Divine Journey 2

TL;DR if you came here and wonder "should I try this pack?" yes you should. "will I like this pack?" well this I can't answer lmao.

To put things into perspective: I played somewhere around 300 hours and got to chapter 19 (out of 30), then quit because of lack of free time and lag induced by Thaumcraft.

The pack starts with dimension exploration (Nether, TF optional, Atum, Erebus optional, Aether, Iceika and the End) followed by a short technical block, at the end of which ME Interfaces are unlocked in chapter 13 (around 80-250 hours into the pack depending on how focused you are). Then comes the key thing of this pack which is passiving, aka you have to set up lines producing every item in the game from raw items, and scale them throughout the pack. After a bit more dimension hopping in chapter you begin the magic block, which involves having to set up many processing lines in those mod's machines and altars, which then requires scaling the prior lines higher, and higher, and higher... Most of the pack's remainder has this gameplay loop: unlock new item, try to passive it, (sometimes) find out you're out of 100500 different components, upscale their production. This is further amplified in chapter 24 and beyond when Mystical Agriculture is unlocked, with apparently "hundreds of thousands of an item being used for literally one craft which you have to do a few hundred times".

Despite this loop, there is almost no time spent doing nothing and waiting on the recipes to complete. I probably only afk'd a couple hours total (+ however much time was spent dimension hopping if that can be considered afk'ing). There is like 1 recipe early on which takes 10 minutes to execute, and then not setting up resource generation will force you to be in the cave for a few hours, but afterwards I haven't ever ran into this again.

Also wow this quest book. This quest book is legitimately amazing. The best one I've seen in any pack (I haven't played GTNH as early game things like steam age GT is too annoying for me to go through)

Now for the bad parts of the pack in my opinion:

• Despite this innovative gameplay loop, the gameplay ends up pretty repetitive as you have to set up hundreds of automatic crafting tables from the mod of your choice, and then dozens (or hundreds) of automatic runic altars, thaumatoriums, etc.
• The pack also includes a quite basic collection of mods that are present everywhere, so if you're into "inherently more interesting" mods this is not for you (some examples of this include Extreme Reactors, Galacticraft, IE), although they're usually turned on their head which is quite nice.

This is my top pick for best expert pack that's non Greg.

Unique linear progression that's fun, cohesive, and well designed. Heavy on exploring different biomes and dimensions in the early game, as well as slowly progressing through early tech. This is a pack you can easily spend 1000+ hours on, and It would be one of my first picks to do so, if I wasn't a serial pack abandoner.

This is the only Minecraft modpack I’ve ever really finished. It took me 700 hours, but it was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. The community of the pack is great (definitely join the discord if you plan on playing the pack) It so masterfully combines tech, with magic and exploration. All while keeping a detailed quest book with a good sense of humor. Highly recommend to anyone who wants a challenge and a second job.

This IS the ultimate Expert Pack.
Split into multiple parts, some exploration in the beginning, then basic tech, advanced tech, magic, and then basically endgame, this pack slowly builds up. The pack goes throught all the well-known (and some less well-known) mods and uses pretty much all mechanics! But don't worry, if you are not a pro at every single mod. The questbook guides you through all of them with all the details needed! So in theory, even someone completely new to modded could complete this pack (even though some experience with an easier expert pack is recommended imo).
But yes, this is a hard pack. It is encouraged to automated everything! Well, not everything, but a lot! Mods and items build upon other mods and items and are intertwined so intensely, that it feels very complex (you might have seen the recipe tree in the big panel on the modpack page). But it is all made to feel organic with the 600+ custom items that are added. Some are ported items from past versions of mods, some complete a set where one item was missing, some combine features of different mods and some are just for gating.
Speaking of gating, the progression feels good! You don't get too op in the first few chapters of the questbook, but you are never underpowered against any mobs or need to grind anything for multiple hours. If you can get a new item manually, the ability to automate said item comes either pretty quickly afterwards or you are not going to need more than twenty of it.
Lastly, I need to mention the community on the Divine Journey Discord Server. There are people there who have played through the pack multiple times that are still on that server and help out other people. There is a forum filled with tips, tricks, setups, and explanations, if you ever get stuck on one.
And as of writing this, the pack is still tweaked and balanced every now and then, so any balance issue that comes up can be resolved.

That was the good part, now to the less good part. With all the automation you will want to do, it is quite resource intense. This can be mitigated if you spread out your base horizontally instead of vertically, but that isn't the most aesthetic way for everyone. So beware of that. Other than that, there is nothing bad I can say.

In conclusion: Better expert pack than FTB Infinity Evolved Expert, organic progression, complex and challenging recipes and recipe trees, beautiful custom items to tie mods together. If you like expert style packs, you're going to love this one!

Brilliant quest design with clear and enticing endgame goals (the key and the mystery quests). Unfortunately on older quest mod so a little buggy/unintuitive. Extensive use of items, blocks, and entities unique to this modpack. Same old 1.12.2 mods but with a fresh feeling of balance and superior design.
However must be said this pack has possibly the worst overworld of any pack Ive ever played somehow worse than just vanilla. The rock types and surface gen is just horrendous.

Strictly in my own opinion, this pack has a distinct lack of tick acceleration. With no time in a bottle, tickrate commands, or even midgame access to expensive RF/Magic based tick acceleration.
QOL items like building gadgets and wands are for some reason gated well into the midgame. This combined with my above gripe makes the earlygame very sluggish by design.

You will without a doubt want to check into the packs discord so you can see all the tips, tricks, and get help for when you eventually get stuck or youre near to bricking your world in lag.

If you like expert packs this is one of the best ones but beware there is a good amount of exploration in the early game so if that is not your thing you might want to avoid this pack.

Uniquely from other modpacks, this one felt like a true journey (divine "journey" lol) to me. The progression line is perfectly constructed, and even the tiny details, like Atricos writing little messages in every quest, made me feel closer to the core of the pack than just the gameplay. Played with a friend and had so much fun exploring dimensions (especially DivineRPG which is set up in an awesome way), building, and quivering with excited disbelief that we would need thousands of something we just spent hours obtaining. This is a great pack for those looking for an adventure and playing through what feels like one's own fantastical story.

TLDR - There better be a Divine Journey 3 or else i will

This pack is such a journey. I don't think I've had as much fun playing a pack as I did with divine journey 2. The progression in this pack is fun, different, challenging and just interesting. I love the fact that this really brings out the expert portion, especially since you have to work around not having ae2 autocratic until chapter 13. I think the only way to summarize this pack properly is to play it for yourself.

I didn't really enjoy this pack, and I think it's extremely overrated and skewed by people who have a strange obsession for reading meticulously through thousands of quest descriptions and consider that to be gameplay. But if that's you, it does seem to be pretty polished.

Also, probably mostly because it's on an older version and has no resource pack, it's really ugly

There are so many quests in this pack when I get lost, or can't find the next step I simply have to be reminded to open my quest book. Everything is meticulously tied together, and I love the progression—it makes you want to play until the very end. At the very end there's a bag of truths, which presumably has truths in it. I'm very excited to get the bag. The textures are to be expected of a 1.12 pack with so many items, but if you're looking for a beautiful, high-performance pack then this definitely isn't for you albeit this pack performs shockingly well for its size.