Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

I find the modpack theme charming, with tons of replayability between classes.
Rougelite was implemented very well. 10/10, will recommend

soooooo as it turns out the 1.20.1 fabric version of the mod (I only tested the latest Neoforge release) actually already features an alpha test version with tweaks and changes which do take into account some of the complaints people including me typically have about the mod in its current state, especially concerning the warden kill requirement and the quality of the block textures which have drastically improved.
I am waiting for the update to be out of Alpha to properly cover the newer changes

What is it ?

Deeper and Darker is a mod which aims to answer the question : what is behind the portal-looking structure within the ancient cities ?
It currently only features a world made of sculking caves with a couple of different biomes, mobs and one hidden structure to plunder.

What does it offer ?

A whole new dimension called the Otherside which is one of the ambient horror type, containing four new environments, more mobs (mostly sculk-based and with base melee AI taken from the zombie) and a structure which has both loot and serves as a way out in case you lose your portal (which is pretty nice).
It features its own biomes (being the deeplands , the echoing forest , the blooming cavern and overcast columns ) with most containing individual blocks and ressources making them worth exploring.
The Transmitter and Staff are very interesting to me, and I would love to see more in terms of sculk-inspired technology, redstone engineering or combat (tool to crawl in walls like how the warden comes out of the ground ? Helmet blinding you but allowing you to witness sounds through walls ? there's so much potential to go wild with these concepts instead of staying satisfied with more powerful variants of already existing minecraft content I'm looking at you Soul Elytra ).

In short, this dimension could be seen as a slightly more interesting mining dimension with a unique horror twist in the form of being the home of everything sculk, while still having some extra content.

To start with the flaws, aesthetics and sounds matter to me, and I don't really like that most mobs just rely on the default player hit sound effects nor emit ambient sounds (the later could still be explained by the dimension being themed around darkness and silence technically speaking). I usually like it better if a dimension has a custom ambience or soundtrack, but to me it isn't an absolute prerequisite when it comes to the Otherside since it is sort of the Warden's lair and an interpretation of where the sculk comes from, so even if having a whole new ost to listen to while there would of course be amazing, it shouldn't the main priority to focus on when thinking about updating this mod I feel;
Still, I think future updates could at least remove the vanilla overworld music from playing there since it obviously doesn't fit with the more horror feel of the dimension.
Another thing is that entering the dimension requires killing a warden, a mob which is explicitely meant to be avoided hence why fighting it seems quite unbalanced and uninteresting in the base game as it is both fast, strong and resilient too (a combination of those three stats being really high is usually something you want to avoid while designing an enemy you are supposed to fight against, I would recommend checking videos about game design principles themed around enemy design since it could also serve the purpose of giving ideas for more unique behavior for the mod's various custom mobs); With this mod, if there is still a want to need fighting a big foe in order to light the portal, there is a need to change the way the warden behaves in combat or make another creature be required instead (same goes for most warden-related drops, which can already be obtained through other means which I find great).
I have also noticed phantoms spawn within the dimension, which while I love the idea of putting phantoms outside of their sleep mechanic like in the End I feel it doesn't really work that much within a heavily cavernous dimension, but maybe there could be creative ways to have them still work, it is just that if they end up spawning naturally they will constantly bonk their heads against ceiling and walls (and this dimension has a lot of that; maybe make them structure-specific where the structure is designed to take them into account ? idk).

In conclusion

Knowing this dimension mod was made before any and all announcements which are related to The Sift , I would like to say that even if it feels gimmicky at times, it could be turned into something far more interesting and is weirdly on point with some of its features.
The mod is well documented (having its own WIP wiki and outside documentation too + advancements, something I tend to forget about) and while it doesn't have a lot of configuration options, it having a config file is still better than nothing at all.
While this mod has plenty of flaws in its current state, I have no doubts it has great chances of changing with later updates as it is clearly stated on the mod's page that there will be more in both content and tweaks as there might be an added internal progression within the dimension;
Do not forget that they have a discord server where you can give feedback to and actively participate in overhauling this dimension mod, which has great potential while not that interesting currently (check out the mod's page, the link is there to be found).

Like I've said before : there's potential for this new dimension, and most beloved minecraft features are developed by multiple people drawing inspiration from several sources, so I am glad to see this project encouraging people to interact with it in this way, discussions are the best way to obtain a mod which might be liked by most.

The Good

• The start is perfect
• Character creation is fun
• The introductory story text is very nice
• Choosing a starter kit is great, and the options are flavorful and exciting
• Choosing a starting location is amazing
• Guns (musket and flintlock) are very well balanced as an expensive but powerful early game option
• Mugging Illager caravans to loot their gunpowder is awesome
• 0 starting mana makes choosing to become a wizard with Irons very interesting
• World Gen is generally very good. Pleasant to look at, and reasonable to traverse
• Healing overhaul is well done
• The method of getting to the Nether and back is excellent and immersive
• Immersive Gateways is amazing
• No natural mob spawns is an inspired choice
• Soundtrack is one of the only ones that feels fitting and sounds good, without playing too much
• Realms RPG skeleton blocks are great for an optional easy fight
• Illagers are balanced well to provide a challenge in the early game that can be overcome
• MCA is implemented well, especially with Numismatic Overhaul
• Natural structure spawns include a nice variety
• Dynamic lights is a must, and integration with the lantern curio slot is very nice
• FleshZ, saddle recipes, etc are nice QOL
• The tree-felling mod plus fast leaf decay works great
• Traversable Leaves is excellent
• Smelting broken tools and armor down works great
• World Gen and server tick performance seems very stable
• Callable Horses, Horseman, Carry on…

The Bad

• Progression tied to exploration
• Specific nether tree required for Hexerei drying racks (why can’t we just use normal drying racks?!) Hexerei in general is always a huge pain in the ***…
• Material tiers tied to buying a blueprint from villagers
• Map to the main quest must be purchased from villagers
• Mid-late game recipes are overly complex and mutli-staged
• Maybe some people like these, but I prefer single step crafting like vanilla. This ruins the pace of late-game for me.
• Diamonds were bad enough, but the Arcane Cloth recipe is a sin against game design.
• Recipes are generally designed from attempting to make random rare items useful, but without alternatives, this turns many recipes into annoying fetch quests for particular items, relying on luck to get the world gen needed for the right items.
• Hexerei recipes are tedious and cannot be automated. You will spend many hours sitting in front of a mortar and pestle or cauldron, manually refilling slots one by one.
• Please remove Hexerei, this mod is never good in any modpack
• Mild case of Ice-and-Fire-itus: some enemies that can be run into immediately are far too strong to fight in the early game. Enemy progression should be gated better to prevent running into enemies like this until the player has reached mid game at least.
• This includes: some desert kobold minibosses, shrimp miniboss that spawns on beaches
• Frequent crashes
• FPS is not always very stable
• Game often hangs for a minute when joining a world
• Aleki’s Nifty Ships is too involved and tedious, and not very fun to use.
• This should be replaced with Small Ships
• Structures and POIs too rare (you can travel for hours without running into anything notable in certain biomes, especially forests and jungles)
• Alex’s Mobs has not been configured enough
• Everyone hates mosquitos, disable these.
• Anacondas are a bit too strong to run into early game, and realistically shouldn’t attack people unprovoked anyway.
• Disable Seagulls stealing items
• Why do jungles spawn creepers constantly? And why do they look like weird deer?
• Backpack mod literally cannot be accessed without removing it and placing it on the ground? Useless.
• This should be replaced with pretty much ANY other backpack mod.
• Minecarts are left vanilla, meaning they are slow and not a viable method of transport
• Some mod to add faster tracks would go a long way here
• Bountiful is a worthless mod and should be removed

The mid

• Overgeared: in depth blacksmithing.
• Map atlases requiring a constant supply of paper is a bit tedious, though immersive
• Luckily, tree felling + stripping bark from logs + paper recipe from bark means its always doable
• I personally would probably just prefer to have Xaero’s minimap tied to having a map in a bauble slot, or have the Map Atlas not require constant paper
• Currently, you can turn paper into maps 1-to-1 using a compass. There is also a config option to allow Map Atlases to accept paper directly. You could cut out this pointless middle step by enabling that config option.
• “You cannot sleep in such a horrible place” mod is fine
• Knapping stones to get stone tools is immersive, I may slightly favor it over vanilla. The mechanic is never used again, however
• Enchanting gems are whatever. The recipes are a bit tedious, but the concept is neat.
• The questlines are nice enough, but I do hope to see them expanded in the future.
• Epic Knights adds a bit too much bloat. Too many armors that do the same thing, and too many aesthetic-only options. This makes it difficult to figure out which armors are better than others, and which ones come with a load.
• Without some kind of nutrition or Spice of Life mod, Farmer’s delight and its addons feel somewhat like bloat here. I have no incentive to eat a variety of foods instead of just spamming the most efficient option.
• These alternate horse controls are nice when traveling long distances to be able to keep moving while in an inventory, but otherwise can be much more inconvenient. Horses keep their last momentum, so if you dismount when a horse is going full speed, the next time you remount, the horse will immediately take off in whatever random direction it is now facing. Not very immersive, mostly just an inconvenience.
• Torch recipes are odd. The main recipe now uses straw, which is a bit tedious to collect considering how many you need. The other recipe, just placing a stick on a campfire, is practically free by comparison. Overall, I’m not sure these recipes really add much to the gameplay. The vanilla recipe would work just fine.
• Better Combat is once again failing to provide any value compared to vanilla
• The partial keepInventory setup is nice, however the enemy progression is still nowhere near good enough to prevent deaths that feel unfair. Until that improves, proper keepInventory is a must.
• Seasons still don’t fit very well into Minecraft

As a simple addon to Vampirism, Werewolves does a good job at what it sets out to do. The Werewolf Heaven biome is pretty simple, plus the different tree colors it adds are quite nice for builds that would want softer pinks and blues. The werewolves themselves are well made and I really love the design of the models. Having the ability to customize your own werewolf form is also a nice touch and the options available are decently expansive, even if it's just fur and eye colors. The different abilities that you can get from leveling up are quite nice as well, but I will say that some of them are pretty basic, like mitigating the negative effects of being a werewolf or general attack or speed buffs. The different accessories that can be acquired offer enough of a range of buffs to feel like you can made a build of sorts.
There are some things that are a bit iffy for me, primarily the quests and how you level up. The quests from Werewolf Representative villagers are pretty basic and mainly consist of killing a certain amount of targets (mostly skeletons) or getting certain items. They're nice additions, but because these quests are the main way you get accessories and specific items (like minion items and oblivion potions) the quests quickly become boring. The Werewolf Lord quests especially feel this way since they require quite a lot of materials, which is typically stacks of gold or rare drops from Alpha Werewolves, and/or capturing villages, which is a pain with how raids work in Vampirism. The leveling system is pretty simple, but unless you look at the wiki, you won't know how to make the altar necessary to even begin leveling up. Having at least a bit of in-game documentation or even randomly generating the altars in Werewolf Heavens would fix the issue.
The only major issue I have with this addon is just that it doesn't get the same amount of attention as Vampirism. Vampirism has a bunch of addons and more fleshed out systems than Werewolves, making the differences in quality apparent. While I think Werewolves is a great addon, it rarely feels more than that. I definitely wish this addon gets more support from the developer to give it a stronger identity of its own.

Believe the hype. This is a datapack that knows what it wants to be.

What is wants to be, is vanilla+, with a bit of an edgier bite to it. It has unique aesthetics that fit together pretty well, and the progression is fantastic. I think I will steal its basic progression concepts for my own pack. My favorite is how most materials have built in enchantments, which diversify them and give them each a niche. I also love how most materials have upgrade paths in the smithing table.

Yeah, silver is 100x rarer than diamonds for some reason.

Yeah, getting the fishing achievement is a massive grind entirely made up of Minecraft's tedious fishing minigame.

Yeah, the End + Ender Dragon + Elytra kill the game once you complete them. But were YOU expecting a datapack to solve the ultimate Minecraft design challenge of making an actually fun endgame? I wasn't, so I wasn't disappointed.

I played on the Smooth Matcha fabric pack, and had amazing performance the entire time. No bugs or crashes at all.

This pack takes a different approach to solving bloat. Instead of removing unnecessary content, it just reflavors it, and tries to make it all fit together.

I don't think this actually works too well. It ends up just being overwhelming with the sheer amount of items, mobs, blocks, and biomes. If I wanted that, I would just go play GreedyCraft or AllTheMods or something.

It's missing the usual QOL mods, and the early game progression felt pretty meh. I got some diamonds from excavating, but it seemed like the actual progression is pretty much just vanilla (with lower ore rates?). Alex's Mobs is here with zero configuration attempts made to make it actually palatable as well, hate that.

It's nice for it to have starter kits, but these starter kits involve Curse of Binding items with Unbreaking 4 and Reforming... Which means you can never actually take them off, or break them, and thus you can never upgrade your armor. Pretty baffling choice.

Overall this feels like one of the less polished modpacks I have played in a while. Which is disappointing, since the mod author sounded like a smart designer who cared a lot about polish, in the modpack description.

Performance was quite good though.

Chalk up another failed RPG/exploration pack.

One of the very first things the quest book explains to you is that you shouldn't look up. Not yet. And I think that first chapter established a tone and expectation that there was no way a pack designed like this could ever fulfill.

It starts with a special strength that you do not often see in questing packs, with a narrative that you don't really understand but feel like you'll slowly unfurl and discover over time, then it softens into a healthy serving of slop. Thousands of iron in your sophisticated storage before you even set up your ae/rs network-type of slop. Notice that I said AE OR RS. Yes, it's another one of those packs where the developer is too scared to force one or the other upon you, leaving one path or the other in your quest book unfulfilled forever. That problem persists across power sources, machines, everything.

Pick a lane packdev. Stop being scared to enforce your vision.

This is an odd pack for a variety of reasons, one of them being that the pack developer made 7-8 mods specifically for the pack. They are rehashes of other mods and I have no idea why they made them considering how their features all exist elsewhere or could just be Kube'd, but it is nice to see custom content.

Otherwise, there are strange happenings all around you. Void Ghosts of yourself flicker in and out of reality, following your movements. Tears in the sky open up without warning. The 8th Gateway to Eternity in the past 5 minutes opens up to your left and it's always the easiest difficulty, as if you're expected to fight a gate every other chunk or something.

For every strange or cool happening, there's another one that his lame or unbalanced. You'll know just how rotten the configs are when you reach the Warped Forest in the Nether and half the Enderman population are Mutant Enderman.

At the core of it, is a custom mod made by the pack developer called the "Void Relic". An alternative take on Project E, but with less of the Equivalent Exchange and more of the Klein Star leveling. It's a trinket that can be powered up via a 5x5 obsidian ritual altar, as well as a variety of machines that handle, manipulate, duplicate, and power themselves with the mod's power source. A fluid called Essence. With each level, up to 5, the Relic grants you increasingly powerful buffs, from water breathing and night vision, to flight.

It has misc uses, but while they are novel, the quest book does nothing to explore them.

The second mod is "Swarm Miner". It's the Digital Miner from Mekanism, but drones instead of whatever the DM uses. They clip through the ground and seemingly home in one whatever you set for them. They suck up a hilariously small amount of power (I could power a swarm of 8 with upgrades and a Furnator from Powah) and spit up just as many items as you'd expect.

The last mod of the 8 customs I want to bring up is the Quest Slot Machine. The rewards are not gated and you can get everything from Nether Stars to Baked Potatoes. Naturally, almost every quest rewards you with a coin to spin the wheel. You likely won't even need to go mining.

When you put these all together, along with Apotheosis, Enchanting Infuser, Agritech, All the Modium, and all this other JUNK, you can see how the story goes. You go into the All the Modium dimensions before you fight the Ender Dragon (End Remastered btw). Let's wrap this up.

There's nothing in here that suggests that story will ever come back. The tone in the beginning was an accident. Nothing happens if you look up. Those ghosts become annoying more than they become interesting. You get strong early and stay unchallenged and unquestioned beyond there, escalating through all the modium until the final chapter of the pack.

Can you redeem something like this? With a major re-design, maybe. To make this many custom mods, even if you vibe-coded them, for your pack is either an act of cynically farming CurseForge for money or because there's a specific vision you're chasing, then I think you have to care at least a little about what was created here. It's not good, but with better design, maybe a second pair of eyes, the strengths can be capitalized on in a way that's not so empty.

1.5/5. Didn't Crash, Had Custom Mods, No Bite, No Balance pass, I think BetterMinecraft was more interesting. Starts crunchy and turns into mush before you're done eating.

The visuals, audio, and music are nice. Excalibur resource pack is awesome, had a great time building with it.
Gameplay balance is wack, though.
I played as an archer and spent countless arrows just to clear one dungeon near spawn, and didn't get worthwhile loot. Many times I had to switch to melee and resort to blocking off a doorway and kept swinging and swinging just to clear a room after running out of my stacks of arrows. Searching for more dungeons was a pain, as enemy levels scaled the further you go. Spawned in an ocean and need to travel 1k blocks to find land? Now you have to deal with mobs that have more than double HP on the surface, and nearly 4x underground. Found plenty of underwater dungeons in the ocean though, but they all contained **** tons of Illusioner pillagers, so those were a no go for me as I need sight to hit enemies as a ranger, and Illusioners blind players.
Also, the entire time you play you have a chance of getting merc'ed by a random mob called the 'Trespasser'. They have several variants, like Spellsword, Crossbow, or just a Swordsman. They have TONS of health and armor, move incredibly fast and their ranged attacks are homing; and bypass your shield. They spawn even near the world spawn, so that means no grace period regarding their spawning. Even if you Prot 4 your armor and reroll your gear with Legendary modifiers, you're likely to get trashed on by them. Best thing to do about them is to hope you can spot them from far away, and avoid that direction until they despawn on the mini-map, or slowly pick them off at range with a bow. Takes like 150+ arrows to do that though, so hope you brought enough arrows.

Performance is fine...-ish. Didn't really have much problems on that front until I had to start farming animals to supply myself with leather ranger armor and arrows. 30 to 40 cows was enough to bring the game to a crawl of 10 FPS looking in their general direction, even with shaders off.

Tbh becomes pretty great when using not-so-essential or essential patcher tho

WITS is an incredibly simple mod. Don't know what mod the structure you just stumbled upon is from or want to know specifically what it's called? /wits will tell you. But what if there are multiple structures nearby? /wits will list them all. Importantly, it does both of these without needing to enable cheats.

This is great for two main scenarios:

1. I'm playing a modpack with either unfamiliar structure mods or a large amount of structure mods.
   (If I like the structure, I might want it for my own modpacks. Or maybe the structure makes more sense contextually once I see what mod it's from.)

2. I'm playtesting a modpack I'm developing, and I curiously happen upon a structure.
   (This is useful in a few ways, such as changing a structure's spawn rate, spawn radius, or otherwise tweaking it; Without WITS, I wouldn't know what structure to tweak.)

Given its simplicity and straightforward execution, I add this to pretty much every modpack I make.

As an aside...

I actually didn't know about the admin tool to target a specific spot in a specific dimension, as opposed to just wherever you happen to be. Personally idk how I would apply this, as my first thought to check a structure where another player is would be /execute as <player> at <player> run wits, but /execute at <player> run witsop ~ ~ ~ could work too.