A Mild Successor to A&B

the pack feels like a good successor to Above & Beyond. just that though: good, not great

all the locational resources are done excellently, they were interesting to set up and gave an excuse for a big train network.

the tech chapters are relatively simple, with long production lines. the magic chapters are weird, with things like quark corundum automation or automated wither killing.

the chapter balancing is iffy. magic chapter 3 (out of 4) is easily the hardest one, with a convoluted system of multiple loops dependent on each other. this chapter is made significantly easier with AE2, but it's only unlocked after the chapter is finished. magic chapter 4 is hilariously easy by comparison, which was quite underwhelming.

many things in this pack are filled with needless waiting. so much waiting for no good reason. wait on trains, wait on corundum, wait on crop farms, wait on source time crystals, wait on PCBs, wait wait wait wait wait. the recipe costs at the end of the pack are exceedingly expensive and suggest you should multithread your factories, but that's horrid design in a pack centered around create. you have to choose between either building your complex factories again (really boring and unfun, plus you'll tank your TPS), or just wait.

the pack author in the discord straight up said players are expected to just wait for about 8 hours after they finish automation of one of the final challenges. do yourself a favor and poke around in the kubejs files to edit annoying recipes if you find them too frustrating (i suggest changing the obelisk crushing recipe and increasing flight orb liquid output).

but that feeling of finishing a factory, especially in this pack, is amazing. things get weird and fun, especially in the magic chapters. do yourself a HUGE favor and learn Integrated Dynamics, you are given it early on and it is an incredibly powerful tool with its readers/writers and all the logic programming. if you learn ID the pack will become easier and much more fun.