Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

I set this up for a vanilla server i ran for a group of friends and while it basically worked, bedrock users had to login to their Microsoft accounts each time they attempted to join so it got really annoying, especially on mobile.

Shield Expansion doesn’t do anything new, but it does these tried and true mechanics well. The parrying feels good, the shield designs feel great. There’s no unnecessary features.

One standout is the variety in playstyles based on your shield. Instead of a linear upgrade system where each shield is better than the last, the different shields have varied cooldowns and parry windows, making each shield have its own advantages and disadvantages.

I don't like All the Mods. This is for a variety of reasons, but I'll simply focus on ones that apply to this pack only.

• Like most "Kitchen Sink" style packs, doesn't take care to keep the overworld or moment-to-moment player experience clean. You're constantly flooded with biomes, structures, items, seeds from grass, guidebooks. It's hard to focus on what's in front of you when it feels similar to a barrage of popup ads.
• Removed "pride flag" styled bees from this pack due to developer's own biases. This is an extremely uncomfortable thing to have to think about when I'm just trying to play Minecraft.
• Unlike early iterations of the pack series, doesn't actually include very many small underrated mods like you'd expect from a pack that wants to dedicate itself to having "all" the mods. Instead it doubles down on walking you through large, well tread mods like Botania, Mekanism, and GregTech.
• Inclusion and focus on mods like Mystical Agriculture, Productive Bees, ExtremeReactors, Easy Villagers, and (mostly) unconfigured Apotheosis result in a very loose, "hyperscaled" feeling experience of playing through.
• Their "Core" mods like "allthemodium" and "alltheores" made for the pack feel very low quality. The textures aren't amazing and remind me more of a first time modder's attempt at making "the best" tools and armor for their mod.

The fun parts of heavily modded Minecraft like interesting cross mod interactions and creative problem solving are obviated away by these first order optimal strategies that immediately solve every single problem. Want materials? Grow a bunch of Mystical Agriculture plants. Power? Just build a massive Extreme Reactor. Something a villager trades that you need? Pump emeralds into it with Easy Villagers. Combat prowess? Apotheosis radically outscales everything else.

In order to keep a semblance of balance in the pack, mobs such as bosses have to have their damage and health cranked to ridiculous values to keep up with the large array of optimal solutions to problems. This makes the experience for more casual players miserable, locking them out of several mods entirely unless they want to participate in the huge expert-pack-like arms race.

I differ from most users in that I think Create does have a purpose in most packs, since it has taken over in terms of "moving world" mods. All the Mods takes this opinion and drags it into question kicking and screaming, since every single OTHER thing in Create is rendered completely obsolete by other mods. I don't think every mod in a kitchen sink needs to have an undisputed niche, but this is emblematic of the problem running throughout All the Mods in that it doesn't actually feel like any care was put into the pack all in terms of mod or balancing choice.

Performance for a kitchen sink pack is below average. I don't expect 400 mods to run like vanilla, but when mods that are known to be apocalyptically laggy like Pipez are included and presented as one of the extremely strong options mentioned above, this exacerbates the issue.

I disagree with effectively every single design choice All the Mods makes, and the politest thing I can say about it is that its shortcomings convinced me to get into pack development and mod development myself, meeting several lifelong friends and members of the community in my pursuit to make something better that I actually like.

For a dimension mod this simple, Splintered Floorboards is a surprisingly unique and well-realized concept.
That said, for a simple mod, I also encountered a ton of bugs, like the dimension's mobs spawning in the overworld, and a crash when mousing over certain mod items and pressing shift.
To reflect the mod creator's wishes, I'll keep discussion of what the mod actually does to a spoiler tag:
Create a Splinter and Bone, light a wooden portal, and go to a dimension that looks similar to the overworld, but for a yellow fog that prevents you from seeing far, and the fact that all blocks have been replaces with various types of wooden planks. Plank trees, plank caves, etc. Wooden mannequins carrying unique weapons stalk the landscape, they look just like you, but wood. As you search around, you can find houses built by other visitors, filled with signs that ask questions like "is this all there is? wood forever?" boarded-up sections of house, and even a door to mid-air ominously labeled "jump." It's a really unique and interesting atmosphere, and I feel like if there was a bit more to do in the dimension, (I'd love to see an equivalent to ores underground that require higher levels of axe,) and the mod worked a little better, this would actually be a really cool little dimension mod.

One of the most simple mods of all time. It adds a bunch of trash cans for throwing away a bunch of items. You generally don't need this mod as a lava pit will do the trick 99% of the time, but it works fine. Recipes are very cheap so i would rebalance them.

What is it ?

A mod adding a new illager boss/subboss with its own magic that you can use if defeated.

What does it offer ?

A necromancer found in his tower, which serves as a powerful foe to beat as he can shoot dark lasers or generate a field of withering darkness around him; he also can raise the dead around you, surrounding you with enemies while you are still trying to beat him. It seems the boss can regenerate somewhat (maybe he just has ridiculous hp), which means you really have to get hyper-focused on attacking him over the hordes he invokes.
After beating him he might give you his staff/armor pieces which grants you abilities such as summoning zombies and skeletons, getting some undead to your side, prevent undead aggro, grant sun immunity to close enough mobs and making your resistant to some potion effects at the cost of making you immune to the regeneration effect too.

I found that the necromancer boss fight (if fought within the context of the overly-frequent tower he spawns in) is almost too hard as it is supposed to occur within a space too tight considering his main gimmick is summoning hordes of zombies and skeletons to distract you from dealing damage to him (maybe putting stairs instead of a ladder as access to the roof may have at least offered an easy way to lure him there instead being doomed to fight in an enclosed room ? technically breaking the floor is still an option I know but still, it feels like it wasn't very well thought out). Always remember that regen/enemy spam makes for the worst bosses.

Also when I say the tower is overly frequent look at the screenshot its crazy.

In conclusion

This mod while having some potential for a simple boss mod seems more like a quick test which was never meant to be taken seriously by anyone, just another Halloween mod meant to be played once before being forgotten.
Unfortunately the mod seems already abandoned and won't receive any more 1.12 updates, which means bugfixes and new content won't get added.
I would like to mention however that a fork/port of this mod is present in 1.20.1 under the name Necromancer Mod Legacy(Raid!) ; I've played that 1.20.1 version of the mod most and might even write a separate review for it if it gets new content or if the texture issues unique to this port gets fixed (at least this mob works better within the context of raids than its original structure).

There's sadly no config file which means the mod can't support modded mobs for some of the custom armor's features (unless other mods go out of their way to add compatibility with this specific niche mod), or that there's no way to make the mod's structure rarer/disable it (except maybe by using recurrent complex's config file ? ' Don't know I have not tried)

Context: This may be influenced by the fact, that they forked one of my mods

Alright, so this mod claims to fix an issue within the original Ender's Modpack Tweaks. Usually this is nice for mods that have been abandoned and are in dire need for fixes. Sadly this isn't the case for this one.

In their description they state that they can't be bothered with opening a PR to actually fix the issue in the base mod, which is like fine in my opinion, but it would be great if they at least created an issue on the bugtracker or reached out to me somewhere to let me know something is broken.

So my next step was to at least look up the fix so I can backport it on my end as well - turns out there is no source available, so I can't simply confirm what he fixed. I then tried to at least replicate the issue they claim to have, which was a rendering issue with my implementation of "Neat" when run under cleanroom. So I setup a quick instance just to find out that I was unable to replicate it on my end - so I sadly don't know what the mod tries to fix.

The next question would be if they intend to maintain this fork in the future, but it is sad to see such behavior in our small community. I currently have no intend on reporting his fork or anything, but I would have at least appreciated a bug report or something similar.

It's a pack made for a Youtube video. If you want a pack that's short, great. Otherwise you'll find there's not a lot to do besides getting killed by monsters.

What is it ?

A mod adding a new mob to work alongside the illagers, while adding various mobs and items related to him;

What does it offer ?

A raider vampire hostile mob which can be quite dangerous as just like zombies it won't just kill villagers but transform them, turning them into vampire villagers which might join the attack instead; not only that but this mod also features unique professions for these new vampire villagers such as the Alchemist (which can sell an immunity potion ; I find this villager too OP because it can also sell blaze powder which breaks the vanilla overworld-nether-end progression), the Slaughter (which I don't find that interesting since its too similar to a regular butcher villager), the Chronicler (which is some kind of historian , selling you a special card which grants you some vampiric abilities ) and the Bard (selling you a special lute and buying the discs you can find in game).

It also adds a new event called the Nightfall plague , which makes the fog foggier and vampires stronger, among other little fun details.
I would like to suggest making/adding a custom ambient track to play during this event just like how some bloodmoon mods add their own eerie sound ambience during the event, but that won't impact my review overall.

(I did not notice any major performance issues)

In conclusion

This mod adds a new mob to join raids which has its place, is good-looking and perfectly fits the fantasy vibe of vanilla minecraft (even if in all honesty Mojang would deem vampires too close to zombies and probably never add them, but one can dream); not only that but it features extra unexpected content to go alongside its new main creature.
The mod's page is also very clear about what the mod adds, which is always a plus in my books.

That said there's some issues with the main progression of the game, notably the Alchemist selling you a nether-exclusive item from the base game, and there's probably some ways I have yet to figure out on how to make the Slaughter more unique.
The lack of a config file to allow making these changes myself/customizing the various trades I don't like makes me hesitant to use it in packs or more serious future projects, if the mod gets updated to add one among possible balance changes/if I'm a dummy and the 1.21 Neoforge version already fixes these issues I'm willing to tweak this review.

I mean it does what it says very well, it optimizes it while still making it look good. Would I recommend this over More Culling? I would say that its your opinion that can choose, but I would recommend Cull Fewer Leaves as THE leave culling mod. The only reason its lower in rate is that its just a leave culling mod, doesn't do anything super duper big.