I've been playing the pack for a couple of days now, and I've enjoyed many of it's aspects. However I must admit that there are some things that are quite annoying. The sheer amount of grind that you have to do in order to obtain automation is quite staggering. I haven't even found a way to start botania of yet(and I need that for oak to get a sigil of a green grove to get some farming done). I've been messing about in a test world and even with a reinforced watering can and 6 agricarnations it takes around a day for wheat to grow to full size.
It's very discouraging when trying to get an automatic sieve to see that after sieving over 15 stacks of dust you only get less than a stack of glowstone, and after converting that to end stone you only get 3 pieces of lead gravel which is not even enough to convert it to ingots. Having to spend hours doing the same thing over and over again is mind numbing and not fun at all. I'd highly suggest combining different mechanics to obtain any given item, rather than the same thing for 3-5 hours to get 1 item.
On the other hand, I absolutely adore that you get to use mekanism so much, I never actually played with it before and I'm enjoying it. I love the way the pack evolves in terms of quests but I am also very disappointed in the rewards from the bags: I've gotten the birch leaves and birch saplings on no less than 10 occasions. The only decent reward I have received were 2 aura nodes (or 1).
Hope I haven't been too harsh and if this is the way the pack is intended, then it's just not for me, so keep up the good work you're doing and ignore everything I just said
PS: Are you supposed to be able to get the cheat sheet by placing the thaumonomicon in a crafting grid? or is that a bug? cause i've totally exploited that and I haven't gotten any warp either.
Lead gravel? Why would you make that? It is an alloy in the smeltery combining iron and water
As for the sigil, it uses ANY sapling, not oak (unless that has changed)
The glowstone I MAY change in a later update, along with the growth times on crops/saplings. Furthermore, I will probably also change a few Ex Nihilo things (e.g. platinum, I may re-enable the gravel recipe)... But that is all for a later update.
The reward bags are still sparse in what they give, for 2 reasons:
1) I don't like the idea of every few reward bags giving players game changing stuff. Because I found while playing packs which I watched YouTubers play, it was sorta hard to keep up with them when they got <reward> and I got <crap reward>. However, I will add more rewards at some point.
2) I hate adding rewards in HQM, it's the most tedious, and slow, part of creating quests :/
But I will limit the amount of times players can claim these rewards in the future. Thanks for telling me they are too common
As for getting in to Botania. You need to go to the nether. There is a bedrock door which you must unlock. When it is unlocked you will be able to access a room full of flowers (around 20 of each kind, along with 2 pure daisies, dayblooms, and nightshades).
And finally, the Thaumcraft Cheat Sheet thing is NOT a bug. I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to notice that recipe
I hate research in Thaumcraft, we've done it all before, maybe not everything, but most of it. And it's a massive PITA. So why not bypass it?... And yes, no warp. I disable warp because I think it's a terrible feature that impedes on the enjoyment of the game, especially when you aren't doing TC related stuff.
And speaking of updates, boy do I have a good one for you guys today?
Additions:
Added ElecCore to the pack (this simply allows the newest version of JordsUtils to run)
INPureCore (SHOULD hide all FMP stuff from NEI)
Updates:
JordsUtils - You can no longer MAKE Uberium, you need to get to the Deltarian (I will upload a tutorial on a few things LiE related at some point)
COFH stuff
NEI, FMP, CCC, Chicken Chunks
Thaumcraft
Buildcraft
Logistics Pipes
Blood Magic
Applied Energistics 2
Thaumic Energistics
Botania
Carpenter's Blocks
Ex Astris
Iron Chests
JABBA
WAILA
NEI Plugins/Addons/Integration
Tinkers' Tooltips
Tinkers' Mechworks
Witchery