DawnCraft - Echoes of Legends

i'm not a huge fan of most role play/rpg pack and this one is not bad, it just get quickly boring...

NOTE: I played the first couple of versions (1.0-1.3) after this pack publicly released, and going off their changelogs up to 1.14 they've addressed a lot of issues already, so I may list outdated stuff in my criticisms.

• This pack is one of the only ones you'll find that has Epic Fight Mod at its core. The novelty of EFM integration alone is arguably reason enough to spend at least a day or two playing DawnCraft.

• At least on release, you could've called this a youtube-bait tier pack akin to Better Minecraft and no one would fault you.

On one hand you have

• EFM
• Custom bosses built with EFM in mind
• Puzzle structures
• Custom mobs
• Custom questing

On the other hand, you have:

• Many essentially untouched configs
• A lack of cross-mod integrations
• Horrid balancing of mobs and weapons and armor. Why do ice elementals spawn everywhere? Why do hollow knights teleport-chase you a million blocks away? Why is that dragon invisible??
• Usage of shudders the Champions mod. By the way, bosses were able to have affixes too. They didn't even think to blacklist them (fixed now though).
• Untouched loot tables
• Real head scratchers like not including mods for things like health bars and damage indicators... in a combat heavy RPG modpack. Okay then...
• The custom questing doesn't have a quest tracker GUI, the quests aren't rewarding or interesting, and many crafting stations were previously GATED behind these mundane and tedious quests... AND YOU HAD TO PAY EMERALDS AFTER THE CORRESPONDING QUESTS TO UNLOCK THEM. To my knowledge they are now just gated behind the main quest
• Very little optimization. Just FYI, these folks also made Mineshafts & Monsters, another pack notorious for how badly it runs
• Lack of reasons to use different weapon types beyond boring aspects like reach and damage output
• Dodge roll, arguably a core mechanic, isn't unlocked until after your first guild quest. You may be surprised how much of an issue this is for people who start the pack without knowing about...
• The villager reputation system. In theory, can be cool, In its execution, it's just a major annoyance. Basically if you loot, kill, etc. in villages, your rep goes down, and the only way to fix it is if you pay off your bounty. Your max negative rep caps at something like 8 bundled emeralds (64), which you pay to the guild in their little treasury box. Anyways, lots, and I mean LOTS of players learned about this too late, and end up spending the next few irl days grinding out emeralds for their bounty, or start their playthrough over entirely. Remember how crafting stations and dodge roll (also all other skills after dodge) are gated behind villager quests? Yeah.
• Patreon-gated content. Yep. Lol.

To summarize, a novelty experience worth playing just for EFM, but otherwise poorly put together. Keep an eye on the pack if you are also waiting for a holy grail RPG Terraria-like pack focused on combat and bosses, because frankly out of all the "medieval" "rpg" packs out there, this one is better than most of them DESPITE its flaws. With more development, this pack has insanely high potential. Looking forward to when I can rewrite this review.