Welcome to the Places of My Mind

I think I finally have a purpose (but not the only purpose) for this blog: detailing my games that I play, with and without mods. Such discussions are too long for Tweets on Twitter without making a long thread of them and it would just be a wall of broken up text on Facebook. Also, Facebook tends to hate links that lead offsite, so that isn't a good platform for sharing stuff in that regard either.

So I finally started up an instance of Minecraft with the 1.16.5 version of the game. The native launcher that the game uses allows for multiple installations, so I have 4 instances that are each running a different version of the game: 1.12.2, 1.15.2, 1.16.4, and now 1.16.5. I spent a couple hours debugging the mod stack to get the game to launch in 1.16.5 and then another few hours actually trying to get a decent world to start on. The first 2 generated worlds were not suitable starts (one of which started me in the middle of an ocean with a clump of driftwood as the nearest "island"). The 3rd one I generated seems to be the most suitable for starting a playthru. I spawned in a village that is up on a ridge, and the surrounding landscape has suitable areas for my builds and decent resources within a reasonable distance.

Mod Stack
I'm running with a total of 99 mods at the moment, with quite a few that are world gen related. I like having a variety of biomes to explore and to get resources from as some resources are restricted to certain biomes. So, here's what I'm running with, broken up into categories:

World Gen:

• Biomes O' Plenty: This is my primary biome mod. It adds a wide selection of biomes to explore with varying landscape features such as mangrove trees, tall mountainous crags, fields of fungi, and wide prairies of grass with some scattered trees.
• Atmospheric: This one is a new one to my mod stack. It has a few neat wood choices (more decorating and build options) and two primary biome additions, rainforest and dunes, which aren't ones that Biomes O' Plenty.
• Quark: This mod covers several categories, so I'll probably list it a few times, but detail what it adds for that category. For world gen, Quark adds quite a bit to the underground, including large dungeons, glowing cave crystals, speleothems (spikes of stone from both the floors and ceilings), underground biomes, and a few cavern modifications. For the above ground areas, faerie rings (ring of flowers with goodies buried at the center) and colored blossoming trees have been added. The Nether gets spires of obsidian added, some of which have goodies embedded in them. Similar spires are also added to the End as well, only without goodies in them. Also adds a few new stone types that generate underground in certain biomes (more decor/build options). Quark also adds some variants to the passive animals (chickens, cows, sheep, pigs).
• YUNG's Better Caves: This mod adjusts how the caverns are generated in both the Overworld and the Nether. The Overworld gets some new "bottom of the world" features such as flooded caverns, underground seas of water and lava, and flat bedrock. The flat bedrock is also applied to the Nether.
• YUNG's Better Mineshafts: This mod revamps how the mineshafts generate and adds new sections to them, such as abandoned work stations and vertical shafts (good locations for elevators).
• Geolosys: Short for Geological Systems, this mod revamps how the ore generates in the world. Instead of being lots of tiny pockets of ore everywhere, ore is condensed to smaller locations and samples appear on the surface (and sometimes inside caverns) to indicate what ore is in the immediate area. You'll have to prospect to figure out where the ore exactly is, however. I like it because it adds a bit more to world exploration and takes the frustration out of figuring out where to get enough of certain resources. A little bit of a learning curve at this time because the ingame manual is incomplete and the fact that the ores use the real world names such as Azurite and Limonite (deep copper and deep iron, respectively).
• Upstream: Revamps how the game's rivers generate and results in less frustrating water travel. The default Minecraft river generation generates far too many narrow and/or water-less river segments, which I usually end up dredging and refilling with water. This should reduce my workload of terraforming rivers for travel quite a bit.
• Blue Power: adds volcanos (lots of basalt), limestone, and marble to the world.
• Create: Adds several stone types underground as well (more decor/build options).
• Thermal Foundation: Adds a few minerals to the underground such as Apatite (fertilizer ingredient) and sulfur.
• Upgrade Aquatic: Adds new aquatic features such as plants and fish (also some fish will eat other fish).
• Charm: Adds some variants to the passive animals (sheep, cows, squid, etc.), allows villages to generate in more biomes, adjusts how mineshafts generate.
• Buzzier Bees: Revamps how the bees work and adds new related resources.
• Productive Bees: Adds new beehives and bee species to the world. Also allows for gathering of mob drops and other resources in Peaceful mode.
• Fun Ores: Allows for gathering of mob drops in Peaceful mode. Adds mob related ores underground that can be mined to gather resources related to specific mods, such as Enderman and Creepers.
• Resynth: Adds a plant-based way to gather various resources, including mob drops and ores.
• TerraAqueous: Adds fruit trees, stone/stick landscape decorations (can be harvested for resources), and flowers (dye sources).
• Botania: A nature-based magic mod that adds flowers to the world which can be used for dyes.

Decoration and Construction Options:

• Advanced Chimneys: Add functional chimneys for routing smoke and particulates. Also makes burning devices such as furnaces emit smoke when running.
• Engineer's Decor: Adds thematic engineering decor and construction options. Goes well with Immersive Engineering.
• Platforms: Adds wooden and steel platforms for making catwalks and other platforms/walkways
• Macaw's Bridges: Adds several types of bridges, including ones with minecart tracks integrated into them.
• Macaw's Roofs: Adds new roofing options, including skylights that can be opened.
• Macaw's Doors: Adds new door options.
• Macaw's Windows: Adds new window options, some of which can be opened.
• Macaw's Trapdoors: Adds new trapdoor options.
• Macaw's Furniture: Adds new furniture options, some of which are functional storage (similar to chests).
• Macaw's Paintings: Adds new painting options.
• Storage Drawers: Provides compact storage which can be upgraded. Compacting drawers that can handle resources that have multiple tiers (ie nuggets that can make ingots which can make blocks).
• Framed Compacting Drawers: Allows you to make compacting drawers with whatever base, drawer, and trim options you want. It's addon for Storage Drawers.
• Inspirations: Adds all sorts of decoration options. I picked it up mainly for the feature of placing carpet tiles on stairs and having them fit the stairs.
• Iron Chests: Upgradeable storage chests.
• Multibeds: Customizable beds, with blankets and pillows.
• Comforts: Adds sleeping bags (function as beds, but do not change your respawn location) and hammocks (advances time to night).
• Chisel & Bits: Allows you to turn a single block into 4096 bits which can then be used to make whatever you want, such as signs, embosses, fences, filigrees, etc. Also supports hacking up liquid sources in a similar manner. Will work with practically any block added by any mod.
• Immersive Posts: Adds post and fence options for Immersive Engineering.

Tech Mods:

• Immersive Engineering: A steampunk themed mod that features dynamically created, drooping electrical wires. Machinery is typically made of multi-block structures that are built in the world and hit with a hammer to form the completed machine. This is the baseline tech mod that I prefer to work with.
• Thermal Expansion: A series of single-block machines that can be upgraded for various functions. Allows for compact machine areas. I consider this to be a mid-tier tech mod for my purposes.
• Transport: A modular minecart and boat mod. Provides base minecart and boat hulls that can be configured with various modules for functions. Also, adds switches/junctions for the minecart tracks. This is what I'm using as a replacement for Railcraft. I still need a signaling mod, though.
• Blue Power: Adds project tables, alloy furnaces, and colored redstone lamps.
• More Red: Adds redstone logic gates.
• Engineer's Tools: Starter tools for getting started with Immersive Engineering.
• Thermal Locomotion: Adds a couple of specialized minecarts and minecart rails (luminous and prisamarine)
• Redstone Gauges and Switches: Adds a variety of switches and gauges that either send or receive redstone signals. Great for controlling redstone circuits and automating systems. I like to use the machine switches from this mod for controlling the Immersive Engineering machinery.
• Water Strainers: Allows you to passively gather materials and fish from water sources. I use this to gather sand for projects.
• Create: Kinetic-powered machinery mod. Allows for machinery to be driven by windmills and waterwheels via shafts and gearboxes. I'm using this for the ability to make functional elevators for accessing mineshafts/caverns. If you know what you're doing, you can make all sorts of automated systems and rotation-moved structures.
• Advanced Hooks Launchers: Grappling hooks (think Legend of Zelda).
• Advanced Finders: Tools for locating ores and other resources.
• Thermal Innovation: Electrically-powered tools.

Quality of Life Mods:

• Client Tweaks: Adds a few inventory and menu features.
• Quark: Adds some accessibility features.
• Xaero's Map & Minimap: Allows you to keep track of where you are and allows the setting of waypoints so you can return to specific places later. Supports teleporting to set waypoints and allows for unique sets of waypoints. I use this feature to keep my waypoints for ores/resources from cluttering my list of points of interest waypoints.
• Swing Through Grass: Allows you to attack mobs without destroying the plants that decorate the landscape (and take durability off your sword).
• The One Probe: Allows you to identify blocks/items while looking at them. Also shows health of mobs, power stored in machinery, etc.
• Thermal Cultivation: Adds an upgradeable watering can for use in farms.
• Gilded Armor: Allows you to add gold plating to armor so Piglins in the Nether will not attack you on sight.
• Gravestone Mod: Sets a grave where you died so you can recover your items. It will also put them back into the same inventory slots that you had them before death.
• Environmentally Friendly Creepers: Allows you to configure Creepers (and other sources of explosions) to prevent holes from being blown into the landscape when they explode.
• Extra Boats: Allows you to place chests into boats and carry mobs with you (tamed pets).
• Just Enough Items: Mod that allows you to look up recipes and see how/where items are used/crafted. Also, allows you to give yourself items in Cheat Mode without being in Creative Mode.
• Rapid Leaf Decay: Makes leaf blocks rapidly disappear once the log blocks they were attached to are removed.
• Tree Harvester: While sneaking and breaking the bottom log of a tree with an axe, you will harvest the whole tree.
• Shut Up Experimental Settings: Removes the prompt when loading a world with modified settings.
• Smooth Boot Forge: Fixes the thread allocations for Minecraft when starting up and while playing. This speeds up Minecraft loading and removes the periodic hangs that Minecraft was doing when I was playing.
• Waystones: Adds waystones to the world for quick-traveling. Also allows you to make your own.
• Waystones 2 Waypoints: Automatically adds waypoints to the map when you activate waystones.
• Polymorph: Allows you to specify the output of a recipe when there are conflicting recipes. Confirmed to work in crafting tables and furnaces.
• Mouse Tweaks: Adds some automation for transferring items between inventories and the hotbar.
• Quark: Allows swapping of the hotbar from the 3 lines of the player's inventory. Whole rows are swapped. Double doors are opened together when one of the doors is opened. Many other QoL features are included, but these are the highlights.
• Dynamic Surroundings: Adds various visual and audio effects to the game. Fireflies appear around plants, auroras appear in the sky at night in mountainous regions, waterfalls have sound and emit particles which create splashes on water surfaces, rain drops create rings on water when it rains, etc.
• Cycle Paintings: With a painting held in your hand, you can cycle through various paintings without having to take one down and replace it constantly to get the one you want (and the game picks a random one each time).
• Klee Slabs: Makes it possible to remove half of a double-slab block without having to remove the entire block to do so.

Where I'm at now
I've explored a good chunk of the surrounding area around the village I spawned in and I have selected a spot on the coast to the south of the village for where I want to start building my base of operations. It's a grove biome with tall dark oak and spruce trees scattered about. The waters off the coast are part of a bayou biome and there are quite a few limonite deposits scattered around. This means that the iron deposits are underneath all of the clay and mud that lines the bottom of the water, so I shouldn't have too much trouble gathering that ore later.

I've set a few waypoints for various ores that I wish to harvest later and plotted out where I want to run a tunnel system to connect to the nearby village. I need to bore a shaft into the nearby cliff to reach one of the nearby cavern systems. From there, I can build a short connector tunnel to reach the engineering shop that is in the village. I'll have to build stairs and stair towers to help connect the village together as it goes across the ridge.

I also have plans to build some minecart railways through the hillside for ease of access across it, and a boat dock so I can start sailing across the bayou to places. I'll have to find a use for all of the lily pads I'm going to be coming across. Bumping into them with a boat breaks them off. Oh, I suppose  I could repurpose them into walkways since they do support me running across them! That's still a lot of lily pads, though! I'll figure it out eventually.

Also, with as much space as I have on the cliff face at my base site, I will probably look into mounting the Create windmills and stuff onto it for powering devices and machinery. On my 1.16.4 instance, I was looking into what I need to make some of the starter machinery to process plates and such with Create so I could move onto Immersive Engineering devices and beyond. I've got the basics down for the Immersive Engineering tech tree from the last few years of playing with that mod, so I'm looking forward to learning how to work with Create's machinery. Sure, it will take up more space, but it looks cool while it works.