Tianyulong's Awakening

[Tianyulong]

So I've always enjoyed these sort of picture walkthroughs, so I decided to try my hand at one myself! The modpack I'm playing is Awakening by shadowake, a relatively new 1.7 modpack that deserves more attention then it gets. A major update is in the works that will overhaul basically the whole pack, and I originally planned to wait for it to be released before starting this. But a stable version of the overhaul is likely still a few months away, and I'm impatient, so I'll just start now, and deal with incompatibilities as they come. I hope you all enjoy!

Spoiler: First Steps

A quick view of the area around where I spawned.

This small island off the coast of the mainland seems like a nice place to start!

...Or not. Turns out the island is close enough to the mainland that zombies and other nasties can just swim over, even with the island itself being fully lit. Once I have a better idea what sort of starter base I'd like to build, I'll definitely move to a safer location.

On the bright side, I did manage to make a full Tinkers setup! In this pack, the only tools you can obtain are from Tinkers, so getting those tables set up is an earlygame priority. Your reward for completing the set is an iron pickaxe, which is absolutely essential, as it's your only way of mining most ores this early on. Using it, I was able to get a smattering of some basic resources, including coal, copper, jade, and some additional iron.

Jade armor might not look the prettiest, but it's cheap, and provides decent protection against hostile mobs. Maybe now skeletons sniping me from the water won't be an instant death sentence!

 

[Tianyulong]

Spoiler: Portable Storage

After crafting a flower pouch from Botania, I was able to gather enough flowers to create some floral fertilizer. I then used the fertilizer to grow even more. I now have at least one of all 16 types of mystical flower.

I also crafted a petal apothecary, the next step in Botania's progression. Unfortunately, there isn't enough space on my starter island to really move past this point, so I'll stop here for now.

I decided to remove the giant mushroom on my island. It certainly looked pretty, but this area is only a temporary setup, and I needed more space for chests and such.

During my travels, I encountered these strange ruins. I'm quite fond of the look of Ancient Rock from Thuamcraft, and having it as a readily available resource gave me inspiration. It was around this point when I built a house in a creative test world, and wrote down a list of resources I needed in order to recreate said house in survival. Unfortunately, the resource requirements are quite steep, so I'll be stuck on my starter island for quite some time.

There wasn't enough ancient rock on the surface for my needs, so I headed into the dungeon below for more. I noticed mobs weren't spawning as I spammed torches as fast as I could. At the time I figured I'd just gotten lucky! It wasn't until later that I realized my error.

Dungeons in this pack are stuffed to the gills with loot, and it quickly became clear that my normal inventory wasn't going to cut it. I decided to make a backpack to help mitigate this problem. Mostly this just requires iron, string, and leather. However, crafting a backpack also requires a bit of hardened leather, which is more involved to make!

Apiary (left), and Presser (right). Using these two machines together with a bee I captured out in the world, I'm able to create beeswax, which combines with leather to form hardened leather. I have no idea if the flowers make the apiary more efficient or not, but figured it was worth a shot.

And with that, I am now the proud owner of a basic backpack! Basking in the glory of my increased carrying capacity, I'm blissfully unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

 

[Tianyulong]

Spoiler: Frustration

Yeah, so it turns out the reason I'd gotten so "lucky" with mob spawns in the dungeon is that I'd somehow set the difficulty to peaceful by accident. Still don't know how I did that. I set it back to standard difficulty about half-way through my dungeon raid.

With normal mob spawns, these dungeons are absolutely nasty places. These water pits make great mob traps though, just be careful not to fall in!

This is the loot I was able to grab from the dungeon. I was conflicted on what to do here. I would never had been able to grab so much loot if I hadn't accidentally set the difficulty to peaceful for awhile, but I probably would've gotten some of it. Ultimately, I decided to throw out more then half of the lootbags, leaving only 2 rare lootbags, and a handful of common ones.

This was the haul from the lootbags I actually opened. That key is by far the best drop I got, it allows you access to a pocket dimension where you can keep storage and machines. I don't have much use for it this early on, but it will be a godsend later.

For the base project I need a ton of wool. I decided I get it by harvesting cotton, which can be turned into string. 4 string makes one piece of wool, so cotton provides a slow but steady source of the materials I need.

While gathering acacia wood to use in my build, I ended up stumbling into a crater in the jungle. This would prove a huge problem, as the area was a horrible death trap for several reasons. First among them, there was a jungle spider spawner inside the crater, just out of reach of my pickaxe. Not only are these spiders so small that they're incredibly hard to hit, not only do they ignore light levels, but they also give you blindness when hitting you. When combined with the difficult terrain, this basically made escape impossible. It didn't help that the area is more then half a kilometer away from my base, mostly through swampland terrain too difficult to boat through (at least, with the terrible, pre 1.8 boats).

While looking for the quickest route back to my grave, I stumbled upon this bizarre looking tree in the swamp. When I first saw it I thought my world had become corrupted, but it's the only one of its kind, and the rest of the chunk is normal.

It took me more then 2 hours and 6 deaths to retrieve my stuff, but, in the end, my persistence won out. It was so satisfying to finally reach home!

In addition to lots of ancient rock and wool, my build requires a ton of wood. Fortunately, magical forests have wood in no short supply, so gathering enough was a cakewalk.

I seriously have no idea where this cultist came from. I've walked through this area dozens of times, and that was the only time I ever encountered a crimson cleric. Totally wrecked me, but thankfully it despawned after I died.

...Now these guys have started to show up with increasing frequency. They aren't too bad to deal with when you see them coming, but getting shot in the back by large, wither-inducing projectiles is not my idea of a good time.

While at this point I'm dying a lot, I'm still making good progress towards getting all the resources I need to build my base.

 

[Tianyulong]

Spoiler: Building my House

While out exploring, I found a small village. Unfortunately it didn't contain much loot, but I did encounter a King Slime while on its outskirts. It hits hard, but is really easy to avoid (especially when he's in the water), so I was able to slay it rather easily. Beating it nets you a King Slime spawn egg in the quest book, so I was able to fight him twice too. I got a couple neat things out of this, but the best was a knight slime shovel that's significantly better then any tool I can craft at the moment. I don't have any way of repairing it though, so I need to be careful not to overuse it.

I thought this natural land-bridge was really pretty, so I decided to build my base here. It's within walking distance from the starter island, so moving is a cinch!

The area around the bridge was too hilly for a novice builder such as myself to make use of, so I flattened the area. I smoothed out that ugly cut-off hill in the background later.

In order to move into the new area, I needed some way to move my stuff. Wooden chest transporters are extremely cheap but only have one use, so you need to craft a lot of them. For now I just made two, so I could move the building materials over to the base location.

It was taking a long time to farm the cotton I needed to craft enough wool, so I passed the time by farming some xp from hostile mobs.

And finally, I'd gathered everything I needed to build my base!

There's something oddly satisfying about having your materials right next to you as you build. It's so convenient!

First I built the front porch. This is loosely based on a reference image, but I can't remember what it was.

And here's the entrance. Acacia looks surprisingly good with its new texture.

There's nothing worse then getting a lag spike, and then immeditely being murdered by a zombie that materialized out of nowhere. So much for the xp I gathered!

Good thing I'd started setting up my bedroom! I want to eventually change my bed to something that clashes less with the floor, but I'm not very familair with my options on 1.7.10.

Moved all my stuff over! I'm amazed how fast items accumulate in this pack. I have more storage space here then I did in my old base, and I'm already close to overflowing. Clearly, a dedicated warehouse needs to be my next project.

To the left of my house is a small garden, containing all the mystical flowers. The chest stores petals. I probably should've made this area bigger so that I could fit more Botania stuff in here but eh, hindsight is 20/20.

The central room of my house. The torch in the chimney there will eventually be replaced with a netherrack fireplace, but I don't have access to the Nether yet so I have to make do with the placeholder.

You know, I'd honestly forgotten the Extra Utilities trashcan is a thing. Super useful in this pack, since it's the cheapest way to void items.

And with that, the basic structure of my house is complete! I plan to refine it's design in the future, as I get access to more building tools, but this is sufficent for now.

Turns out I'd vastly overestimated the amount of building blocks I'd need to create my house. Not sure what I'll do with all this stuff yet, so I'll just keep it in the chest outside my house for now.