The Feed The Beast Apocalypse

[Kumorineko]

So, lately I've been playing on FTB Ultimate after doing a little editing to my Extrabiomes XL config files.

Basically only a few types of biomes will spawn in my worlds now. (The Wasteland Biome, The Redrock Mountains, Deserts, Desert Mountains, Glaciers, and Ice Wastelands)
I've also banned myself from using Mystcraft to get resources.

So far I've also installed Invasion Mod for the occasional monster raid on my base, Mine & Blade: Commander for a little help in defending myself, and Pet Bats mod to give me a companion in the lonely wasteland.

The two biggest challenges I face are:
1. Finding a tree to get started, they do exist, due to the way minecraft biome generation works, sometimes little forest and grass biomes appear on the borders of other biomes. So Trees are out there, but they're very rare and I dont always find one on the first night.
2. Food, the dead grass in the wastelands sometimes drops seeds but its rare (and they aren't always food seeds), the firest few days are usually spent sustaining myself with the occasional apple and rotten flesh. Xycraft helps a heck of a lot when you can gather the resources together.

After I overcome these two challenges, however, I start to lose that sense of desperation, and even the monster raids grow a bit dull as I build up the resources for better armor and weapons and create more secure bases. (I've also stopped myself from using the Rift Flux generated from the invasions except on very rare occasions. Makes getting diamonds and iron way too easy.)

So, long story short, I want ideas. How can I make my own little apocalypse more challenging, but not quite impossible. Make the struggle of surviving last a bit longer and have more eventual goals to work towards.

Second thing, I want to know if this intrigues anyone else. If you decide to try it post your first experiance here.

PS: I've already considered adding Underground Biomes & Biomes O' Plenty to add a bit more variety to the world but haven't attempted it yet.

Mods being used:

Spoiler

(To clarify, these were installed on Minecraft 1.5.2, not installed on Feed the Beast.)
Coremods:
CodeChickenCore -ChickenBones
DynamicLights -AtomicStryker
Microblocks- immibis
NotEnoughItems -ChickenBones

Mods:
rei's Minimap -ReiFNSK
Mine & Blade: Battlegear 2 - nerd-boy
MineFantasy - Anonymous Productions
Ruins Mod -AtomicStryker
Damage Indicators - rich1051414
Ars Magica -Mithion
Backpack Mod -Eydamos
Biblocraft -Nuchaz
ExtrabiomesXL -MisterFiber
Invasion Mod -Lieu
Falling Meteors -AlexDGr8r
Timber! -TehKrush
Rotten Flesh to Leather -EpicBlargh
chestTransporter -CubeX2
Iron Chests - cpw
Extra Utilities- RWTema
Natura - mDiyo
Smartmoving - Divisor (This mod needs to be placed direclty into the minecraft.jar file.)

Biomes'O'Plenty was removed for making things too easy. (Too many trees.)
Underground Biomes I would like to have but it doesn't like the modpack.

 

[GPuzzle]

Tip number 1:
Install Millenaire and the Backpack mod.
Number 2:
Write a diary.
Number 3:
Give yourself some hardcore variants. Clay houses, no buckets, no torches but home (also, this needs Dynamic Lights) and turning an Ars Magica (if you have it) building/village your fortress are some ideas. Also completing all the challenges of a Cubeaism deity are some ideas.

 

[PeggleFrank]

Get a nuke or something and blow a huge crater. Put a tiny little rubble shack at the bottom of it, that can be your house.

Get some T5 monster spawners around the perimeter of the crater. Have daylight sensors (vanilla or RP2, probably vanilla since RP2 senses light and not daylight I think) check to see if it's day. If it is, then it emits a redstone signal and it turns off the monster spawners. During the night, however, TONS of mobs will start to raid your house, making surviving a difficult thing.

You can cheat in some ghast T5 spawners elsewhere in the wasteland, so if you do try and run away and escape you'll be blown the hell up by a bunch of ghasts that blend in with the clouds and the fog in the distance.

Turning on Mo' Creatures and only enabling werewolves and ogres might be a good way to make it harder, too. Wraiths might also be a good idea.


If it's still too easy for you, you should ask Greg to add a 'wasteland' config option that makes everything in vanilla really rare and really hard to craft. That's something he would probably love to do.

 

[Lambert2191]

gotta look into this invasion mod.. sounds cool

 

[Kumorineko]

gotta look into this invasion mod.. sounds cool

It's absolutely mental, if your base isn't extremely secure it will get chewed through in seconds. (Literally, the zombies eat your walls away.)

The way I have it set up is nightly monsters attack my base in waves until the sun rises, increasing intensity every night. (Theres also an item to stop the intensity from increasing, or just stop it all-together. I use them frequently ^.^

When it comes to mods, however, you do need to go into the config files and give modded blocks a certain strength. (Dirt < Stone < Stone Bricks < Obsidian. ETC)

As of now I have it set so the wasteland's Cracked Sand block is slightly better than dirt but worse than stone.
Red Rock is equal to regular cobblestone.
Basalt (From Volcanos) Is only slightly below obsidian. Cuz if I ever find a volcano in FTB I'm absolutely bound to make a base out of basalt bricks.

 

[Kumorineko]

Tip number 1:
Install Millenaire and the Backpack mod.
Number 2:
Write a diary.
Number 3:
Give yourself some hardcore variants. Clay houses, no buckets, no torches but home (also, this needs Dynamic Lights) and turning an Ars Magica (if you have it) building/village your fortress are some ideas. Also completing all the challenges of a Cubeaism deity are some ideas.

I don't really like the idea of Millenaire, the villages are too common. I like the lonely feeling of the wasteland, and occasionally spotting the very rare npc village makes the discovery all the more fun.
The backpacks mod is a good idea and I'll definately try that out for when I need to travel. (Maybe even make a bug out bag for when the monsters take over my current base.)

Cubeaism sounds kinda fun but I don't think i'll do much of it, why worship the gods of a land that has long since died ;D

Lastly, Ars Magicka, is there some trick to installing that? I tried and it started conflicting with red power. (As many mods seem to do.) I can't find the Ars Magica config file anywhere, I'm guessing it hasn't been created yet cuz of the conflicts. And trying to change the red power item id's resulted in yet more crashes. =/

But thank you very much for the suggestions.

Get a nuke or something and blow a huge crater. Put a tiny little rubble shack at the bottom of it, that can be your house.

Get some T5 monster spawners around the perimeter of the crater. Have daylight sensors (vanilla or RP2, probably vanilla since RP2 senses light and not daylight I think) check to see if it's day. If it is, then it emits a redstone signal and it turns off the monster spawners. During the night, however, TONS of mobs will start to raid your house, making surviving a difficult thing.

You can cheat in some ghast T5 spawners elsewhere in the wasteland, so if you do try and run away and escape you'll be blown the hell up by a bunch of ghasts that blend in with the clouds and the fog in the distance.

Turning on Mo' Creatures and only enabling werewolves and ogres might be a good way to make it harder, too. Wraiths might also be a good idea.


If it's still too easy for you, you should ask Greg to add a 'wasteland' config option that makes everything in vanilla really rare and really hard to craft. That's something he would probably love to do.

Your idea sounds more like something you'd do in vanilla, lol, no offense meant. I sort've like the exploration part of the wasteland, searching the big flat featureless plains of sand and ice for any sign of another person. Ruins, villages, animals. Any kind of living creature that isn't out to kill you. Sitting in one little crater for the whole game sounds like a quick way to become bored, that's part of why I installed the Invasion mod, so I could never let myself get comfortable in one place unless I worked very hard to defend it.

Secondly, Mo' Creatures sounds like a decent idea, but I don't have a good history with that mod, lol. I'm also not sure how it would interact with Extrabiomes. I'd probably miss out on a lot of the spawns.

 

[PeggleFrank]

STUFF

Mo' Creatures' creatures spawn in any biome. The ocean mobs spawn in water, and water doesn't really count as its own biome.

Also, it tends to eff up the spawns of other mods mobs. So if you do use mo'creatures for more challenging invaders later on, you might not get angry zombies or wisps or whatever.


I'm not sure how to deal with the other issues you have with the crater idea, but if the Zeppelin mod ever gets updated or if Ugocraft adds something like frames (or maybe if RP2 gets updated but we all know that's never going to happen) you could try to get the resources necessary for a blimp that you could build and then launch into the sky so you could escape.


Also, you should hop into MCedit (I think the latest version lets you manipulate modded blocks, or at least it doesn't corrupt them into normal vanilla blocks) and make some neat world features, so it's not just you wandering around on a totally flat biome with zombies coming up out of the ground and killing you. Maybe some mountains with giant holes in them would be nice, or some craters/ravines. You have an interesting place to defend from and it's also very easy to lose your position in it. Plus, once you do lose your position, you have the option to run like hell and set up a makeshift defense somewhere else on the mountain. Maybe go to the top so you can snipe down on things, but having the disadvantage of not being able to get up there easily, or you could go into a small crater in a mountain so that you have a smaller chokepoint to defend from, but with the possibility of mobs dropping down on your head or breaking through the other side of the mountain and surrounding you on both sides.

Of course, if that version of MCedit isn't public then that idea is totally pointless.

 

[casilleroatr]

If you do decide to get Biomes a plenty then the promised land dimension could be an appropriate end game target

 

[Golrith]

You could try out the Ruins mod by AtomicStryker, allows you to add random ruins/structures to world gen per biome, very easy to config. Many ruins are actually traps, leading you to rooms full of mob spawners or raining lava on you. Requires quite a bit of testing so that generation suits your tastes.

If someone could make a mod for you, how about one where water and rain causes you damage, bit like Fallout 3 (apart from the rain).

Do you play on hard mode?

 

[ex13]

How about the Falling Meteors mod? It looks really nice (I actually want to try it as well soon) and would fit perfectly to you apocalyptic setting.

Otherwise, you might want to adjust the overall survival aspect, with thirst mods or the Hunger Overhaul.

 

[Dare2Win]

If you do decide to get Biomes a plenty then the promised land dimension could be an appropriate end game target

depending on the version, in 1.5.2, bop 5.5 you need certain biomes to spawn certain gemstones

 

[Technician]

I really like this idea. Would do it myself but I'm really lazy xD.

Could you turn it to always night time? Or some mod that makes day really really short.

You could build "safehouses" and cannot sleep in any one house for too long. Each place must be purified with lava first.

 

[Kumorineko]

If you do decide to get Biomes a plenty then the promised land dimension could be an appropriate end game target

I did decide to get Biomes O Plenty, it didn't play too nicely with Extra Biomes XL, and I prefer the latter mod to be honest, so I turned it off. Underground biomes was also a no-go sadly.

You could try out the Ruins mod by AtomicStryker, allows you to add random ruins/structures to world gen per biome, very easy to config. Many ruins are actually traps, leading you to rooms full of mob spawners or raining lava on you. Requires quite a bit of testing so that generation suits your tastes.

If someone could make a mod for you, how about one where water and rain causes you damage, bit like Fallout 3 (apart from the rain).

Do you play on hard mode?

I usually play on Hard, but sometimes bump it down to normal. Unless you mean Hardcore mode, I'd go through way too many worlds that way, lol.

if i could configure the ruins mod to make the ruins more rare then they are by default, and pick and choose which ruins do and do not spawn the ruins I might consider it, I did get Ars magica working however and that fills sort've the same role. If those two mods can play nice I'll try it, thanks! =D

How about the Falling Meteors mod? It looks really nice (I actually want to try it as well soon) and would fit perfectly to you apocalyptic setting.

Otherwise, you might want to adjust the overall survival aspect, with thirst mods or the Hunger Overhaul.

The falling meteors mod sounds like a great idea, and you also gave me the idea to try and install an extreme weather mod. The occasional tornado would be a great way to liven up the day to day survival.

Makes me wish that cracked sand still spread, it would make things that much more 'interesting' over time.

I miss that feature too! Would make finding the occasional oasis be a more fleeting thing.

I really like this idea. Would do it myself but I'm really lazy xD.

Could you turn it to always night time? Or some mod that makes day really really short.

You could build "safehouses" and cannot sleep in any one house for too long. Each place must be purified with lava first.

I already can't sleep in any one house for too long because the monsters destroy them, lol. (Yes, even if I build up in the sky or deep underground.)
and I'm too lazy to do the whole lava thing, hehe. I would recommend trying it though, it is a lot of fun.

 

[Kumorineko]

Okay, now that I have my obsessive need to reply to everyone out of the way. ^.^;

I have a new question. But first some context:

I've been building my own personal mod collection for 1.5.2 for this specific purpose and I found a great mod I want to add to that collection called Mine Fantasy.

The mod adds some bits here and there but what interests me most about the mod is the smithing overhaul. Making you have to work metal with blooms, forges, and blast furnaces and forge your metal items on an actual anvil. (You actually have to sit there and pound on the anvil with a hammer too, no easy crafting method.)
However I have one problem. The mod relies heavily on getting animal hides to tan leather, you can't make any useful tools without leather, which is difficult in a world where little to no cows will spawn.

So my question is this: Is there a good mod out there that provides an alternative way to getting leather that might work in my unique situation?

Alternatively I'm trying to come up with a challenge or process I need to complete before I spawn in leather for myself using NEI, like maybe I tan rotten flesh from zombies instead or something.
This comes with the caveat of turning cheat mode on for NEI though, which is bad cuz I'm bad at resisting temptation, lol.

 

[casilleroatr]

On one of the latest Direwolf20 server play episodes he was in the nether killing these funny passive mobs that looked like dwarves or something. They dropped these special hides which could be crafted into leather. I think they are added by Natura but I don't think its public release yet.

 

[Technician]

On one of the latest Direwolf20 server play episodes he was in the nether killing these funny passive mobs that looked like dwarves or something. They dropped these special hides which could be crafted into leather. I think they are added by Natura but I don't think its public release yet.

Imps.

Okay, now that I have my obsessive need to reply to everyone out of the way. ^.^;

I have a new question. But first some context:

I've been building my own personal mod collection for 1.5.2 for this specific purpose and I found a great mod I want to add to that collection called Mine Fantasy.

The mod adds some bits here and there but what interests me most about the mod is the smithing overhaul. Making you have to work metal with blooms, forges, and blast furnaces and forge your metal items on an actual anvil. (You actually have to sit there and pound on the anvil with a hammer too, no easy crafting method.)
However I have one problem. The mod relies heavily on getting animal hides to tan leather, you can't make any useful tools without leather, which is difficult in a world where little to no cows will spawn.

So my question is this: Is there a good mod out there that provides an alternative way to getting leather that might work in my unique situation?

Alternatively I'm trying to come up with a challenge or process I need to complete before I spawn in leather for myself using NEI, like maybe I tan rotten flesh from zombies instead or something.
This comes with the caveat of turning cheat mode on for NEI though, which is bad cuz I'm bad at resisting temptation, lol.

There is a rotten flesh-leather mod

Would you be against sharing that pack with me xD

 

[Kumorineko]

Imps.
There is a rotten flesh-leather mod

Would you be against sharing that pack with me xD

Thanks for the mod sugestion, and it's not really a mod 'pack' per say. Just a collection of them I had to install manually to vanilla minecraft. I'll put a list of the mods Im using up in a bit, I'm still looking for a few to bring it all together and I wanna test out some of these mods in a more long term way to see if they'll be good for it.

 

[Technician]

Do you have any "tech" mods?

 

[Kumorineko]

Do you have any "tech" mods?

As of yet no. I want to add Redpower for the Microblocks part and Xycraft. Both are a little bit "techy" but neither of them has updated to 1.5.2 yet.

I do use Flans mod so can build some basic planes so I can get from one place to another quickly when I have a good amount of resources. Which is difficult because you need quite a bit of iron.
and I use the Old West Guns pack for it, very basic guns that fire very slowly, making it pretty balanced. So you're not running around with automatic weapons.

Also, I would enjoy a way to affect world generation to make certain biomes bigger without increasing the size of -every- generated biome, and it would be really spoiling me if I could affect the rarity of a certain biome compared to others.
Basically I want to make the Wasteland biome very large and very common compared to most of the other biomes, the way it's working for me now makes all the biomes packed together really tightly. Though admitedly this does make travel pretty challenging when you have to scale a mountain range every ten minutes, lol.

 

[casilleroatr]

Immibis has a mod just for microblocks. He has some other useful mods too.

It is also updated.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...nitubes-5502-liquid-xp-5511-microblocks-5501/