I had fun with this pack, for however little time I played it. It is well balanced and well thought out. It never crashed on me, and it ran at ~80 fps on my laptop. It does have it’s issues and quirks, and it is a shame it seems to be no longer updated since 1.0.

Where do i even start huh?

Tectonic has all the features in overhauling the worldgen, by default you get higher mountains, deeper oceans, not strictly a bigger cave system, but definitely a more diverse one, a pretty nice river and other worldgen features, but by far, still pretty for Vanilla+

The kicker however is within the fact that Tectonic is highly configurable amongst many other worldgen mods. You can modify almost everything within it. Starting with world height (both Max Y and Min Y), the cave carvers (the code that carves caves), continent sizes, river sizes, erosion (basically horizontality/verticality of certain features), islands, oceans, ridges.

And on top of it all, a really configurable biome spreading that uses temperature and vegetative parameters from every biome to determine how the overall world looks, that has compatibility WITH ALMOST EVERY BIOME MODS (Terralith, BoP, BWG, Regions Unexplored, Natures Spirit). You can make cold biomes and warm biomes has a certain amount of separation between them, and have biomes with less trees be far from biomes with lots of them, super realistic.

One last point, unlike some other worldgen mods that causes a HUGE performance hit, Tectonic only consumes so little on most of my modded playthroughs (worldheight set to 480 though), it genuinely baffles me on how the devs optimized the code.

But sure it does have a shortcoming in some terms. It basically overtakes the worldgen from Biome mods, making certain unique worldgen noise (the tendency of how the biome's affecting it's land, e.g plains is flat, mountains is rising, grasslands is flat), either completely got overtook, or have only a little effect. Luckily it doesn't affect any placed features like in the BWG Ironwood Gour, BWG Lush Stacks, etc.

Another shortcoming is that while the mod is really configurable, i feel like there needs to be a more descriptive documentation or tooltips in each configurable settings, as right now some players without any technical knowledge may have issues in customizing Tectonic. On the note of configs, i do wish there's a way to safe and export presets that you've made (other than directly copying and pasting the json).

Overall, an absolutely no brainer mod to add into any packs you got. 10/10

This was the first expert pack I ever played and I'm glad it was. It wasn't too difficult and the progression was fair, although the endgame gets pretty involved.

Very helpful questbook and community. Learned a lot about chemistry and GregTech. Had fun making factories

For anyone looking for a modpack that has boss oriented progression, this should be a must try. Do note that it requires Create to progress and in the current state of the modded minecraft scene that may be a dealbreaker for some. If you do decide to give it a try you'll be rewarded with a thoroughly enjoyable experience, the modpack features a welcome revamp to Create: Enchantment Industry and some features of Apotheosis. I personally found only one aspect that could be considered a big drawback, and that would be the existance of one Iron's Spells and Spellbooks setup that both trivialized boss fights and overshadowed any other styles/schools of magic; this is obviously more of a mod issue rather than a modpack one, but it is worth noting nonetheless.

Great skyblock modpack for people looking for clear progressive goals focused on automation, while avoiding the usual resource generation methods, which the vast majority of the community has gotten burned out of.

Positives:
+Beautiful art direction
+Deep progression
+Diverse weapons and armor
+References to other media
+Unique bosses
+Accessories galore
+Expansive structures
+Difficult
+Super sniffer

Negatives:
-Large scope
-1.0 unreleased
-Not enough early game content

Overall a phenomenal mod that may be the only one you'll need to install for a good time and a long time. I am looking forward to 1.0!

Initially a friend and I landed on MeatballCraft because we were looking for a mod pack that would match our very different playstyles. I am a very tech/automation-focused player and he is a more adventure/combat/RPG-focused player. MeatballCraft is, to date, the only pack we've ever found has ever kept both of us interested throughout the time we both put into the pack and we only made it to roughly Chapter 3 or 4 during our approximately 1,500 (combined) hours of playtime (1,000 for me, 500 for him).

The Early Game

The mod pack starts of very in a very kitchen sink style with unlocks coming pretty quickly, mostly focused on cosmetic blocks and quality of life features. Things like ProjectE's Transmutation Tablet and Philosopher Stone are available near the very beginning of the pack to aid in building beautiful bases and almost all cosmetic blocks have EMC values. EMC loops are easy to build and, in fact, are not only encouraged but an intended feature highlighted by the quest book. Many useful features like /dank/null storage, ProjectE's Alchemical Satchel's, and other early storage options are relatively easy to access in the early game.

The Mid-Game

This is where my friend and I spent the bulk of our time with the pack. This was split between questing through the many, many, many dimensions on offer and automating various items, materials, and other things to unlock the next dimensions in the pack. The automation was, usually, not too onerous if you had done due diligence, followed the quest books early recommendations, and automated or even passived the items from the previous set of quests. This pack rewards taking your time and doing your automation right the first time. Slap-dashing your builds together to rush through the pack will bite you down the road, no if's, and's, or but's.

The difficulty curve is maintained by certain hidden recipes which are unlocked via special items that must be crafted to reveal them. Using these items increases mod difficulty in various ways (more health, armor, damage, and more). This keeps combat interesting, at least up to the point my friend and I made it into the pack.

The number of dimensions on offer also helps keep enemy variety up as well as keeps special bosses and other fun mechanics in play for the more adventure-focused players. Many custom set pieces are also present, summoned in or warped to via special items that are crafted throughout the pack. A very fun and unique mechanic and I wish more packs did.

Tying all this together is an overarching plot line that, while a bit arbitrary, does a decent job at providing a reason for all the shenanigans, arbitrary crafting recipes, and random dimensions to exist together in this one pack. It's a bit of a shallow plot line, admittedly, but to paraphrase from a certain early days id Software developer, "Story in a video game is like story in certain kinds of 'films', it's expected to be there but it's not all that important". The story is simply a vehicle to give the mod pack a reason to exist and, in that regard, it's perfectly serviceable.

Minor Criticisms

I really only have a few small criticisms to hand out to this mod pack.

1. Some recipes were, at the time my friend and I were playing, quite simply unreasonable. These recipes could stand to be toned back. A good example of this is the Extreme/Bigger Reactor's Turbine Casings. It's a BIG investment to stand your first one up for where it is in the pack.
2. The placement of certain quality of life options feels... Off at times. For example, the placement of the Angel Ring in the progression tree feels far too late in my personal opinion. You can get creative flight earlier, though with a time limit, but anyone who can put in a bit of time can easily grind out essentially unlimited creative flight time with a hint of early automation. So why not just make the Angel Ring an earlier unlock? It's just a bit odd.
3. Thaumcraft, while integrated, does not have enough early options to manage Taint. This is more of a Thaumcraft problem, to be a bit fair, but the mod pack does try to adjust things to deal with this. I feel more could be done in this regard as it's far too easy to cause Warp-related problems and corrupt your entire world with no way to stop it. I realize that's kind of the point of Taint but it's also just flat out not fun to deal with after pouring so many hours into the pack to simply get to that stage.

As an aside, the pack, while developed on GitHub, is not developed in manner that feels welcoming to outside contribution. Not strictly a mark against the pack but it's worth mentioning as I feel the pack could be so much more amazing with a more active community of developers than the one man show it currently is.

Overall Thoughts

I cannot recommend this mod pack enough. It's well balanced and just flat out fun for pretty much all play styles, but particularly when differing play styles come together to cooperate to complete it!

Never had so much fun playing Minecraft before.
Of course, some people may turn their noses up at unusual content, such as: no End dimension; reworked enchanting; coordinates tied to items... but it actually makes the game slower and really different from most modded experiences, forcing you to play in a different way.
The pack achieves a HUGE integration between each mod. Everything just connects. New textures, recipes, loads of content made specially for the pack...
It's a really well-thought vanilla overhaul. It feels more free and like a true sandbox game.
Of course, sometimes there may be some bugs due to the integration of the mods, and even though this happens all the time with many packs, this one is so well made that when something is out of place it sticks out. However, the amazing people developing this pack try their best on polishing the experience.

As far as Kitchen sink modpacks goes, this is one of the better ones. At least, one that offers a bunch of different playstyles, goals, and branches to explore when it comes to tech, magic and automation; I had a great time with it, but is it good objectively ? No, not really.

The quest book is really nice, there's A LOT to it and I get it could get confusing for some people but for me, it was well organized and fun to complete each mods.

The main issue with ATM10, like any kitchen sink modpacks, is being badly balanced. The early game is very fun as you have so many options when it comes to making a storage system, ways to travel, armors and equipments to get etc.. But of course, once you get a way to fly, good enough armor that 99% of mobs can't do anything to you, and infinite ressources from basic automation; basically half of the content gets closed to you.

Why exploring all those tech mods that would result to the same end goal as the one I've already completed ?
Why learning all those spells and magic mods just to make gears and effect that are way too complex compared to other QoL mods that do the same thing in 5min ?

The best example is dimensions;
god the dimensions... basically all useless. You just can't reach and explore any of them before reaching a point where the loot isn't worth it, and all the exploration comes from flying from point A to point B to speedrun the questbook without experiencing anything it has to offer.
There's also the issue of lack of linearity with progression, especially tech. Either you have a linear pack, or multiple branches you can take to reach the same point. But there's just so many mods that 90% of your playtime is spent progressing on a single mod that does the exact same function as 3 others. Except one of them takes hours, and the other like 10min if you know what you're doing.

Kitchen sink modpacks are just not made to be enjoyed on a concise, well balanced experience. Like its name suggest it is SUPPOSED to be messy, but it makes so many great mods left to be desired.

I would still recommend this pack, especially if someone wants a modpack that has a bunch to offer everywhere you go without being TOO messy or confusing. But for more experienced players in modded MC or players who are looking for a tailer-made, well crafted experience, look elsewhere and especially not at Kitchen sink modpacks.