Okay, after abandoning my first semi-successful world, a few things I've learned:
- Boron is now my go-to tool material. Diamond-equivalent (though with only 80% of the durability), and far, far more frequent.
- Magneticraft machines look awesome, but I'll have to do a LOT of experimentation with them in creative mode before I build them again. That was an awful lot of resources to put into machines that I couldn't figure out how to get working.
- I really, really miss having early-game travel boosts, while trying to get through the early progression in Chromaticraft. My nearest pylon for one of the colors (brown, IIRC) was more than 1500 blocks away from where I set up camp this time around.
- MOAR BACKPACKS. The number of times I had to abandon a lucrative mining trip, or dungeon chests, because my inventory was full was utterly ridiculous.
- I also need to figure out some way of using either OpenComputers robots, or Engineer's Toolbox, to build an equivalent of the Buildcraft Filler. A proper base never did get built, even after something like 24 hours in-game, because I could never be bothered going out with a shovel and flattening ground for it.
Time to start my next run, I think. Maybe I'll push for Essentialcraft this time... even if it means a ton of villager trading early-game to get emeralds..