Let's talk about Iron Backpacks

This is a real gem I'm just now discovering. The ways you can upgrade these things is nuts.

I'm trying to figure out a few things, mainly in an attempt to design the ultimate mega-backpack, and I'm curious what others might do with it as well, so I can steal your idea for my own.

Right now, what I do have with it is already really awesome. I'm playing Sprout, for reference. I have one bag that will automatically pick up everything I mine, but has the 3x3 and 2x2 compacting upgrades, which I can use to automatically turn redstone into redtone blocks on the fly. I will even compress my cobblestone. Not just once but all the way to Quad, which is amazing. I can mine almost forever.

I have another with the mod-based auto pickup. Right now, I'm just using it to separate my Silent's Gems gems that get piled up. And lastly, I have the main pack that I've only jsut found out how to equip, which I set to its own button on my controller and added the upgrade that makes it soulbound. This one is full of all my tools and will eventually host my other bags just so they're all on me at all times, just as soon as I figure out how to get a damn egg on this modpack.

But, it looks like there's even more potential than that. For starters, there is an option to make a bag upgrade-centric, adding more upgrade points at the expense of storage, but I'm not seeing how I'd ever use that many points? What am I missing here? What neat little things have you done with yours that I could look out for?

 

Because of the limit of 3 configurable upgrades (and no duplicates), I just max out the storage and keep adding new bags for different things.

 

Has anyone tried using ExU2 filters in the ghost slots? Does that work? I can go either way on that one.

I think I'm going to just go with the nesting, depth and everlasting upgrades on the main bag and use different bags inside that one. I can't remember if you need to use another upgrade to make the bags on the inside work off a direct right click or not, but I want that as well. If there's room, I might add in the restocking upgrade and put my food in there.

I did learn that the order matters for when you have a conflict. For example, I have my gems bag and my mining bag. The mining bag will pick up the gems as well. The order the bags are placed take precedence, apparently. If one of them is on the bar, it will go there first. Otherwise, it appears to go left to right, top to bottom. So, if you want the gems in the gems bag, rename it so it's alphabetically before the mining bag (luckily for me, Gems comes before Mining anyway) so when you use some kind of an autosort button, it will go into that order automatically.

edit: Do you need to use both a nesting upgrade AND an advanced nesting upgrade, or just one or the other?

 

* Builder's Bag, set with Resupply Upgrade, filled with whatever I'm building with at the time, as a way to have 20+ stacks of building materials on me while using something like a Builder's Wand (or some variant thereof) so I can complete my construction in one go. This is particularly useful in the Nether. Take one with a dozen or so stacks of cobble so you can fortify your portal immediately as soon as you enter.

* Ores bag, which is set to have all ores pulled into it. This includes gems and other valuables I might mine up. Also has Quick Deposit upgrade so I can drop off the goods to my sorting chest, whatever it ends up being. I don't remember if I can use the mining filter upgrade, or if I had to manually filter.

* Rubble Bag, which is set to pull in Cobble, Gravel, Sand, and Dirt, with 3x3 compacting upgrades. Because while I might occasionally need some, keeping it out of my way is more important. On the other hand, you'll almost never need to empty this bag, due to compression of double/triple gives you a stupid amount of capacity. If you just don't care about then anymore, void filter upgrade and be done with it.

Sprout is very relevant to my interests, but since I run Linux, getting it to actually work is a royal pain. I'll try again later today.

 

Oh, good call on that builder's bag with resupply. That will be amazing with a builder's wand. You can go all day.

Based on what you've been talking about, I do think you'll like Sprout. It's a little buggy, but it feels so much more alive. It's not just the quests, but Minecolonies makes it. Feels like I'm building up a real kingdom over here. Plus, dragons.

I wasn't able to do scavenger mode because my minecraft partner/albatross wouldn't like it, but for any minecraft veteran, I'd really recommend going that way.

 

I really like using Iron Backpacks with the Mod-Specific Filter. Having a backpack to pick up all Botania resources, for example, is much more useful than the Flower Pouch that comes with the mod - which picks up flowers, but not flower petals, let alone Livingwood, Living Rock, etc. I'm going to test and see if the Uncrafting upgrade will turn flowers into petals; that, plus a Resupplying upgrade, will make farming flowers less of a chore. Than the Quick Deposit upgrade...

 

My first experience as with quite a few mods, was in Iskandar's Modular Mayhem. I remember setting it up to autocraft cobble and gravel into their compressed forms, which was awesome.

 

I tend to use multiple packs, much like @ShneekeyTheLost outlined. I usually have a pack dedicated to pipes and wires nested into a medium sized Tool Bag as well. I find if I have pack space, I'll fill it up, so I tend to keep my Tool Bag as small as possible while still fitting all my random wrenches, axe, buckets, ladders, food, torches, and whatnot.

Having Quick Deposit on your bags makes cleaning up after an extended mining trip or large build a breeze. Having Resupplying food and torches makes exploring and caving easier, as well.

 

The nesting upgrade is one thing I like about it over the basic Backpack's mod. Of course I also typically eventually fill the Tinker's Knapsack with other bags.

 

If I had a bag with the compacting upgrade, then the opposite of that, whatever it's called, along with the replacement upgrade, could that, potentially, pick up cobblestone, compress it, then automatically uncompress it as it pushes out cobblestone onto the bar?

I would normally have dismissed the idea entirely, but the fact that it will recursively compact cobblestone into multiple layers on the fly has me almost believing this is possible.

 

Yep iron backpacks is the best. Too bad AoE doesnt have it.
But what I did in Beyond was a Iron backpack with a compression and magnet upgrade. It sucks up cobblestone, and the other stones to be compressed into compressed blocks super useful... And then I go to the end and it bugs out and I cant kill the dragon.

 

The only thing Iron Backpacks is really lacking is a manual crafting upgrade. Because I really like the ability to craft on the fly, without needing to haul around a crafting table.

 

Update on this: So, I did find that you do need the upgrade centric bag for the main bag if you wanna have it all, including insurance.

Advanced nesting, depth, restocking, buttons and eternity upgrade all combine for one more than a top tier bag can have, even with adding points. The upgrades bag can have all that with room for an advanced filter upgrade.

This setup let me go turbo mode into this game. It's amazing what you can get done when you're not fumbling around with your inventory every five minutes.

 

I feel like Eternity upgrade is overrated. There's a wonderful enchantment called soulbound. You should try it.

 

Yes and no. Yes, Soulbound is awesome, but having to do it for the a bunch of bags, vs. one bag and then nesting all the other bags inside, and not having to mess around with the enchantment table if you're lacking EnderIO for some reason.

 

Wait, you can enchant iron bags, too?

 

No, but soulbound can be put on anything.

 

Depends. You might be able to do the Thermal Expansion enchantment on it, depending on pack config settings. It's worth testing, at any rate.