Disclaimer, I played this pack a few months ago. It is possible some of my issues have been fixed since.

The Good:

• Very good stability. Almost no lag, frame drops, freezes, crashes, chunk gen lag, TPS lag, or hangups at all. The one serious issue I ran into was some kind of desync, where I could not interact with anything server-side. This seemed to happen after using scrolls of identification from my off-hand many times in a row. The game could not quit properly, here is the log: https://mclo.gs/AtvAuWP

• Choosing a race was cool, and felt very impactful.

• The structures in the world are very impressive, and I didn’t find myself missing AW2 or ChocolateQuest very much since these are here. Even villages feel fleshed out and modern. Great job with these, though there could be more variety. The wizard structures were especially impressive and fun to come across

• Reskillable slowed down progression significantly, which I like.

• No passive regeneration is good, I like that

• The deepslate layer is good, and I liked the caves overall.

• No tech mods or mass storage: thank god for this.

• The MCA villagers are a nice visual upgrade from vanilla villagers

• The stamina system works well enough; I almost wish it were more integrated, like being used for holding breath, shield blocking, and weapon attacks.

• Random tool quality is fun and adds some depth to choosing equipment. I also liked the set bonuses, and would even enjoy more of them.

• Worldgen is pretty solid. It didn’t feel like a generic BOP world, or some slop worldgen. It actually felt pretty modern.

• Texture pack is nice. Between that and the worldgen, I even forgot I was playing on 1.12 for a while!

• The Questbook is pretty nice. Just an introduction to explain things, and then some open ended “kill stuff” quests; I can get behind that. The tutorial for using bauble slots was also appreciated.

• Dynamic lighting: a must have in any pack, glad to see it working well

The Bad:

• Races give no explanation, and you are forced to choose 1 first thing, with no prior knowledge
  The Goblin race (and I assume other small size races) have awful camera movement whenever you are in grass. Third person mode doesn’t help much. Basically, the game is visually unplayable in grassy areas as a small race. Horse riding also obstructed the view, and made 3rd person a must while on horseback.

• Ice and Fire-itus: this modpack suffers from the same issues as most modpacks that include Ice and Fire, where deadly endgame threats like dragons can be encountered within minutes of creating a new world. The default ice and fire config of keeping them 1200 blocks from spawn is nowhere near enough. I would recommend updating this value to something like 4000 minimum, but really the only true solution is using mob stages to gate off ice and fire mobs for some time. Reskillable locking you to low-tier equipment makes this problem way, WAY worse. Even some Mowzies mobs fall in this category (the Naga mainly).

• Also Ice and Fire: why do dragons have 128 follow range? This is 4x most hostile mobs and often further than the player can even see. I changed it to 32 in the config to make them more reasonable.

• Starting progression is broken: removing wooden tools is a great idea, but no alternatives are provided. If you lose or break your starting stone pickaxe before increasing your mining skill to stone tier, there is no way to progress. Village loot does not contain stone or stone tools, nor do any village trades offer it. Even if they did, REQUIRING a village to BEGIN progression is pretty awful.

• XP grind: my #1 issue with this pack is that so much of the pack is about progression by spending XP, but the best way to get XP is villager trades. The optimal way to play this pack is to find a villager or couple villagers that offer a net-positive trade loop, and spend literal hours grinding that 1 trade until you have maxed out your Reskillable and LevelUp skills. This… sucks. It’s some of the worst gameplay in the pack. And it defeats the whole purpose of the levelup mods, which is to feel like I am progressing. Note that IIRC, the pack creator said that he intended it to work this way. Villager trade grinding is INTENTIONALLY the core gameplay.

• Healing items were easy enough to loot, but their crafting recipes were bad. They require kelp, which only appears in 1 specific kelp forest biome, which I never saw once while exploring the ocean. Maybe add more alternative recipes for healing items, using plants found on land? Or just add healing campfires/beds.

• No craftable saddle? Really?

• The hostile humans, villagers, and MCA NPCs all look the same. I can’t tell if one is going to kill me, trade with me, or offer to follow me until I get up close and personal.

• ElectroBlob Wizardry structures are awful. The custom wizard towers from Recurrent Complex are great, but the default ones are pretty lame. Plus, the structures that have a chest, which trap you in an INESCAPABLE FORCEFIELD with MULTIPLE HOSTILE WIZARDS have always been my least favorite structure from any mod. There is no reason for this structure to exist. All it does it kill noobs who don’t know any better, and once you do know better, you have no reason to loot them, since if you are strong enough to 1v3 some wizards, you don’t need the loot. The only good EBW structures are the abandoned libraries, but even those don’t seem to work quite right in this modpack. They have Lootr chests replacing the bookshelves, most of which are empty. (This has since been fixed)

• Why do wizards ask for 3 difference currencies? Replacing villager emeralds with standardized coins was great, why do EBW wizards still ask for emeralds and sapphires on top asking for coins? After playing for over 10 hours I don't think I've even seen a single sapphire.

• (Nitpick) Why is there copper, bronze, and brass, but bronze is an ore, not an alloy? Pretty weird.

• Bountiful is a bad mod, and always has been. Meaningless fetch quests which never actually fit the progression. Harmless enough to ignore them I suppose.

• Animal spawns are lame. It's mostly vanilla animals. Chickens in the swamp, cows in the tundra, pigs in the jungle? We can do better than this. I know most 1.12 animal mods have 1 issue or another, but I believe in your ability to find a solution.

• The backpack mod didn’t seem to do anything. It wouldn’t go in the chest armor slot, nor any bauble slot. Wearable Backpacks is just not a good backpack mod. Use any other.

Some QOL mods I added for my own playthrough:

• Better Horse Movement and Callable Horses: both a must for any playthrough where you make decent use of horses.

• Xaero’s World Map: I just can’t play without some kind of world map.

• Anvil Patch Evil: removes XP costs from anvils. Imo this is a must-have, especially in a pack where XP is so important for character progression, spending it on naming or repairing basic tools is a terrible idea. If you grinded enough levels to even unlock the anvil, it might as well be useful.

• Better 3rd Person: just nice to have when 3rd person mode is so important for small races

• Passable Leaves: more a personal preference, and plays poorly with small races, but I always like to have it

PLEASE set the config option in EBW so that you can exit the Arcane Workbench by pressing ‘E’.