Material Energy^5: Entity

Despite it being such a short pack to complete (~60ish hours for my playthrough, including grinding out the last couple items for completion's sake), it was still one of my favorites. It's highly focused on quests of adventure and exploration rather than resource automation, starting you off with a fully functional storage system, power generation, and food. It has enough of a unique premise to stay fresh throughout the entire pack.

If you make it through the entire pack without finding some of the trophies, don't be afraid to look up where they are - they can be a bit out of the way at times, and this pack works best if you're only playing while you're having fun. There's at least one video on youtube that lists all of their locations.

I love this modpack. It's clever, it rewards exploration (despite being a fairly small custom map), it uses spatial cells really well, and it's a lot of fun. There are many items to collect (several trophies) that are hidden around the entire map. It's also good at explaining the various mods it uses through quests. This was first modpack with a storyline questline I played, and it remains my absolute favorite.

That being said, there are some issues. While it has Tinker's, you can't make any smelter and can only get metal tool parts from random chests. I found this very frustrating. If you go with the grave mod instead of KeepInventory, it's hard to get your corpse back - and given there are unique items, it's more important than usual to get those items back. Finally, there are optional achievements - and a couple of them are just a huge grindfest. (Or, more accurately, an afk fest.) There's not really a good place to build or decorate - you live in a precreated structure.

Even with those small issues, this remains a fantastic modpack. I think it's also pretty stylish - a lot of thought and care went into the map as a while as well as each spatial cell location. I highly recommend it if you like questing packs. Skip if you prefer kitchen sink packs, building packs, or packs with a lot of freedom.

Clearly a labor of love. Level design is consistently great and (almost) every spatial cell has a few fun secrets to uncover.

Balancing was touch and go, and the difficulty was largely in swarms of mobs with knockback or explosive attacks. The worst was if I died in a way that I couldn't easily recover my grave (one of two death options alongside keepInventory) , so I'd be trapped in a loop of dying trying to retrieve it until I got lucky or made a painstaking cobblestone tunnel to reach it.

The story was serviceable, and the quests were well done except for a few that said they were repeatable but weren't and some spelling mistakes.

I didn't end up finishing the monument because some of the requirements were just too much and some of the trophies were super well hidden. Even still, I had a good time and would recommend if you're looking for a ~40 hour adventure map experience with some teeth.