May 27, 2016

Exploring #Minecraft Mod Pack Launchers

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To this day, Minecraft remains one of my best game purchases. I bought it before it was mainstream for a total of $5 and it has since provided thousands of hours of entertainment – largely due to the mod community. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of different mods out there, and with them, different mod packs.

These days most mod packs require a specific launcher in order to use them. The three popular ones that I’ve made use of in the past include the Curse Client, Technic, and FeedTheBeast. I recently started using another one called ATLauncher. My issue with some of the others is the method in which they organize (or don’t organize) the list of packs available. It can make searching for the perfect one to try incredibly difficult. ATLauncher is amazingly simple, installation is even more simple, and going from downloading a server to playing on said server is something I didn’t have to struggle with at all.

One of the first packs I checked out was called Divergence. This is a heavy quest mod pack, with dungeons and a progression system. A really fantastic pack – except it doesn’t suit my play style at all. I don’t like progression type mods, and I don’t like having to follow a more difficult crafting path just unlock achievements and progress the quests. I quickly moved on to Revenge of the C-Team which was another fantastic pack with tons of mods and it was very unique in what it offered. To start off, there was weather going on and I’m not talking about your typical rain or storms, but a huge tornado type storm was forming overhead. Lightning and thunder was going off everywhere and it was amazing to watch.

Then I found this gigantic tower in the sky. I climbed to the top and started mining my way down. Each floor had 2 creature spawners along with a chest of treasures. There must have been at least 20 floors in all and when you got to the 2nd last chest it spawned a boss underneath that started fighting me through the floor (which is completely not fair by the way!). I eventually defeated him, placed enough torches in the tower so that creatures wouldn’t spawn, and took the place over as my first base. It was awesome.

Because of the ease in setting up servers with the ATLauncher, I decided to try one more. This one was called Resonant Rise Mainline. It includes a TON of mod packs, and of course when I logged in to my newly created world I found myself in a vast empire of.. taint. It was growing everywhere, out of control before I even got into the world.

One of my favourite new (to me) mods that most of these packs have is the ability for me to open a web browser with a live map of my game as I play. That means I can close down the mini-map in game (freeing up valuable screen space) and simply track it from my 2nd monitor. Plus I can take screenshots, and that’s awesome.

All in all I’m incredibly impressed with the scope of mod packs available on ATLauncher, and their creativity. They do include a few mods that I’m overly familiar with by now, but most of them are brand new to me, and that makes for some exciting game time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!