- The Strength zombies (the guys wearing the red helmets) are a pain in the ass to deal with, because they run faster than you and will pick up and drop you repeatedly which makes it a pain to fight it in melee range (you can't hit it when it's picked you up) and a death sentence when other mobs are nearby to slap you / blow up in your face while this guy picks you up and prevents you from hitting anything.
I thought that too until I learned that you can press shift to unmount them.
- Any mob which displays behavior from Special AI seems to randomly become immune to knockback which makes melee combat surprisingly difficult, considering that some zombies will charge you down / jump at you (especially the strength zombie) and you can't knock creepers away then backpedal to prevent them exploding.
I don't think this has anything to do with Special AI. If a mob is wearing armor the knockback is reduced. If the mob is on fire the knockback might also not come through. Both are vanilla mechanics. If a mob charges you, then you just need to side step it. If you need a stronger knockback try the TiCon frying pan + knockback modiferes.
- The mob totems. I'm talking about creepers riding creepers riding creepers. Not only does it look ridiculous but unless you have a bow you have no way of dealing with these. Also mobs will occasionally grab and throw other nearby mobs at you meaning nearby creepers become hand grenades with a 1 second fuse that you can't knock away thanks to point 2.
Well you start out with a bow so... Use a shield if you have a problem with creepers getting thrown at you. But I've made the experience that you don't take much damage from a creeper explosion unless you stay on the same block as the creeper(unless you're wearing no armor which would be pretty stupid).
The mod was really intended to be added alone or with one or two extra mods, when this is added on top of Special Mobs, Zombie Awareness, Infernal mobs and that mod that slows backpedalling, it really becomes impossible to kill anything at night in the early game (which is required thanks to multiple early game quests requiring zombie flesh, leather, bones or skulls..)
I never had a problem with the first nights to be honest. If you have such a big problem then stay at the door of your base and bash every zombie which tries to get in and close the door if one actually gets in. Don't pull the whole map at once. Use your bow for creepers. Smart moving adds dashes(double tap a direction key). I didn't even notice until now that backpedaling is slowed. If you get unlucky with infernal mobs in your first night, then tough luck you just wasted 5 minutes of your life, restart and everything will be fine.
Past the first nights you'll be equipped with a full krekorite armor, have a shield(optional), have a fully leveld Tinker's weaopn(even a wooden one get's op very fast and you can change parts after you reach master), an army of your own golems and base defense turrets and unkillable pet dogs.
Also if you don't want to fight the mobs, then just sleep. If you're to incompetent to fight them, wall a spawner in and fight those mobs.
Another small hint I learned recently: If you want Looting or Fortune on your tinker's weapons or tools then add 1 Lapis as soon as possible. The modifiers seem to level aswell(even after you reach master) so by the time your tool/weapon reaches master you'll already have about 150/450 and maybe already be at Fortune/Looting 2. I'm not sure if this works for sharpness aswell.