Rebirth of the Night (RotN)

its pretty hard and underrated modpack i play lots of minecraft modpacks and i fell like its the most underrated minecraft modpack and i wish if this modpack was popular

all it needs is for the final polish and the in game guide book to finally be complete. works for main progression but is spotty when delving into side content like the magic systems. my friends have played through it twice now and its always a good time. can you add grappling hooks back, they were a lot of fun and super helpful when exploring :).

I have played through Rebirth of the Night from beginning to end, and I can say with confidence that it has been the most enjoyable modpack I have ever played through. The team has clearly put a large amount of effort into this modpack, and I believe everyone should give it a try to see if it's their cup of tea. If you're tired of the same grind every tech modpack has, then you may find Rebirth of the Night to be a breath of fresh air as I did. RoTN has given me a modpack experience that nothing so far has been able to replicate.

Gameplay
Pros:
-Good weapon variety and armor set bonuses
-Mobs are mostly well balanced against the player
-Dodging is fun and interactive
-Harvester boss is an incredible first boss experience
-Great tech progression, not grindy, nor too simple
-Different dimensions that are enjoyable to explore and conquer
-Excellent difficulty and gear progression/gating, player progresses at their own pace.

Cons:
-Early game feels a little too starved of utility items like dynamite for clearing out land for a base
-Quality of life items (such as the Magic Mirror) are gated too far into progression, by the time you have them, the modpack is almost over.
-Starting progression by entering the Nether makes the Overworld dangerous to the point making Overworld mining less enjoyable, encouraging a long farming period before starting progression.
-Invasions are too difficult to not be cheesed through base-building and traps, which results in invasions basically being loot drops that have a chance to result in bugs/large amount of time spent cleaning up stray mobs.
-Various rough patches that make the game look unpolished, such as items that have no use (Nether honey), or the in-game Guidebook having many placeholders and being unfinished.

Aesthetics
Pros:
-Amazing soundtrack, varies per biome or underground depth, very high quality
-The texture pack looks very good, and the machines can make a base that is both functional and beautiful
-Mobs look excellent (arachnophobes will likely be triggered and should look into disabling the Mo-Bends mod)

Cons:
-I literally can't think of anything

Performance and Stability
I have a fairly solid rig, so my experiences may not match others. I had issues until I allocated only 8 GB of ram as per the modpack's instructions, and stability improved vastly. I do not believe I encountered too many bugs (outside of invasions), but you should always allow commands/cheats in case they do occur. I cannot comment on the multiplayer experience, as I have not tried multiplayer.

I've been playing this modpack for a few weeks now, and I've been having a blast. Terraria has always been one of my favorite games ever, and this modpack really gives a terrarian sense of progression to the game and your world. Bosses are cool, enemies are unique, and progressing just feels so good. Exploring caves is awesome, but also makes it so the modpack is so much better with friends. You'll end up getting mobbed by tons of monsters, which can make caving hard, and sometimes a bit tedious when you just wanna mine ores but you've gotta fight goblins every 15 seconds, but it's not terrible, if you just sprint around torching up the caves, then kill everything, you'll have some time to mine. It can get similarly rough on the surface, especially at night, but if you design a good enough base you'll be fine. Do NOT skimp out on proper base defenses, especially as you progress, because mobs will tear your base apart if it's not properly fortified. The music in the pack is great, except I hate the creepy piano music it plays in the mines, very spooky. The only reason I can't give it 5/5 right now is the bugs. Some things just don't work as intended, which can hamper the playing experience just a bit, but it never outright breaks the game (at least not for me, yet). I recommend turning commands on in your world just-in-case (I had an invasion that lasted a full in-game week till I just had to use the command that forcibly ends it).
Overall, great modpack, tons of fun, but I strongly recommend playing with a friend. And take your time! Don't try and rush to the next stage, the more time you spend fortifying, the better off you'll be when things start getting crazy.

[er, self-reviewish sorta? i left the team before 3.0 was fully released]

Where do I even begin with this? RotN has been close to my heart ever since I started working on it in 2019, and what a ride it was. Though, I'm gonna (try to) refrain from discussing anything about my developer experience and rather review the pack for what it is. I will of course be a little biased, but also a bit harsh because I know the potential this pack has.

This pack has given me hundreds if not thousands of hours of just pure addictive fun. It makes you feel like a genius at times because it really forces you to think and be creative. It tries to steer you in the right direction without being handholdy. It lets you explore whatever aspect of the pack you wish to explore. Especially in a multiplayer setting, you can really focus on whatever it is you enjoy. You can literally spelunk forever if you wanted to (and you will want to), or focus on the in-depth cooking system, the long but rewarding crafting system, the base-building aspect with so many fitting cosmetics, the defense aspect with unique approaches and traps, the progression with incredible lore and thrilling boss fights, etc. Of course, many aspects of the pack are gated by conquest elements (ie, killing bosses and discovering dimensions), but the best part is you can tackle that at your own pace. Hell, I'm an advocate of playing this pack on peaceful if that's your thing because it's still fun and such a chill experience, mostly because of how god **** good this pack's aesthetics are.

RotN has absolutely NAILED aesthetics. The moment you spawn in you are tossed into a BEAUTIFUL world with such a diverse and immersive ecosystem with a variety of animals and fantasy creatures alike. The music couldn't be more perfect, the ambience, the recommended shaders, the custom textures and CTM, dynamic trees, villages that actually feel alive and part of the world, everything just comes together to make you want to protect this world and explore every aspect of it. Not to mention just how quickly the environment and ambience can change the moment you step into a cave and hear the echoes of hostile mobs, or when the sky darkens and coupled with the soothing piano backing track and falling stars... it just feels mystical, yet not free of dangers; you're still on your toes. If you haven't spent a moment to truly take in and enjoy this pack's aesthetics and environment, I implore that you do so.

Now, unfortunately with all that being said, this pack is held back immensely by it's instability. This is not a discredit to the developers, because dear god I know how difficult, painful, and stressful it is to deal with bugs in extra large modpacks. I can not even begin to tell you how many hours I've spent debugging and troubleshooting this pack. However, when a pack such as this is not patched for many months at a time, leaving very crucial and game-breaking bugs that were already fixed months ago, it's extremely disheartening. I recognize how difficult and time-consuming it is to keep track of all the issues and commits and to release a hopefully not broken build, but hundreds of new players are experiencing this unique pack for this first time likely every single day, only to be let down when they realize they have to modify their pack install to even be playable or have their hard work become corrupted because of an outdated mod that was updated internally 5 months ago. Many of these players are likely never going to play RotN again, not because they didn't have fun, but because it was broken. And that hurts me.

I truly believe that if RotN wants to be the underdog that rises into the mainstream to show the entire modded Minecraft community what incredible talent, creativity, passion, love, and attention to detail can do for a modpack, it must develop a more efficient release schedule that prioritizes small semi-frequent patches that will lead to a more positive experience for all players.

I played minecraft modpacks since 2012 and this modpack is easily one of the best ones out there to date. Where other modpacks spend time kitbashing mods together, ROTN spends its time balancing progression, and tuning the game to create a challenging but fun experience for the player. This combined with the custom textures, music, AI, and commissioned mods perfectly synergize to make the game feel familiar to anyone used to the vanilla game loop. This modpack is awesome, play it and enjoy

I've been playing different versions of this modpack on and off for the past 2 years, and I have to say that there's nothing like it. It's surprising that a single modpack has had continuous development for as long as RoTN has, and every version brings new and improved progression and mechanics that slowly inch towards the grand vision behind the modpack.

RoTN is a "hardcore" survival modpack with achievement-based progression, and a very integrated collection of mods. Every 10-13 days, an invasion happens, prefaced by a Terraria-boss-like message, that you must defend against. The current version of the modpack has particularly difficult invasions. The strength and type of mobs in the invasions scales with your achievement progression, starting with getting good armor, then unlocking the Nether, the Aether, the Beneath, the End, and the Twilight Forest. Many of the mobs in invasions can break through blocks, and later, fly. It is up to you to build a base that can withstand the onslaught.

This modpack fully integrates each of the mods within it. Gone are the days when modpacks have Botania or Thaumcraft or some other huge mod with an entirely separate progression system. Nor are there any huge tech mods isolated from all other mods, like Tech:Reborn, AE2, or Mystical Agr. RoTN has magic, tech, and exploration within its progression system, but everything flows smoothly. You never feel like going down one path means you are at a standstill somewhere else. Regardless of what you focus on, everything is going to help you survive the night, and maybe even get to a new dimension.

The modpack has its own soundtrack and texture packs. These help in setting the atmosphere, and integrating all of the different mods with a consistent art style. You're also always free to turn off these things by adjusting your setting if you prefer the original look, or would like to play your own music.

The performance of this modpack is one of the best things about it. I use an 8 year old gaming laptop, and my CPU often struggles with running other modpacks, especially the really large ones like DDSS, SevTech, or any Kitchen Sink stuff. RoTN has way better performance. Of course, it's not perfect, but for the quantity of new and original content in the modpack, the gameplay experience and the FPS I can play it at is fantastic. I would still recommend closing as much as you can while playing though, if you're on a weak computer like mine.

Finally, the modpack has a great community on its discord. You don't have to scour old wikis or reddit posts, but instead receive near-immediate help from experienced players. And, the modpack is far from being completed; future updates promise a ton of new content that will make this modpack even more enjoyable. RoTN hits the sweet spot for a challenging progression-based pack, without the non-sensical BS of RLCraft or the monotonous grind of SevTech. Without a doubt, my favorite modpack.

I'll preface this by saying I'm not very far in the modpack. This modpack apparently has bosses and a long progression path, but I have not faced a single boss yet. This review is only for the early game, and I can not comment on the balance or design decisions made further into progression.

The mod was quite good. It feels like RLcraft but actually designed around being a playable game. I was honestly surprised, considering this modpack creator's other modpack, trepidation, is a mess of bugs and strange design choices.

This modpack is similar to RLcraft in that you have the realistic crafting trees, with more enemies and items, but thankfully this modpack is much more fair than RLcraft. It doesn't have the stupid thirst mechanic, it doesn't have the dumb heat/cold mechanic, and it doesn't have the extremely frustrating enemies that instakill you from nowhere.

This modpack also has mechanical mods, which normally I hate, but it seems to have been done tastefully here. Other mods usually have super complex mechanical blocks right from the start, but this mod focuses more on primitive mechanics, like having a mill powered by a river, or using a campfire to heat a crucible. This is so much more reasonable and enjoyable.

There are also quality of life features, like the ability to track teammates on your HUD with a compass at the top of your screen (which for some reason required restarting the server for us after we joined a team, but oh well), the ability to sprint left and right, appleskin to track your hunger, JEI, et cetera.

More interestingly, this modpack gives enemies the ability to raid your home, break blocks, and tower up. This makes enemies much more of a threat, and makes minecraft combat feel, dare I say... dynamic? It still has issues, but it does fix minecraft's old problem of enemies being completely unthreatening if you use the ability to build/break blocks.

My personal favorite modpack. The gameplay speaks for itself. Also try Underdog.

[Self-Review]
As of version 3.1.1, Rebirth of the Night is a healthy mix of new content, a cohesive experience, a lot of promises, and a bit of an unfinished mess.

First of all, not just any system can run this pack smoothly. With a minimum requirement of around 6 gigabytes of RAM and a selection of more than 300 mods, RotN pushes Minecraft optimization to the limits, making use of all the mods you would come to expect. Entry requirements aside, there is a 90% chance you will experience at least one annoying bug during your experience, but there is an
equal chance that you will want to continue playing and be able to do so despite the stability of the pack.

When it comes to progression, it is unfinished, and a sizable amount of info, both in and outside the game is outdated. It promises a hardcore but fair experience... perhaps surprisingly, it delivers, for the most part. And although it may seem I am being too harsh, that is only because I really love this modpack.

The early game is probably where the game shines; guided by an obscure and many times forgotten "guide" written in first person within the player's inventory and an extensive array of advancements, the game gives you a rough idea of in which direction to go, but it is up to you to survive the first day. Overhauled recipes and a typical "realist modpack early-game extension" sets you on a hunt for resources to build defenses--and you want those defenses up to fend off the block-breaking mobs.

After recreating early historical technology with things such as kilns and windmills, the pack delves deeper into the fantasy aspect with many non-existent materials such as gem "ingots", viridium, mYthril, exorite, dragon steel, etc, etc; everything kept under lock and key behind invasions of enemies, dimensional travels to the depths and heights of the world, heavy-hitting minibosses, an annoying plague, and more recipes that you can keep track of (write a list!). Where this chaotic mix of tiers shines is probably with Set Bonuses obtained from wearing specific combinations of equipment and with a growing feeling that you can face your enemies, but never truly get comfortable.

All in all, careful attention paid to texture and recipe consistency is one of the greatest hallmarks of RotN. After all, for someone new getting into the pack, it feels like most things belong. Yet the game falls short; having been in development a little over 3 years, this modpack is still far from finished, and just like the Twilight Forest's Final Castle on its own at the moment of writing this review, Rebirth's implementation of the dimension along with the rest of the end-game is notoriously unfinished and rough around the edges.

There are many plans to continue the development of the pack, but leaving copium aside, does the pack itself stand on its own legs? The answer is probably yes, given its continued popularity, somewhat active community, and power to inspire other modpacks to mimic its level of attention to detail.

Rebirth of the Night is an immersive and unforgiving modpack that demands a lot from you, but that can return the investment threefold, that is assuming you are willing to ignore the lack of objectives after a hundred or just five hours of progressing without someone handholding you.