Battletowers- go and clean em'! besides having nice loot, the golem will give you diamonds- combining the chests and the golem loot, getting 10 diamonds per one isn't that rare . they can be found easily be sailing an ocean, there are tons of them there, you move fast thanks to the boat and you don't have to worry about the taint.
AM2- rash it! best armor mid game to late game with earth - battlemage armor combination blocking any damage completely, cheapest diamond armor alternative for early game (just battlemage armor, which is even cheaper then diamond, and also is self repairing, magic boosting, mana regen boosting and gives general resistance to everything, best attack after reaching level 20-25 and possibly before with lightning giving you a ranged option that will quickly become powerful enough to 1 hit 10 hearts mobs and pierces armor, and some nice base equipment.
calefactor- make infinite vinteum! this thing, even without a single focus, creates way more vinteum then it requires to fuel (obelisk can use vintuem too). just get yourself a bit of vinteum to create a calefactor, obelisk and crystal wrench, and you are set up for good. that also means free smelting (charge focus will make it fast, too) and kinda free reconstructing (it still requires huge amount of vinteum and it doesn't pay back any vinteum). you just need something smeltable- netherack or cobble will get the job done.
thaumcraft- some things are useless now, like the fortress armor with better alternatives, and runic shielding isn't too useful. however some previously unnecessary thing are now blessing from the gods - creature duplication can be a lifesaver in all that taint and will also work with tissue samples in the form of meat (that you can get from twilight), blooms can clear the taint, and golems that used to be overshadowed by machines are now the jewel of the crown of thaumcraft, allowing automating. wand focus dissolving is also useful, allowing you to break things into crystal essentia, making "clean" recipes in alchemy and faster distillation when you need liquid essentia. the osmotic enchanter is also a very OP item, not costing any Xp and allowing you to pick your enchantments.
Energized nodes- pretty much infnite vis, if used right. read about them. it's very possible to find a node with all aspects- with all those special nodes, i even found a node that gave me 6 CV of each except ignis- i got 8 of that.
botania: the mod swords aren't worth using compared to magic, and the terrasteel armor is a joke, costing 12 mana pools, 24 diamonds, 24 ender pearls and 24 iron (it may actually be 13 mana pools, as mana infusing all those is 72 things is quite expensive), and ending up as a diamond armor that can defend itself with mana, making the battlemage armor a better choice even in power terms. however, the baubles are pretty cheap and defintly worth using. witchery has better potions, so mostly mana potions aren't worth bothering with.
automate it!- day blooms and hydrogenesis aren't amazing- it's possible to make a tree farm using golems, so you can feed planks to your endoflames. you can make it even better by-
making the wood charcoal in a calefactor obelisk system- very simple, really worth it
making the charcoal and some cobble from thaumic stone extruder into alumentum with auto alchemy- if you are really advanced
giving the use golem bone meal to use on the sapling- simple, very efficient, only disadvatage is that you need a supply of bone meal (actaully not that hard- consider using the spawner lifter (something life agr... something from botania) if you are deep enough into botania- finding a skeleton spawner will be a piece O' cake, and using liquid death is a nice way to ensure even the toughest bastards will die, without wasting a single drop of mana and also getting essentia as a bonus. automagy will allow you to auto craft the bones into bone meal.
Ritual of gaia II- well, it's not accurate that botania armor and swords are useless- they are very useful here. normal armor, even earth armor, can't take this fight, it will break. (battlemage also can't stand the ritual of gaia I). you need something equal to diamond or above (trust me, you don't want to fight this fight without it) , that can't break- simply repairing isn't enough. surprisingly enough, you do have a choice- blood magic's bound armor or botania's terrasteel armor, if you take terra make sure you give everything protection IV and that you don't forget the mana tablet. it will barely cost you any mana, considering the fact it just blocked over 3000 durability damage in every piece of equipment you wear, but come with a full tablet anyway. the II guardian is deferentially worth fighting, since the relics are so awesome- ex-caliber will make re defeating the guardian a piece of cake, ring of odin will help in the fight itself and outside, granting 10 extra hearts and fire + fall resistance. also fruit of can't-write-the-name is an infinite food source and also quick to eat, and eye of the flugal is basically 12 free flexible recall stones in 1 item.
anyway, my thoughts and tips on the modpack-
thoughts: it's awesome. it has all the mods i like, and also doesn't have all the tech mods and tinkers, which sometimes just force you to use them since they have a better\ more OP way of doing what you want. i love the focus on exploring and fighting instead of mining too- in vanila (and pretty much every other modpack), you had o be a maniac to try and get metrials from dungeons instead of mining. also the taint is cool- always thought taint was lame and needed some work on- you never see any, even if you do it spreads super slow, very easy to make sure the taint is not chunk loaded be getting a bit far from it, you really have no reason to settle near the taint, and it's very easy to clear as long as it is a small area- break the node, place the blooms, go home, and even if for some reason you don't clean the taint and live on it, the disadvantages for doing something that stupid aren't serious. however, since now you have to live in an entirely tainted world, where taint gets even underground, the biome of the world is tainted land (which causes it to spread much faster) and everything alive gets eaten by taint, it is now a real challenge. also, the taint damage i didn't really cared about became from small menace if you walk in taint to something you risk by simply being out in the world. i also saw it spreading- in the beginning, lots of trees, flowers and grass, it wasn't much of a problem, however, later, it pretty much ate everything, including spreading into the huge dungeon i choose to be my home. first i was worried by it's spread, since i knew it will reach my underground home eventually. i ended up sealing it. i don't know exactly what happened, but it did skipped my house, but not the rest of the dungeon (i have no idea from where it got there). i explored huge dungeons, first with no taint, and then i saw this purple thing starting to take over the place, getting further in every time i visit. eventually it got to the entire place (beside my sealed home), and i walked in the tainted tunnels, remembering when they were still clean, knowing i actually could save them be sealing them too, seeing rooms indentical to my house crawling with taint and thining "OMG it could have been my house!" (the only reason i originally lived there is that i slept in the bed there, so i respawned there and decided it will be my home)and knowing i have the cursed taint 1 block away from my home, and that breaking a single block will cause it to rather quickly get in, wreck my home, kill my dogs and so on (which still didn't happened), which is not like anything i have ever experienced in minecraft or any game. so, i loved the modpack, well done!
suggestions:
-terrasteel armor is too weak for how much it costs, it should be stronger.
-earth armor is so OP- i don't know what mithion thought when he gave that kind of reward to the lame earth guardian. it needs to be seriously nerfed.
-wand foci needs to become stronger- 2 times stronger sounds reasonable, allowing you to 3 hit with a shock or 2 hit after upgrading it or even 1 hit (i think) after upgrading it- 3 hit isn't amazing, but spells both require more time and have the mana problem, so i think it's fair.
-runic shielding is still very weak, if possible it should defend your actual hearts after armor reduces damage. also there are too much types of damage it doesn't defend against.
-some dungeon loot needs to by modified- i have explored the huge dungeon near my home quite a lot, a never found a single diamond. i have found nice amounts in other places, but i don't see any reason those chests should suck (also never found a single reliquary item there, but found plenty in other places)
-custom bosses, quest givers, and traders.
1. bosses is kinda covered by AM2, but a few new bosses will be interesting (i believe it shouldn't be that hard adding with custom NPCs), also AM2 bosses are quite annoying to fight as they are not extremely strong in offence but very strong in defense, having resistance, armor and damage cap, fighting bosses without those things will be nice.
2. quest givers: sure, the quest book can give you quests,but NPCs are better option to giving quest who are not beneficial to the player by themselves and not help in progression (like, get me 5 taint tendrils), and consume tasks, the AM2 spell quests for example are more an NPC kind of quest, since it's "give me 10 slimeballs and 3 cobwebs and i'll give you a spell". also having a few NPCs will make the world more interesting.
3. traders- villager trading kinda suck. they are easily killed, most of them still use emerald as currency instead of gold coins, and the trades, besides being random, are also pretty boring. custon traders, however, should use the gold coins that i made a barrel for since i have so goddamn much, and maybe loot bags too (i stopped opening even the rare ones quite a while ago, i really don't need anything), and can give in return AM2 spells, ores and flowers (flowers should be cheap), thaumcraft discoveries, knowledge shards and ores, and from botania mystical flowers, runes, normal flowers, and maybe even mana (in the form of black\er lotus)
if it is implented, then it should become the source of AM flowers and the TC saplings (crafting them was kinda silly).
thanks for reading, sorry for my bad English, it's not my native.
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) . Could you please maybe try an "ELI5" on that to-do item? From the perspective of someone who hasn't started the quest line and knows nothing of Witchery, what do I need to know before starting? Any early essentials part of whatever needs reworking?