R
ReaperDragon4
Guest
My younger brother suggested I put these up here when I told him i was going to make another try at Blastoff Modpack last week. His response? "you must be a masochist." My response "not really, start with the tinkers tools you're given, level up your weapons, and take 5 to 10 minute breaks in peaceful mode to assess your progress. That bow is /deadly/ once you level it and your new arrows to Master rank."
It was then that I realized that as awesome as my brother's and my shared love of minecraft modpacks is, bro doesn't quite have my skill with resources or finding loop holes.
So I'm going to do general tips, and then some of the more famous HQM packs past and present on FTB.
1. Pay attention and read - Don't just read the quest book directions carefully, also read the config files.
Learn to utilize the config files but also pay attention to quest prizes in the Quest book.
A good challenge for a favorite mod that just happens to be in an HQM map is that if you enable one feature, you /have/ to enable them all, helpful or not. When I play Crash landing for example, I always enable /every/ special mob. And I also make the ones who's drops aren't as useful to me more common than they originally were. It ups the difficulty but leaves open the possibility of useful drops from mobs.
Not only that but some modpack makers are trying to target who's not paying attention to fine detail. In Crash Landing (an example I use frequently) defenses are one of the biggest initial hurdles and you're on a timer. If you forget that you have to saaaay block up the fuel spill, you could have a mess on your hands. Although mob griefing has been disabled since I tried Crash landing for the first time, if you forgot this early on you could easily have half your shelter blown off.
In Material Energy ^3 and related packs, not paying attention could cost you monument completion, because although there are a lot of useful things hidden in easy to find places, there are also some awesome things hidden in places people aren't likely to look.
2. All of civilization started with a surplus - of food, fiber and other critical resources. In the case of minecraft those resources tend to be a steady supply of food, wood, coal and iron but HQM tends to throw a monkey wrench into that. If you can't find a resource, see tip #1.
If the world is dust and you think you just need a stack, dig two stacks. If you think you need one pick or one chest piece make two and put the other in a chest. Think you need one block of cultivated rice or wheat or one apple tree, do two of it.
As Modern Civilization started with a surplus of wheat, barley, rye and goats, offering food that could store for long periods or be available on demand, so to do you need a decent sized farm and a surplus of the resources it brings. Don't go far from home until you have at least two stacks more of food and one stack more of wood than you need.
Then there's Enviromine, which has a tendency to screw up those priorities mightily. If you want something on television or elsewhere in the world that can give you a basic idea of how Enviromine works, check out the work of Survival teacher Cody Lundin, who's great at demystifying survival stuff for the rest of us. But more of that later. I /am/ going to go into detail on Enviromine another time. Till then remember to watch your guages and keep a torch on you all the time!
3. Panicking? Then stop and breathe. - I once sat there and watched Lancypooh rage quit Blast Off. It was painful to watch. And if you're reading this Lancypooh, I feel your pain.
A neuroscientist once played the entire Call of Duty series all the way through, and when he got to the infamous airport scene he actually felt guilty. Thats silly, he thought, its a game. But then he asked himself, "why does my brain respond by feeling guilty when I witness virtual violence?"
When he tested the brains of gamers playing a "murder game" in which they had to kill everyone else, then observed their behavior, he discovered that the brain and instincts that go with it can't tell the difference between the game and reality even if we're consciously aware that the violence isn't real.
This is why games like "Run from the beast" are so hard, why some people overreact when FNAF animatronics jumpscare them and others don't. Not only can your brain not tell the difference between the game and real life, but both minecraft minigames and point and click horror with way too many jumpscares and a lot of dark places are /designed/ to make the player panic and activate the fight or flight response.
If you find yourself panicking, walk away for 10 minutes. No exceptions. Breathe, smell some flowers, open a window. If you're a smoker... i mean come on do you really need a cigarette to relax? REALLY? Okay not really, I'm just kidding. But you need to get oxygen into your lungs and brain. Scientists have shown that not only does oxygen help your brain perform better, but exercise and sunlight release positive chemicals into your brain that soothe stress. If your brain is treating the game like its real stress, then relieve it like its real stress.
Learn to recognize when you're being hunted or being put under pressure, learn to recognize when its too much, and walk away to get your head right.
4. Spend some time in peaceful - This is to assess your situation and strategize your next move. If you're trying to figure out a complicated machine and a creeper interrupts your train of thought by jumping you, you may lose your train of thought. I call this "Mobus Interruptus" and its a huge pain in the butt.
You may think it stupid to play for large parts of the time in peaceful, but when machines get complicated or you got one thing wrong in that magic mod and have to retrace your steps, peaceful mode is a huge help.
5. Practice practice practice - a good intro to more difficult progression packs is Jaded Cat's Magic Farm 2. You have the advantage of being able to range for resources if you have to, something that seriously helps with the hunger restrictions and in many ways it and Agrarian Skies gave birth to the super difficult HQM progression genre. If you see a mod in an easy modpack thats also in your progression mod, then its time to practice and study.
6. Take things apart, all kinds of things - With dungeons especially, take them apart in peaceful or creative in an extra save file. Learn what the redstone traps look like, where the spawners are, where the triggers are.
In the case of the Rogue Dungeons mod, I actually surprised my raiding party when we went into a rogue dungeon on a modded fantasy server... and I knew where every single spawner was just by looking at the room. I knew this because in a large variety of other modpacks, I'd taken the time to go into single player creative or single player peaceful and take them apart to see what was inside.
In the case of one of FTB's fan favorites, Material Energy ^3 and ^4, there are some dungeons where I think Parcel31U deliberately built something to be taken apart in creative. Chests behind the outer walls of the spatial disk dungeons, parts of the /old/ spatial drive bay, the broken one outside your main base hidden underneath bedrock in a way that /only/ creative mode can reach, as no bedrock breaker was included in the modpack.
The buildings in crash landing were literally designed to be taken apart in the final version of the pack, with an ex nihilo hammer no less. But in earlier versions of the pack, stripping the smaller buildings often will reveal the zombie pigman or other mob spawners inside the room.
Taking apart Chocolate craft dungeons often reveals redstone, hidden chests, and sometimes even a boss hidden behind walls. Some items in packs with minechem are given to you as quest rewards simply to be cannon fodder, you're /meant/ to take that limestone or that bunch of iron bars or that random useless chemical apart.
I mean, if you're a chicken for going into peaceful and taking that dungeon apart, then so is the kid who takes the radio or tv or laptop into their room and takes it apart to see how it works.
7. Watch the tuber, tweak the tuber, test the tuber, soon you'll be uber - Watch a youtuber do a particular modded minecraft thing, try it out for yourself, tweak it, test it, and repeat till you like it. These guys do takes for some things just like actors do. Only instead of acting, they do a take to make sure everything is working. They gear up behind the scenes and cut when grinding or exploring is about to ensue. Some youtubers like Dan TDM have actually started using minecraft as a filming or theatrical medium, and HQM packs sometimes do have a bit of theater involved.
But most of the time the youtubers unintentionally teach by example what not to do, Cranier and Ssundee for example, pull off Goofus and Gallant Minecraft Version very well, and since Ssundee likes exploits, he has a higher than average chance of finding things that will backfire terribly. Cranier also provides an example of point no 8.
8. Knowledge is power - this isn't just a phrase on afternoon specials, in the case of modpacks, knowing your way around a mod will make a progression pack faster. There's a reason I went back to blast off months after I lost interest, it was to test the skill level I'd risen to since then against it.
But also... it will warn you against the following scenario...
- your play partner cursed you with witchery
- you can't get it off
- your play partner puts up a booth titled "curse remover 9000" which directs you to throw your tinkers construct sword and two ME drives into a pit of Lava to remove the curse.
If you had studied witchery, a favorite magic mod in packs by the way, you would have realized that curses don't work that way. You need 6 allied coven witches and a circle ritual to remove the curse. V.V;;; not knowing this Cranier threw two empty high level ME drives into the lava and tried to throw his sword, but it wouldn't go through the trip wire placed across the lava.
Knowing your mods guards you against tricks like this in multiplayer, but also against tricks the map or pack maker might have worked into the pack.
Since this post is getting pretty long, I'm gonna post it and move on to a second post about modpack, mod and stylistic tips.
It was then that I realized that as awesome as my brother's and my shared love of minecraft modpacks is, bro doesn't quite have my skill with resources or finding loop holes.
So I'm going to do general tips, and then some of the more famous HQM packs past and present on FTB.
1. Pay attention and read - Don't just read the quest book directions carefully, also read the config files.
Learn to utilize the config files but also pay attention to quest prizes in the Quest book.
A good challenge for a favorite mod that just happens to be in an HQM map is that if you enable one feature, you /have/ to enable them all, helpful or not. When I play Crash landing for example, I always enable /every/ special mob. And I also make the ones who's drops aren't as useful to me more common than they originally were. It ups the difficulty but leaves open the possibility of useful drops from mobs.
Not only that but some modpack makers are trying to target who's not paying attention to fine detail. In Crash Landing (an example I use frequently) defenses are one of the biggest initial hurdles and you're on a timer. If you forget that you have to saaaay block up the fuel spill, you could have a mess on your hands. Although mob griefing has been disabled since I tried Crash landing for the first time, if you forgot this early on you could easily have half your shelter blown off.
In Material Energy ^3 and related packs, not paying attention could cost you monument completion, because although there are a lot of useful things hidden in easy to find places, there are also some awesome things hidden in places people aren't likely to look.
2. All of civilization started with a surplus - of food, fiber and other critical resources. In the case of minecraft those resources tend to be a steady supply of food, wood, coal and iron but HQM tends to throw a monkey wrench into that. If you can't find a resource, see tip #1.
If the world is dust and you think you just need a stack, dig two stacks. If you think you need one pick or one chest piece make two and put the other in a chest. Think you need one block of cultivated rice or wheat or one apple tree, do two of it.
As Modern Civilization started with a surplus of wheat, barley, rye and goats, offering food that could store for long periods or be available on demand, so to do you need a decent sized farm and a surplus of the resources it brings. Don't go far from home until you have at least two stacks more of food and one stack more of wood than you need.
Then there's Enviromine, which has a tendency to screw up those priorities mightily. If you want something on television or elsewhere in the world that can give you a basic idea of how Enviromine works, check out the work of Survival teacher Cody Lundin, who's great at demystifying survival stuff for the rest of us. But more of that later. I /am/ going to go into detail on Enviromine another time. Till then remember to watch your guages and keep a torch on you all the time!
3. Panicking? Then stop and breathe. - I once sat there and watched Lancypooh rage quit Blast Off. It was painful to watch. And if you're reading this Lancypooh, I feel your pain.
A neuroscientist once played the entire Call of Duty series all the way through, and when he got to the infamous airport scene he actually felt guilty. Thats silly, he thought, its a game. But then he asked himself, "why does my brain respond by feeling guilty when I witness virtual violence?"
When he tested the brains of gamers playing a "murder game" in which they had to kill everyone else, then observed their behavior, he discovered that the brain and instincts that go with it can't tell the difference between the game and reality even if we're consciously aware that the violence isn't real.
This is why games like "Run from the beast" are so hard, why some people overreact when FNAF animatronics jumpscare them and others don't. Not only can your brain not tell the difference between the game and real life, but both minecraft minigames and point and click horror with way too many jumpscares and a lot of dark places are /designed/ to make the player panic and activate the fight or flight response.
If you find yourself panicking, walk away for 10 minutes. No exceptions. Breathe, smell some flowers, open a window. If you're a smoker... i mean come on do you really need a cigarette to relax? REALLY? Okay not really, I'm just kidding. But you need to get oxygen into your lungs and brain. Scientists have shown that not only does oxygen help your brain perform better, but exercise and sunlight release positive chemicals into your brain that soothe stress. If your brain is treating the game like its real stress, then relieve it like its real stress.
Learn to recognize when you're being hunted or being put under pressure, learn to recognize when its too much, and walk away to get your head right.
4. Spend some time in peaceful - This is to assess your situation and strategize your next move. If you're trying to figure out a complicated machine and a creeper interrupts your train of thought by jumping you, you may lose your train of thought. I call this "Mobus Interruptus" and its a huge pain in the butt.
You may think it stupid to play for large parts of the time in peaceful, but when machines get complicated or you got one thing wrong in that magic mod and have to retrace your steps, peaceful mode is a huge help.
5. Practice practice practice - a good intro to more difficult progression packs is Jaded Cat's Magic Farm 2. You have the advantage of being able to range for resources if you have to, something that seriously helps with the hunger restrictions and in many ways it and Agrarian Skies gave birth to the super difficult HQM progression genre. If you see a mod in an easy modpack thats also in your progression mod, then its time to practice and study.
6. Take things apart, all kinds of things - With dungeons especially, take them apart in peaceful or creative in an extra save file. Learn what the redstone traps look like, where the spawners are, where the triggers are.
In the case of the Rogue Dungeons mod, I actually surprised my raiding party when we went into a rogue dungeon on a modded fantasy server... and I knew where every single spawner was just by looking at the room. I knew this because in a large variety of other modpacks, I'd taken the time to go into single player creative or single player peaceful and take them apart to see what was inside.
In the case of one of FTB's fan favorites, Material Energy ^3 and ^4, there are some dungeons where I think Parcel31U deliberately built something to be taken apart in creative. Chests behind the outer walls of the spatial disk dungeons, parts of the /old/ spatial drive bay, the broken one outside your main base hidden underneath bedrock in a way that /only/ creative mode can reach, as no bedrock breaker was included in the modpack.
The buildings in crash landing were literally designed to be taken apart in the final version of the pack, with an ex nihilo hammer no less. But in earlier versions of the pack, stripping the smaller buildings often will reveal the zombie pigman or other mob spawners inside the room.
Taking apart Chocolate craft dungeons often reveals redstone, hidden chests, and sometimes even a boss hidden behind walls. Some items in packs with minechem are given to you as quest rewards simply to be cannon fodder, you're /meant/ to take that limestone or that bunch of iron bars or that random useless chemical apart.
I mean, if you're a chicken for going into peaceful and taking that dungeon apart, then so is the kid who takes the radio or tv or laptop into their room and takes it apart to see how it works.
7. Watch the tuber, tweak the tuber, test the tuber, soon you'll be uber - Watch a youtuber do a particular modded minecraft thing, try it out for yourself, tweak it, test it, and repeat till you like it. These guys do takes for some things just like actors do. Only instead of acting, they do a take to make sure everything is working. They gear up behind the scenes and cut when grinding or exploring is about to ensue. Some youtubers like Dan TDM have actually started using minecraft as a filming or theatrical medium, and HQM packs sometimes do have a bit of theater involved.
But most of the time the youtubers unintentionally teach by example what not to do, Cranier and Ssundee for example, pull off Goofus and Gallant Minecraft Version very well, and since Ssundee likes exploits, he has a higher than average chance of finding things that will backfire terribly. Cranier also provides an example of point no 8.
8. Knowledge is power - this isn't just a phrase on afternoon specials, in the case of modpacks, knowing your way around a mod will make a progression pack faster. There's a reason I went back to blast off months after I lost interest, it was to test the skill level I'd risen to since then against it.
But also... it will warn you against the following scenario...
- your play partner cursed you with witchery
- you can't get it off
- your play partner puts up a booth titled "curse remover 9000" which directs you to throw your tinkers construct sword and two ME drives into a pit of Lava to remove the curse.
If you had studied witchery, a favorite magic mod in packs by the way, you would have realized that curses don't work that way. You need 6 allied coven witches and a circle ritual to remove the curse. V.V;;; not knowing this Cranier threw two empty high level ME drives into the lava and tried to throw his sword, but it wouldn't go through the trip wire placed across the lava.
Knowing your mods guards you against tricks like this in multiplayer, but also against tricks the map or pack maker might have worked into the pack.
Since this post is getting pretty long, I'm gonna post it and move on to a second post about modpack, mod and stylistic tips.
