Auseawesome

Not only is this mod made in mcreator when a datapack would suffice, leading to incompatibility which is frankly unacceptable for a single recipe, the cost of a nametag is unreasonable, being more expensive than a pickaxe just to give a cosmetic name to a single mob.

I don't understand why this isn't a datapack. I, regrettably, tried this out and also looked at the jar and the amount of wasted code and potential conflicts in this mod is crazy considering it adds a few simple recipes.

Would not recommend.

In terms of mechanics, sky factory 5 is definitely the most varied and interesting of the series bringing new ideas and concepts. The colours literally coming back to your world as you get new stages is an incredibly unique concept and really helps elevate intrigue.

The execution however is unfortunately incredibly flawed and it took my group of 4 people 4 hours to realise the green stage hadn't given us the reward on triggering, entirely softlocking us and meaning we had to cheat in resources. This alone was reason enough as it took much searching to figure out why we couldn't get any green stuff and we would've been entirely stuck if we didn't find a thread on reddit describing how common this issue was...

Further more, the colour system, while interesting, passes quickly and you fall into the traps of skyblock very soon, just harvesting trees and stuck collecting stuff in barrels.

Interesting idea, poor execution. Try the pack if you really like the series but there are better modern skyblocks.

Note: a good portion of this review comes from how I found using it as a pack dev, though my rating would still likely be the same if I only used it as a player.

Tinkers construct is a mod that does a lot. It adds so many systems with a single download, such as alloying, ore multiplication and more. As a player, the first time I played this it was amazing, as a pack dev it was overwhelming.

The tool creation system works well, with mostly steady progression early game and interesting ways to craft higher tier metal tools, except, as soon as you get the foundry you unlock allloying and the ability to craft many alloys which are far better than anything else available at that stage of the game, as well as insane ore multiplication all from a single multiblock. As a player, this can be fun, as a modpack dev how do you balance all the alloys and prevent breaking balance with ore multiplication without players complaining. How do you toe the line between the foundry being overpowered, able to smelt so mant blocks in parallel with really simple automation, or making it feel sluggish and slow.

One issue that isn't immediately apparent with the mod is scaling, normally if you want furnaces to be 8x faster, you need 8x the materials for 8 furnaces. But because these multiblocks only need the outside, for it to be 8x faster you only need 4x the materials. 125x faster only 25x materials etc, and this problem becomes incredibly apparent in packs where all other smelting options are overshadowed by building since large smeltery structures from tinkers.

If this mod wasn't all one mega mod that allowed for easily getting rid of certain features it wouldn't be as bad, but if you only want modular tools or a smeltery, this mod comes with a lot of baggage.

That's not to say this mod doesn't do soen stuff very well, the ability to add custom materials etc is overshadowed only be silent gear and the configuration is overall good. Tools abilities can be fun to use and the smeltery is intuitive.

This is a mod i think everyone who likes big expansions should try, but I think it is often overused in packs where it can overshadow other mods.

This mineshaft module for Dungeons and Taverns is, in my opinion, of higher quality than the base mod. Most of the loot is suitable for the stage in which these mineshafts can be found. The structures added by this mod are very similar but are different enough to be a welcome change from vanilla.

Compared to similar mods like YUNG's mineshaft overhaul, these mineshafts definitely feel more vanilla but with less intrigue, and would certainly be more suitable for vanilla+ packs. These mineshafts also come with early game tools meaning they are suitable for exploration potentially without any tools, compared with YUNG's mineshafts which have higher tier loot but also threats.

Surface mineshaft entrances are easier to find than normal and with them being added to new biomes, they certainly feel more common in this mod than they do in vanilla. Along with slightly improved loot in certain places, this can make mineshafts even more worthwhile than they normally are.

Overall, not a bad mod, I recommend people give it a shot if they like exploration mods, though if you want more of a vast overhaul you should look elsewhere.

Dungeons and Taverns is a datapack packaged as a mod which adds structures and enchantments. Most of these structures are quite aesthetically pleasing, however they litter the landscape and make finding an area devoid of large structures difficult, especially within certain biomes.

These structures are designed to fit within a modded world, rather than a vanilla one and are normally far more grandiose and with far different loot distribution to vanilla structures, which may suit some packs but not others. They also seem to cause a significant slow down of world generation due to their size and frequency, though this is only anecdotal.

Loot in these structures is very hit and miss with structures such as the ruined town having very minimal loot that serves mainly as inventory clutter, structures like the Witch Villa having tens of chests with near identical loot meaning you can come out with 5 of the same cursed book, or structures like the badlands miner outpost with actually decent loot.

Structures like the Stray Fort are so expansive it is possible that geared with only a shield, you could take iron and enchanted gear from exterior chests and fully armour and tool up, before looting the centre and finish with enough gear for a group of players. This could potentially affect the balance of the game, but in packs with more endgame content it is less of an issue.

Another issue I had that does slightly hamper the performance of the mod is the fact some of the structure maps you can find in loot will point you to structures 10s of thousands of blocks away, even if the world is dense with structures, making them annoying in survival, especially when these can be found relatively easily before any mode of transport except boats and horses would be available.

Overall this mod does add more structures to your game, though it is quite a large overbearing mod, so I would not add it to any packs that aren't explicitly exploration focused and would recommend pairing it with optimisation mods.

Although I'm an author on this project, Ive really only helped on the documentation and some of the ideas. It's Lucky who's really made this mod shine.

Foundry Engine is pitched as a mod to bring together scripting from mods like KubeJS with a built in editor GUI, tools for editing the world like axiom and the ability to run serverside only for mini games. Even in this early state it does succeed at that, we have Gcat testing it for his current project!

I've tried to be as unbiased as possible in this review, as you can probably see from the rather low performance and stability score at the moment, but thats only because the project is in alpha and constantly changing!

I've made this review to hopefully bring awareness to this newcomer in the scripting mod scene. Id genuinely recommend it to anyone trying out new experimental content for 26.1+, come over to our discord if you want any help or want to influence the development!

Apothic enchanting is a module that really demonstrates the great ideas of the entire Apotheosis mod, whereas vanilla enchanting is very one-dimensional and doesn't add much actual length or complexity to progression, apothic enchanting adds complexity in an enjoyable way!

The new bookshelves do really help in bringing decision making to enchanting, unlike the vanilla system of getting 30 bookshelves then continually picking the highest experience option until you get what you want. One drawback is, like the rest of apotheosis, the higher level enchants available through this system will often cause significant scaling issues with other mods, especially fortune and looting which can make resources far more plentiful than mods were designed around.

One gripe I do have with this mod is how easy it is to remove enchantments from gear, it makes it so that you basically never have to think about whether it is worth using enchantments as you can always get them back later, or the fact you can split enchanting books you find in loot to apply the good enchants without worrying about the curses.

This mod has a pretty good configuration and I'd highly advise checking it out to make the experience fit your pack and ideal as best as possible. I recommend this mod to people who don't like the enchanting system in vanilla but don't want to throw it out entirely.

Apotheosis is an incredibly ambitious mod, and does actually manage to achieve many of its goals. The elites and invaders help break up all enemies feeling the same and can add more interest to combat.

I honestly really love the conceptual idea of socketing gems, a way to imbue gear with abilities you can find through exploration and combat. I also really like the fact mobs have more variety added through elites (although I will get into the issues I feel there are with the execution of this later). This mod is a treasure trove of interesting concepts and ways to improve systems in the game, however it fells like this mod would be better if it thought about how these would interact with other mods.

My issues with this mod start at the balance, but in my opinions hint at some deeper issues when this mod is viewed from the standpoint as a small side addition to many packs as it is often treated. As a mod that is often treated as a side mod, this mod does a lot of things in questionable ways, for example the elites/invaders can often be so fast it's incredibly difficult to escape them, or have so much regeneration it is almost impossible to kill them with your gear at the time. This, in my opinion, often draws from the intended experience of the pack/game because it interrupts the players focus, forcing them to deal with some threat when they may have just been trying to build or explore.

On the other hand, for combat focused packs which are designed to make a player try to become as powerful as possible and feel as 'cool' as possible, this mod does really work, however I feel this is a narrow scope for the usability of the mod. This leads on to understanding how this mod is balanced, because it isn't balanced around vanilla gameplay, it is balanced around taking everything and scaling up both damage and health in roughly equal proportions. While this can make the player feel powerful, and lead to cool moments, it often makes other mod's content get overshadowed as spells become underpowered or modded bosses become trivial. This is fixable with configuration, but out of the box as it is in many packs it can be a large issue.

You should try this mod, maybe in a small pack or in a combat/RPG pack, but please, don't shove this into any old pack and expect the balance to work. I recommend this mod to those that don't mind sinking their teeth into config files to make sure their mods work correctly together.

While this mod cannot hold a torch to it's new rewrite, that does not mean it was not a good mod on the versions where it existed already. I would heavily advise staying away from the original MCreator version however due to serious stability issues.

'Oh The Biomes You'll Go' is an interesting mod, many of it's biomes are unique and I feel have more character than mods such as 'Biomes o' Plenty'. However, in my opinion, many of the textures are... lacking. Most trees don't provide much utility for building unfortunately and although the biomes are often interesting they can sometimes look discontinuous.

This mod often doesn't work amazingly with other biome mods, with much repeated content or biomes that have no business being together being placed immediately adjacent, however this is to be expected to some extent with how large this mod is.

Despite all the problems I've described with this mod, most of the criticism comes from a place of love as this is a mod I have played with a lot, despite it's flaws. I would recommend this on older versions to people who are bored of vanilla, but if possible play it's rewrite first!