Mom Plays Minecraft: Rogue Like Dungeons - the Between Lands

General Notes (specific things about each dimension are in different posts.)

I think that this one has been my favorite modpack so far.  Although it's quest based, the idea really is aimed toward exploration and there are some interesting rewards for exploring.  T

Inventory Pets really shine in this modpack.  I found I was constantly using the Enderman (teleports when health is low), Anvil (repairs equipment over time, including armor), and Ocelot (see in the dark... like... dungeons.)  The speed run of the chicken was something else I used frequently.  Chest pets (and double chest pets) are wonderful storage for your travels though you do have to keep feeding them planks or they won't open for you.

I do recommend (particularly for the novice) setting the game play to allow cheats for two reasons.  Firstly, there's no mechanic for recovering your inventory after death and that's a pain and the gravestone pet doesn't always work (the command /gamerule keepInventory true seems to work, though).  Secondly, in order to get to one of the worlds to explore, you have to find a "druid circle" and they're not very common.  You can travel via glider or via airship (if you can get that to work) but it's easier to enter creative mode and fly until you find the circle, put down a marker, and teleport to that area after you set the game back on normal mode.

Starting in the R.A.D. world for the first time means doing all the first time stuff (beating up trees, making rock pickaxes, and so forth.)  Once you get basic tools, start looking for single trunk oak trees in areas where there are other types of trees (spruce forests, for instance.)  There are chests hidden in the tops of these oak trees that contain an inventory pet, gemstones (usually), nuggets, leaves, and lots and lots (lots!) of melon slices.

After you've found a few chests, you will want to find cows (leather) and sheep (wool) to kill.  Four wool plus four leather plus a chest is the basic recipe for a backpack and you're going to need a lot of those.

My advice would be to wait until you find a village to set up a permanent house.  Some of the villagers will trade useful things (Eye of Ender) and it's easier to hand over an emerald for something than to go kill a dozen or more mobs and hope the random number gods favor you.  There are traveling vendors as well.

Wolves are very common, and I suggest creating a pack to follow you down into dungeons.  It cuts down on aggravating deaths.

There are only a few basic ores in this mod... so you won't have to worry about making bronze or any of the alloys.  Your basic mine-able blocks are diamond, emerald, coal, redstone, and iron (other materials are rarely found.)  These are all fairly abundant; one of the best places to look for those ores are on the fourth level of what I call the "homely house" dungeons (yes, a reference to Elf-Lord Elrond's abode in THE HOBBIT.)  The fourth level will also have magma blocks (which you will need) and nether quartz -- no need to make a nether portal to get those.

Not all the vegetation is friendly.  Feather blossoms will loft you high into the air -- and then drop you.  Purple fade leaf flowers will teleport you to random places.  I've lost a number of horses when I ran over those flowers.  Cinder blooms will set you on fire.  There are thornvines... and plants in the jungle that will try to eat you, just to keep it interesting.


Next up:  the wizard option

Mom Plays Minecraft: Descent to the Core (2nd level gameplay)

I'm going to be honest, here - until you're familiar with all the recipes and mechanics and locations, be prepared to switch into 'peaceful' mode on occasions.  Ores and other resources are in mob-rich areas and often some distance away, and  the bows and arrows that the skeletons use have a considerable knock-back.  If it's your first time in the area, you can die many times just trying to get back to retrieve your gear - and then lose it all in the lava..  It will take more than a Minecraft month to complete the quests; with mobs, it could take darn near forever.

Remember, it's a game.  It's supposed to be fun - not to get you stressed out.

Descent to the Core is best played as a multiplayer game.  If you do it as a singleplayer game (as I do), consider learning to use the "Cheats" module.  They weren't disabled, and it makes gameplay a lot less frustrating when you lose your iron sword and you have to spend a day leveling a pickaxe so you can mine iron.

The /give command and you
The "give" command can give you a lot of useful things.  For example, typing

/give **** book
and
/give **** string  (where **** is your name)

...will give yourself a book and a string.  You can put the two together and get a new copy of the questbook for Descent to the Core.  This is useful, because there are about a thousand different ways to lose that darn questbook, and I've done it a good fifty times.

/give **** 1666 will give you soil to plant your seeds in.

You could theoretically give yourself all the things needed to complete quests, but that's not much fun.


Moving Around
Using the map teleport to get back to your death place is also useful (I generally leave two death points up... one near my "home"and another on one of the big planes.)

Keep a chest near your doorway "out" of your home and supply it with a pick and a sword and armor.  You'll need them to retrieve your gear when you die.

Harvest a lot of saplings.  I grow my trees outdoors (in Peaceful mode) rather than trying to set up a tree nursery.  That ended up being less frustrating.  The Sacred Oaks give you more saplings and wood than you can harvest in an hour.

Hoes and mattocks don't work.  You need fertile soil to grow crops - no preps, just stick the seeds in the ground.  Choose the soybean seed when it comes up, because you'll need milk.

Eight zombie flesh can be smelted into leather and turned into one backpack.


First Steps in Descent To The Core
Once you've survived your arrival and set up a small house, your priority should be to find the large planes with dirt, ore, and gravel resources.  You'll want to save out two stacks of marble and two of limestone because one quest will want them.  Mine any aluminum ore on the way... as your pick upgrades, you will be able to mine some other ores but it takes a lot of digging.

A lot of the items are in chests in dungeons.  You'll do a lot of fighting (or a lot of cheating)

Make lots of chests and if anything odd shows up, store it.  There's probably a quest that will ask for it.

If you lose your initial pickaxe, the command /give **** 5678 will give you a nice ferrous pickaxe that will mine ferrous ore.

Recipes that you may need

Seared Brick: Roast the grout that you got as a reward.
Sand: Two compressed gravel (nine gravel, spread on your crafting table)