SkyFactory 4

The progression line is lowkey not it, most of my journey was doing my own gameplay and less of following the quest book because the quest book just ain't it. However, the modpack has everything you want from beginner to advanced mods

Even though the gameplay makes your game sessions last quite a bit, I love this modpack.
I honestly don't get all the hate, as I don't really use the available tech mods that much, and also because the tree issues can be solved with filing cabinets and bonsai pots for the most part.
Exploring the Lost Cities and looting its chests is pretty fun, headcrumbs and creepers aside.
I honestly like it because it doesn't force you to make a wither blender 3000 or something like that to progress. It gives freedom to the player that not many packs that try to focus on tech do.

Aesthetics are 5 stars because it doesn't bleed my eyes out (and the Lost Cities are one thing I sank my time into and I found it good-looking) and Performance and Stability on 4 stars because it should run as intended if you aren't on a potato laptop.

In short, I don't get the hate.

This is a skyblock pack that utilizes resource trees rather than sieving like 99% of all other skyblock packs. It's a really interesting concept, and can be sped up using various custom farmland blocks, but falls completely flat in the end game when you are stuck with acorns or resins that have zero use.

The biggest draw to this modpack is the prestige system, where you gain a single prestige point by completing chapters in the advancements tab. You can then spend those points on perks that persist between worlds, such as unlocking veinminer, getting permanent potion buffs, or unlocking whole mods. You are encouraged to restart the game multiple times, and each time you're a little bit better, very much like how clicker/idle games work. Unfortunately, this too falls flat on its face. The problem is two fold: reward balance and lack of care in the advancements.

The perks you can buy early game require at least two tabs in the advancements to be fully complete, and that's an absolute SLOG when you're just starting out without veinminer. Some of the rewards require hundreds of points to unlock, which requires a new item called the Parabox to generate, something you won't get until much later in the game. The reward costs are all over the place. Just to unlock Mystical Agriculture, you need to spend hundreds of points, and by that time you're just SO done with the pack you might as well just cheat in the points. If you decide to play with prestige mode turned off, you'll find yourself missing the ProjectTree world type because you need to unlock it in prestige mode.

And the worst part is that the mod author wrote one really good chapter of advancements and then said "meh, MAKE ALL THE THINGS" with all the other. I could go on about how this makes the modpack pretty horrible, but I'll give the paragraph the same effort the mod author did to the advancements.

At least it has NuclearCraft, so that's something.

Despite being hugely popular, avoid this pack at all cost.

I started playing this pack because of the memory of good ol days, but man. The progression is fucking garbage. If you like planting 500 gigazillian different trees and twerking, It might suit for you, but for me? Hell Nah! Just play Project Ozone Instead.

Recourse trees are a cool idea, but not good in execution. They end up becoming more of a chore to use, and ends up just slowing the game down and becoming even more annoying than seives. You can do worse, but you can do a lot better

It's a decent modpack that you can have some fun in. It's use of trees, while unique, completely overshadow many other mods, and turn their respective quests (plus many more) into a boring slog that adds next to nothing to your playthrough. Has quite a few bugs and unintended interactions too, but funnily enough most of them end up actually being more helpful than detrimental. With a few pretty big exceptions...

A little something for everyone. Being able to customize your world when you start is a new approach from the previous release.