Book of Steve: A Modpack centered around Mystcraft

[Namorax]

Hello everyone!
In case I posted this in the wrong section, I apologize... but lets get to the topic:


What is this about:

As the threadtitle already mentioned, "The Book of Steve" (temp. title) is a modpack built around Mystcraft. For those who don't know the mod, here is a link to the thread in the Minecraftforum. Those who do know about Mystcraft, will also know what it's about: the creation of just about any kind of dimension you can imagine and write.
Sadly, the "writing" is the part most people have problems with. There are a few guildes out there describing how to create proper worlds, how to create certain effects and the idea of this pack was to explain all that ingame via HQM.​

Is there a story?

Yes, at the moment there is a rough outline. The basic gist is that the player suddenly finds him-/herself trapped in the middle of a foreign (and kinda hostile) world with a (Quest)book being the only way to contact the outside world.
The person contacting the player through the book introduces himself as "Writer" and the being responsible for putting you (the player) into this world.
The demands of Writer are rather simple: Your personal wellbeing is of absolutely no interest, you're just a tool intended to mine and produce whatever is currently needed by Writer and you'll do so until your existance is forgotten or you longer serves any purpose... in which case you'll still be trapped inside this world. Writer doesn't really care what you do at any moment since there are countless other worlds that require his/her list of demands attention. You are allowed to ignore Writer's wishes but he/she advises you that in case you "turn out to be another failure" the world you exist in will be "written off" and "recycled as soon as possible".
In order to reward you, Writer is able to interfere with the world to a certain degree, restricted only by his/her talent as a writer and his/her willingness to actually bother doing something for you.
This "willingness" manifests in the guise of the rewards you receive for completing quests and the fact that you "revive" after meeting an... untimely demise.
(Which basically means that Writer uses his/her powers to write you back into existance... after all, it's such a bother having to explain everything again to your replacement...)
To make matters worse, you discover that the world you're forced to live in is actually devoid of any kind of intelligent life... and ores.
The player will encounter the ruins left behind by his predecessors and learn the art of "writing" in order to leave this forsaken chunk of dirt behind!​

Which mods will be included

Spoiler

Worldgenmods:
Alternate Terrain Generator
Big Trees Mod
Biomes O'Plenty
Custom Ore Generation
ExtrabiomesXL
Natura
NewDungeons
Roguelike Dungeons

Coremods:
AppleCore
Baubles
CoFHCore
CoroUtil
Enchiridon
MetallurgyCore
WaslieCore

Minor Mods:
Flat Signs
InfiniBow
Inventory Tweaks
ObsidiPlates

Major Mods:
Another one Bites the Dust 2
Applied Energistics 2

ExtraCells​

BiblioCraft+Addons
Big Reactors
Blood Magic
Forestry

Forestry Extras 2
Gendustry
ExtraBees (Binnie Mods)
Magic Bees​

Gardenstuff
Gregs Lighting
Hardcore Questing Mod
Hunger Overhaul
IronChests
JABBA
Mariculture
Metallurgy
MineFactory Reloaded
Minetweaker 3

Modtweaker​

Mystcraft
Pam's Harvestcraft
Spice of Life
Thaumcraft 4

Thaumcraft 4 – Nodal Mechanics
Thaumic Energistcs
Thaumic Exploration
Thaumic Tinkerer​

Thermal Expansion

Redstone Arsenal​

The Spice of Live
Tinkers' Construct

ExtraTiC
Iguanas Tinker Tweaks
Tinkers' Mechworks
Tinker's Steelworks (+CookieCore)
Tinker's Tooltips (TC-Tooltips)​

WAILA

WAWLA​

Zombie Awareness

What I am working on right now:

The overworld is properly devoid of ores, and during my first test-plays I managed to survive the first few nights without starving to death. Due to the mentioned scarcity of ores, most of my tools are "low-tech" and I already did evrything one could do without starting to access mystcraft ages to get access to ores.
I am currently reworking some of the recipes to make them available during the "stoneage" (for example: Mariculture's Fishing Rod or Bloodmagic/Thaumcraft Content).
If possible I'd like to try adding a few mods that might fill this niche, so I guess I'm currently looking for suggestions.
Does anybody know of an interesting low-tech mod?​

What I plan to do:

Using HQM the player is supposed to learn how to write Mystcraft ages in order to quickly gather the ressources needed to complete Quests and craft the medium-/high-tech items.
Since I included Metallurgy, I have a LOT of metals at hand... so I intend to replace many recipes that utilised "normal" metals (like iron, copper tin, etc...) to use these esoteric metals instead. The players are supposed to explore all kinds of biomes in order to find all kinds of stuff after all.​

 

[MinecraftMart]

Interesting! If you ever need any testers. I am free when im not working on my own pack.

 

[darthwesix]

sounds cool

 

[Namorax]

(I see that my post "lost" the last two entries. Quickly fixed the spoilertags so the OP should now look the was it was supposed to be.)

Thanks, but I'm still in the process of finding things for the player to do.^^
Right now, the pre-iron content is pretty much setting up a farm/ranch to get food/leather. Depending on your starting location you can find a nearby ruin to explore or dive into the ocean to find oyster/chests/corals (VERY rare).
I was able to build myself a TinCon smeltery and use clay buckets to fill it with lava, but that was about he limit of what I can do without any iron. The dungeons are dangerous enough at the beginning, but a well prepared player (Leather and flint/bone weapon) can get inside and loot the first few levels if he/she is careful.

Aside form the already mention stuff, I think its possible to craft some bee houses to do simple beekeeping for a few combs... if possible I really want to add some stuff to do, but at the moment it looks like I'll have to keep my eyes open while I start writing the first few quests.
I'm playing with the idea of adding "Fossils and Archeology Revival" and have the fossils spawn only in the Overworld to keep the theme of the overworld being "dead" and to give the player an alternate source for bones.

 

[Namorax]

Starting to get a feel for the ore progression with TinCon+Metallurgy. On a funny sidenote: I discovered that TNT-Mining gives me the high-tier ores without having to go from stone->copper->iron->Bronze->etc...
Not sure if that's something good or bad. xD

I'm still going through an Alpha-Questline. My biggest issues right now is how to distribute the various ores so players can easily find a certain ore by looking for a certain biome.
Due to the sheer volume of available ores, it's REALLY hard to find Iron, Lead or Platinum.

 

[MinecraftMart]

Damn nice!

 

[Namorax]

Tweaking ATG-WorldGen:
I kinda doubt this is a starting location most of us would enjoy

Spoiler

FYI: That's a volcano. The peak is a giant lake of lava that seems to go down to bedrock, ringed with obsidian.

Going the other way, I find this... plattform... poking out of the mountain. The "Plattform" is actually a "NewDungeons"-dungeon and you can see the TNT trap underneath it.

 

[astralbeast56]

when will this be released do you think sorry for an ETA.