Life in the village 3

Life in the Village 3 is the third Minecolonies-focused pack by dreams01. It's low tech - no RF/FE, no machines, and has no magic mods, either. It does utilize Create, and weapons are done using Tetra, so there's plenty of progression there.

There are tons of locations to discover, and you can use Productive Bees to help get resources to build your colony. (Necessary if you don't want to wait forever....) There are also a lot of decorative packs to make your colony look nicer. (Beautify, Chipped, a bunch of furniture mods...) I hadn't used some of them before and had a great time adding little (and big) touches to my colony.

There's a ton of quests, almost all of which give levels or coins for a shop, or both. Some items (such as waystones) are rarely found in the world and are uncraftable, instead being purchased from said shop. The first half or so of quests have good descriptions, but later quests get less and less, often just having the advancement text and nothing else.

There's a lot of focus on having companions - both human ones and animal ones, as well as being able to use the Minecolony guards as companions, too. Doggy Talents Next is in there.

Overall, it's a fun pack that has a nice combination of exploration and base building. It's great to have a pack that's focused on Minecolonies instead of it just being tossed in there. However, there are some downsides.

The Human Companion buildings are waaaay too common - it felt like you stumbled on them every 300 blocks or so. They also get pointed to by signposts, as they apparently count as a village? Which sucks when you first start out and are searching for villages. The various mods add tons of new enchanted books - dozens, in fact - and there's no way to cycle through villager trades. There definitely should be at least a cycle trades mod, if not full on Easy Villagers or similar. Trying to get the books I wanted (some of which were for a questline) was incredibly frustrating until I finally gave up and added a mod so I could cycle the trades.

Additionally, and a bigger issue imo, is that several of the quests in the book are unachievable. Changes to the modpack (like removing certain animals from Alex's Mobs or changing how mineshafts generate) make getting the items/locations you need impossible. Other quests have no descriptions and no JEI, making it difficult to figure out what to do for them (Phantasmic aka Netherific - look in the advancements for some hints).

I did report these issues on the discord, so hopefully it'll be fixed with the next release, though I believe most of the focus of the dev is on the next modpack, not this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing this pack, putting in about 200 hours. I completed most achievable quests, though I skipped some of the Alex's Mobs ones. Despite the issues I had with it, I overall thought it was an excellent pack and a great choice if you want to play Minecolonies.

Avoid this pack if you need technology or magic mods, or really love mechanical automation. Try it if you enjoy Minecolonies or want to try it out, love exploration, and don't mind a bit of mistakes in the quest lines. If you prefer more technology, the pack creator also has Industrial Village, which is Minecolonies + Immersive Engineering, by the way, though I can't say how good it is. (I am burned out and going to avoid Minecolonies for a little while, haha.)