Farming

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

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Slime Rancher

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The Game

With the recent release of Slime Rancher 2, I went back to the original to see where it all began and what all the hype was about. As the name suggest Slime Rancher (developed by Monomi Park) is a game that revolves around farming and exploiting adorable (but sometimes dangerous) slimes. You explore the open world vacuuming up unsuspecting and rare slimes after which you bring them back to your ranch where they are stored in corrals and fed various foods in order to obtain their most valuable resource – plorts. Each different kind of slime will drop its own kind of plorts, different plorts sell for different prices and those will fluctuate depending on how many you’ve sold recently and the in-game economy.

If a slime eats another slime’s plorts you will get a so called Largo slime – an extra large hybrid slime of the two types (producing 2 types of plorts) these larger slimes are harder to handle as they can’t be sucked up as you can only move one at a time. The danger with these slimes is that if they eat a third type of plort they can become tar slimes – a destructive and dangerous slime that can quickly decimate your ranch and other slimes. As you progress in the open world you will also find Gordos – special extra large slimes that need to be force-fed in order to unlock portals and keys to new areas of the map. New and sometimes dangerous slimes are discovered as you progress as well – some explosive, others radioactive.

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Worth it?

Generally speaking the game will set you back around £10 to £15, although with Slime Rancher 2 being released recently I would expect this to drop soon (the game is available for free as part of the PS Plus Extra tier too). Overall the game takes around 14 hours to complete depending on what you focus on, if you’re not out there overfeeding gordos and unlocking new areas it will take you a lot longer (but then again there’s so much to do on the ranch that I don’t blame you). The game is very good at keeping you busy constantly – the “one more day” moment is definitely there and can easily absorb you for extended periods of time. The game concept is simple but very effective and there are plenty of things to unlock and do – from timed challenges to crafting and research. The open world presents a bit of a traversal challenge and sometimes can feel as if you’re trying to break it with some of the areas you can jetpack to, the ability to unlock portals and quicker routes is also helpful as navigating the fairly big open world can get a bit tedious, especially if you have to go anywhere near water with an inventory full of goodies as falling in water will cause them to all be lost.

The game is a fun and generally relaxing experience, exploring and discovering new areas can seem scary but is also actually quite chill as even the more dangerous slimes can be vacced up quite easily or you can always run from them. Even if the farming element gets a bit repetitive, the open world and lore take you on quite the adventure. If you’re after a chill farming type game with some really cute slimes then it’s definitely worth checking out.

Tips

  • Unlock the jetpack early
  • Feed a slime its favourite food for a double plort yield
  • Feed a gordo its favourite food and you only have to feed it half the amount of food
  • Tars spread faster at night
  • Complete daily quests for cash and special rewards
  • Get the water tank upgrade early and always keep it full – water instantly kills tar slimes
  • Phosphorous slimes only appear at night and will die if exposed to sunlight
  • Farming largos allows you to get 2 types of plort from one corral
  • Store and sell plorts when their price is high (when you sell a large amount the price will then drop for some considerable time)
  • Get a farm going early on
  • Getting high walls or a net on your corral can help prevent slimes from escaping (they will try to escape if there’s food nearby)
  • Do not give a largo a third type of plort or it will become a tar
  • You can unlock new areas to expand in by unlocking the overgrowth or the grotto (you can take care of phosphorus slimes in there without a solar shield
  • Completing quests for other ranchers on their ranch can eventually unlock even more area to expand to and other special prizes

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