[WIP] Aurora's Garden - A mostly botanical skyblock for 1.7.10

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

Welcome to Aurora's Garden

The lore:
You awaken in the sky, with only a fragment of a world to live on. There with you are several books, together giving you an idea what sort of challenge you have been placed in: the goddess Aurora wishes to see a world of beauty and life grow in her realm, and you have been selected to create it. In her kindness, she has granted you the freedom to make a place to your own liking, though many tasks have been suggested for you. However, some are too obvious to ignore, such as growing food; unlike the gods, you require physical sustenance.

There are magics to be learned, machines to build, and many plants and trees to grow. Even the stones themselves may be made to grow and give you good things, if you are wise and resourceful!

Perhaps when your garden is ready, Aurora herself will come and walk with you, and grant you a place at her side... but until then, there are farms to till and monsters to fight. Bold adventurer, sturdy farmer, gentle veterinarian, wise witch, terrible monster: the choice is yours. Dedicate the land and build what you will in Aurora's Garden in the sky!

Details:
Aurora's Garden is a skyblock modpack focused primarily on Botania, Aura Cascade, and Pneumaticraft, with big assists from Railcraft, Witchery, and MFR. Instead of Extra Utilities with its transfer nodes and generators (too easy!), Buildcraft and Logistics Pipes take first place in transport and RF energy systems. Fortunately, there are several options to help ease the loss of the builder's wand, and it's not like you'll lack in resources once you get some mana and an orechid or two going, is it?

A few recipes (will) have been added or changed. If you can't figure them out with NEI, check the Simple Achievements book, which will have plenty of hints and suggestions for building out your own garden in the sky. Notably, certain mods have been gated through others (MFR's machine blocks require steel, for example, and you must discover a way to get rubber trees), and oil must be worked for or you won't have any at all.

Aurora's Garden is currently in alpha testing state, and not yet available for download. Comments and ideas are welcome anyway!

Mods included:
I'm still finalizing the list and getting permissions, so nobody take this as ultimate canon, including Witchery and MFR! Mods may be added, removed, or updated at any time before pack approval. Authors and links for all mods will be added soon. I just added a handful of new mods and remove a couple, so my plan is to clean up the modpack yet again after further testing. Once that happens, I may be able to bring this modpack out of alpha and recruit a select few for closed beta testing.

Spoiler: Mods here!

Magic mods
Aura Cascade, by pixlepix (it's magic-themed tech, so I put it here)
Botania, by Vazkii (of course! Be sure to select the Garden of Glass world type when making your world)
Colourful Portals
Gem Buffs
Magic Clover
Not Enough Wands
ShadowCraft
Spellbound
Witchery

Tech mods
Buildcraft, by the Buildcraft Team
Buildcraft Compat
Buildcraft Additions
Catwalks
Fluxed Crystals 2 (uses RF and has machines, though it also accepts mana as fuel, so into tech it goes)
FluxFyre
Funky Locomotion
Helper Tools
JRF Moon Sensor
Ladders
Logistics Pipes
MineFactory Reloaded
Parachute Mod
Pneumatic Craft
Railcraft
Redstone Paste
Router Reborn
Springboards
Steve's Factory Manager, by Vswe
Steve's Workshop, by Vswe
Wireless Redstone ChickenBones Edition, by Chickenbones

Food mods
Cooking for Blockheads
Flower Tea
Pam's Harvestcraft

Storage and decorative mods
Better Storage, by Copygirl
Bibliocraft, by Nuchaz
Carpenter's Blocks
Cart Livery
Chisel 2
Horizontal Glass Panes
Iron Chests
Iron Tanks
JABBA
Marble

Misc mods
ArmorStatus HUD
StatusEffect HUD
Phase Blocks
Another One Bites The Dust
Chance Cubes
Charcoal Block
Fast Leaf Decay
Garden of Glass (of course! or what skyblock?)
Journey Map
MineTweaker
MmmMmmMmmMmm
ModTweaker
Morpheus
NEI Integration
No More F3
Not Enough Items
Obsidian Boat
Open Blocks
Simple Achievements
Simple Ender Things
Spice of Life
Tabula Rasa
Translocators, by Chickenbones
VeinMiner
Waila
Wawla
Balkon's Weapon Mod

Core mods and whatever's left
bspkrsCore
AppleCore
Baubles, by Azanor
CodeChickenCore, by Chickenbones
CodeChickenLib, by Chickenbones
CoFH Core (the Forge loading screen has been disabled in configs due to the Intel graphics issue, to turn it on edit your Forge config)
ForgeMultipart
Mantle
OpenModsLib

Note on certain oft-wanted mods: If you want Fastcraft or Optifine, you'll have to add those yourself. Optifine, as most know, is licensed only for download through the author's links (and thus not through the FTB launcher), while Fastcraft actually makes my game run slower instead of faster with recent versions of Forge. As for Inventory Tweaks and Mouse Tweaks, I don't use them. Again, you'll have to add them yourself, though a sufficient outcry may convince me to add one or both of these mods for you all to use or remove at your leisure; I'm biased, but not too biased.

To download:
Sorry, there isn't a download link at this time. I'm still getting this modpack out of alpha! When it's ready for others to test and sufficient permissions have been granted, a download will be made available for testing.

About the author:
Hello! This is my first attempt at an FTB modpack, but I've been making personal modpacks for years (ever since discovering Direwolf20 and learning that mods were a Thing). I've been unable to make things for people to use for a while now, but I hope to finish this modpack soon and give you all a taste of what I can do!
-- Zeeth Kyrah, unicorn dragon magician engineer

 

[Fortanono]

Sounds awesome! Am excited to see how this turns out!

 

[electrifeye]

This looks cool, particularly as I found the mod of the month botania pack a little boring and plain, despite my failed attempts to actually sit down and learn botania. I'm glad I don't see Ex Nilho on the mods list, I feel that mod is terribly overused in these modpacks.

I look forward to trying the modpack!

 

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

This looks cool, particularly as I found the mod of the month botania pack a little boring and plain, despite my failed attempts to actually sit down and learn botania. I'm glad I don't see Ex Nilho on the mods list, I feel that mod is terribly overused in these modpacks.

I look forward to trying the modpack!

Thanks for your vote of confidence!

I also feel that Ex Nihilo is a bit overused. One nice thing about Garden of Glass is, it triggers Botania to add some things that make a "resource-free" world possible, like cobble from dirt. Though some resources are further up the progress tree: to get sand, for example, you have to go to the nether for blaze rods and make an alchemy catalyst! After you've got the basics in place and an orechid going, things settle into a pretty standard gameplay.

I've finally got a good recipe for oil, I just need to add and texture the intermediate item (you craft a bottle of bitumen in the PneumaticCraft pressure chamber, then smelt that in a coke oven to get crude oil). Still testing the new mods I added, though. I plan to update this post sometime this week with more authors and mod links, as well as some permissions statuses. Expect at least one mod to go away, there's a bit more overlap than I expected.

 

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

Updates! Sorry it's taking so long to get back on this, I had some computer issues getting in the way.

First, I've decided to remove a VERY popular mod: Ender Storage. There are several ways to move stuff between locations in this modpack (including between dimensions), and I want to add a bit of complication without adding quests. Removing an easy way to store and transport materials anywhere does exactly that.

One other mod has been removed, and another couple are on the chopping block. I've removed Silent's Gems, since the mechanic I wanted it for (easy enchanting) comes with a lot of ores and excess tools and armor (plus some pretty nice ability gems, which are effectively duplicated by other items). Not appropriate when there are already several ways to acquire enchantments (and self-repair) and add them to your stuff. I'm also unsure about Spellbound (it's pretty nice, the ore rarity is what will make/break this decision) and Gem Buffs (I want the buff gems to take damage, which I think they do, I just need to test it).

Second, I've added Tabula Rasa. I need an item or two for crafting purposes. That way you can craft your oil using the compression chamber and coke oven. It'll be slow and a little labor-intensive at first, but also pretty awesome once automated. You just need a way to fill water bottles (if you want to automate that). Also, I'm pretty sure I want to add silver ingots, for the Iron Chests and Iron Tanks mods to use. Still no Thermal Foundation, however, which was a challenge I set for building this modpack!

Third, I've begun updating configs and writing scripts. I'm still testing the mods to be sure they have the content and abilities they say they have. So far so good, however!

Anyway, if anyone would like to suggest a mod for addition or removal, let me know!