I've been playing TerraFirmaCraft (back in 1.7.10, which remains my sweet spot before Minecraft got carried away with weird combat mechanics, terrifying oceans and more complicated villagers -- not that I never play higher, but I've found my happy). And the saplings have been driving me nuts, to the point where I'm seriously considering giving up my playthrough and choosing some other set of mods.
Thing is, there are some aspects of TFC that I very much enjoy, and would like to add to my regular mod set for 1.7.10 (or possibly for more recent builds). I just haven't run across any mods that provide anything like this functionality without adding a ton of excess content. And, well, some of the mechanics in TFC I have literally seen nowhere else.
Basically, I like to play Minecraft in a more immersive, "I got lost while hiking / crashed into the mountains / woke up on this new planet" kind of feel, where the normal Minecraft tech is a bit more out of reach or less of a concern, at least for the first few days. I mean, if you were lost while hiking, you'd focus on getting food, water, shelter, and maintaining body heat, not putting together a crafting table and creating tools. And some of TFC's limitations make me feel a bit more like achieving that.
But I'm not the kind of player who enjoys the high-end tech play, or quite so much fiddling with the details, let alone the chore aspect of food decay. And the saplings are just killing my enjoyment. Still, I'd like to see that early stuff in a mod that wasn't a total conversion like TFC.
Things I Like About TFC:
Log Piles, and I would love to see the ability to lay them out and pick them up like in the Pit Kiln.
Planks, although I don't want to have to craft Saws to make them. I love being able to easily make 1/8th blocks (Chisel in stairs mode) and to make thin platforms, railings, and other useful or decorative use of smaller pieces than the Minecraft base block. I don't use these much, but I like having them available, and TFC's version seems more simple and intuitive than some of the other mods I've seen with similar mechanics.
Hay/straw blocks, although I'd like to be able to gather straw early and without having to make advanced items in order to get it. Being able to make a quick thatch hut sounds awesome. My Roughin' It mod idea included being able to pull the bark off trees for a building material, and I like the idea of first-day makeshift building materials.
Some of the storage mechanics, especially being able to create ceramic vessels and stick them on the ground (well in advance of being able to build a chest); I doubt that I'd find that Pit Kiln mechanic elsewhere, but I'd want to have access to these things before building either a Furnace or some elaborate Campfire (pretty much every campfire mod I've found makes them mid-game tech instead of first-night tech).
Making a crafting bench increases your inventory crafting size -- no more having to carry a crafting bench around or keep running back to where you've stored one!
Firestarters made from sticks, for day-one campfires or the like. I think I've found this in some games.
Sticks and rocks found first thing, easily, without much effort. I appreciate TFC's random sticks and rocks on the ground, though I'd be just as happy getting sticks from foliage and random stones as I dug up dirt. (I think sticks from foliage is part of MC proper now? so it probably gets covered under Ad Futurum or something.)
Things I like about TFC, but have pretty much covered in other mods: Additional types of trees, additional types of stone, some amount of gems more than Minecraft provides, more types of crops and more attention to growing food, a few new tools/weapon types, more interesting enemies, occasional cave-ins (okay, the TFC version is terrifying me enough that I gave up cave exploration altogether, but a more rare "unstable stone" thing would be welcome, and I vaguely recall having found a mod that serves a similar purpose... though I might be thinking of Glenn's Gases, which isn't about cave-ins but gives a similar interest curve), wild animals that are harder to tame... probably some other bits that I'm not recalling at the moment.
Things I Dislike About TFC:
Runaway Saplings, as noted. I don't mind spreading forests (too much), so long as the spread isn't too fast, but having my cleared fields randomly sprout trees all the time is a huge detriment to my raze-the-forest playstyle.
Food Decay. So, okay, dealing with this isn't such a big deal compared to all the fun I've been having with TFC, and I understand the desire to make it a little more realistic and all... but when I come back from a little mining trip and find that my food is a quarter destroyed, it's depressing (in the sense of "makes me feel squashed" and "sucks out all the fun"). I tried to follow the guidelines to start preserving food and all, but I got about three items in vinegar vats before I realized that I had to wait out winter to get more fruit, and somewhere in that mess I just said "the hell with it." But I don't appreciate item decay in other games (coughPuzzlePiratescough) and I don't care for it in Minecraft. I worked hard to get that stuff! Let me stockpile and enjoy it.
Cooking only one thing at a time. So, okay, I get why this exists, but I hate it. I am not playing this game to stick around stuffing one piece of sand into the fire every few seconds. When the game makes me tend a fire while playing other games on my phone to pass the time, I'm pretty sure the chore mechanics have gotten boring enough that I don't want to deal with them anymore. This feels like the time that I decided I'm never again digging a tree block by block, and stuffed Treecapitator (or any similar mod) into every mod build since that point.
Huge Complicated Tech Tree. Again, I see where it's important to the core experience of TFC, what they're trying to achieve -- it's just not something I care to mess with overmuch. I like to keep my Minecraft simple and low-tech and not all that complicated, and I don't enjoy having to look up mechanics all the time to figure out how to do a thing. Like, okay, now I know the ratio for Bismuth Bronze, but trying to figure that out by trial and error would've been annoying, because of the rate at which I was collecting copper (since I was sticking to the surface with very little digging). And trying to work out the mechanics for making iron or steel things is way more thinking than I want to do in my gaming these days. I've got enough left in me to figure out leatherworking, if I can manage to find flux, but that's about it for me.
Seasons. Now, I like seasons. I honestly do. I've enjoyed using them in various builds before. But in TFC, they're just one more obstacle in the way of me making a functional wheat field whereby to attract the animals I want to use for my farm. Waiting around for days/weeks in order to get some wheat, and then having the wheat decay fast enough that I can't attract substantial numbers of animals to my farm in a timely manner, in part because I have to be chopping down pathways (AGAIN) between my farm and the place where I found the sheep... it's just additional irritation that I do not need.
So, those are my key complaints, at least.
Anyway, so I'd like to get the former section, without having the latter section. So, does anyone know of some mods that would provide a relatively streamlined way to achieve some or all of the parts I like about TFC, without bringing in the mechanics that I hate, and while still allowing me to use additional mods to customize my Minecraft experience?
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
I've been playing TerraFirmaCraft (back in 1.7.10, which remains my sweet spot before Minecraft got carried away with weird combat mechanics, terrifying oceans and more complicated villagers -- not that I never play higher, but I've found my happy). And the saplings have been driving me nuts, to the point where I'm seriously considering giving up my playthrough and choosing some other set of mods.
Thing is, there are some aspects of TFC that I very much enjoy, and would like to add to my regular mod set for 1.7.10 (or possibly for more recent builds). I just haven't run across any mods that provide anything like this functionality without adding a ton of excess content. And, well, some of the mechanics in TFC I have literally seen nowhere else.
Basically, I like to play Minecraft in a more immersive, "I got lost while hiking / crashed into the mountains / woke up on this new planet" kind of feel, where the normal Minecraft tech is a bit more out of reach or less of a concern, at least for the first few days. I mean, if you were lost while hiking, you'd focus on getting food, water, shelter, and maintaining body heat, not putting together a crafting table and creating tools. And some of TFC's limitations make me feel a bit more like achieving that.
But I'm not the kind of player who enjoys the high-end tech play, or quite so much fiddling with the details, let alone the chore aspect of food decay. And the saplings are just killing my enjoyment. Still, I'd like to see that early stuff in a mod that wasn't a total conversion like TFC.
Things I Like About TFC:
Things I like about TFC, but have pretty much covered in other mods: Additional types of trees, additional types of stone, some amount of gems more than Minecraft provides, more types of crops and more attention to growing food, a few new tools/weapon types, more interesting enemies, occasional cave-ins (okay, the TFC version is terrifying me enough that I gave up cave exploration altogether, but a more rare "unstable stone" thing would be welcome, and I vaguely recall having found a mod that serves a similar purpose... though I might be thinking of Glenn's Gases, which isn't about cave-ins but gives a similar interest curve), wild animals that are harder to tame... probably some other bits that I'm not recalling at the moment.
Things I Dislike About TFC:
So, those are my key complaints, at least.
Anyway, so I'd like to get the former section, without having the latter section. So, does anyone know of some mods that would provide a relatively streamlined way to achieve some or all of the parts I like about TFC, without bringing in the mechanics that I hate, and while still allowing me to use additional mods to customize my Minecraft experience?
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!