Playing with modded Minecraft is one heck of an awesome experience (or... it can be). But there is a bit of a problem... most mods add plenty of items to your game, usually both items as well as new crafting ingredients. For example techmods have a tendency to add all sorts of new metal ores to your world, magic mods might provide a plethora of magical items and tools (not to mention ingredients)....

Question: where are you going to store all of that? Because trust me when I say that a vanilla double chest is going to run out of storage space really quickly.

Matter energy networks

Fortunately there's a solution: matter energy. Applied Energistics 2 ("AE2") introduces us to an alien technology which turns out to be very useful for our logistic needs. You see, instead of storing your items in chests you're now able to "digitize" them and store them onto a storage unit instead. These storage units can be used in "ME chests" which give you access to one storage unit. Or you can use so called "ME drives" which provide access to 10 storage units at once.

Simply put: a full storage room filled to the brim with double chests can now be replaced with one single block: the ME drive.

Very satisfying mechanics

This mod tries to combine "real world" computer mechanics with those of Minecraft, and I really enjoy this part. You see... it all starts with finding meteors which contain strange "presses". You can use these presses with a so called inscriber which allows you to turn use a press to create a circuit. You do this by applying a specific material, materials like gold, diamond or certus quartz. Once you have a circuit you can now make yourself a processor; this is done by combining the circuit with printed silicone and one redstone dust. You do realize that silicone is the key element of most computer chips, right?

And that's roughly how you get started. Set up your network (make sure you got enough power) and from there on out you'll have easy and quick access to your entire storage.

The best part? You don't even have to bother too much with your existing storage either: just use so called 'import busses' on your current chests so that you gain access to them within your ME network as well, easy!

Ever wanted to have access to your storage from within other dimensions? Well... now you can.

I honestly cannot see myself play modded without this one.

Long before Minecraft gave us the official recipebook us modded players already had something much better: Just Enough Items.

The perfect crafting tool

Just Enough Items ("JEI") is all about giving you a full overview of all the items in your game, both vanilla and modded, and this includes their crafting recipes which you can easily look up thanks to some useful keyboard shortcuts. If you have opened a recipe while you also have a crafting grid active then JEI can check if all the required items are in your inventory. If they are you can click the "+" icon to place them onto your crafting grid, but if you don't have all the items then JEI will mark the missing ones in red as soon as you hover your mouse over this "+ icon".

Keyboard shortcuts

What makes JEI really powerful is its use of keyboard shortcuts. Do you have an item in your inventory and wondering how to craft it? Press 'r' and you'll look up the recipe. But wait! There's more: if you press 'u' instead you'll get an overview of recipes which use the item as an ingredient. So if you have an item of which you know that it's an ingredient... this is the perfect way to check its uses.

And keep in mind that this mechanic isn't limited to just items, it'll apply to liquids and gasses as well, which will come in very handy while playing with tech mods.

Fun fact: many mods actually rely on JEI to be present so that you can use its features to dive further into the mod at hand.

See, JEI also allows you to look up items on a per-mod basis. In the JEI overview you can search for mods by using the "@" character, but can also search tooltips, the ore dictionary and/or the creative tab. And of course these searches can be combined.

If you play modded Minecraft then this is a mod you don't want to miss out on!

In EvilCraft you follow in the footsteps of an adventurer who has discovered "dark gems", just like you. Deep underground there are now "dark ore" blocks which roughly behave in the same way as redstone: they start emitting particles if you step on them. If you mine them you'll get dark gems, and these items are very special and very powerful.

To get started with this mod from scratch you should combine the dark gem with an apple, this will spoil the apple. Seriously: don't try to eat that! Instead, feed it to an animal and make sure you bring a book with you. As soon as the animal dies you'll see some kind of strange "portal", hurry: and throw the book in! This will get you the "Origins of Darkness" manuscript, which is essentially the guide for this mod.

This guide literally reads as if it were written by someone who's been here before: they discovered the dark gems and started experimenting with it to see what it could do, and fortunately for us they documented everything.

From repairing items, to "raising" the dead!

What I really like about this mod is that it'll provide useful features the very moment you make your first device. That is... if you make the right decisions of course; it's perfectly possible to pick the "wrong" device to start with, thus making it much harder to expand on what you already have.

Seriously: you'll want a blood infuser as your first device, this chest allows you to infuse items with blood, but also allows you to repair items as well. Don't you have enough iron to warrant making an anvil just yet? Well.. maybe this can help keep you fix up your (iron?) armor & tools.

Capturing spirits

There are a lot of general QOL features which this mod adds. Obscured glass can help you build mob spawners: this glass lets light in, but blocks the sun which prevents hostile mobs from spawning. Or what about the dark tank which can hold any kind of liquid you need?

But things will become really interesting once you learned about vengeful spirits. You see.. when mobs (or players!) die their spirit remains in our realm for a few moments. And dark gems can help you create tools which can capture that spirit! This can help you when you use your "spirit boxes" ("the box of eternal closure") in a so called spirit furnace; this allows you to revive the spirit and kill it all over again, and again and again. Why? Easy: to get more drops out of your mobs!

Of course all of that only works with enough blood....