Minecraft

related to my curseforge woes: does anyone know of a modpack that lets you sell what you grow/mine/gather and buy things with the profits?

farming valley has that, but only for their custom crops and ores, which are obtained in a really limited way, and the things you can buy are mostly stuff you should be able to craft but they disabled the recipe. just not as satisfying as, say, being able to sell redstone blocks and buy a nether star or something.

i also tried out dooglamoo cities, but it's so buggy and awkward and poorly documented, and it's also just really goddamn lonely. there are no people. just boxes and buildings. the crops harvest themselves and teleport into a box. the office buildings build themselves and then stand empty. it's a little nightmarish, to be perfectly frank. besides, the only things you can buy are things you can sell. so like. i GUESS i could sell cobblestone and buy baked potatoes, but that's not interesting. the idea is apparently to set up a thriving economy and then watch the numbers get huge. that's not my bag. i don't play cookie clicker either.

what i'd really like is something along the lines of farming valley but more open-ended and more in tune with minecraft mechanics. like, instead of adding a completely new set of tools that can't be enchanted or repaired, which are the only things that can mine your completely new ore, how about having the blacksmith buy vanilla ore and sell ingots, or something?

idk, i just want to try all the farming mods really, but most of them are clones of each other and don't have an economy. so. love to hear some recommendations.

 

in the meantime, i'm taking a break from farming mods and i'm gonna try out sevtech ages. it promises to basically start you as a caveman and walk you through various progressions until you're building spaceships and exploring other planets. i didn't add anything to it except 'just enough buttons' because if i don't have magnet mode i destroy my hands, and it doesn't have botania for me to cheat in a magnet ring.

wish me luck!

 

well, so far i am LOVING it. i can't do ANYTHING! i am just a wee stone age squareman, banging rocks together, and it's delightful! i felt a genuine sense of accomplishment when i spearfished and cooked a fish, obtained a wolf hide, dug up some salt -- things i would normally not even notice because i was feverishly hunting grains of infinity or something. every so often i exclaim aloud, i'm so chuffed. "carrots!" i cry, or, "you are a pretty flower, i am taking you home!" or "ohhhh no not today woofs, i have a pointy stick, you stay over there!"

being a caveman is kind of great. i'm almost not looking forward to agriculture. why toil in the dust when i can eat apples and stab wild pigs?



behold my cozy little shelter. i've got a clay kiln, a thatch roof, and even a doormat. irl it would probably reek to high heaven because i'm always tanning hides in there, but that's the great thing about minecraft, is that things are odorless and cubical and you never have to sleep. :D

next up: GRINDSTONE. i've heard there's this new technology where you bang the rocks together with things in between them and get useful powders! i dunno if regular rock-banging can be improved upon. we shall see.

 

there are some things that are hard to figure out and i had to look them up.

Spoiler: caveman skillz

for instance, to make planks, you set a log on a chopping block and hit it 4 or 5 times with an axe and planks will pop out. don't put the grill on top of the campfire, it does nothing, you have to put it above a block that you have set on fire. the kiln can't cook food for some reason, and if you break it you get a brick. one brick. low grade charcoal burns forever, though, so that's your cooking problems solved, once you have the kiln to make the stuff.

thatch falls down if you don't have a solid thing under it. the water bladder seems to remove water source blocks in a way that keeps them from replenishing themselves, unless it's my local pond that's weird in some way. anyhow, make rain barrels as soon as you have some planks and that's solved.

oh, and don't mix up the drying rack with the item rack. they look identical, but the item rack will allow you to adorn your shack with salted hides that never ever turn into leather, for hours of frustration fun!

i kind of enjoy the trial and error debugging process, personally, but some of these things are hard to work out that way and i had to google. on caveman google, you know. with chalk, in a cave.

 

another non-0bvious thing i had to look up, and a bunch of people were having a problem with: go into your options and change the keybind for 'carry-on' so it's not left-shift, or it will make you pick up your barrel in both hands when you're trying to get the lid off. i'd just turn carry-on off entirely in a solo game, it looks to only be useful for roleplay. anyhow, then you can shift-click on the side of the barrel to pick it up normally, or on the top to remove the lid.

 

my shelter has become a cabin. still living the hunter/gatherer life, but i've got leather clothes and i've been farming sugarcane for wicker so i can make a chicken enclosure. made some shears and sheared some wild sheep, but all i can make out of the wool is string. i also made a badass shaman hat out of a wolf head and some pelts, but it looks much cooler in my imagination than it does on the screen, so i didn't screenshot it.

 

i've reached the bronze age! many advancements! i have discovered how to mine copper, tin, and coal. i can bake bread in an oven instead of on a grill. i can make normal torches (so bright!) and normal chests (so big!) and a normal crafting table (you don't have to hit it with a rock to make it go!) also i got buffalo and they are weirdly affectionate.

no you can't help me chop wood, mini-boof, please stay out of the axe swinging area

i built a proper house out of limestone that i'm pretending is adobe, with a nice parquet floor and a second story loft. on the back patio is

my handy dandy making-things-hot area and grindey wheelatorium.

i have learned the technology of DIG DIRT and have some crops planted now, though i still mostly forage. in foreground: wicker fence to foil the pesterings of the beefalo. in background: mud brick wall to keep out angry animals and jerks.

inside my LOVE SHACK on a rainy night. i'm making jerky, all cozy and safe behind my fancy new DOOR. look how bright and not smoky those coal torches are! so much better than just wadding grass around a stick! whoever invented those is the boss -- OH WAIT I DID. (since apparently i am making all these advancements all on my ownsome. the squidwards are still trying to figure out how to irrigate their dirt and stick seeds in it.)

 

i see why you're not quite satisfied, but i can also see what you're going for, and it's a really cool idea. post when you get it how you want it?

 

ok i gotta say, sevtech ages progression is kinda screwed up. like, requiring me to invent the water mill before i can make a clay bucket? dumb. so dumb.

i just made age 2, and i'm cheating a LOT because some of these advancements have a ridiculously extended series of steps, and i have adhd and a toothache. i do NOT feel like having to set up a water powered saw mill and then doing 10 subsequent things in between making the tinker's stencil table and putting a stencil blank in it. and the recipe for the tinker's book... making a book is absurdly complicated. i've got mulberry parchment but i can't just make a book out of it? and i still can't use a chisel.

books, chisels, and clay casts should be bronze age, and shouldn't require automation. like, anything the egyptians were doing 5000 years ago i feel like you shouldn't need late renaissance tech to do.

 

after poking at astral sorcery a bit, i've concluded that the attunement perks and such might be pretty awesome, but in no way are they worth the VAST amount of time and fiddling required to get them. it's a very pretty mod, but i think you'll only enjoy it if you like it for its own sake. it's super cool looking, though. all the doomy-darky-gothy-darqueness magic mods were getting old. this one's togas and crystal spires.



SOOPER SHINEY

(not my setup. i do not have that kind of patience. i got as far as making the resonance wand and then swung by google to see if i had a lot more fiddling before i got anything nice. answer: lol yes.)

 

IM CRY

i let twitch update itself, and now it won't recognize my minecraft modpacks.

i'm too sick to troubleshoot. their twitter says 'known bug' like a week ago. i just wanted to farm. why is twitch so terrible.

 

i'll try that, thanks! for now i went to the ftb launcher and am playing stoneblock 2. what is the pet rock for? is it just so you're less lonely in your little cave? it gets in the way, and it jumps off stuff and hurts itself. i gotta admit it's cute tho.

 

what they say: "my intent is for players to explore and experiment, not be spoonfed."

what they mean: "writing documentation is boring and i dun wanna."

(yes, astral sorcery, i am looking at you, well spotted.)