Modded Minecraft Reviews

(completed at 17-ish hours? had to make a new world because of the update) Reminiscence is a fantastically put together experience with some of the best thought out vanilla minus reworks in a pack I’ve seen. Even after having a massive update though, I think it still has a little bit further to go until everything really fits together.

Thematically, I think the modpack fits well more with the description of “beta with a bunch of mods installed” than any other goal or genuine appeal to some sort of pure beta experience; where Better Than Adventure isn’t trying to be Beta because it wants to experiment with some un-betalike mechanics, Reminiscence isn’t trying to be beta because it has a clear and extended progression line combined with a bunch of weird stuff that’s slightly out of place like funny looking mobs and ores. Basically, imagine the vibe you get when you install DrZharks Mo Creatures, with the mob models fitting in slightly better. As you can tell by the rating and this review’s vibe though, I think this goal works and this pack works fundamentally.

Big reworks; While foods still heal instantly as in beta, the food system still plays a lot differently. Farmer’s Delight is in the pack, and stackable foods are in the pack, but big meats don’t stack and a massive amount of ingredient type items while stackable are almost universally nerfed to only healing half a heart. While nothing is technically stopping you from playing it like Beta and going with Cooked Porkchop, you will definitely want to cook as the prepared meals from Farmer’s Delight heal a lot and stack well. The armor system hasn’t received a BTA style total makeover, but sets now have effects, either having small stackable per piece bonuses like Copper’s mining speed, bonuses that only come with a full set like Meteorite’s double jump, and bonuses that are unique to each piece of the set like Silver pieces having various status immunities. This basically renders every player preference towards armor sets viable in some way; there are reasons to be going with mixed armors, standard full sets of the highest tier, or quirky off meta armors with special set bonuses. I think the only real obstacle to this system as is is that acquiring some of these armor sets is slightly too difficult to be worth it so your choices will be more limited in practice.

I think the main issue I had here is that the progression line breaks down halfway and as what feels like a pretty progression heavy modpack it doesn’t feel great to get stuck on. First, the oversights with the End Remastered eyes are baffling since all but one of these eyes have been specifically poured over and had their crafting recipes or obtainment methods tweaked, so I don’t know how the Exotic Eye (there are no coral reefs to get the corals required) or the Guardian Eye (beta oceans are too small for ocean monuments to spawn; ||you can still obtain prismarine because guardians are now random ocean spawns||) got in here. And the remaining eyes are still very negatively affected by the beta generation and lack of Cartographer maps making their related biomes or structures very hard to find depending on your luck. There are no fun shortcuts here to make traversal fun; the Aether moas are *End gated*, and there’s another issue with traversal I’ll mention in the performance section. Second, the Aether is fun and cool, but it makes the largely unmodified Nether stick out like a sore thumb in comparison. There’s no new ores except for Silver which also spawns in the overworld and the only other things to look out for are the Quark mobs and the fact that it’s now double height (for which you have no tools to navigate). I don’t think it works sitting next to the Aether in terms of progression and I wish there was a little more to do there. Finally, as more of a nitpick, the Dragon fight has a few weird secondary attacks like the Dive (deals massive damage if it the dragon himself hits you directly) and the Lasers (I don’t even know how those work) that deal unreasonably outsized damage and will probably kill you without warning several times that put a massive damper on what is otherwise the best dragon fight I’ve seen.

I also think the modpack just needs maybe a hundred more custom EMI description entries and other assorted guides. Most ores are described, but not all ores. Lots of weird mod specific mechanics go unexplained and its rough when something like an eye recipe requires a Quark stone. The pack will entirely rename and retexture something and still not have a description for what it does. The modpack is really dark which is true to beta but the standard brightness slider is simply non-functional and hasn’t been replaced with a gamma slider like BTA did which means you need to figure out that you have to go to a specific section of the Nostalgia Tweaks config to brighten stuff up. This pack had me googling a surprising amount which I really wish was not an issue here.

Finally, performance is almost there. It was kind of there in the 1.5.0 pre-release that I installed and started playing on (before 2.0.0 released literally the day after without me noticing), with fast load times, Crucial 2 level memory consumption and high framerates. The load times are drastically worse, the memory consumption is slightly higher, and the framerates are still about the same, but the main issue which may or may not have been in the pre-release is that the pack has a pretty severe memory leak problem: base memory consumption doesn’t really matter when frequent dimension hopping or an hour of straight traversal can force a restart. I hope this can be fixed but I don’t even know why this happens; this seems to be plaguing 1.20.1 packs in general so it might be unavoidable.

Basically, in conclusion, as notes for the developer; add something else to the Nether, go back over the eyes, add ten million EMI descriptions, fix the terminal memory leak that’s highly contagious and is spreading throughout 1.20 modding like a virus. For anyone else reading, if you’re not a modpack developer, these might seem simple enough, but it is genuinely kinda hard. I have faith in the developer though cause I had like a bunch of things to complain about from the 1.5.0 pre-release that just magically disappeared when I upgraded so I trust he can do some miracle worker shit and cook insanely hard. Also the end is really cool I didn’t have anywhere else to mention it but it’s really cool

The entire modpack revolves around upgrading your gear through Apotheosis Gems. You need an absurd amount of XP to upgrade everything. Youre always either so undergeared that everything oneshots you or you’re completely op and oneshot everything and take no damage. Damage is obscure and hard to understand, the UI fights you and is generally unintuitive. You dont actually have to fight bosses to upgrade your gear for the most part. You build a mob farm, farm the gems, materials and levels you need to max out your gear. Armor is extremely stupid as that the higher the incoming hit is the worse your armor becomes meaning vs high lvl monsters armor is basically worthless and all that matters is flat dmg reductions through effects or flat max HP. The passive skilltree is unbalanced af too. All that matters is HP. Its generally pretty boring imo and the mods dont create one coherent experience. Overall I dont recommend playing this pack as there are much better packs out there. Ive heard the new version Dragonfyre is supposed to be better..

Although it felt unfinished, it was an incredibly promising mod pack. I was really surprised to see such work coming out of the Minecraft modding community. I experienced details I wouldn’t find in mod packs with 10 million downloads. We’re seeing a job that’s been put a lot of effort into. The animations, atmosphere, music, character development, and sense of exploration were all excellent. If the creator of this pack is reading this, I have something to say: Please stop working on Minecraft and make your own game. Making games with Godot has become much easier. Go make that game you want to make. I’ll be your first customer.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

(completed, 43h) Past the pretty distinct but extremely short early game, Mechanical Mastery will feel like a lot of other skyblock packs of it’s time, if more compressed. ProjectE is used on a very surface level where maximizing EMC production isn’t actually important for anything since nothing is actually expensive enough and the only other things to spend your EMC on are the vanilla wood types and deepslate. The modpack isn’t hard enough to actually “put players tech mod knowledge put to the test” (lightly paraphrased from the modpack page) but it’s also not explanatory enough to be that great for beginners. Despite only having 150~ mods the mod bloat is insane ranging from IE existing just for thirty gameplay minutes of coke/steel to the extremely unwelcome inclusion of mandatory Industrial Foregoing, in addition to maybe thirty other mods I didn’t notice were in the pack until I saw them randomly pop up in JEI (only god knows why computercraft is here). This (or more likely one specific shitty or poorly configured mod) has a deleterious effect on load times which is especially aggravating when you eat a crash to something as random like accidentally putting the Ultimate Singularity back into the extended crafting table.

Beyond these, the refined mixture recipe double conflict, a low quality quest tree, and important configurations not being made by default such as FTB Chunks fake player chunkloading, I still had a decent amount of fun. It’s nice to skip the resource gathering sometimes to just make funky resource lines and even if ProjectE wasn’t explored and I had to google all of its functionality it was still a cool mod to mess around with for the first time. The pack just doesn’t stand out as much from other skyblock packs of the time as you might otherwise think it would, or at the very least the most unique parts of the experience are mostly limited to the very short earlygame.

# Super unpolished RPG focussed pack

Even after a year of updates since I last played, it feels a beta pack in the small things. They continued to add content, that’s right, but everything else was left behind without much thought

# Aestetics

The pack by default uses a couple of texture packs, including a modified font, which I find quite hard to read compared to the standard vanilla font. Moreover, the ashen resource pack is just slapped on top of the game, where modded contents are not retextured to follow the same aesthetics, especially cave ores.

# Mod choices feels all over the place

Is it an RPG pack or a kitchen sink? Why is there such an in-depth tech mod like modern industrialization along with the rather cool and interesting boss progression? Create is obviously thrown in there for good measure, I guess just for the sake of saying “play how you want”. They even removed a good early game storage option (Tom’s simple storage), leaving all the work to AE2 (in a medieval-fantasy themed pack?).

# Too much RNG focus

You get to build a character and that’s cool and all, but most of them requires a “relic” only found in loot chests. Guess what? In my original world, where I spent 100+ hrs goofing around I never found the one I envisioned my build to work with, having to deal with sub par weapons. No way of crafting it, just gambling.

# Final thoughts

This pack would be even half decent if the dev(s) took the time to revise some old/not up to date contents, because it’s really the small things that made me quit the modpack, just the feel of many small clashing decisions. I didn’t talk about crashes I experienced with some bosses I encountered in an old version, because they may have fixed it, but I have little faith in that. This review has been rather hard on the pack, but that’s in the hope of getting a better experience in the future…

Liminal Industries has a strong aethetic design, the generation of rooms is well dont, each room has design and care put into them, and it is very interesting to explore. I have put so much time exploring the different rooms and still find new secret passages and rooms.

The game performs well, other than a visual glitch (? its possibly intentional) that I’ve experienced where textures will have individual pixels horizontally stretch at the edges of the screen, that makes long sessions nauseating

(If it is intentional, I’ve found no way to turn it off)

The beginning progression of the game I’ve found enjoyable, but it quickly becomes reliant on the Create mod for all progression, with only small bits that require the use of the other tech & magic mods.

While I don’t mind the emptiness and lack of enemies overall, some people do find that boring. Hostile Mobs tend to only spawn in specific ‘sculked’ areas with exception to ravagers which I believe (can’t confirm) can spawn in unsculked areas

There are a few small glitches as well, like I discovered an exploit where if you use the soap item on a dyed cooler (which can be easily found around the backrooms) then it will duplicate all the items inside it

But overall its a very enjoyable experienced, I wouldn’t suggest trying to go through the progression, instead giving this modpack a go just to explore the world

#What is it ?

This is a mod which adds a new peaceful and hostiles creatures/animals, which fit in most vanilla + settings and bring interesting mechanics, gimmicks and items to play around with.

#What does it offer ?

A couple of **new monsters** and **passive mobs** some of both can be tamed, since there is not too many let me give more details down here (spoilers for all the mobs added) :

||Chameleon|| :

||An ambient mob meant for forest and jungly biomes; Their drops can be used to make some camo-leather armor||

||Treasure Slime|| :

||A rare slime which appears in any biome at night, they will contain goods which can be acquired by killing them until they become small; there is a variant of this mob which doesn’t contain anything, and which can be sort-of tamed. Using an external loot-tweaking mod, it is possible to configure the slime treasures||

||Haunted Tool|| :

||Basically a possessed item, having its stats depend on the item’s durability and damage output. Using an external loot-tweaking mod, it is possible to change the type of tools they appear as||

||Grove Sprite|| :

||A nature spirit that will plant trees corresponding to its forest; their sap can be useful to turn logs of one wood into another||

||Bewitched Tome|| :

||An hostile cave tome which is a nice way to get enchanted books. They spawn more often in strongholds||

||Filch Lizard|| :

||A desert thief lizard which will take a look in your inventory and act on their impulses; their preferences can be easily tweaked using an external loottable tweaking mod (such as loottweaker) ||

||Brain Slime|| :

||A beach slime that will grow larger the longer it attacks you, which it does by staying in top of your head and eat you||

||Rocket Creeper|| :

||A goofy creeper which jumps in the air, exploding instantly after hitting a block or you. They can rarely drop a mysterious egg||

||Festive Creeper|| :

||They won’t explode, but will throw tnt dynamite-style; they are immune to explosions and fire damage. They can rarely drop a mysterious egg||

||Support Creeper|| :

||Exactly what it sounds like, a creeper that will resort to its deadly explosive force only when there isn’t any mob left to defend. They can rarely drop a mysterious egg||

||Skeleton Warrior|| :

||Basically a stronger and smarter skeleton, always spawning with more hp, a leather cap, a bow with weakness arrows as well as carrying an iron sword on its back to use if the player gets too close. Their drops aren’t as interesting though but they are a nice challenge to have, could work well in arenas or smth||

||Blazing Juggernaut|| :

||An “everywhere blaze”, spawning outside of nether fortresses, but different; It has similar loot but attacks in melee by having a weird zigzag dodging pattern making it quite hard to hit and a challenging foe||

||Lily Lurker|| :

||Disguised as a lilypad, it is actually an hostile swamp fish. There isn’t anything else to add though||

||Mother Spider|| :

||Marqued as “spider family” on multimob, they will appear with their children an attack you all at once. their drop can be exploited to trap and get a spider of your own, which you can ride and customize its eye color||

||Trollager|| :

||A tough mob appearing in caves, they can see you through walls an will break them down in an attempt to reach you; they also have the ability to throw blocks to attack you from a distance, and will turn to stone if exposed to sunlight||

||Note that they require quite of bit of space to spawn in caves, meaning that quark’s speleothems can often make them an even rarer occurence||

||Lost Miner|| :

||A villager which spawns in caves, fleeing from mobs and following players to the surface. When rescued they give them a bunch of emeralds and turn into a trader out of three types, selling you ores, rocks or gems||

||Traveling Merchant|| :

||A wandering trader selling a bunch of really rare items (which I often deem too rare to use them in most packs). Use the Trader backport mod if you want regular wandering traders which are more configurable||

||Dodo|| :

||A unique extinct mob which can only be found in the most peaceful biome that is the mushroom island; their meat restaures a lot of hunger points, though it is compensated by their rarity and how picky they tend to be when it comes to the food needed for their reproduction||

||Sheepman|| :

||Nether-NPCS which deal in gold and are scared of zombie pigmens; The alchemist sells potions made from nether materials, the scavenger sells stuff you can simply find by exploring the nether and fortresses and the thief sells mob drops (some of them being a bit to overpowered for my taste)||

||Note that in older versions of the mod, a special sheepman with an anvil on its back existed, which could repair your items||

||Goblin|| :

||A mineshaft dweller before the rascal’s mob vote even occured; they are fast and use a special mace which doesn’t deal much damage but is quite deadly to your armor, meaning they can be threatening in longer fights alongside other foes||

||Harpy|| :

||A mob which spawns in high terrain in extreme hills, it doesn’t attack, it instead attempts to kill you using fall damage. Good concept, quite like 1.18+ vanilla goats||

||Flame Spewer|| :

||A more interesting lavamonster, behaving in a similar way to The legend of zelda’s octorocks, spewing fireballs like a turret from the safety of its lava lake||

||Void Eye|| :

||A dangerous and sometimes quite annoying creature (I really recommend disabling its overworld spawn its a nightmare), as it can fire a blinding laser through walls. It also drops ender eyes sometimes, which can break the intended dimensional progression of the game||

||Summoner|| :

||Only present in older versions of Primitive mobs, this mob directly inspired by pokemon and similar games summons creatures using some sort of capturing ball; they can then be used by the player to capture their own mobs. This mobs has its own separate mod in 1.12 called “TheSummoner”, and is now an illager instead of having his previous witch look||

This mod depends on a library called **Multimob** : it basically manages the spawning system of these mobs; That said, it is also possible and even quite easy to **add your own mobs** in the extra entries to the spawning system, meaning one can add mobs (note that **after a certain amount of new mobs added the mod will crash** , so take that into account and avoid to completely rely on this mod for your modpack’s mobspawning)

Multimob also gives away **plenty of informations for modpack-makers** by creating **txt files** listing : Biomes, BiomeTypes, Blocks, BlockStates, Enchantments, Entities, Items, Potions, PotionTypes, and some Vanilla structure names (again for the spawn system you can add creatures to vanilla structures such as mineshafts and woodland mansions, so it mostly serves that purpose).

**Issues ? they are mostly tied to multimob** :

it seems the very last version of multimob causes problems in some modpacks for some reason (which is why I purposely use an outdated version of said mod);

I would also recommend switching the mob creature types from the new ones made-up by multimob (MULTIMOBPASSIVE,MULTIMOBMONSTER) to the vanilla ones (CREATURE,MONSTER), especially if you want them to spawn alongside zombies and skeletons at weight : 100 (if not they might override the vanilla spawns, you’ve been warned).

**Issues with primitive mobs ? mostly balance** :

The mobs are all cool and interesting, but as mentioned before many give away items that can ruin the game’s progression if you do not tamper with the mobs’s loot tables (using loottabletweaker or other outside mods).

#In conclusion

I really like this mod, and since **most issues are tied to its library** (which again, using an older version seems to solve everything for some reason), I would consider this mod to be **quite good at what it does** : **adding new vanilla + mobs in your world** .

This mod is also now present in at least 1.20.1 as it has been forked by tatoling under the name **PrimitiveMobsRevival** ; though I don’t know how complete the mod is right now.

If you are looking for more 1.12 mods adding **useful entities** such as these I recommend **Fish’s Undead Rising** , **Beast Slayer** and **Eerie entities** , though more might be out there.

If you are looking for other **Multimob equivalents** there is a craftweaker addon known as **Spawntabletweaker** which is quite simple to use but doesn’t allow for much complexity, and there also is **InControl!** (which I don’t know much about but it seems to be quite good at what it does as I’ve mostly heard good things about it).

Was Nietzsche a great philosopher? Was Proust an incredible author, or a bedridden noble with a serious addiction to pen and paper? Perhaps by answering these questions one can determine the quality of Divine Journey 2. Is it always an excellent pack? No. There are moments, especially regarding the progression through various later dimensions and the tedious and tortuous process of nested chapter 28 crafting, where one would be excused, nay triumphed! For the suggestion that Divine Journey 2 was a mistake, a farce, the ultimate proof of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. But then, when you cross the thicket, beaten and battered from poison ivy and stinging nettle, when you emerge into the glorious glade of Rigorous Automation, then, my friends, you may see the light. “No!” Cried the audience, “Eureka!” shouted the actors, so the play went on. Divine Journey, it seems, could not be adored from the rows, the pews, ye weary folks gathered at the foot pedestal of Modded Minecraft. No, tis the actors, those beneficent clamorous and bored actors, they are those who love this pack. Those who spend their days pondering and playing. No passive consumer may enjoy. Viewer beware. Restricted from All Ages. Rejoice!

A tech mod that excels at input/output logistics. This pack is a must-have for any modpack just for the conduits: cables that can be pipes and wires, overlap and share blocks with great visual versatility, and GUIs for every block they can face. The in-mod machines are pretty intuitive to work with too, giving an interactive 3D display to let you control the behavior of each face. Unfortunately it’s a bit light on tech content, meaning it isn’t much fun on its own, but it works wonders in combination with blocks from other mods.