Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

AE2 has cemented itself as the go-to storage tech mod, and for good reason. The original Applied Energistics was the forerunner for mods like this and the sequel expanded on it in every way.

The channel system in the mod pushes you towards designing more efficient (and performant) storage systems, rather than spamming expensive block entities. Some people dislike this, but even if thats the case it's entirely configurable. Even without the channel system, AE2 is - in my experience - the most performant storage mod.

The way networks work is incredibly powerful, with subnets allowing for incredibly powerful but simple setups, allowing you to easily expand and modularise your storage rather than just making wire spaghetti.

My main gripe with this mod is how slow automating some of its machines can be, though addons solve this problem entirely. Some performance issues occur with giant storage setups, but that's to be expected and it's much better than mods like Simple/Refined Storage from my testing.

Would highly recommend for any tech/expert pack that needs a storage tech mod!

I first discovered this mod through playing a modpack, and I remember finding the nether fruit making the experience of staying in the nether for extended periods much more enjoyable. Rambutan especially was my favourite, and the shield is actually a really interesting and useful item.

The integration with Farmer's Delight and Create is small, but definitely appreciated. The potion brewing is definitely a unique addition, however the cures are a lot more expensive than milk in most cases.

However, when you realise this is an MCreator mod like I did, after experiencing more crashes than is reasonable for a small food mod, you'll understand why I cannot give this mod a higher rating in good faith. This mod caused many, sometimes random issues and mod incompatibility was far higher than it should be for a mod like this. Additionally, some of the content just feels weird, like the full armour and tool set made out of a fruit that almost looks like cheese?

Overall, interesting mod, if this was made not using MCreator then I would be able to recommend it. If you want to try it, take regular world backups and play it in a smaller pack.

My 2 friends and I started playing this modpack on Expert with an expectation that it carried on the legacy of Project Ozone 1-3 into modern versions, but as we got further into the pack, it became more and more apparent that most of the "expert"ness of the pack completely revolved around making recipes ludicrously expensive and then gating functional automation tools (notably AE2) behind the late-game. This made for an incredibly dull experience mostly consisting of exhausting manual labor.

The main issue: A lot of the pack is spent running from machine to machine gathering stacks upon stacks of resources to craft the next big thing, all the while knowing that we'd have to replace all of it as soon as we actually unlocked AE2 and we could set up the production lines. The typical expert direction you'd go is automating resources so you can get some passive materials, right? But at the start, all we could do was use basic pipes to automate some sifters, and that was it. Even crafting Sophisticated Storage drawer upgrades costed 8 copper, 8 iron, 8 gold, 8 diamond, and 8 netherite each, just to set up the storage for the darned machines. Oh, and void upgrades cost Crying Obsidian and Dimensional Shards and Ersatz Leather. Not to mention before the iron press this cost would be x9. Yeah, the plates are a 9:1 ratio before the press, and it used to be 18:1. Do you see the problem here? I can't get anything done without hours of manual labor.

This pack felt like trying to play Factorio, but belts required steel, and inserters required plastic, and construction bots required promethium science. No self-proclaimed "automation modpack" would gate functional automation this far back and call it okay. Yes, you can play packs without AE2 to do everything, but usually there is a complexity limit before AE2 is essentially required, and this modpack far exceeds it, and then some. A lot of the mods themselves are barely changed, too, just making an important ingredient 9x or 18x or 50x more expensive.

We had fun for the first few hours when we were just starting out in a new skyblock pack and being able to expand and grow our world, but I don't think I can really give that credit to the pack, because a lot of it is very similar to Project Ozone's start. It also runs well, and I liked having a in-game command to swap between expert and normal.

Other gripes:

• Blinding and nauseating title screen, calm it down please. Related, the loading background is really saturated for some reason.
• The mod "Cooked Foods" by the modpack author has blurry textures that don't fit in Minecraft, and the pack dev put a line in KubeJS that disables the perfectly fine Fried Egg from Farmer's Delight.
• Sophisticated Storage in-place upgrades from Non-sophisticated to Basic cost 1 storage component. Dumb, but fine. The in-place upgrade from Basic to Copper cost another storage component, even though upgrading it in the crafting table doesn't, so you'd just be wasting another 8 copper, 8 iron, ... etc.
• Some Sophisticated Storage upgrades require Functional Storage upgrades, why?
• Sophisticated stack upgrade and downgrade require 2 of the previous upgrade and one Functional Storage upgrade to make, creating an O(n^3) resource problem.
• I think this pack dev just hates Sophisticated Storage.
• Time in a Bottle equivalent is locked behind end-game, which makes it completely pointless.
• Some recipes are completely overlooked in expert, conductive alloy requires redstone ingot and copper alloy in the IE Alloy Kiln, but has the default recipe of iron and copper in the EnderIO Alloy Smelter.
• Ingot to Block compression being disabled is interesting for about 1 hour before you realize that it significantly nerfs compressing drawers. Also the compressor is gated to far end-game for some reason.
• The iron furnaces mod is actually more expensive in normal mode than expert mode, requiring blocks instead of plates.

Don't play this, basically. Don't make our mistake and build a cool base before realizing that there's nothing more to this pack than expensive recipes.

This mod certainly does add a lot of new blocks, and I would agree it is a lot better than similar mods like Rechiseled texture-wise. The crafting benches for getting new blocks are very nicely textured and modelled and fit very well thematically. Additionally, the extra foliage designs can be really nice for adding variations, and the case where a new texture has been made for a single block palette is normally done really well.

However, all mods like this suffer from the issue of quantity > quality and many of the textures have odd contrast or just feel too alike. Furthermore, sometimes when building these extra blocks make it harder to create cohesive block palletes due to choice paralysis and having so many similar options, which can actually make building more frustrating. Lastly, the variations on things like foliage and dripstone often aren't understood by other mods correctly due to tagging, so it can sometimes lead to unintended frustration.

I would recommend this mod only if there are some specific block textures in it you are looking for, otherwise I'd focus on getting more mods that add unique variation to different blocks rather than providing same-y recolours of a few patterns.

This mod adds many new particles, a lot of which fit so well you can forget its even a mod. The skeleton bones and the slime particles do help make these mobs feel more impactful.

I will say that the pixel stretching in the splash effect can look odd at times but normally it is so quick you don't even notice. Performance is normally very good, though it can make mob farms even laggier than they normally are and I would highly recommend combining this with other performance mods to make sure it isnt too much of a detriment.

As long as you aren't really tight for frames, I'd recommend this as just a bit of extra immersion!

Spark is a mod that any server owner, pack maker and performance-centric end user should have. It allows you to easily see current resource usage as well as profiling over a period of time to see what mods are using up the most CPU time.

When making modpacks, this mod can be really helpful for understanding where the performance bottleneck is in packs. It is also really useful if you need to report bugs to mod authors, such as memory leaks, as you can dump the memory or get a brief summary.

As a server owner, this mod proved invaluable for discovering which areas of the world and whose bases were causing server lag, as it has a lag overlay which allows you to easily find problem areas. For the end user it is less useful, but it can help when making large bases to understand why things are slowing down and build things in a more efficient way.

Overall, this is just an incredibly useful tool for server owners and pack makers alike and I highly recommend it.

I really have to hand it to the LumyVerse team, this is an extensive modpack. The current content features all pokemon and gameplay mechanics including megas, z-moves, dynamaxing, terastalizing, and raids, and the gyms are all tailor-made ranging from gen 1 to gen 4. All the gyms have custom structures (with varying quality based on the generation of origin, which is a nice touch), and many of the legendaries that are not random encounters have impressively elaborate structures and quests.

However, if you are expecting a casual cobblemon experience as the modpack pages seem to imply, you are not going to find it here.

What this pack actually is, is 4 consecutive kaizo runs back-to-back. All trainers have absurd AI, EV-trained and perfect IV teams, some have teams casually filled with legendaries, and several gym leaders and trainers do just outright cheat, including (but not limited to) Lorelai's pokemon knowing origin pulse and Koga in the Johto E4 throwing out a mega pokemon holding a focus sash, none of which is explicit in the modpack's descriptions and may not be apparent in a casual playthrough until the 8th gym of gen 1, where you encounter Giovanni using a mewtwo on his ground type team.

In summary, this is a hugely impressive pack and a very extensive cobblemon experience, but it is clearly not made for casual players and the modpack descriptions very much neglect to mention that.

This mod adds a tonne of new and unique machines and processes which can be utilised by modpack makers to add more processing chains. However, on its own this mod doesn't really do much. The new processing machines are honestly really unique, the helve hammer and laser especially and they add a lot of new options for modpack creators to experiment with.

The new items it adds for compatibility with other mods are a really nice starting place for modpack creators but do leave something to be desired in relation to the textures. Modpack creators should probably edit the textures of the ones they want to use. The sheer amount of items can sometimes be somewhat bloated when a pack just wants the machines to add it's own custom processes but it is still a nice feature to have.

I would recommend this mod as a tool for modpack makers who are willing to put in a lot of effort to create custom processing chains and potentially some new textures.

I'm not normally a giant fan of blood mods, and this isn't an exception per se, but I cannot deny how well this mod is put together.

Iron has once again managed to pull some data driven magic and made all the blood data driven, allowing different mobs to bleed differently, such as slimes. This makes this mod amazing for modpacks with different unique mods and a great addition to heavier themed RPG packs and the like.

The performance caused by many particles which can smartly identify height isn't amazing on low end machines but it's very good considering what it is.

Would recommend for people who like this sort of thing!

This mod integrates Farmer's Delight and Create in a way that just makes sense. The utilisation of the blaze burner to make a blaze cook makes perfect sense in terms of Create and the utility it provides can be really useful for food assembly lines. The automation recipes it provides for many of the Farmer's Delight recipes are also very helpful so pack makers don't have to implement them for each pack.

I believe this mod truly stands out from other mods like Slice and Dice because of how natural it feels to use and how the choices to prevent block and machine bloat have led to the blaze burner and sensible automation with the mixer and deployer.

The only negatives with this mod is potentially the wealth of recipes it adds, and the fact that the main cooking pot automation it adds is mechanical arms which can be slow, and it does not address the issue of the cooking pot not really having enough sizes to easily belt feed it.

A great cooking automation mod, if it is available on the version you are using I would highly recommend using this mod over the alternatives.