The full list seems interesting. I'm disappointed with the large amount of duplicate and similar functionality of some of the mods though.
I also have mixed feelings about the return of
Mystcraft. It was always cool to be able to make a world that you could completely plunder without consequence, but with the
Twilight Forest, Deep Dark, and possibly even more dimensions that spawn both Vanilla and mod ores, there are already plenty of places to plunder. I particularly like the concept of the Deep Dark. Lots of ores, but very dangerous to mine. Another problem with Mystcraft worlds, is it's possible to do silly things like make a super flat world covered with
Thaumcraft dungeons, villages, and other structures, making the acquisition of rare dungeon loot trivial. You can also find a world with an infinite molten lake of a very hard to acquire substance like manyullyn, uu-matter, or some other rare material, giving you an infinite amount of something that should require far more than just a pump to get. Also, linking books, and by extension crystal portals, make pretty much every other portal system useless.
Enhanced Portals 3 in particular looks very interesting, but other than aesthetics, there is very little it can do that Mystcraft can't do at a considerably cheaper cost. Now don't get me wrong. If I was only playing singleplayer, I would just disable Mystcraft and that would be the end of that. However, I prefer to play on a server with my friends, where it is not my decision what mods are kept and what aren't. If Mystcraft is kept, I fear everyone will just do what they're used to and create lots of mining ages and linking books, instead of exploring other potentially more interesting options.
GeoStrata seems like it could be annoying. I've seem some of Slow's streams, and it appears that this stuff is everywhere. Even worse than Redpower2's marble. There are already materials added by other mods in the pack that look VERY similar to most of what GeoStrata has to offer. Those materials, however, either don't spam worldgen as badly, or are simply crafted instead of generated. This stuff seems like it will clog up a lot of inventories. The crystals and extra potions seem kind of cool, and if the mod added just that, then I would be cool with it. Even though the crystals will likely have an effect on framerate similar to Xycraft's quartz crystals.
As far as other changes go,
Mimicry seems like it adds nothing worthwhile. We DO NOT NEED any more ore doubling. Especially one as good as that, which can be used in addition to other ore doubling, making it more like ore quadrupling.
MeteorCraft seems fun in concept, but in servers with chunk loaders it could be a real pain. Even if it doesn't hit structures directly, it looks like it could potentially make the areas around them a meteor riddled wasteland.
Sync seems really fun. I just love the idea of having an evil lab filled with clones of myself! Also nice if you want to have different sets of armor and equipment set up for various tasks like mining or building, and then be able to switch between them easily.
I'm glad
Forge Multipart made it in. I love microblocks and it is BY FAR the best micro block mod.
I also wish
Big Reactors wasn't cut. It seemed like a lot of fun. Instead We have
Compact Solars, which I hate, since it trivializes other power generation. Especially with
Universal Electricity added.
Dye Trees seems a little silly, but meh.
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Also worth noting, there are still very few of the Horizons mods in Monster. Do they not meet the standards of Monster? Are they trying to avoid putting Horizons mods in other packs so Horizons is more unique? Or what? I'm a little confused is all. Some of the new mods in Horizons are quite good, and seem like they would fit in Monster quite well.
He did say Tome of Alkahest and some other mods can create dupe bugs, so I hope that's defaulted to off. The Alkahest is interesting, but again, I'm always wary of that kind of thing for the natural imbalance it can create. Still, I've missed all those nice magical items it provides, and I'm glad to see it back. I'm also glad Xeno was nice enough to pass it on to a new developer, and I hope TheMike does a good job.
