I've recently taken a belated second look at FTB: Interactions.

Apologies as I'm sure most people are familiar, but to recap: the basic theme of the modpack is to take a typical Expert Mode modpack (magic and tech), pare back any duplicated functions across mods, and then make progression through what remains heavily interdependent through heavy recipe tweaking. This is not a pack where you dedicate a long period of time to progressing a specific sub-mod, but rather one where you constantly need to dip into different mods to achieve your goals. In a sense, it is a true "unifying" modpack, that creates one grand progression through the power levels. This is necessary, because the world is a LOT more dangerous than most modpacks, with true darkness at night, invisible mode for creepers that get close, hyper aggressive zombie pigmen and many other difficulty tweaks that step up sequentially as you progress through the pack

The progression steps (and in particular the "ages" one progresses through) are fundamentally underpinned by a variation of Gregtech, and I guess this is part of the source of its comparative unpopularity. It's worth understanding however that this is not a "vanilla" Gregtech pack, and no-where near as painful as that would be because there is so much other stuff interlinking in, preventing you ever being stuck in a long period of microcrafting. The packmakers also attempt to alleviate some of the microcrafting through quest rewards often reimbursing or multiplying things you've crafted.

The pack is often complimented for its strong earlygame, guided very clearly and well by a well thought out initial quest structure while in a "skyblock" environment setting up, which is fun and not too confusing. It then transitions into the overworld, and ultimately nether, outer space and the end.

The concept and much of the execution of this pack is EVERYTHING modded minecraft should be at its best - a sprawling, wonderous problem-solving journey weaved in a fairly consistent and allmod encompassing way into a single master progression. I absolutely love the idea and content of the pack and thing everyone who likes complexity in their mod packs would enjoy it... but for some interconnected major issues

My main criticism of the pack starts in the overworld. The premise of the pack, the interaction and interdependency between different mods, is a fantastic one, but the quest structure post-skyblock really lets this down. There are a lot of quests but the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve gets lost in a lot of inconsequential detail. Some quests are utterly critical to do early with rewards that unlock huge timesavers, but if you dont spot them you may not bother until much later when it really doesnt matter anymore (example: one early quest gives you enough exotic materials to craft 60 ender item conduits 3 ages prior to them being makeable, hugely helping automation, but this is not signposted in any way.

The standard expert pack justification for not handholding players through the mods simply doesnt make sense here - players may well be experts of the mods, say bloodmagic or astral sorcery, but the pack makes such huge changes to their playstyle and progression that this expertise doesnt get you anywhere, not realising except after literal hours of JEI searching that the obvious earlygame step you are trying to take is now gated much later in the pack. This could easily be addressed through the quests - making it clear what is gated behind what else so the player can choose their own path but not waste dozens of hours pursuing a dead end.

Speaking of JEI this is really the other main shortcoming of the pack. Gregtech introduces literally dozens of circular recipes for every one of a hundred new materials. As such it is excessively difficult to find how to make something through JEI alone as you need to wade through 50+ recipes that go in circles to work out, eventually, it is the small piles of dust (rather than the normal piles, or ingots or plates or nuggets or medium piles or bars or ....) that are the "important" ones for this particular material. There's also MANY materials which have no real purpose - i.e. you can make ingots or plates but they feature in no recipes other than the millions of circular ones that lead back into its current state. This leads to an incredibly frustrating JEI treasure hunt.

Finally on JEI, in some 1.7 packs there used to be a mod which would show for an item or material, as a tab (like each machine has), if stuff spawns in the overworld/nether/end or is obtained from a drop from a mob or in a dungeon chest or from villagers. This isnt present in this pack (does it still exist?). Similarly, some processes including, e.g. multiblock structures like the thaumcraft infernal furnace or the earlygame blast furnace have no recipes tabs. Finally many disabled items still exist in JEI. As a result it often seems like an item has no crafting recipes at all when in fact you CAN craft it or obtain it easily from a drop, but this isnt readily discoverable because it could quite easily be another disabled recipe.

If these JEI/quest issues could be fixed I honestly thing this would be the best expert pack to date.

Just came back from a long break from the game, saw FTB One not seen it before so thought I would give it a try, is this pack complete ? it seems really empty, and clunky.

What is the current big pack to play like the most recent one.

Im looking into getting an FTB World for a small “server” that will have 3-5 people on it at the most. We plan on playing the FTB NeoTech modpack on it and im wondering if theres anyone who has experimented with an FTB World? Im mostly curious about the performance of the server later on when there is a high performance demand on the server while its running. Any thoughts or experiences anyone has had on an FTB World is much appreciated as I am having a hard time finding any reviews of the service. Thanks!