This is a repost from my thread on minecraftforum.net here.
This is a modpack recipe; I do not have time to maintain modpacks at this time, so I figured the next best thing for getting them out would be to make a list with links, and let anyone who is interested take over from there.
The Vanilla Beyond is a modpack that attempts to limit the improvements of a game to things that have a vanilla flavor to them. No power systems other than basic redstone, and no extensive changes in existing game mechanics. But there are a lot of improvements.
That being said, Minecraft has several basic game mechanics that can be expanded by existing mods.
The first thing about the game is that hunger seems to be tacked on to the game, rather than a challenging mechanic... Kill a couple cows, cook the meat, and boom, problem solved. Or go into peaceful mode, and boom, no more problem.
Three mods rectify these issues:
Two mods address these issues:
Agriculture
With the hunger mechanic given a boost, you're pretty much doomed, right? No, not really. Farming has just been made more important, as has the need for more crops than just the couple base types. Here comes the food-pocalypse!
These mods handle the farming system in the game:
Mobs
The hostile mobs in the game are pretty predictable and are easy to isolate and kill. Animals are entirely passive. Not much challenge once you've reached the point where you can wear armor and have an obstacle course protecting you from them.
Several mods have been added to mix things up:
If you want a little something to add atmosphere to the game, I found that Animals+ adds a number of creatures that just seems to fill out the biomes a little bit more without really changing the game's flavor. There are some hostile mobs, but most of them are marine life, and snakes are more defensive-hostile than aggressive. Other than that, there are birds, lizards, insects, and other things that are more or less neutral.
Magic
In vanilla, you can enchant your tools and armor, and brew potions. Expanding these were somewhat difficult, as there are a lot of magic mods in the game, and very few of them retain that vanilla feel.
Here's the closest I came up with:
Redstone is the key automating technology in vanilla Minecraft. It's the basis for some of the most impressive technology in vanilla minecraft. That being said, it seems to be something of a lost art, since Buildcraft introduced the Minecraft Joule, and later lost its throne to Redstone Flux. Because of this, I've taken steps to avoid using anything making use of Redstone Flux in this pack, and those that do, I've taken steps to disable anything requiring it.
On the other hand, redstone is pretty much stone age stuff. Ook and Gug make pretty red lights do nifty things. But those nifty things sometimes require entire fields of blocks to do one small task. Miniaturizing redstone technology, without removing the fundamentals of the technology, is the key to advancing this aspect of the vanilla game.
To this end, three mods (and one plugin) were added to the list:
One of the lesser-used, but not unknown mechanics in the game is the railway system. Vanilla minecraft includes a few types of carts and rails. These count as appetizers for those of us who grew up with train sets instead of the Internet. To handle this deficiency, Railcraft has been added to the pack. Railcraft is a mod that includes additional carts, a lot of additional types of tracks, as well as many ways to automate their use.
One thing to note: In order to keep Railcraft in line with the vanilla feel of the modpack, the "factory" module will need to be disabled in the config. Otherwise, the mod will require the use of machines that need RF to run, which kinda cuts the vanilla aspect off at the knees.
Storage
In vanilla, storage is limited to chests and ender chests. Railcraft adds liquid storage, while AgriCraft has rain collection and irrigation. But sometimes, we really want to maximize our storage in a minimal space. Different types of storage options should be available, right?
Yes, and here's what we got:
Worldgen
I've played with various worldgen mods, including oregen, biome expansions, and terrain generation mods. However, in the end, we want a vanilla flavor, and more importantly, one of the tenets of vanilla is that it is responsive. Worldgen mods tend to cause the most delay in play due to longer chunkloads of new chunks, since the worldgen mod has to make changes before a chunk is available for play. On smaller computers, this can be a significant hindrance to gameplay. This leads to situations where drops get delayed after breaking their sources after wandering into recently-generated lands. So my suggestion is to keep worldgen completely to a minimum, if not completely untouched, unless you really want those extra biomes, terrain, or custom oregen.
Decoration
We don't want to forget those people who want to play a creative game. Having a grab bag of decorations is one of the fun things in a game where building structures is a basic part of gameplay. To this end, the major decoration mods have been included in the list:
These are items that I was not able to give categories of their own, but which can fit in the vanilla theme I was going for... more or less. These mods are:
These don't fit in the crafting category, but still were considered useful to the pack as a whole:
These modify the way the game shows you information and takes your commands. They also change the experience you have in the game for the better. They include:
The above mods are all good for an expanded vanilla game. However, quite a few of them depend on other mods in order to work correctly. These are the mods:
This is a modpack recipe; I do not have time to maintain modpacks at this time, so I figured the next best thing for getting them out would be to make a list with links, and let anyone who is interested take over from there.
The Vanilla Beyond is a modpack that attempts to limit the improvements of a game to things that have a vanilla flavor to them. No power systems other than basic redstone, and no extensive changes in existing game mechanics. But there are a lot of improvements.
That being said, Minecraft has several basic game mechanics that can be expanded by existing mods.
- Hunger and Health: Survival likelihood
- Agriculture: Farming and ranching.
- Mobs: Testificates, animals (cow, sheep, pig, chicken, and squid), and monsters (spider, creeper, zombie, skeleton, silverfish, witch, and enderman).
- Magic: Potions and enchantments
- Redstone Technology: Signal paths, logic, and automation
- Minecarts and Tracks: Fast movement, and workshop-on-the-go
- Storage: Chests
- Worldgen: Biomes, and block placement.
- Decoration: When you just want to be creative.
- Craftables: making tools, weapons, and other useful stuff.
- User Interface: Bars, chat, and machine screens.
The first thing about the game is that hunger seems to be tacked on to the game, rather than a challenging mechanic... Kill a couple cows, cook the meat, and boom, problem solved. Or go into peaceful mode, and boom, no more problem.
Three mods rectify these issues:
- Hunger Overhaul: Reduces food satisfaction, makes farming slower, and changes how hunger accumulates, but it also adds non-breaking harvesting.
- Spice of Life: Limits the number of times you can eat the same food and get benefits.
- Hunger in Peace: Removes peaceful mode as a way to hide from your hunger; allows for a challenging game without mobs.
Two mods address these issues:
- Hunger in Peace: (also mentioned above) Not only enables hunger in peaceful mode, but also prevents instant peaceful regeneration.
- Natural Absorption: As long as you don't continue to sustain damage, you will build up a buffer against 2-heart problems (by default), keeping you alive long enough to get home and drink a potion or something.
Agriculture
With the hunger mechanic given a boost, you're pretty much doomed, right? No, not really. Farming has just been made more important, as has the need for more crops than just the couple base types. Here comes the food-pocalypse!
These mods handle the farming system in the game:
- Pam's Harvestcraft: Both a farming and cooking mod, this mod includes hundreds of different recipes of different strengths. If you can get to the high-end recipes, then you can probably survive without a problem, as the highest-level recipes will fill both the hunger bar and the saturation bar (which will likely then take days to deplete to the point where you can eat again). Also, with this mod, you can survive hunger even if you're just wandering the wilderness; little pods of food appear pretty regularly in nearly all biomes (including oceans!), each containing multiple types of crop.
- AgriCraft: Missing a specific crop for that recipe you wanted to try? Don't want to wander the wilderness for an onion, or sail the high seas for some rice? Well, AgriCraft introduces crossbreeding of crops, where you can cross two crops together to get a third crop. Great for those recipes missing that final ingredient. Once you have that third crop, you can simply craft the crop back into a vanilla seed for planting the vanilla way.
Mobs
The hostile mobs in the game are pretty predictable and are easy to isolate and kill. Animals are entirely passive. Not much challenge once you've reached the point where you can wear armor and have an obstacle course protecting you from them.
Several mods have been added to mix things up:
- Zombie Awareness: Zombies and skeletons spawn in larger numbers and move in groups. They can see lights, hear sounds, and smell you when you're hurt.
- Special AI: Mobs vary in behavior. Too many varieties to list, but keep in mind that among those behaviors is a griefing mechanic; zombies will break your stuff, such as doors, torches, tool blocks (like the crafting bench) and farmland. And since they are already attracted to light sources, this makes torches a temporary barrier. Some light sources are immune to this mechanic, but I'll leave that for you to discover.
- Special Mobs: Mobs also vary in size, power, speed, and have different abilities. Giants can see and reach farther. Brutish mobs have ungodly hit points. Some mobs are on fire, and various creepers move and explode in different ways.
- Stalker Creepers: Creepers will not explode behind you. Don't look back.
If you want a little something to add atmosphere to the game, I found that Animals+ adds a number of creatures that just seems to fill out the biomes a little bit more without really changing the game's flavor. There are some hostile mobs, but most of them are marine life, and snakes are more defensive-hostile than aggressive. Other than that, there are birds, lizards, insects, and other things that are more or less neutral.
Magic
In vanilla, you can enchant your tools and armor, and brew potions. Expanding these were somewhat difficult, as there are a lot of magic mods in the game, and very few of them retain that vanilla feel.
Here's the closest I came up with:
- Enchanting Plus: With this upgrade to the enchantment table, you can decide how you want your experience to be applied to your gear, both in enchantment type, and the level used. Since this is an upgrade to an existing table, it does not affect the vanilla table's default behavior, in case the mystery is something you want.
- More Enchantments: Just that: additional enchantments that can be applied to your armor and tools. More fun ways to gain an unfair advantage on the horde.
- Witchery: This was the hardest one to justify adding to the pack. Witchery definitely improves the brewing mechanic, and adds more potions to the game. Additionally, it adds a magic mechanic that is probably closest to vanilla of all the magic mods, and even gives vanilla witches some interesting and useful drops.
Redstone is the key automating technology in vanilla Minecraft. It's the basis for some of the most impressive technology in vanilla minecraft. That being said, it seems to be something of a lost art, since Buildcraft introduced the Minecraft Joule, and later lost its throne to Redstone Flux. Because of this, I've taken steps to avoid using anything making use of Redstone Flux in this pack, and those that do, I've taken steps to disable anything requiring it.
On the other hand, redstone is pretty much stone age stuff. Ook and Gug make pretty red lights do nifty things. But those nifty things sometimes require entire fields of blocks to do one small task. Miniaturizing redstone technology, without removing the fundamentals of the technology, is the key to advancing this aspect of the vanilla game.
To this end, three mods (and one plugin) were added to the list:
- Project:Red: This mod provides a lot of single-block logic devices to remove the need to make 5x5x5 structures just to accomplish one logic function. It also includes redstone alloy wires that can travel much further without degradation, removing the need for repeaters, and includes some additional world-interaction devices.
- Expanded Redstone: Provides additional world-interaction devices to function with redstone circuits, such as a block placer, several block breakers, a block activator, wireless redstone, a clock that has an even-but-configurable on-off cycle, ranging from ticks to hours, and various types of world sensor.
- ComputerCraft: Further miniaturization of logic, and makes redstone programmable at a higher level.
- OpenCCSensors: Like the sensors in Expanded Redstone, but used by a computer, rather than outputting a redstone signal. Can also interact with other mods' blocks.
One of the lesser-used, but not unknown mechanics in the game is the railway system. Vanilla minecraft includes a few types of carts and rails. These count as appetizers for those of us who grew up with train sets instead of the Internet. To handle this deficiency, Railcraft has been added to the pack. Railcraft is a mod that includes additional carts, a lot of additional types of tracks, as well as many ways to automate their use.
One thing to note: In order to keep Railcraft in line with the vanilla feel of the modpack, the "factory" module will need to be disabled in the config. Otherwise, the mod will require the use of machines that need RF to run, which kinda cuts the vanilla aspect off at the knees.
Storage
In vanilla, storage is limited to chests and ender chests. Railcraft adds liquid storage, while AgriCraft has rain collection and irrigation. But sometimes, we really want to maximize our storage in a minimal space. Different types of storage options should be available, right?
Yes, and here's what we got:
- JABBA: A barrel holds one type of object only, but up to 64 stacks, all in one single block. This can be upgraded as needed; perfect for storing all that cobblestone gathered in the course of mining.
- Storage Drawers: Smaller versions of the JABBA barrel that allows more than one item per block (2- or 4-item blocks). Good for your growing collection of rotten flesh.
- Better Storage: Adds additional options for storage (each has advantages and disadvantages over chests), which includes "reinforced chests" (chests with metal reinforcement for higher storage capacity). Also allows you to make locks and keys, and a drinking helmet (one key applies a portion of each of two potions).
- Ender Storage: One ender storage space is nice, but having as many ender storage spaces as you have color combinations (over 4000) is better; each chest has three wool dots on the top; its space is determined by what dyes you apply to those dots.
Worldgen
I've played with various worldgen mods, including oregen, biome expansions, and terrain generation mods. However, in the end, we want a vanilla flavor, and more importantly, one of the tenets of vanilla is that it is responsive. Worldgen mods tend to cause the most delay in play due to longer chunkloads of new chunks, since the worldgen mod has to make changes before a chunk is available for play. On smaller computers, this can be a significant hindrance to gameplay. This leads to situations where drops get delayed after breaking their sources after wandering into recently-generated lands. So my suggestion is to keep worldgen completely to a minimum, if not completely untouched, unless you really want those extra biomes, terrain, or custom oregen.
Decoration
We don't want to forget those people who want to play a creative game. Having a grab bag of decorations is one of the fun things in a game where building structures is a basic part of gameplay. To this end, the major decoration mods have been included in the list:
- BiblioCraft: adds useful bookshelves and publishing abilities, in addition to furniture and decorations.
- Carpenter's Blocks: Allows you to make differently-shaped blocks with the texture (and strength) of other mods' materials. Including things like doors, torches, and ladders.
- Chisel 2: Takes nearly every material block and adds decorative versions of that material block... which can be used in Carpenter's Blocks.
- Garden Stuff: Garden decorations, tons of pottery, windowboxes, and the ability to pack multiple flowers in a single block.
- Mr. Crayfish's Furniture Mod: kitchen, living room, Bedrooms, and yard decorations.
These are items that I was not able to give categories of their own, but which can fit in the vanilla theme I was going for... more or less. These mods are:
- Antique Atlas: The vanilla Minecraft map is good for mapping local areas, but The Antique atlas will give an overview of an area for several chunks in a single block, as well as allow you to mark key points in the map. Makes a great long-range map to vanilla's area map. Of course, you need to craft it, using a book and a compass, so it fits the vanilla theme much better than mods like Journey Map or VoxelMap.
- Extra Utilities: This mod provides is a decent grab bag to either accept or disable, depending on the "vanilla-ness" of the items in question.
- OpenBlocks: Just like Extra Utilities; this is a grab bag that you can individually use or disable in the configs.
- Hopper Ducts Mod: If you disable the transfer cables in Extra Utilities, this can perform the function of a basic item pipe; in fact, since it's an extension of the vanilla hopper, this is about as vanilla a pipe as you can get.
- Ropes+: This is one of those "Maybe" mods. I'd recommend disabling the dirt, redstone torch, frost, seed, and slime arrows, and use MineTweaker to change the warp arrow's recipe from obsidian to ender pearl... I don't think it works for balance if it's cheaper to have warp arrows, which can go much further than ender pearls.
- Magic Yarn: Getting lost in a cave system sucks. This makes it possible to get back.
- Secret Rooms Mod: Sometimes, you just want to keep your home hidden from other players. Secret rooms are good for that.
- Mine & Blade: Battlegear 2: More weapons, dual-wielding, and shields to fight the horde. My recommendation also includes this: Disable the arrows from "Ropes+," Because this mod adds specialty arrows and a quiver.
- Emerald & Obsidian Tools and Armor: Emerald exists. Obsidian exists. The latter was used in the real world to make some pretty significant gear. So why doesn't Minecraft do this? This mod is a little overdue, if you ask me.
- The Vegan Option: THE mod to have for a peaceful game, and definitely useful to have during the early game where the nightly horde is still too powerful yet. This mod essentially adds "vegan" replacements for all the major mob drops, as well as various tools needed to produce them. Gunpowder? The classic coal/sulfer/saltpeter. Bonemeal? Fertilizer or white ink. Rotten flesh? Rotten plants. String or wool? Jungle trees drop kapok tufts. Leather? Collect and ret jute to make burlap. The only mob drops you can't make are Nether Stars or the dragon egg. However, you can make wither skeleton heads using a melon and some papier-mâché.
- ToolUtilities: Now the anvil can be used to improve your gear with various abilities; the tooltips show what improvements can be made, and what materials you need to make the improvement. Kinda like Tinker's Construct, only vanilla... and without the OP.
- Lava Boat: Adds a couple extra boats to the game, including a reinforced boat (won't be destroyed by lily pads and squids), large boats (take your mount with you), and even (as the name makes obvious) boats to cross lava.
- Just Another Crafting Bench: What it says on the tin. The only difference is that leaving this bench doesn't drop what you have placed.
These don't fit in the crafting category, but still were considered useful to the pack as a whole:
- InfiniBows: A tweak that removes the requirement of one arrow when you have the infinite enchantment on a bow.
- Flat Signs: A change to the way vanilla signs work, making them work on ceilings and floors, as well as using sponges to change the sign.
- MineTweaker 3: Sometimes, you just want to change a recipe or two, or maybe play with the loot tables.
- Random Things: I usually keep most of this mod disabled. The random background in the start page, as well as the fast leaf decay make this mod worth consideration. Just make sure you disable the blood moon, unless you're going for hardcore gaming. One early-game blood moon can ruin a person's day.
- OpenEye: Easily the most important mod to have in any modpack; this will upload any crashes that occur to a database, where mod authors can look for issues. The program also allows you to see what likely caused the game to crash.
- Treecapitator: This is a mod where you can chop an entire tree using an axe, rather than one block at a time. My preference is to set this mod so it only recognizes the diamond axe as an axe (meaning that you can only chop down entire trees once you've gotten a diamond axe).
- INpureCore: For those who use NEI, this cleans up the heavy numbers of microblocks, panels, and other such duplicate detritus from the NEI item list.
These modify the way the game shows you information and takes your commands. They also change the experience you have in the game for the better. They include:
- Dynamic Lights: If you carry a torch, your immediate area is lit, and that light follows you. If you drop the torch, it can also light the area, even if it is not attached to the floor or wall.
- MAtmos: Atmospheric sounds, as well as changes to the game's default sounds. I recommend msi_conversion and rhapsodia resource packs to provide the best-sounding game (putting rhapsodia above msi_conversion in the list).
- Shaders Mod: What MAtmos is to sound, the Shaders Mod is to video. I can't describe just how much more incredible the view is with the right shaderpack. I personally use Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders (with Depth of Field enhancement). The downside is that vanilla/mod shader effects (such as a blood moon's "reddening" and vanilla "night vision" effects) won't work
- Sound Filters: A mod that adds atmospheric effects to game sounds; if you're in a cave, all actions will have an echo. If you're underwater, all surface sounds will be much quieter, while you can better hear actions underwater.
- Inventory Tweaks: Sorts inventories. So worth it.
- MultiMine: Another unique mod from AtomicStryker; if you stop mining a block, it will not instantly heal back up (it will in a few seconds, if you leave it alone). Additionally, multiple people harvesting the same block will increase harvest speed.
- Not Enough Keys: All your keybindings in one place. A must-have.
- Not Enough Items: An advanced items interface for crafting and machine UIs. If this removes the vanilla feel of the game, it can be disabled with the letter "o." It can also be disabled by default, so the player will need to enable it to use it. Also, get NEI Addons and NEI Integration.
- WAILA: "What Am I Looking At" is a pop-up at the top of the HUD that identifies what you're looking at. If it removes the vanilla feel of the game, it can be turned off using the number "1" in the keypad, and also has an option in the config file to disable by default. Also get WAILA Harvestability and WAILA Plugins.
The above mods are all good for an expanded vanilla game. However, quite a few of them depend on other mods in order to work correctly. These are the mods:
- AppleCore: Required by the hunger mods, as well as Pam's HarvestCraft. This is the mod that adds the advanced hunger bar that marks hunger, saturation, and hunger progress.
- bspkrsCore: Required by Treecapitator.
- DragonAPI: Required for Expanded Redstone.
- CodeChickenCore: Required for Ender Chests and Not Enough Items.
- coroutil: Required for Zombie Awareness.
- KDG Commons: Required for MAtmos.
- Practical XML: Required for MAtmos.
- MobiusCore: Required for JABBA.
- MrTJPCore: Required for Project:Red
- OpenModsLib: Required for OpenBlocks and OpenEye.
- ttCore: Required for WAILA Plugins
- UpdateCheckerMod: Included with a few of AtomicStryker's mods, this checks for updated versions of the mods.
