I haven't been playing MC very long, in fact just got it last weekend. But I can certainly see some things a mod can correct, such as the expanded inventory , crafting recipes, minimap, etc... However, as a newb, I understand getting mods to run can be problematic sometimes, and a manual proces prone to mistakes; and since FTB now has a hassle free Launcher, I'm wondering if FTB would be good for a newb such as myself who wants to experience MineCraft, and use some mods to make the experience a bit better, but without being so totally overwhelmed?
Is FTB appropriate for MineCraft newbs?
- Thread starter Wizaerd
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I personally played Vanilla minecraft for a good while, but haha, that was before modding became a serious thing.
If you understand basic Vanilla you should have no problem using Feed The Beast, which only adds things to Vanilla. It may take a while to familiarize yourself when thrust against so many new mods though.
If you understand basic Vanilla you should have no problem using Feed The Beast, which only adds things to Vanilla. It may take a while to familiarize yourself when thrust against so many new mods though.
If you're a newb at minecraft, I would suggest playing vanilla a bit first, as it can be hard to work with some of the mods. Heck, I've been playing with these mods for more than a year and still don't fully understand some of them! Anyways, you should try and get used to the vanilla mechanics before you try FTB.
You can disable mods to be loaded with the FTB mod pack. In that way you can try out a few at first. My first mod was buildcraft (BC), and it had a fine learning curve. Besides BC, you can activate reis minimap, not enough items (NEI) and perhaps InvTweaks. The last 3 are all utility mods, that does not add new blocks or mechanics, but aid you in playing the game. NEI will help you with crafting... suggest you read up on that (not much to learn). BC was just MY first mod, so im sure others can point you to other mods that are great for learing some of the more advanced mechanics of mods. If starting with BC, adding mods such as thermal expansion, forestry and railcraft, might be fine, as they add directly to buildcraft (am I forgetting any BC add-ons?).
GL with MC and FTB
GL with MC and FTB
I wouldn't recommend adding TE, Forestry and Railcraft if you want to learn each mod at a time just because they're not actually direct additions to Buildcraft, as they add a lot of new, independent content each, and if the idea was to make learning less overwhelming that won't accomplish the objective at all. Actual add-ons to Buildcraft you might want to put in that won't be so overwhelming and that actually add to the mod are mods such as AdditionalPipes and Logistics Pipes, which improve upon existing BC fundamentals instead of adding new concepts like new machines or Forestry's beekeeping, which is one of the most complicated and detailed features to learn among all mods currently in FTB.
Answering the OP, as far as technical issues go, FTB won't be troublesome at all, but the learning curve might be quite steep for a Minecraft newbie, considering it already is pretty overwhelming even for long time minecrafters. It is extremely fun, though, so if you're up to it, go ahead. There are many different places you can learn from. While there's no FTB wiki, the mods' wikis are an obvious resource (Google for them, too many). Also, you might find the Technical Pack wiki a nice place to research, considering the packs have a lot of mods in common. You might also be successful trying to learn keeping track of a Let's Play, and for that many people would recommend Direwolf20. Waiting for his new single player series may be a good idea, though, seeing as he's not nearly as descriptive and educational in his SMP series, where he spends most of his time visiting the other players.
By the way, as a last recommendation, disable GregTech (you can do it from the launcher). As to why, many people have explained it before, and I'll be brief: it's a mod basically designed for some ludicrous end-game content but mostly makes things harder and more complicated. Also, because it's such a new mod in the scene and because it changed a lot of the default IndustrialCraft recipes and mechanics, it'll be tougher to learn things, because documentation might not match the actual game. Once you get used to IC2, take a look at its documentation and see if you like it or not, but for now you shouldn't use it, as a new player.
Good luck and have fun with your mods!
I recommend starting with only the utility mods at first, (minimap, NEI and convenient inventory), then adding in industrial-craft before you go further down the automation path with buildcraft and the logistics pipes and all that stuff. Railcraft and other content heavy mod's should come last, cuz they don't add any particularly important survival mechanic. They are there more so you can have more cool stuff to build. Gregtech is not for newbies, so you might want to disable that until you feel up for a really big challenge tho.
I've been playing with mods for months now, and I am doing a gregtech heavy run and i find it really hard to get to grips with some of the changes it makes.
A little note on redpower tho. it's not currently in the FTB pack because Eloram is something of a perfectionist that wont let people play with buggy pre releases and such. but it adds a LOT of stuff that is somewhat complex, but is actually of great benefit. especially in the redstone category. vanilla redstone mechanics are a PITA to work with. So despite it being a tough mod to cope with for a newb I recomend using it from the start if only for the enhanced redstone stuff when it becomes available.
I've been playing with mods for months now, and I am doing a gregtech heavy run and i find it really hard to get to grips with some of the changes it makes.
A little note on redpower tho. it's not currently in the FTB pack because Eloram is something of a perfectionist that wont let people play with buggy pre releases and such. but it adds a LOT of stuff that is somewhat complex, but is actually of great benefit. especially in the redstone category. vanilla redstone mechanics are a PITA to work with. So despite it being a tough mod to cope with for a newb I recomend using it from the start if only for the enhanced redstone stuff when it becomes available.
I completely disagree with your last recommendation. Someone who doesn't know the original recipes isn't going to be put off by the greater complexity\cost of Gregtech compared to the recipes others are used to, as long as they can use NEI which is in the modpack they can figure out how to get the resources required, hell for a total newb the crafting of bronze (forestry style) is a completely new mechanic, cetrifuging some resources to gain other resources is simple and clear in comparison ,I take a to make b, very similar to just throwing stuff in a furnace apart from power requirements etc etc but that is true for the techmodded minecraft experience as a whole.
Actually disabling and reenabling mods just adds confusing since they change so much.
Forestry does bronze different from IC2, IC2 adds another rail-recipe which is disabled again by railcraft and well Gregs just changes everything.
Basically you could just use all the mods and start a game. If you find something like iron just use NEI to look what you can do with it. Or just use the cheatmode to cheat in some machines to try them out and such. It is totally possible to start FTB with all mods installed even if you have never played minecraft before. Since it is way easier to ignore parts of the pack than disabling and reenabling things.
Forestry does bronze different from IC2, IC2 adds another rail-recipe which is disabled again by railcraft and well Gregs just changes everything.
Basically you could just use all the mods and start a game. If you find something like iron just use NEI to look what you can do with it. Or just use the cheatmode to cheat in some machines to try them out and such. It is totally possible to start FTB with all mods installed even if you have never played minecraft before. Since it is way easier to ignore parts of the pack than disabling and reenabling things.
The only thing I recommend you disable would be GregTech, as that purposefully makes things harder. Other than that you don't actually HAVE to use any of the mods if you don't want.
The way I started, way back at the beginning of time, was with the Getting Started instructions over in the IndustrialCraft wiki. Here is the link.
http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Tutorial:First_Steps
With a little searching you can find getting started guides for most of the major mods in FTB. I recommend starting with IndustrialCraft as I found that very easy to get going with. Next for ease of beginning would be BuildCraft, but when RedPower is available I pretty much ignore BC. As an engineer IRL I am drawn to the elegance of systems available through RP, but they can be a bit overwhelming at first. It really just depends on you, and how quickly you become comfortable with the concepts.
Good luck, and welcome to Minecraft!
Edit: it's not that GregTech changes recipes that makes it harder, it's that the new recipes are so interdependent with other mods. The materials are harder, and it invalidates all of the great getting started tutorials out there. I like it personally, as it has challenged me to use other mods and build things in new ways. For a newcomer however those tutorials are invaluable.
The way I started, way back at the beginning of time, was with the Getting Started instructions over in the IndustrialCraft wiki. Here is the link.
http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Tutorial:First_Steps
With a little searching you can find getting started guides for most of the major mods in FTB. I recommend starting with IndustrialCraft as I found that very easy to get going with. Next for ease of beginning would be BuildCraft, but when RedPower is available I pretty much ignore BC. As an engineer IRL I am drawn to the elegance of systems available through RP, but they can be a bit overwhelming at first. It really just depends on you, and how quickly you become comfortable with the concepts.
Good luck, and welcome to Minecraft!
Edit: it's not that GregTech changes recipes that makes it harder, it's that the new recipes are so interdependent with other mods. The materials are harder, and it invalidates all of the great getting started tutorials out there. I like it personally, as it has challenged me to use other mods and build things in new ways. For a newcomer however those tutorials are invaluable.
I want to thank everyone who has responded. While I know I've not played very long and haven't come close to seeing and doing everything in this game, I do have a good feeling about a lot of it. And some of the utility mods would come in handy. I don't want to mess around with separate individual mods. I like the fact that this is a complete package, proven to work well together. So while there is much I probably wont understand initially, I look forward to giving it a try.
Thanx again everyone for your insights...
Thanx again everyone for your insights...
^^ You should play on a small scale multiplayer server with some people who know whats going on. It will make the transition very easy. Contact me via pm if you are looking for a super small server like that
Disable gregtech compressed blocks and everything should be fine, you can just play like in vanilla and slowly learn mods one by one
I'd recommend taking time to learn stuff though then not just trying to get everything cause one might get overwhelmed then
On SMP: Hmm it can have good and bad aspects depending on person. Some may feel left out playing on some FTB server where people know much and have all cool machines and such, on the other hand you could get help from people and have stuff explained to you better
I'd recommend taking time to learn stuff though then not just trying to get everything cause one might get overwhelmed then
On SMP: Hmm it can have good and bad aspects depending on person. Some may feel left out playing on some FTB server where people know much and have all cool machines and such, on the other hand you could get help from people and have stuff explained to you better
Youtube is your friend, I've been playing now for almost a year and still don't know half of it, start now, start later, makes no difference you still have to learn it sometime. So start playing the Full FTB pack now and learn it as you go along, you do not need to know all of it or even any of it to start with, after all FTB is vanilla MC with a few extra bits.
Watch some server plays (NOT Direwolf20s vids) on FTB from the start and you'll soon grasp what it's all about and before I get jumped on for say NOT DW20s vids, we all know his server plays are at an advanced stage and for a newcomer will more likely scare or confuse the crap out of you.
Watch some server plays (NOT Direwolf20s vids) on FTB from the start and you'll soon grasp what it's all about and before I get jumped on for say NOT DW20s vids, we all know his server plays are at an advanced stage and for a newcomer will more likely scare or confuse the crap out of you.
I appreciate the offer, but I'm not really a big fan of MP games in general. I always feel like I have to play upto other people's expectations whereas I'd really much rather do my own thing, and at my own pace.
I'm going to have to look up this gregtech mod to see how much it really changes up the game. I'm fine with additional resources, and as already stated, really like the idea of the utility mods such as expanded inventory, crafting recipes, etc... But I don't want any major gameplay changes that drastically affect what I already know and have experienced. Although on the other hand, since I haven't been playing a super long time, it's not like I'd have to really re-learn anything, it'd be just as if I were starting out. Hmmmm...
Oddly enough, I did watch some of Direwolfs, and grasped right away that he had been doing this for quite some time, and it was a bit daunting in how different his startup would be from my own. But I also assumed it was because he was intimately familiar with at least most of the mods already. Truth be told, I do find his videos quite entertaining. But regardless, is there any single player let's plays with FTB that you would recommend?
I think I am in the same boat. But I have been playing vanilla survival / creative minecraft for about 6 months I think.
For me I had to step back and pick one goal at a time to work on before moving on to the next. For me I built my starter shelter (basically sealed off an exposed side of a mountain cave) got food, got tools, and went mining / branch mining for a few hours to get a shit ton of ores and resources, then went and found some rubber trees. Once you got a bunch of resources, build some simple machines like macerator (VERY helpful double your ore yield!), powered furnace, generator, etc
Then build something awesome. Like refinery, quarry, so you can get a headache from combustion engine fuel usage. Haha.
Its overwhelming because there is so much stuff to do. But once you get some of the basic stuff its make regular minecraft seem like a damn breeze.
For me I had to step back and pick one goal at a time to work on before moving on to the next. For me I built my starter shelter (basically sealed off an exposed side of a mountain cave) got food, got tools, and went mining / branch mining for a few hours to get a shit ton of ores and resources, then went and found some rubber trees. Once you got a bunch of resources, build some simple machines like macerator (VERY helpful double your ore yield!), powered furnace, generator, etc
Then build something awesome. Like refinery, quarry, so you can get a headache from combustion engine fuel usage. Haha.
Its overwhelming because there is so much stuff to do. But once you get some of the basic stuff its make regular minecraft seem like a damn breeze.
I also found YouTube to be immensely helpful. I'd suggest the series Docm77 and monkeyfarm are doing, as they're both just getting started in FTB. Direwolf makes an appearance on their server to help out and get them pointed in the right direction. He is the king of modded Minecraft, IMO, but I wouldn't suggest a newbie start with him - there's just too much to process at first.