A semi-review of Beyond Cosmo: A ton of torches and some bad choices
As is typical with any sorta review, this is just an opinion piece. I don't mean any malice towards the modpack devs or the people who made the individual mods housed in the pack, even if I may seem heated at points.
Beyond Cosmo is, according to its page, an Action Packed Sci-Fi modpack with 400+ mods designed for a true challenge. This led me to believe it was a tech modpack, given the sci-fi part, but that's not quite the case; admittedly that's on me, those two aren't entirely the same thing, and something having tech mods doesnt mean it's sci-fi and vice versa. That being said, there is tech, things like Mekanism and Create (with a bunch of add-ons thrown in for good measure of course,) Thermal Foundation, pretty standard stuff.
When you start the game, you'll notice that the modpack has No Tree Punching. This just adds a couple steps between spawning and getting wood, which is inoffensive; something interesting that I learned, however, is that No Tree Punching isn't just about not being able to punch trees anymore, instead it forces you to use the respective tool needed for more blocks, not just for harvesting, but for breaking the blocks at all. This is cool in concept, but very frustrating considering the host of things you're now unable to break due to this restriction. In theory, you can soft-lock yourself with just 13 sticks via supplementary. You also cant break vines, bamboo, and sugar cane which is just... why? Bamboo sorta makes sense since it'd circumvent the flint axe progression, but it wouldn't skip it too far anyways; and even then, vines and sugarcane?
Moving forward, Beyond Cosmo introduced me to a mod that I have never seen before, and frankly, don't want to see elsewhere: Hot Iron. This makes it so that stone, iron, and diamond tools have entirely different crafting steps, which in concept is fine. You need to use flint shards on stone to get rocks, right click with rocks in both hands to knap them, and shape the rocks into the tool heads, and only then will you be allowed to create stone tools. That's actually a fairly interesting way of doing it, although now that I think about it, it does sorta nullify the beginning of NTP, since you could just get some flint, make the shards, right click on stone, get a stick, and there you go, stone tools. Another flaw with Hot Iron's stone progression is that you only have a chance to get a rock every time you use your flint shards, thus leading to situations where I was sitting there holding right click, seeing it hit 13 times before giving me a rock.
As for iron, it's actually quite simple. First, you need to make tongs, a bellow, flint and steel, a smithy hammer and smithing anvil, and some water nearby. You put an ingot and tongs in a crafting space of some sort, use the bellows on a fire, right click the hot fire with the tonged ingot, put it on the smithing anvil with shift right click, and repeat 2 more times. once that's done, you put the iron in an arrangement similar to normal iron tools, I.E. 3 iron on the top row for a pickaxe head. Once put into position, hammer the Smithing anvil as many times as it requests to shape the tool head, then right click the hot head with the tongs and use it on the cauldron. This will give you a rough iron tool head, which you need to polish with a grindstone to get a polished pickaxe head. You think you're done yet? Don't be silly, now you need a Chopping stump to cut wood on. This will give you pieces of timber, which you also use on a grindstone to make a tool handle. Combine that with the iron pickaxe head and- Viola, you have yourself an Iron pickaxe. You'll need 16 iron ingots to make all of this stuff, not including the cost of the tool you wanna make; and this goes for armor and a shield too.
You know how many times I decided to go through that whole process? None. And yet, I was fine without it, because this modpack has Ancient Elements and Immersive Engineering, two mods which allow you to make iron-tier pickaxes without
As is typical with any sorta review, this is just an opinion piece. I don't mean any malice towards the modpack devs or the people who made the individual mods housed in the pack, even if I may seem heated at points.
Beyond Cosmo is, according to its page, an Action Packed Sci-Fi modpack with 400+ mods designed for a true challenge. This led me to believe it was a tech modpack, given the sci-fi part, but that's not quite the case; admittedly that's on me, those two aren't entirely the same thing, and something having tech mods doesnt mean it's sci-fi and vice versa. That being said, there is tech, things like Mekanism and Create (with a bunch of add-ons thrown in for good measure of course,) Thermal Foundation, pretty standard stuff.
When you start the game, you'll notice that the modpack has No Tree Punching. This just adds a couple steps between spawning and getting wood, which is inoffensive; something interesting that I learned, however, is that No Tree Punching isn't just about not being able to punch trees anymore, instead it forces you to use the respective tool needed for more blocks, not just for harvesting, but for breaking the blocks at all. This is cool in concept, but very frustrating considering the host of things you're now unable to break due to this restriction. In theory, you can soft-lock yourself with just 13 sticks via supplementary. You also cant break vines, bamboo, and sugar cane which is just... why? Bamboo sorta makes sense since it'd circumvent the flint axe progression, but it wouldn't skip it too far anyways; and even then, vines and sugarcane?
Moving forward, Beyond Cosmo introduced me to a mod that I have never seen before, and frankly, don't want to see elsewhere: Hot Iron. This makes it so that stone, iron, and diamond tools have entirely different crafting steps, which in concept is fine. You need to use flint shards on stone to get rocks, right click with rocks in both hands to knap them, and shape the rocks into the tool heads, and only then will you be allowed to create stone tools. That's actually a fairly interesting way of doing it, although now that I think about it, it does sorta nullify the beginning of NTP, since you could just get some flint, make the shards, right click on stone, get a stick, and there you go, stone tools. Another flaw with Hot Iron's stone progression is that you only have a chance to get a rock every time you use your flint shards, thus leading to situations where I was sitting there holding right click, seeing it hit 13 times before giving me a rock.
As for iron, it's actually quite simple. First, you need to make tongs, a bellow, flint and steel, a smithy hammer and smithing anvil, and some water nearby. You put an ingot and tongs in a crafting space of some sort, use the bellows on a fire, right click the hot fire with the tonged ingot, put it on the smithing anvil with shift right click, and repeat 2 more times. once that's done, you put the iron in an arrangement similar to normal iron tools, I.E. 3 iron on the top row for a pickaxe head. Once put into position, hammer the Smithing anvil as many times as it requests to shape the tool head, then right click the hot head with the tongs and use it on the cauldron. This will give you a rough iron tool head, which you need to polish with a grindstone to get a polished pickaxe head. You think you're done yet? Don't be silly, now you need a Chopping stump to cut wood on. This will give you pieces of timber, which you also use on a grindstone to make a tool handle. Combine that with the iron pickaxe head and- Viola, you have yourself an Iron pickaxe. You'll need 16 iron ingots to make all of this stuff, not including the cost of the tool you wanna make; and this goes for armor and a shield too.
You know how many times I decided to go through that whole process? None. And yet, I was fine without it, because this modpack has Ancient Elements and Immersive Engineering, two mods which allow you to make iron-tier pickaxes without
having to do everything outlined above. This sort of process doesn't make me want to engage with the system set in place, it just made me want to go around it via some other ore, or if I'm lucky, just finding a chest with an iron tool inside.
Beyond Cosmo also comes packaged with a ton of new visual effects, via shaders as always, but also from EnhancedVisuals. I suppose it'd be enhanced for me if i wanted to deal with blur from any explosion nearby, blur from being low on health making it hard to see, blood covering my screen, my view going gray if i get to 3 hunger bars or below, blur whenever you enter and exit WATER, are you seeing a theme here? There are SO many effects that will make the screen blurry for no reason, which is infuriating to deal with. Sidenote, this might also cause issues with people who suffer from any sorta photosensitivity issues, although im not entirely sure. There's a couple animation mods, as well as a mod that changes the models for mobs, which is pretty cool, but comes with its own litany of issues, particularly involving visability and hitboxes. Zombies will often bend backwards and in various directions, flopping around like car dealership tube men, while their hitbox stays consistent. This causes zombies to be much harder to track as they're moving and just looks ridiculous when you encounter a horde of them.
Mob balancing as a whole is overhauled as well, with some neat changes and some changes that make me wonder if you're even supposed to fight. This can mainly be attributed to "Enhanced AI," a mod which gives mobs an entire workshop of new abilities. Creepers can now detect you through walls and explode accordingly, a behavior described as "breaching," which is clever in theory but in reality it just means creepers will explode seemingly at random while you mind your own business. Mobs in general seem to target you through walls, which means that you wont get any sort of break from the action unless you make really thick walls or a really large carpet of torches in an area. This mod also has an option for mobs to damage or "bite" you if you attack them without holding some sort of weapon, which is turned on by default in the pack. Why am I getting punished for attacking a mob? Why should I lose health and blood just because I wanted to knock back something without wasting durability or just straight up fighting it? Mob sunscreen is also installed, meaning that any sort of safety you get from the day is lowered since zombies and skeletons no longer burn.
There's also a blood system adjacent to health, which lowers when you take damage sometimes and can be healed via some sort of bandaging from a few different mods, or golden apples. At certain points, if your blood level gets low enough, you'll end up getting negative effects like fragility, weakness, and slowness. It seems blood can also heal on its own, I've noticed you get it back when sleeping (which is just a high speed-up instead of instant night skipping btw). If your blood meter gets to empty, you just die, no recourse. I don't know about anyone else, but dying to a second health meter running out when your main health meter can be full is frustrating, especially when you get weaker as you lose "Health 2," since you lose your ability to fight back and end up dying because of that.
Before I get onto my biggest gripe about this modpack, there are a couple things I do like. There's a lot of structure variety, and said structures look really nice in world. You'll sometimes spot an old, rusted wind turbine or a transmission tower that act more as set dressing, or abandoned houses and malls with some neat loot inside. Additionally, this modpack has guns. It's a small thing when put that way, but I haven't really seen many modpacks that have guns built into them, and I have no idea why. It's something I'd like to see more of in major packs. The money system is really cool as well; certain mobs have quests tied to them, which once killed will autocomplete their respective quest and instantly reward the money listed. The money
Beyond Cosmo also comes packaged with a ton of new visual effects, via shaders as always, but also from EnhancedVisuals. I suppose it'd be enhanced for me if i wanted to deal with blur from any explosion nearby, blur from being low on health making it hard to see, blood covering my screen, my view going gray if i get to 3 hunger bars or below, blur whenever you enter and exit WATER, are you seeing a theme here? There are SO many effects that will make the screen blurry for no reason, which is infuriating to deal with. Sidenote, this might also cause issues with people who suffer from any sorta photosensitivity issues, although im not entirely sure. There's a couple animation mods, as well as a mod that changes the models for mobs, which is pretty cool, but comes with its own litany of issues, particularly involving visability and hitboxes. Zombies will often bend backwards and in various directions, flopping around like car dealership tube men, while their hitbox stays consistent. This causes zombies to be much harder to track as they're moving and just looks ridiculous when you encounter a horde of them.
Mob balancing as a whole is overhauled as well, with some neat changes and some changes that make me wonder if you're even supposed to fight. This can mainly be attributed to "Enhanced AI," a mod which gives mobs an entire workshop of new abilities. Creepers can now detect you through walls and explode accordingly, a behavior described as "breaching," which is clever in theory but in reality it just means creepers will explode seemingly at random while you mind your own business. Mobs in general seem to target you through walls, which means that you wont get any sort of break from the action unless you make really thick walls or a really large carpet of torches in an area. This mod also has an option for mobs to damage or "bite" you if you attack them without holding some sort of weapon, which is turned on by default in the pack. Why am I getting punished for attacking a mob? Why should I lose health and blood just because I wanted to knock back something without wasting durability or just straight up fighting it? Mob sunscreen is also installed, meaning that any sort of safety you get from the day is lowered since zombies and skeletons no longer burn.
There's also a blood system adjacent to health, which lowers when you take damage sometimes and can be healed via some sort of bandaging from a few different mods, or golden apples. At certain points, if your blood level gets low enough, you'll end up getting negative effects like fragility, weakness, and slowness. It seems blood can also heal on its own, I've noticed you get it back when sleeping (which is just a high speed-up instead of instant night skipping btw). If your blood meter gets to empty, you just die, no recourse. I don't know about anyone else, but dying to a second health meter running out when your main health meter can be full is frustrating, especially when you get weaker as you lose "Health 2," since you lose your ability to fight back and end up dying because of that.
Before I get onto my biggest gripe about this modpack, there are a couple things I do like. There's a lot of structure variety, and said structures look really nice in world. You'll sometimes spot an old, rusted wind turbine or a transmission tower that act more as set dressing, or abandoned houses and malls with some neat loot inside. Additionally, this modpack has guns. It's a small thing when put that way, but I haven't really seen many modpacks that have guns built into them, and I have no idea why. It's something I'd like to see more of in major packs. The money system is really cool as well; certain mobs have quests tied to them, which once killed will autocomplete their respective quest and instantly reward the money listed. The money
itself is an item and has a stack limit of 10k, and can be used to buy certain guns, armors, melees, and attachments for guns
I only got to around the lower-middle of the early game portion of the modpack, and I wanted to get further; I could've probably pushed through, but there was one mod in particular that just drove me off: Undead\_revamp2.
U_R2 is a mod that introduces a group of new mobs that serve as side/upgrades to the usual zombies, having new abilities and generally being tough to deal with, at least that's the idea. Mobs from this mod start spawning a week of in game days after the world begins, at which point the nights become exponentially stronger, and stronger in ways that are not fun to fight against in the slightest.
Moonflowers are way faster and more agile than normal zombies, and often spawn in groups of three or four, which means that by the time you see them coming they're already on you and hitting you back and forth. Hunters are like Ars Wilden stalkers but tuned up too much. The Rabidus lunges at you faster than you can run so you're just boned. The Horrors are cool in concept but would make more sense as a summoned boss than something you can just stumble upon. The Clogger is straight up just a boss that can also appear randomly, and if you dont have you base lit up enough to prevent spawns? Too bad, giant pig is going to destroy half your home.
I know, long ass post, yadda yadda, I just feel like when you have this much going on in the early game you cant really do anything like explore because you get punished heavily by everything around you
The modpack seems cool, but I don't want to play it until there's a way to completely disable U_R2 or something while still being able to download updates.
https://redd.it/1o2ofsq
@MinecraftModded
I only got to around the lower-middle of the early game portion of the modpack, and I wanted to get further; I could've probably pushed through, but there was one mod in particular that just drove me off: Undead\_revamp2.
U_R2 is a mod that introduces a group of new mobs that serve as side/upgrades to the usual zombies, having new abilities and generally being tough to deal with, at least that's the idea. Mobs from this mod start spawning a week of in game days after the world begins, at which point the nights become exponentially stronger, and stronger in ways that are not fun to fight against in the slightest.
Moonflowers are way faster and more agile than normal zombies, and often spawn in groups of three or four, which means that by the time you see them coming they're already on you and hitting you back and forth. Hunters are like Ars Wilden stalkers but tuned up too much. The Rabidus lunges at you faster than you can run so you're just boned. The Horrors are cool in concept but would make more sense as a summoned boss than something you can just stumble upon. The Clogger is straight up just a boss that can also appear randomly, and if you dont have you base lit up enough to prevent spawns? Too bad, giant pig is going to destroy half your home.
I know, long ass post, yadda yadda, I just feel like when you have this much going on in the early game you cant really do anything like explore because you get punished heavily by everything around you
The modpack seems cool, but I don't want to play it until there's a way to completely disable U_R2 or something while still being able to download updates.
https://redd.it/1o2ofsq
@MinecraftModded
Reddit
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Favorite and least favorite, and powerful and least powerful item transport systems?
Lots of different mods have ways to move items around. Create tends to use conveyor belts. Thermal uses pipes. Laser IO uses lasers.
How would you rank things from most to least favorite personally? Also what's your opinion on the ranking from most to least powerful?
Also if you want to split mods up and rank the points of progression on them differently that's fine (for example giving create ash alloy funnels a different rank than brass funnels).
I'm very new to modded Minecraft so I'm curious what people's thoughts are.
https://redd.it/1o2lzwl
@MinecraftModded
Lots of different mods have ways to move items around. Create tends to use conveyor belts. Thermal uses pipes. Laser IO uses lasers.
How would you rank things from most to least favorite personally? Also what's your opinion on the ranking from most to least powerful?
Also if you want to split mods up and rank the points of progression on them differently that's fine (for example giving create ash alloy funnels a different rank than brass funnels).
I'm very new to modded Minecraft so I'm curious what people's thoughts are.
https://redd.it/1o2lzwl
@MinecraftModded
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Mods to increase difficulty
I recently started playing the modpack ancient kingdoms 3 and it‘s a ton of fun. One thing that‘s a bit unfortunate is that the modpack offers many cool new armors and weapons but no challenges that require them. Even the hardest bosses I found so far are easy with normal enchanted dia equipment, all the fancy new stuff is just way to strong. But the thing is that I really want to use these new legendary weapons and spells without taking all the challenge out.
That‘s why I wanted to know I anyone knows good mods that make the game harder in a fun way. Maybe nerf enchantments, armor, buff enemies, make healing less abuseable idk. I dont want a super hard nightmare mode, just a reason to reach the strongest weapons, armor and spells mods like tinkers construct, ice and fire, all the different magic mods and the whole package add while maintaining a challenge that makes it possible to die and not solve every fight with sprint and punch, maybe a gold apple at most
https://redd.it/1o2uv2s
@MinecraftModded
I recently started playing the modpack ancient kingdoms 3 and it‘s a ton of fun. One thing that‘s a bit unfortunate is that the modpack offers many cool new armors and weapons but no challenges that require them. Even the hardest bosses I found so far are easy with normal enchanted dia equipment, all the fancy new stuff is just way to strong. But the thing is that I really want to use these new legendary weapons and spells without taking all the challenge out.
That‘s why I wanted to know I anyone knows good mods that make the game harder in a fun way. Maybe nerf enchantments, armor, buff enemies, make healing less abuseable idk. I dont want a super hard nightmare mode, just a reason to reach the strongest weapons, armor and spells mods like tinkers construct, ice and fire, all the different magic mods and the whole package add while maintaining a challenge that makes it possible to die and not solve every fight with sprint and punch, maybe a gold apple at most
https://redd.it/1o2uv2s
@MinecraftModded
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How do i reenable The End in raspberry flavoured?
I KNOW it is blasphemy against the holy dev team, but my friend group just refused to play RF without End being enabled.
help :(
https://redd.it/1o2tlwp
@MinecraftModded
I KNOW it is blasphemy against the holy dev team, but my friend group just refused to play RF without End being enabled.
help :(
https://redd.it/1o2tlwp
@MinecraftModded
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Something has gone horribly wrong. I made my own modpack and now I can't mine stone with a wooden pickaxe
https://redd.it/1o2zxy1
@MinecraftModded
https://redd.it/1o2zxy1
@MinecraftModded
Mods that are made only for Youtube content
I was browsing Youtube in hopes of finding some underrated mods to add to my modpack when I came around one video that caught my eye. I'm not going to mention the video here to not create drama or beef with the video creator. Anyway, I looked to download it and... there was no download link? I tried searching the mod online, but no luck either. It seems that the mod creator simply didn't upload it anywhere. I continued looking for more mods and found another cool one, this time with a download link, but it seems the mod wasn't updated since the video came out. Am I noticing a trend here? Are content creators making mods just to show the algorithm and get clicks, with no intentions of maintaining them? Granted, two data points isn't a lot, but I'd like to get more opinions on this.
https://redd.it/1o30x3i
@MinecraftModded
I was browsing Youtube in hopes of finding some underrated mods to add to my modpack when I came around one video that caught my eye. I'm not going to mention the video here to not create drama or beef with the video creator. Anyway, I looked to download it and... there was no download link? I tried searching the mod online, but no luck either. It seems that the mod creator simply didn't upload it anywhere. I continued looking for more mods and found another cool one, this time with a download link, but it seems the mod wasn't updated since the video came out. Am I noticing a trend here? Are content creators making mods just to show the algorithm and get clicks, with no intentions of maintaining them? Granted, two data points isn't a lot, but I'd like to get more opinions on this.
https://redd.it/1o30x3i
@MinecraftModded
Reddit
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Modding Minecraft using non-java languages
I've been thinking about making my own Minecraft mod for a while now. I have some basic Java knowledge that allows me to understand and make minor adjustments to local copies of existing mods, nothing complex. I really don't think I would be able to even begin to write and make my own mod in Java in the foreseeable future, even if I were to study Java very seriously, and I don't plan on doing so. However, I am pretty skilled in c++, so that way would be a much quicker and easier one, with much less study involved and a little less effort. However, I've never modded anything, and all my experience with Minecraft mods is installing and using already made ones, so I know next to nothing about it. Here's my question: would it even be possible to write a Java Edition mod in c++, is it something I could look into, or would I be wasting my time trying to learn how to do it?
https://redd.it/1o31ti4
@MinecraftModded
I've been thinking about making my own Minecraft mod for a while now. I have some basic Java knowledge that allows me to understand and make minor adjustments to local copies of existing mods, nothing complex. I really don't think I would be able to even begin to write and make my own mod in Java in the foreseeable future, even if I were to study Java very seriously, and I don't plan on doing so. However, I am pretty skilled in c++, so that way would be a much quicker and easier one, with much less study involved and a little less effort. However, I've never modded anything, and all my experience with Minecraft mods is installing and using already made ones, so I know next to nothing about it. Here's my question: would it even be possible to write a Java Edition mod in c++, is it something I could look into, or would I be wasting my time trying to learn how to do it?
https://redd.it/1o31ti4
@MinecraftModded
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Is there a 'broken' modpack
A previous post on this subreddit gave me an idea for a modpack and I'd like to see if it already exists.
The idea is a pack where you have to use workarounds or glitches to progress, such as having to lure a creeper to stone in order to get cobblestone because wooden pickaxes can't mine stone, or having diamonds spawn below bedrock.
Does something like that already exist?
https://redd.it/1o37yt4
@MinecraftModded
A previous post on this subreddit gave me an idea for a modpack and I'd like to see if it already exists.
The idea is a pack where you have to use workarounds or glitches to progress, such as having to lure a creeper to stone in order to get cobblestone because wooden pickaxes can't mine stone, or having diamonds spawn below bedrock.
Does something like that already exist?
https://redd.it/1o37yt4
@MinecraftModded
Reddit
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