The Reaping - Brainstorm pack idea

[Golrith]

Been thinking of this idea for a while now, about a pack that due to "story line" there is no redstone in Minecraftia (along with many other rarer resources), the source of all power in our minecraft worlds.

Instead the player has to look for new sources of "power" progressing as far as they can until redstone becomes a requirement. For this goal I'm thinking of the following mods/paths:

Path of Death - AbyssalCraft
Path of Light - Astral Sorcery
Path of Magi - Thaumcraft
Path of Earth - Magneticraft/FactoryTech/Better with Mods
Path of Fire - Embers
Path of Life - Botania

I'm not familiar with most of these mods (so good start!) as I'm more of a pure classic tech mod user, so even designing this is going to be a challenge especially as there will need to be a quest book.

Eventually, you can craft W.I.R.Ps (Weakly Interacting Redstone Particals) which is a form of artificial redstone, but this crafting process needs to be a pain, but allows you to progress to "Seeds of Destruction", which is mystical agriculture, but I want to force the growing of these in Thermal Expansions Insolators only. WIRPs could be used for recipes with redstone (i.e. all other mods in pack), but that would be a real stupid idea.

After getting in a more reliable source of resources, then the old "skool" redstone based power/tech is available to the player, and most of the rest of the pack is as a standard pack.


The quest book will also reward a currency, and there will be a "rewards shop" in the book to spend the currency on various different rewards, so side quests may help your progression, instead of being left with lots of pointless rewards that you tend to get in many other packs.


I'd appreciate mod suggestions that will complement this idea, suggestions, warnings about ideas, etc, etc.
I already have a rough story line in my mind, and an idea for the game world generation.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

I really like this as an idea! it’s neat.

It’s funny, the paths that you mentioned reminded me of something - in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Ed, the Warlock class chooses a Pact to seal with some source of power. The infernal/Dark pact related to demons, the fey pact to the forces of Faerie, and the Star pact was a really interesting one - with the thought being that some stars were pinholes into the realms of madness, in which lovecraftian horrors resided, and their fell light could grant you power. Analogously to that, the Path of Death is like the Dark Pact, and the Path of Light is like the Star Pact. If it was possible to connect with the forces of the Elemental Chaos, that would fit quite well with Thaumcraft in the sense that everything comes from elemental sources. You haven’t listed botania, it’s in everything so I can understand that, but that would be quite Fae if you take the Alfheim stuff into account.

Anyway; random ramblings aside, it’s pretty damn cool! I’d almost be tempted to call your Earth Path the Path of the Mechanist. Embers is quite... not steampunk, that’s the wrong term. Magitech? Reminds me a bit of stuff from Torchlight. I don’t know if it’s got as much in it as some other things, but that said each has its own progression, tools and so on.

 

[Golrith]

I really like this as an idea! it’s neat.

It’s funny, the paths that you mentioned reminded me of something - in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Ed, the Warlock class chooses a Pact to seal with some source of power. The infernal/Dark pact related to demons, the fey pact to the forces of Faerie, and the Star pact was a really interesting one - with the thought being that some stars were pinholes into the realms of madness, in which lovecraftian horrors resided, and their fell light could grant you power. Analogously to that, the Path of Death is like the Dark Pact, and the Path of Light is like the Star Pact. If it was possible to connect with the forces of the Elemental Chaos, that would fit quite well with Thaumcraft in the sense that everything comes from elemental sources. You haven’t listed botania, it’s in everything so I can understand that, but that would be quite Fae if you take the Alfheim stuff into account.

Anyway; random ramblings aside, it’s pretty damn cool! I’d almost be tempted to call your Earth Path the Path of the Mechanist. Embers is quite... not steampunk, that’s the wrong term. Magitech? Reminds me a bit of stuff from Torchlight. I don’t know if it’s got as much in it as some other things, but that said each has its own progression, tools and so on.

Added Botania (it was on my list in my head...) just not a favorite mod of mine

Made a test world with all these "starting" mods to get a feel for things. Some things come to mind to tweak already (some things need redstone alternatives in the recipes otherwise you'll be totally screwed), need some serious sessions (in creative) with ingame manuals and online wikis to get a better grasp. Need to really adjust Better With Mods, some changes are good, others are a grind.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Ah nice! Yeah BWM can be really helpful to get a certain feel, but it’s very customisable for a reason - you can tweak it to the level of grind YOU want it to have. One vanilla thing I always liked in Regrowth was the adjustment of pistons to use a lever instead of redstone. Simple, but effective.

 

[Golrith]

Ah nice! Yeah BWM can be really helpful to get a certain feel, but it’s very customisable for a reason - you can tweak it to the level of grind YOU want it to have. One vanilla thing I always liked in Regrowth was the adjustment of pistons to use a lever instead of redstone. Simple, but effective.

Yeah, I'm thinking of a "Clockwork Gizmo" to act as a redstone replacement in simple crafts (like the piston), the gizmo is more expensive then redstone to reflect the feel of the pack (aka you've cobbled something together that can do the same basic function of redstone, like a combination of gears & springs, possibly crafted through FactoryTech/Magneticraft)

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

That's an interesting idea! If it was in 1.12, Clockwork Phase would have probably worked quite nicely for that, you might have to go with a custom item maybe.

 

[Golrith]

Big thanks to Direwolf20 for the mod review of Thaumcraft. To get started, you need redstone, so, that's a small issue Alternate recipes incoming!

 

[Golrith]

I think I may have been a bit overkill on AE2 meteorite generation. Well, you can't say you can't find a meteorite!