New to FTB

[CreepnTG]

Hello all, i have played minecraft on and off for about 3 years. I have hosted my own servers for just me and a couple friends but never got into modded things. I am really interested in learning FTB Modpacks as i have watched a lot of twitch streamers and this is all they used. I am 23 years old, and i live in EST time USA. Im making this post to see if anyone out there has a new map and small community(3-5 players) that will accept 1 more into the server. I am very OCD about playing Minecraft as if it doesnt look perfect, i have to fix it. I take time in my builds and play the game at a slow place. IF anyone out there is interested in taking a newbie on, inbox me.

Thanks all!

 

[malicious_bloke]

*teleports into your base and plonks a block of dirt right in the middle of your very nicely decorated machine room.

Sorry, should probably stop channelling neutral mobs...

As for the other thing, there's a server promotion subforum that should have everything you need here:
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/categories/server-promotion.81/

 

[Cptqrk]

To be honest with you, start on a single player world.
Try all the different mod packs.
Keep playing SSP (single player) until you find a pack that you enjoy.
Then look for servers to play on.

Trust me, this will save you a lot of time/frustration.

 

[CreepnTG]

I have tried SSP but theres no good info in game and i just cant find any good info on mod packs on the internet. Trying to learn them on my own is frustrating, hell i'd even be happy trying to learn them with someone else.

 

[Cptqrk]

See, that's the thing.
Read the in game books (if there is one)
Watch the youtube videos.
Read the guides.
Don't start with Rotary Craft! (that thing breaks even experienced modded MC player's brains)
Hopping onto a server and asking "how do I..." a lot will cause you, the other players, and the server owner/ops frustration.

I'm not trying to be mean, but in the long run, you will get more enjoyment out of a server when it has a pack you like, added/disabled mods you like/don't like, and you have an idea as to what you want to do.
Otherwise you will find yourself frustrated, and unhappy due to people "not helping" and not knowing what to do next.

SSP is the way to go for all new players.

 

[CreepnTG]

What do you suggest i first start learning?

 

[Cptqrk]

That's all a matter of preference.
What interests you?
Machines/automation?
Magic?
Crops?
Everyone starts off differently.
Good packs to start with are FTB Light and the Direwolf20 pack

FTB Light is exactly that, light, so you don't have many mods to work with. This is actually a good thing for new players (IMO) as you can focus on the mods there to get a good foundation.
Direwolf20 pack has more mods, but it's not overwhelming. It's got just enough stuff in it to keep you going and get the basics of modded MC (again, IMO)

Then, try out the other packs.
Make sure to read what the packs are about. For example, if you wish to die a LOT, try Blood and Bones
If you want a hard, quest driven, few resources grind fest, try Agrarian Skies (love you @Jadedcat don't kill me for calling it a grind fest!)

I find that when my friends played modded MC to start they went with the "all in one" packs like the old Unleashed pack and they quit soon after due to the "WTF do I do?" factor.

Remember, the mod packs have mod lists (in the launcher and here on the FTB web site). Read the links associated with those mods (make sure when you are Googling them, to specify the version you want to know about, as there is a LOT of old info out there due to people playing older versions of packs) Pick one mod like Thermal Expansion for tech (or if you like to burn through resources like an all consuming sun, IC2/Gregtec) and go through it.

You will find the community here is quite pleasant, and will be helpful to you if you are having problems, but don't be surprised when they point you to a wiki (http://wiki.feed-the-beast.com/Main_Page)or a video explaining the solution.

As always tho' opinions are like assholes, everyone's got them, and if they say they don't, they are full of sh*t...

 

[malicious_bloke]

Monster is a good start as it has basically everything you could possibly want.

In terms of mods:

- Thermal expansion is the goto mod for newer players as it's incredibly simple to work with and the power system is used by many other mods.
- Buildcraft is also good for this (before more awesome mass mining apparatuseses existed, the quarry was THE thing).
- Tinkers Construct. Great crafting system for tools and weapons, much better than vanilla, it's an integral part of my early game setup in virtually every world.
- Thaumcraft. It's magic It has a lot of content and some of the concepts are a bit weird to get your head round at first but once you work it out, you'll make extensive use of it because it's win.
- Applied Energistics. Basically it's an entire system for storing all your stuff in a fraction of the space a normal inventory system would use, using it to automatically craft things on demand, process ores automatically (in conjunction with other mods' machines), it's an all-encompassing automation tool that I personally can't survive without. PRAISES BE TO COLIN!

And ignore people who tell you rotarycraft is difficult. It just requires a slightly different approach than traditional mods. And the rewards you get once you work it out are fantastic.

Other stuff:
For renewable resources of all kinds (all your minerals, mob drops, anything you can think of really), look into bee breeding (from a mod called Forestry, but there's an uber way of doing it now called Gendustry) and/or Magical crops (which is so awesome some neckbeardy people complain that it's cheating )

For automating pretty much any crappy task you don't want to spend hours doing (harvesting your farms, enchanting, brewing potions, killing mobs etc etc) there's Minefactory Reloaded (MFR).

There's also several mods which add a ton of extra little devices that do all sorts of incredibly useful little tasks, while the mods themselves have no overall theme. Randomthings, Openblocks and Extra Utilities. I find myself adding tons of their little doohickeys to my bases because they are just so handy.

Also blood magic. It's disabled by default in Monster, but you can enable it at the touch of a button, and it's FANTASTIC if you like to extract living essence from gelflings mobs/yourself to power various awesome contraptions.

That should be enough to get you started, for everything else there's mastercard exploration

 

[Cptqrk]

While I don't disagree with you malicious, I find that Monster is "too much" for new players. Again, IMO LOL
You are correct tho' Monster is.. well.. a monster of a pack, and a tonne of fun to play. But for newbies, who don't want to spend more time on a wiki than playing, maybe a smaller, lighter pack will do.

 

[malicious_bloke]

While I don't disagree with you malicious, I find that Monster is "too much" for new players. Again, IMO LOL
You are correct tho' Monster is.. well.. a monster of a pack, and a tonne of fun to play. But for newbies, who don't want to spend more time on a wiki than playing, maybe a smaller, lighter pack will do.

Well it is huge but without further direction on what sort of thing someone wants to do with their playthrough I thought it best just to point out the one with the widest range of possibilities.

 

[Cptqrk]

*sage nod*
Like I said, I don't disagree with Monster being a great pack.
But the smaller packs have the same ideas behind them, some magic, some tech, some terrain gen, just without the OMGALLTHETHINGS!

 

[dothrom]

Personally, the way I got into heavily modded MC was Direwolf20's Let's Play S5 and his pack at the time. It was a good way to see most of the core mechanics of modded MC.
So my suggestion would be to watch his S6 Let's Play (which is still ongoing) and play the current pack. He doesn't cover everything, and sometimes he doesn't have the 'best' information, but it's usually a good starting point.

 

[zemerick]

Just some bits of advice from my experiences as/with new players.

The biggest thing that stands out, is to remember to keep the mods separate. I don't mean using more than 1 mod to build a machine, but in your head. They were built separate, and mostly are designed to run completely alone. Compatibility between mods has gotten far better, but it still isn't perfect. It also helps to remember that the different power systems are different. There are mods to convert between them, but it's not perfect. Simply remembering that a "Quarry" is from a completely different mod than "Glass Fibre Cable" will help you to not try powering a Quarry with those cables.

Focus on 1 mod at a time, and learn it. Then, move on to something else. If you try to do a Direwolf20 mega build, using 37 different mods that you haven't really learned yet, I can guarantee tons of headaches.

Read the entire wiki articles on items, and possibly even some of the linked articles. Depending on the mod, lots of stuff has a number of critical details to know. For example, Thermal Expansion Conduits limits are only per connection. The conduit itself can transfer any amount of power. This is the entire basis and "difficulty" of Rotarycraft. All of the machines/items have various limitations and needs. If you read the full wiki, and learn all of the details with each piece, Rotarycraft is actually very simple.

Make a creative flat world for testing. Any time you're having issues, or not sure about something, pop over and fiddle around with things in creative. You will learn a ton this way, including stuff that just isn't on the wikis yet.

When you hit a snag, google it. I can pretty much guarantee someone else has had the same issue

Make backups often, ( Most recommend nightly, but you should be fine doing it once every few days as a slower builder. ) and have patience. ( Sort of required for Minecraft anyways.) Minecraft is a buggy mess for a major game, and you're adding hacked in modifications, neither of which is ever really finished and polished. This means there will absolutely be the occasional hiccup, glitch, crash...even the rare world corruption. Many times the world corruptions can be fixed, but sometimes they can't.

That's all I can think of off hand. So,

Good luck, and have fun!

 

[malicious_bloke]

Make a creative flat world for testing. Any time you're having issues, or not sure about something, pop over and fiddle around with things in creative. You will learn a ton this way, including stuff that just isn't on the wikis yet.

^ that is brilliant advice.

I still do this even now when planning a big setup, it helps me iron out problems before I start putting things together in my survival world.

Especially vital when dealing with anything that can potentially overheat and glass your entire base

 

[dothrom]

^ that is brilliant advice.

I still do this even now when planning a big setup, it helps me iron out problems before I start putting things together in my survival world.

Especially vital when dealing with anything that can potentially overheat and glass your entire base

A thousand times this. I've only live-tested new builds a couple times. And it's never fun to go: "What if I do - " *crater* Right in the middle of your base. And some mods have an excess of things that gleefully make craters out of bases.

 

[RJS]

Quite a lot of mods have fairly extensive ingame documentation. OpenBlocks, Mariculture, Witchery and Tinker's Construct all have either one book or a series of books which provides almost all the information you need. Thaumcraft's ingame documentation is central to the mod itself. Extra Utilities (in 1.6.4, not sure if it's in 1.7 yet) has information about every block it adds within NEI.

The way I learnt modded stuff was by starting up an FTB Monster world and setting up in a cave base. Never really bothered building anything nice, just kept expanding my cave and playing around with what I could find. Watching people who play a fair amount of modded minecraft on youtube is pretty helpful too-you can see how they set stuff up, figure out why they did it that way and then see if you can reproduce it.

If you're not sure what you want, I recommend getting an all the things pack like Monster, have a play around with the stuff in it, and see what mods you like/don't like. From there, look for packs which have primarily the mods you like, and get to see new mods that way. I found from my Monster plays that I much prefer the magic side, so switched over to Magic World 2.

Good Luck!

 

[DeathOfTime]

I would recommend watching Direwolf20 Season 6 single players lets play too. It is really instructive.

I use https://feedthebeast.atlassian.net/wiki/display/PML/Public+Modpack+Listings to look up the mods and research how to do things in them. NEI, WAILA, and the in game books help a lot too.

By the sounds of your building tastes. Install the Monster modpack and learn the "Chisel" mod first. There are lots of mods. That one sounds like it suits you best though. For now.

 

[CreepnTG]

Thanks all for the replies, i have been trying crash landing and agarian skies. I like these becuase of the quest and that it helps teach me what to do next and keep me on a straight foward path. I dislike them because i have to maintain food and only have a few lives. Is there any modpacks with a questline where its easier to stay on the quest and not worry about food so much?

 

[Cptqrk]

All of the ModJam packs are going to use the HCQM (the quest book mod) as it is a requirement for the contest.
I would suggest looking at some of those packs if you are looking for something like this.
Both AG and Crash are going to be brutal on the food/health side, as this is a main tenant of those packs.
In the end tho' I'm glad you are enjoying modded FTB!
*starts chanting* one of us... one of us....

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

Thanks all for the replies, i have been trying crash landing and agarian skies. I like these becuase of the quest and that it helps teach me what to do next and keep me on a straight foward path. I dislike them because i have to maintain food and only have a few lives. Is there any modpacks with a questline where its easier to stay on the quest and not worry about food so much?

Agrarian Skies is meant to be difficult, but you can make it easier for yourself if you want.

If you don't like the food changes, go into the modpack\minecraft\config directory and change the attributes in HungerOverhaul to your liking. You probably want to change these:

Set everything in the "delays" section to 1.
Example:      I:dryingRackTimeMultiplier=1

And change the following from what they are to this, if you want it to be easier.
    I:modFoodValueDivider=1
    B:modifyFoodValues=false
    I:minHungerToHeal=18
    B:constantHungerLoss=false
    B:addSleepHungerLoss=false

You could also change this to make food decay slower than normal. For example, setting it to 75 will make it decay 25% slower.

    I:hungerLossRatePercentage=100

You can also go to minecraft\config\hqm, open hqmconfig and change

This

I:"Default lives"=2

To this:

I:"Default lives"=255

This will change your starting lives to 255, so you won't really have to worry about lives. You can also turn off Hardcore mode in the same file.