Smallpax: My minimalist modpack adventure

[Zekromaster]

Infinity. Inventions. Sky Factory. What do these pack share? Having more mods than the human mind can process. And while I love having the choice to do whatever I want in a world, sometimes I feel like I should use some mods more. How long since I last based my tech progression in a pack on IC2? And since I last used Buildcraft Pipes to do transport? It was 1.2.5, I think. And I think I never really used carts and railways as much as I'd liked.
So, I decided to make a pack with just some mods I really want to use. And to keep a journal to force myself to play the pack at least once a week (I'm looking to play a lot of packs, so keeping a journal for each one of them may be a solution to avoid abandoning any one of them. Expect some journalspam from me. As I'm a person that starts a lot of packs and then abandons them without even getting to mid-game, I'll force myself to only play packs I'm doing a journal of, so I'll have to get some progress done instead of abandoning them).

Some of the mods I use but not much, while others are mods I never really touched but seemed interesting. For a total of an overwhelming 10 "content" mods, 4 Worldgen Mods and 4 "utility" mods! I may add mods in the future, but I decided to not want to get over 20 "content" mods. You can see the modlist here (Addons in Italic):

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Utility:
NEI
WAILA
JourneyMap
Inventory Tweaks
Content:
Buildcraft
Iguana Tinker Tweaks (Tinker's Construct Addon)
IndustrialCraft 2 Experimental
Logistics Pipes (Buildcraft Addon)
Minefactory Reloaded
Power Converters 3
RailCraft
Steve's Cart 2
Steve's Factory Manager
Tinker's Construct
Worldgen:
Custom Ore Generation
Climate Control
Realistic Terrain Generation
Per Fabrica ad Astra: Geologica (Custom Ore Generation Addon)

I also did some recipe changes with CraftTweaker, and I'll list them here:

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- Made the MFR Chassis require IC2 Chassis

I'll list any change I do to the pack in a sort of "changelog" at the beginning of each journal post.

Episode 1​

Ok, so, let's start with order. I made my world.

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(The name is the first thing that came to my mind)

Little recipe check to see if Minetweaker loaded

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So, let's start gathering some wood and make some basic stuff

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During my quest to get some wood in a forest (Difficult task), I found an Oil Well and a beach. The Oil Well isn't gonna be useful until I get some tech going, but with PFAA's Oregen, the beach pretty much means ores and minerals.

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Before getting into the ore-mining action, we'll need to level-up our pickaxe. Let's dig a hole that will serve as both a way to gain experience for our flint pickaxe and a base.

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I made this a corridor, with the intention of making the other "rooms" extend horizontally from here. I still can't mine that Banded Iron, so we'll have to wait before removing it.

So, now that we have a base with some basic stuff, we're gonna go back to the beach with our brand-new shovel, to get gravel, clay and sand for a coke oven and a smeltery. Also, let's see if we can get some ores.

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Quod Erat Demostratum. We got some Cassiterite (Tin) and some Basaltic Ore (Iron)

So, until next update I'm gonna build a coke oven, a basic smeltery and I'm gonna go mining a little more to find the materials for a basic generator + macerator setup to double ores and alloy metals without consuming lava (which I still have to find, and will have difficulties moving without Ender and Portable Tanks). Wish me luck!

 

[JFischer00]

Looks cool. I've been having somewhat similar feelings about giant modpacks recently. There are so many mods that I've never even learned. Definitely gonna watch this thread. After seeing this, I may even make myself a small modpack to learn some new to me mods.

 

[JaRyCu]

How did you ever manage to find wood in a forest?? I'm stumped on this. I thought it took at least an Ender Quarry with a World Interaction Addon being powered by a 9x9x9 Big Reactor before you could get wood?

 

[Zekromaster]

Looks cool. I've been having somewhat similar feelings about giant modpacks recently. There are so many mods that I've never even learned. Definitely gonna watch this thread. After seeing this, I may even make myself a small modpack to learn some new to me mods.

Thanks for the kind worlds, man!
Also, JUST DO IT. If I can suggest a thing, many new 1.10.2 mods look really interesting.

How did you ever manage to find wood in a forest?? I'm stumped on this. I thought it took at least an Ender Quarry with a World Interaction Addon being powered by a 9x9x9 Big Reactor before you could get wood?

I know, it was really difficult and I had to use some weird speedrunning techniques to jumpstart me to the late game and get that wood.

 

[JFischer00]

Thanks for the kind worlds, man!
Also, JUST DO IT. If I can suggest a thing, many new 1.10.2 mods look really interesting.

Yeah, there are some interesting ones, but I think I want to completely learn some of the classics like IC2, Railcraft, etc... Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll consider it.

 

[Zekromaster]

Episode 2​

Ok, so I didn't do much today. I built my Coke Oven (finally)

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While doing my stuff, I found a redstone vein. They contain Chalcopyrite. This means copper.

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Next, on to furnace upgrading. I got almost 3 stacks of Iron, in the forms of Granitic and Basaltic ore. 10 plates won't be that great a cost, and we'll get some more efficiency out of our furnaces, which combined with coal coke means crazy-efficient fuel.

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So, making a Smeltery is our last thing to do for today. Which means trips to the beach. Which also means some more iron, tin, and somehow gold.

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Next time, I'm gonna try to get some lava, so wish me luck.

 

[KingTriaxx]

How did you ever manage to find wood in a forest?? I'm stumped on this. I thought it took at least an Ender Quarry with a World Interaction Addon being powered by a 9x9x9 Big Reactor before you could get wood?

Clearly someone's been playing too much Infinity.

This looks like an awesome little pack you've got. I look forward to seeing more.

I very much approve of your choice of texture pack as well.

 

[Zekromaster]

I came to three conclusions in these two months:
1. The real reason I don't play with IC2 much is just because I don't like it. While I like some parts of it, an experience completely centered around itisn't something I like to play. It's not about having more efficient options. I ditched IC2 Ore Processing for the RotaryCraft Extractor, in one of my packs, just because I found that IC2 was boring.
2. Never put Iguana Tweaks with Per Fabrica Ad Astra if you don't have a way of getting lava without getting to y30.
3. I have mixed feelings about RC and SC. I don't know if I genuinely don't like them, or I just need to learn them some more.

So, I ditched this pack really fast, and I'm sorry for not updating and saying it before. I like being pushed out of my comfort zone, but I need to do that with something I like more. I'm having a blast playing a custom pack with Rotarycraft, for example.

If I find myself in need to restart my custom pack world, I'll be here to keep a journal.
Otherwise, I may publish my own journal of some random pack if I decide on something to play before I settle for my custom pack (It's 14:35 here in Italy at the time of this writing).

 

[KingTriaxx]

May consider it if you also run Tech Reborn, which is basically a new version of the old 1.4.7 version of Gregtech, back when the rewards were eventually worth the effort.

Replacing parts is the only bit of Iguana Tweaks I liked. TiCon2 agreed.

Railcraft is a love it or hate it mod. You either love the trains, or you hate them. Shneekey hates it, and has perfectly valid reasons for doing so. I love it, for almost exactly the same reasons.

Steve's Carts was fantastic. But it started a Gregtech style progression towards 'balance' and ended up driving away people who used it because it was simple and fun. It almost always took some time to put things together, and that got very, very long. Plus all the attachments now have durability, except for the obscenely hard to get Galgadorian variants. It ends up being like a stack of diamonds to get enough Galgadorian material together to do anything with, and then you end up needing a much more advanced Hull, which yes, takes more Galgadorian to make.