Automation

Minecraft: Reclamation Modpack

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The Game

This modpack is a major overhaul of the Minecraft you’re used to seeing. You spawn in a desolate world, there are no more trees, no grass, no ores. The only things remaining are dead trees, ruins which hold some copper blocks and wasteland bees. From this bare minimum you will have to rebuild and rewild the world – no small task. There are also less hostile mobs coming out at night than before – husks, skeletons, cave spiders, creepers and endermen, you’ll have to bring animals back too.

You start out getting bits of copper from the ruins and you are then introduced to the Theurgy mod which eventually allows you to get your first dirt blocks – luckily you can get seeds by breaking the dried grass still left in this world and begin your journey. The early game is quite focused on crops – you will have to selectively breed and combine crops to progress from the base 4 types to re-discovering all other types of crop and seed. The first major milestone is cuprosia – a plant that allows you to grow copper. From there, more mods start coming in and opening up avenues to create and reintroduce more materials, plants and nature.

Worth it?

The modpack is quite magic heavy – there are some very interesting mods and the work put in to make them all work together and work sequentially in the quest line is truly impressive. There is one mod that does let down the pack a little bit and a lot of the consensus online seems to back this – embers rekindled. At it’s heart it’s got some good things, but the trial and error element of using the Exchange Tablet can be very frustrating for players. While at its heart it is essentially a version of a mastermind game where you have to match elements to positions, it can be very frustrating and losing hard earned materials in this was can also be demoralising.

It is a slow pack, things take time and sometimes a lot of steps. It takes some considerable time to get to automation and making your life easier and more efficient. You have to enjoy the journey and take your time, if you enjoy that, enjoy building and the magic mods, you will definitely have fun. The custom quest line offers a strong reason to keep going and trying new things, getting familiar with particular mods requires more reading and experimenting with specifics. You can easily spend 30+ hours on the quest line alone. The work done by people to put together this amazing modpack is truly commendable.

Tips

  • In the early game focus on the crops, getting all 10s cuprosia will help massively with getting copper and using the watering can makes a huge difference to how quickly you can grow crops
  • Use a mastermind solver to for the exchange tablet to help solve it.
  • Once you get saplings a 4×4 Spruce tree is a great way to farm dirt by digging up the podzol it creates
  • Once you can make the botanist gear (with infused iron), create that and the aura cache so you can repair your gear and sword
  • In order to increase your Enchanted altar’s capacity plant a large variety of plants around it (not all plants contribute so do check), there’s also a cap on how much each plant will contribute – make it varied, various trees, mushrooms (also big ones), crops all contribute – in order to get a mob head – use the botanist’s sword when fighting mobs as it increases the chance of heads dropping.
  • Don’t ignore the agricraft seeds – this will be one of the most reliable ways to automate gold, iron, lead and other metal production in the mid game – combined with some automated Create farms you will have plenty of metals coming from these
  • Feeding the Herbivorous Absorber with flowers will actively generate aura in an area (it takes a lot)
  • Use a potency lens with the mana spreader in order to increase its mana output – longer term set up a semi automated solution with endoflames and the mana spreader pointing at a splitter and a few pools.
  • Once you start unlocking Create parts it’s worth making a mechanical saw, which massively speeds up cutting down trees (especially big spruce trees)
  • Read the books for each of the modpacks – there’s a lot of useful info in each of them for specific items and structures
  • Setting up a variety of automated farms with the various agricraft seeds will see you into the late game and take away some of the resource grind

Useful Links

Forager

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The Game

Forager is a survival crafting game developed by HopFrog in which you start out on a single island with nothing but a pickaxe and a desire to “forage” everything around you. You start out simple – focusing on trees, rocks and berries. Gradually you expand your operations to include idle fish traps that will catch fish for you and eventually a smelter and the first crafting elements. The game allows you to expand by buying new islands adjacent to yours. As you expand you will find new materials and ways to upgrade your gear or build new machines to help you. As you establish yourself you can automate certain tasks and set your smelters or factories to constantly produce the materials that you need.

Every time you hit something you expend your energy, you can regain it by eating. Similarly, you start out with 3 hearts/health, if you get hit by an enemy that can drop to 2, certain foods will help replenish hearts. As you unlock islands you come across various puzzles and dungeons which will reward you with resources and ways to increase your health, damage or energy. Every time you level up you are also given a chance to spend your skill points on new skills. There are 4 main areas to spend your skills in, which are also the 4 main building types – industrial, farming, economic and magic.

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Worth it?

The game is free on PS Plus Premium and also available via Xbox Gamepass, on Steam you can get it for around £15, but it’s frequently on sale for around £5. Overall that price seems fair – it’s a great little game, brilliantly simply with quite a bit of depth and very easy to get sucked into and lose hours. Once you get multiple machines and automation running the game is almost musical in its constant sound effects, it also has some great puzzles that are just the right amount of challenging. My single biggest issue with the game is that it seems that some of the trophies are broken on PlayStation (and possibly elsewhere) and it’s been a known issue for a while. It would be a great game to 100% but not getting that achievement really stung and killed the joy of it for me. It’s also worth mentioning that Forager multiplayer was in development but was canned due to some controversy around how the creator treated his team.

Overall Forager is a great game that will make time fly and keep you hooked for at least 10-20 hours while you complete the majority of it. The simple graphics and musical sound effects make it a great experience.

Tips

  • You can get void items by building a void portal from the sigil maker, unlocked via the magic skill tree
  • Build multiples of your industrial buildings and split stacks across them in order to get materials faster
  • Buy sigils from the markets in the late game as a way to quickly grind bosses
  • Don’t bother with the pet skill until later – it just gives you a pet, nothing more
  • Most quest lines require a rare item that can be found by digging in dig spots (small holes in the ground), which randomly spawn on uncovered ground
  • Geology is a very useful early skill to target in order to improve your coal production
  • Vaults and Banks can also be useful early game in order to store items and generate passive income
  • Combine quarries with mining lasers to automate the workflow
  • Magic is useful early game as it will add fairies to the world which can instantly replenish your hearts and energy
  • Dump your inventory at the museum

Useful Links