Source
r/feedthebeast•
oldark

Modpack Review: Fantasy Evolved: A Quest for Magic

It's hard to find good suggestions for well made magic focused modpacks and from a thread earlier this week I went through 7 different ones and selected the most promising after ~15 minutes in each. The selected one was Fantasy Evolved: A Quest for Magic. I played the pack for roughly 15 hours, unlocking all but one quest line in the process. Some of the notes below may be more related to a specific mod than the pack itself. (and on a side note, I'm up for suggestions for another pack to try in a similar vein, I still haven't really gotten to enjoy astral sorcery, embers, minecolonies, or the newer thaumcraft versions as much as I'd like)

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tlwr; Overall I really enjoyed my time spent playing this so in spite of how it may seem with the number of issues listed it was quite fun and I would recommend it - though maybe with some config changes.

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Quests & Progression

The quests themselves were well written. Likewise I enjoyed the mod progression from Totemic->Roots and then opening up Astral Sorcery, Embers, Botania, and Thaumcraft. Minecolonies was also there after a quest line on basic automation. The big problem with the quests are that the quests within each line didn't follow a logical progression order in many cases. A couple of examples to show what I mean:

  • You receive a quest for crafting a medicine pouch which requires buffalo teeth. After completeing the quest you're then asked to make a windchime (which you already had to make in order to get Buffalo). After making the windchime your next quest is to "meet a buffalo".
  • Astral Sorcery line begins with crafting the journal (requires aquamarine). The very next quest is an introduction to aquamarine and instructions to find it.
  • There are some others as well, if the modpack author browses by here and wants feedback I will be more than happy to share the rest of the notes I took while playing.

Another quest irritant was that many of them were 'craft' quests rather than 'obtain' quests. So the shears or windchime I made 15 minutes ago just becomes an extra sitting in my chest when I'm required to craft another.

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Mod Interactions and Configs

The modpack makes a big deal about how ore will only process into 1 nugget until further tech levels are reached. This is mentioned again even after getting into some of the other later quest chains. However you can just build a grindstone from stone and sticks and get 1 ore -> 1 ingot that way straight from the start. Similarly, the chopping block is suggested several times, but the ability to just craft logs with your axe in inventory returns 3 planks instead of the 2 that the chopping block gives for low tier axes.

Carry On mod makes things that require shift right clicking to operate problematic in some situations. Specifically trying to pull materials off the grindstone or remove items from botania's petal apothecary.

I never saw a single instance of Ember's Lead Ore during my playthrough and JEI doesn't show it as having any worldgen levels. It's completely possible I just missed it seeing as how I minimized my mining as much as possible (reasoning below).

Cooking times are changed by item. In most cases this was fine but taking 8x as long (and 8x as much fuel) for making smooth stone was a nightmare. I usually make my buildings out of that because it looks decent when chiseled but I had to avoid doing so this time.

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World Gen

I played with Realistic world type. The world itself looked beautiful. Nature's compass indicated that the biomes were available and within a few thousand blocks of my spawn were multiple villages, pirate ships, and a couple of dungeons. My big gripe with this, and with the modpack as a whole was the strata system (unsure which mod adds this - I highly recommend config'ing it out if possible for anyone that plays). As you dig deeper the stone becomes harder to mine. Theoretically this indicates you need to upgrade your pickaxe. That worked fine when I hit the first barrier. I mined some iron, made a new pick and carried on. Then I hit the next levels down while searching for redstone and gold required for quests at this point. The iron pick was taking more than 60 seconds per block. I lucked out and found manasteel in a dungeon loot and tried that, no improvement. I moved Buffalo totems into my mine every half dozen blocks to add haste but it didn't save any mining time. Finally I used TNT to mine (thank you pirate ship loot!) until I acquired diamonds. After this I went back at it with my diamond pickaxe and it was much faster than the iron one, however 'much faster' in this case still meant 30+ seconds per stone. This combined with the scarcer (but larger veins) of ore made mining an extremely unpleasant chore.

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Sorry for the length and hopefully those of you that do enjoy a good magical progression pack find this helpful!

Posted Feb 2, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

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JRutterbush•

A note regarding the mining: I forget the mod name, but it's not meant to make mining a chore, it's meant to make strip mining such a chore that you don't do it at all. You're supposed to go caving instead, since stone is softer the more of its sides are exposed to the air.

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oldarkOP•

Ah wish I had known that. I would have just hand quarried instead of working my way (half caves, half ladders) down to the bottom then tunneling for diamonds.

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JRutterbush•

If you give it another try, consider throwing in YUNG's Better Caves. I put it in once and have never willingly played a pack without it since, it makes caving much more fun and interesting, and in my opinion removes the need for strip mining entirely because of how much it opens things up.

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Turmfalke_•

Please make more of these reviews. I would love to see more modpack reviews. Especially in written form.

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C4rbonXR•

Could you link the thread with the suggestions? I'm always looking for more modern magic modpacks.

Also, what modpack do you plan on reviewing next?

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oldarkOP•

https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/evnvgx/best_magic_modpacks/

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I started playing Arcane Anarchy this morning. So far so good, I'm not a huge fan of the FTB Quests setup over Better Questing but I'll adjust. It's also missing out on the village/town aspect that I would enjoy playing with but other than that it's running well and seems to be playing the way I'd hoped.

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C4rbonXR•

aaaaaaaand that's my comment. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined /s

Anyway, of the packs I recommended in that thread, Arcane Anarchy is by far the one I've played the most. I look forward to reading your review on it.

Also something I don't know if I mentioned in the other thread: Magical Village 2 and Magiculture 2 both have quests (they use better questing), although I don't know if they're full-on expert packs.

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oldarkOP•

I tried Magical Village 2, It immediately threw crashes related to betweenlands until I removed it then performed vary.. not poorly but strangely. I dropped it after 5 minutes counting that as bad omens.

I haven't looked into Magiculture 2, I'll add it to my list.

For Arcane Anarchy did you have problems with ore gen? I've generated multiple worlds now and gone over 10000 blocks just under sea level with a prospector (in creative) and never found a single piece of Iron Ore. Other's seem to be generating fine.

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Edit: Regarding my first 3ish hours impression on Arcane Anarchy - I'm enjoynig the mods and getting used to the quest system (I still prefer the BQ book but I'm adjusting). About half an hour ago I stopped to investigate the suspicious lack of iron in it. Other than that all it's really missing for me is the village/town building aspect but that's rare enough that I won't dock points for it :)

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C4rbonXR•

I didn't notice any issues with MV2, probably because I removed Betweenlands from the get-go (the page on curseforge said it's optional and can be removed, so I did) because I don't really like the betweenlands.

That being said, I dropped MV2 pretty quickly upon learning that it didn't have Embers, Roots, or Blood Magic, and had Lycanites, which I hate.

With regards to Arcane Anarchy, I did have a little trouble finding some ores (namely iron and gold), though not to the extent that you're encountering. IIRC vanilla ore gen is tweaked with cofh to spawn less veins (though the veins are larger to compensate). Maybe that's where the issue is?

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