For those wondering: I got the Dense Ores symbol legitimately after around 50 worlds. The secret to getting 500 diamonds in 20 minutes is to use use one copy of the symbol non-stacked; you can find a viable world after only a few tries, and with one symbol it is dense enough to get such returns. Another big thing is the synergy with the other symbols I used; ravines and caves allow for lots of easy access to layers below diamond level that is easy to find.
Keep in mind that even if it takes 500 tries to find dense ores, it will take around three hours. On multiplayer things are skewed because it only takes one player to find dense ores to throw the whole balance of rare resources out of whack.
Wow, you just COMPLETELY ignored the third point. You used creative mode to give yourself a full notebook. In which case you could just save yourself the 20 minutes spent mining and just use creative mode to give yourself all those diamonds.
Essentially you're arguing that creative mode is OP.
I ignored this point because it is false
I did this on my legit world. Proof:
http://i.imgur.com/eUQ0S.jpg Notice that I am missing symbols in this part of the book; creative book gives you all the symbols.
Actually, Mystcraft is a life saver for me because it gives me relatively easy access to a desert biome. The next one in my overworld is miles away. It took me less tiem to find diamonds than to find a cactus ^^
Mystcraft is a great mod and well worth inclusion in FtB; it has valid synsergy with other mods, most especially for your noted reason for simpler access to biome-dependent resources required by mods. In the end, it expands ways to play, mine, and spelunk, which is a good thing.
As a conclusion, I would like to note that the issue of balance and symbol discovery mechanics is noted by the creator by the mod (
http://binarymage.com/) , and planned to be addressed. XCompWiz admits that the discovery system in the version we are using is broken. The point of this thread is to not criticize what I think is a great mod, but to show a potential problem. In this effort, this thread has been successful. In the end it does not matter what I or anyone else who has posted thinks, what matters is what the FtB team thinks regarding their mod pack. They really know what they are doing