickers. don't put too many people on one sieve or you might trigger it... you can literally blame Soaryn for this, lol.
  • Added a new crook.
  • Moved the default item and block IDs into a different bunch of IDs. Hopefully this takes care of the ID conflicts...
  • The last update accidentally made it impossible to get rubber tree seeds. That is fixed now. Made the seeds more common to make up for it. If you have both IC2 and MFR, they are twice as common because you need twice as many.
• Updated Ex Aliquo to 0.9.1
  • Fixed a crash due to debug code. Irony blows, man
  • Mariculture support!
  • Growthcraft Apples, Bamboo, and Bees support
  • A new crook! Reed based!
  • Futureproofed my own forgetfulness!
  • Changed some sieve inputs for an Ex Nihilo update. This makes Nihilo 1.27 the minimum version required.
  • Oreberry bushes from Tinker's Construct now require smoothstone in a sieve. Don't ask how
  • Natura trees and bushes now require any of the three types of Topiary grass
  • Natura leaves can also be sieved to get berries. Sieve the nether leaves to get nether berries
  • Hopseed trees from Natura are also OFF by default due to an exploit.
• Update Mekanism to 6.0.3.21
  • Fix up Chemical Crystalizer saving issue
  • Fix GUI crash, items with outputs now take priority in factories and electric machines
  • Made generators solid
  • Fix panel harvest levels
  • Bump version to 6.0.3
  • Fix Chemical Crystalizer auto-output, got that dissolution chamber to actually use sulfuric acid
  • Whoops! Got rid of the old Atomic Disassembler icon
  • Added link to Mekanism site
  • Added a necessary null check

v1.0.2​

• Fixed dual version installation of the below updates
• Updated Factorization to 0.8.33
• Updated Ex Nihilo to 1.26
• Updated TConstruct to 1.5.3
• Updated Waila to 1.5.1

v1.0.1​

• Pack approved by FTB Team

​

Spoiler: Future Plans

None, Make a suggestion

Spoiler: Known Bugs

None

Spoiler: Special Thanks

FTB team for accepting my mod pack
All my subscribers on YouTube for making this all possible
My wife, for giving me the time to do it all

 

[AlCapella]

Hi, this map sounds very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to create and upload this.

I would actually like to do a cooperative/competetive gameplay (a la pyramid map series from direwolf20) with other people, using this map. I take it this is only single player atm?

How hard would it be to make it multiplayer (2-6 players) compatible?

But thanks a bunch for taking the time and doing this. I'll look into it ver the next few days.

Cheerio.

 

[Surgonan]

The reason it is mainly Single player is because of the world included.

It would work just fine if you want to use the same world. It would work well for cooperative play.

There are a few things to keep in mind with this pack when making a server world:

1. Any new worlds are spawned as void worlds
   • This can be changed in the Ex Nihilo configs (crowley.skyblock.cfg)
2. Certain features such as bees require different biomes
   • This is taken into account in the map that is included
   • A new world may have difficulties finding biomes for bees
3. It's never been tested on a server

It should work fine as long as you are willing to do a little work with the configs, biomes, or building your own map.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask

 

[AlCapella]

Thanks for replying. I actually downloaded your pack+map (hooray!) to test the waters and check out what you are talking about.

My regular machine is actually an Intel i3 laptop (integrated graphics) with 8GB RAM, and the direwolf pack does lag a lot on mine. So, I play a customised FTBLite2 on my laptop. Guess what? So did your pack (unfortunately) and I fell to death w/o even starting the game. And thusly endeth my first session.

BTW, I changed the map settings to nearest, 1024, and "PgUp"-ed the map a few times.

Some of the things I did do with the DW pack to bring lag to manageable levels was to disable the mapwriter, aka Opis mod, and used Zan's map instead. I also had to disable the following other mods from the pack

AM2,
Thaumcraft
AE,
Biblio and her cousins,
BC,
IC2,
Project Red

in order to get my lag to manageable levels.

The DW pack had 140 mods to start with and quite a few of them were for mod compatibility. So, I could trim out the mods based on absolute need. My current FTBLite2 pack is near to the 90 mods mark. Having watched your intro video, I was kind of hopeful that 82 mods would be manageable. Alas, no. :-(

So, some clarifications to your reply, and some more questions from me:

0. Are you going to be doing all the skyblock objectives in your playthrough series? Or rather how will you be going about this map?
1. I do not intend to create new worlds with your mod pack. It's just the Skybloacks map, that I am interested to play. We might do it with 2 or three players -- coop only (like the pyramid map), given that there are no two identical platforms laid out like a competition like the other FTB maps. ;-)
2. Re: Bees, and biomes etc., same reply as above.
3. Short reply: Oh well, one's got to start somewhere. Slightly long reply: See, it won't run on a dedicated server, etc... One of us has a slightly old but very sturdy gaming desktop, and we might simply run the map on that machine like a local server and the rest intend to connect locally from the other rooms via LAN. So, it's a very simple scale and setup that I'm looking at.

Back to the mod pack:

1. We actually wish to do something similar to the objectives that were originally intended in the original FTB maps, a.k.a complete the 10-20 mod-only crafted items needed for the "Beast" which then spits out rewards... which in turn is what one needs to use for the other things on the challenge, etc, etc.
2. The Ex-nihilio mod is one I hadn't heard of before, and it looks interesting enough (based on your first video).
3. Since in this case there is no "beast" to feed, nor are there any items that will be provided in turn by the beast, I realise now that we need to put more thought and work into this to make it more of a "FTB-clone" map. ;-)
4. Turning this map into similar competitive survival a la FTB challenge (similar, not the same) would also be far too much of a hassle, yes?
5. I am very comfortable with editing the mod configs, but I think it needs more work than that.
6. MapWriter/Opis is pretty hard on memory, and FPS, and Zan's map offers a very equivalent performance and utility experience with less memory and graphics overhead. So, I intend to switch to the Zan's map mod on your pack. You could do the same for your local mod pack and see how the performance goes.
7. At your end, what kind of hardware setup have you got, and how's your FPS/ game performance?

More later.
Ciao.

 

[AlCapella]

Also, the Ex-Nihilio mod sounds like the poor man's version of the EE mod (in a way). So, technically there is no need for a "beast", but only patience and getting the combination of items right. Anyway, I'll be back later.

 

[Surgonan]

The pack is designed more like a normal survival map, than a feed the "beast". It has all the capability to make anything in any of the mods, without a "beast" giving you items. It just takes time to get resources. It will become more apparent if you watch my later videos as I play the pack.

As far as the map. I will look into the Zan's map. If it works with the pack, I can change it out in a future update. Rei's minimap crashed the game with these mods.

I don't have a problem and normally get around 100-120 FPS. Although I only record at 30 FPS

As far as my system, I have a custom gaming desktop.

• 3.24GHz I7 core processor
• 12Gb ram
• NVidia GTX 480
• 120Gb SSD drive for gaming
• 1Tb HDD drive for storage

 

[AlCapella]

I've replied to you, and added some more questions further below:

The pack is designed more like a normal survival map, than a feed the "beast". It will become more apparent if you watch my later videos as I play the pack.

I do get that part of what you wish to do with the series. It is called "skyblocks" after all, no?

It has all the capability to make anything in any of the mods, without a "beast" giving you items. It just takes time to get resources. .

The FTB maps did have the mod packs installed with them like yours. It is just that the items given from the beast advanced the gameplay in a certain trajectory as the mapmaker had intended. It gave you a hint of what's the next thing to craft, and you sort of had a goal post to work towards from that point on. In your case, those would be skyblock objectives, am I right? Also, I already read through the nihilio mod thing, and I can see it is very EE in terms of its functionality. There is no "philosopher's stone" or "transmutation table" by name, that is all. Like UNIX it has a bunch of tools, and each one does one thing well, and they all play well nicely. heh So, it's similar to the FTB maps, only a different mod to get things done. And no EMC mechanism of EE either.

So in a way, it will be an interesting challenge to see how quickly we would be able to do the items needed for the map working b/w ourselves using this mod pack. But the lag's definitely worrying at this point.

As far as the map. I will look into the Zan's map. If it works with the pack, I can change it out in a future update. Rei's minimap crashed the game with these mods.

I don't have a problem and normally get around 100-120 FPS. Although I only record at 30 FPS

As far as my system, I have a custom gaming desktop.

• 3.24GHz I7 core processor
• 12Gb ram
• NVidia GTX 480
• 120Gb SSD drive for gaming
• 1Tb HDD drive for storage

Yes, based on your video, I figured you might be having a new-ish machine.


So, do you plan to add Thaumcraft as well to this? How do you foresee a use for Ars Magica, Thaumcraft, Buildcraft, Bibliocraft and Project:Red packs in a map like this?

The rest of the mods do flow together as a narrative, but given there is no exploration (AM2 or Thaumcraft) or massive server multiplay (Buildcraft, Bibliocraft and Project:Red) in the gameplay dynamics, I am pretty sure we can disable it and still get a good game going.

I mean, power generation, transport, storage, redstone power, servos, etc., are handled by many of the other mods too: We've got OpenBlocks, Factorization, Extra Utilites, TE3, MFR....

What do you think? It kind of trims the redundancy for the purpose of the map, keeps the pack lithe and responsive and makes us improvise the kind of machinery we could use.

It is your mod pack after all, and I do not wish to tell you what to do with it. But let's just say, I am offering you my feedback of the map based on my (limited) FTB mods knowledge and my (limited) gameplay on it.

If you were to make it more responsive, it might very well find a wider audience among people like me who do not have powerful machines, but enjoy the idea of playing friendly coop gaming with friends, re-live the nostalgia of FTB roots, and enjoying all the latest releases of the "classic" FTB mods on the 1.6.4 platform.

If you do wish to take my suggestions and remove those mods I mentioned from your pack, and actually test out the gameplay dynamics in your series itself, that would be super cool. Also, that would mean that I could download a "nimbler copy" of your mod pack instead of frankensteining your mod pack at my end based on my idea, and trying to get it all to run for LAN play.

Cheers for now.

EDIT: Fixed verbal flubs and typos and rearranged some sentences

 

[AlCapella]

I also liked the Agriculture mod on FTBLite2 very much. I also saw on your list of videos that you made a mod spotlight of it. Nice. How about adding that to your pack. It adds a nice "well fed" dynamic to the gameplay too. Just a thought.

P.S: I caught a recipe conflict between the oven grill and the XP drain and reported it on thier IRC. And one of the mod authors was kind enough to fix it on-the-fly. It was a nice gesture.

 

[Surgonan]

You are free to disable any mods you deem are not needed for your purposes.
Although the mod pack is designed to have 100% compatibility. Meaning that you can make anything from any of the added mods. This includes Thaumcraft and AM2. All of the components are available even without exploration

Yes, Thaumcraft will be added in the next update. If you wish not to use it, by all means disable it.
However, the pack is designed to basically give a skyblocks world that feels like a FTB pack.

As far as Agriculture, there would be missing items. There is no way to get salt, vanilla, Peanuts, and other items that you would get from World generation.

 

[AlCapella]

However, the pack is designed to basically give a skyblocks world that feels like a FTB pack.

Don't worry, I figured right away that's where you are going with it. Else you would have added powersuits to your pack too, and that would have been a bummer on the gameplay haha .

Indeed I was pretty fed up with the original maps suffering from bitrot due to lack of upgrades. I was about to do something like this myself. I did not want to "reinvent the wheel" just in case, so I searched the forums. Lo and behold, I noticed your post. Splendid timing, what! Hence my replying to you in the forums and suggesting all of this.

You are free to disable any mods you deem are not needed for your purposes.

I know my way around mod disabling and config editing. I did quite a bit of that with the original DW mod for making it work smoothly for me and subsequently I did a bit of mod inclusion and upgrades for my copy of FTBLite2...

Although the mod pack is designed to have 100% compatibility. Meaning that you can make anything from any of the added mods.

Oh, I figured that one too.. The Nihilio and the aliquo mods are the ones that seem to be doing all the EE style heavy lifting in this regard!

This includes Thaumcraft and AM2. All of the components are available even without exploration
Yes, Thaumcraft will be added in the next update. If you wish not to use it, by all means disable it.

Please don't get me wrong, but Thaumcraft, bibliocraft and AM2 kinda seems overkill to me in a "skyblock style", "set of objective challenges to complete" themed map. Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I think that those are very right in RPG and magic themed packs. And there are a few magic, spells, enchantments, potions, fantasy, RPG etc., themed packs on our sub-forum too.

As far as Agriculture, there would be missing items. There is no way to get salt, vanilla, Peanuts, and other items that you would get from World generation.

^^ This is true. But future versions of your map could feature a Bonus chest with those items as the starter kit muahahaa


So, bottomline from this discussion is is that your mod pack stays the way it is (with Thaumcraft making an entry at some point). I need to do any of the "mod frankensteining" at my end to trim the pack.

Oh well, I was really, really hoping that you would have a trimmed, downloadable mod pack at your end, and I can tell all the different players to simply download the pack and "get cracking with the list of challenges" for a coming weekend of fun. :-(

Pretty please. Think about it for a last time.

Catch you later.
Oh, and also, take it easy.

 

[Surgonan]

Please don't get me wrong, but Thaumcraft, bibliocraft and AM2 kinda seems overkill to me in a "skyblock style", "set of objective challenges to complete" themed map.

The thing is I never designed the pack to have a "set of objective challenges to complete".
It was designed to be a survival play to have fun and do something different than your every day survival in a vanilla generated world.

I understand that is the style pack you might want. And it is not hard to modify the pack to complete that goal.

 

[AlCapella]

The thing is I never designed the pack to have a "set of objective challenges to complete".
It was designed to be a survival play to have fun and do something different than your every day survival in a vanilla generated world.

I understand that is the style pack you might want. And it is not hard to modify the pack to complete that goal.

I've started the mix-and-match already. And also, in ^^ this case, simply disabling the nihilio and aquilio mods, or maybe setting all these options to true is sufficient to make the pack, a generic world generation modpack suitable for regular survival play?

"void generation options" {
    B:end=true
    B:nether=true
    B:nether_fortresses_allowed=true
    B:overworld=true
}

And of course, adding a biome mod like extrabiomesxl, and the full collection of mekanism mods will complete the set. ;-)

 

[Surgonan]

Yea, If you wanted a normal world you would change the configs to look like this.

"void generation options" {
    B:end=false
    B:nether=false
    B:nether_fortresses_allowed=true
    B:overworld=false
}

 

[AlCapella]

Thanks and cheers.

 

[Plasma_Blazer]

Am I free to use this in my own Surgs Skyblocks lets paly because this map/mudpack is awesome[DOUBLEPOST=1394267536][/DOUBLEPOST]Is there an extra copy of the map anywhere cause I also need that for my lets play

 

[Surgonan]

Yes feel free to use it for your Let's Play. That's why i made it public
The map is included in the pack. Once you download it, the map will be there automatically.

 

[exofudge]

How do you get into ic2 and mfr? I can't find any way to get rubber...
Edit: Found out you can get rubber tree sapling. Derp

 

[exofudge]

Not sure if you meant to miss these off the mod list, but here's the only ones I could see were missing

• Ex Nihilo by Crowley
• Ex Aliquo by Zerokyuuni
• MobiusCore by ProfMobius

Edit: Formatting error

 

[Surgonan]

Oh yea ur right lol... How did I forget Ex Nihilo. Without that mod the pack wouldn't work

 

[AlCapella]

Started playing with it to get a feel for it. The ex aquilo mod's forum page speaks of mini-smelteries, but I had already started with the map before I saw it/decided to build it. The configs comes with mini smelteries disabled by default. I went ahead and enabled it, but the faucet won't affix to the crucible. Should the config be enabled *before* starting off with the map/worldgen?. Part 2: Have you had success building a mini-smeltery?