Announcing EXPEDITIONS ~ Polished/Integrated Vanilla Plus ~

Preamble; Inspired by Crucial 2, Raspberry Flavored and other polished Vanilla+ packs, Expeditions is an exploration-focused modpack which abides by the philosophy that less is more; rather than overcompensate for lack of vision by cramming mod after mod into the pack without thought, this pack was carefully crafted with a specific vision in mind and mods that failed to give something meaningful to that vision were cut from the pack. Each mod added was cut up or tweaked in some way to be more meaningfully integrated. I spent about a day or two finalizing the modlist, with some minor exceptions, and the last 3 months of development entirely on perfecting what's already there. Inspired by Musketeer and others, I've also elected to make quite a few opinionated decisions about content, both vanilla & modded, doing things in this pack I'm not sure have ever been done before. Those features which are the most thought-out & unique are marked as Premier.

Limitations; I am self-taught, working (as of now) completely alone and have little experience with scripting but have made extensive and very tasteful use of many modpack utility mods such as Spawn Balance Utility, Custom Villager Trades & others, as well as countless datapacks and even a KubeJS script here or there when I can find applicable templates to (copy) learn from. During post-release, I will be attempting to replace as many of these utility mods with more advanced techniques to shave the modlist down even further but I would rather simply make this modpack exist and then try to make it perfect rather than never release it by insisting on perfection in spite of my limitations.

NO AI; This modpack (and this post, I just type like this) was made with zero "help" from generative AI. When you select the Pirate starter kit and you read the player journal, I want you to know that I rewrote the starting journal in pirate speak by hand. I need you to understand that I did that for YOU.

Included Mods (Highlights); Quark, Supplementaries, JEI, Amendments, Alex's Mobs, Alex's Caves, Caverns & Chasms, Environmental, Atmospheric, Spawn, Windswept, Habitat, Ecologics, Species, Opposing Force, Galosphere, Oreganized, YUNG's Series
(Only two hand-picked-for-excellency MCreator mods have been included for stability's sake; Mutated Items & More Critters)

Excluded Mod (Noteworthy); Create

Premier Feature; Ecosystems
I created dozens of spawn group templates for various ecosystems and swapped out every single biome's spawn list with the appropriate template. Then, I painstakingly fine tuned every semi-unique biome, all the outliers, and by the time I was done, 8 biome mods created around 115 unique ecosystems; 115 biomes or groups of biomes in which the mobs that spawn are different from the other 114. All Ocean, Beach, Cave, End and Nether biomes, for example, are completely unique ecosystems. In Expeditions, discovering mobs is a reasonable challenge and each area feels distinct. New ecosystems totally distinct from vanilla ones bring new life and context to modded environments. Even if you've played modpacks with these biomes and have technically 'seen' them before, I have a feeling you'll see them here in a new light and perhaps come away thinking something is missing from them each time you see them again without my adjustments in other packs. After testing and playing this pack myself, I know I have felt that way. Below is a brief overview of 5 new major ecosystem types for a feel for what I'm going for here;

• The Chaparral; A lush desert environment inspired by the American Southwest in which the Roadrunner, Cochineal and other mobs can be found. This environment contrasts with the more Sahara-inspired environs of Desert ecosystems which spawn things like Camels, Jerboa & Rain Frogs instead.
• The Tropics; Inspired by Southeast Asia, contains many reptiles like The Komodo Dragon as well as Tapirs, Tigers and various birds.
• The Rainforest; Inspired by the Amazon, contains just about every animal found there such as Capuchin, Toucan and Maned Wolves on the edges. The special Amazonia biome is a more explicitly Amazon-themed Rainforest sub-ecosystem in which the Anaconda can also be found.
• The Jungle; Inspired by West Africa, home of the apes; Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and a monkey, the Baboon are found here as well as Crocodiles & Shoebills. This is the ecosystem most vanilla or vanilla-like Jungle biomes will have.
• The Outback; Inspired by Australia, just about every marsupial is found here as well as emus, all dry-biome bug mobs and is the only surface biome where spiders spawn naturally aside from the Rainforest but they spawn much more commonly here.

"8 Biome Mods Huh? Uh SLOP ALERT"

Almost every other modpack of this scope or vision will opt to only include a single biome mod for consistency. This modpack chooses, instead, to rename biomes, customize spawns, add uses for foliage and does basically everything imaginable to make modded biomes feel as consistent, distinct & useful as vanilla biomes. This is to create the most diverse possible palette for building and for exploring; every awesome, screenshottable biome anyone has ever found while playing a recent modpack is likely from one of the mods included in this pack and players will likely see it while playing.

Even though there are 8 biome mods including all 4 of the biggest ones; Biomes O' Plenty, Biomes We've Gone, Regions Unexplored and Nature's Spirit, they are customized in size and distribution such that one is almost guaranteed to be able to find just about any kind of biome in the entire pack within 10k blocks from spawn and (even though finding them doesn't feel as important in this pack) vanilla biomes typically much closer. Despite this, their sizes are still comfortable to build in and still feel big enough to be real, not much smaller than vanilla biome sizes.

I know my goal of extreme polish almost demands I don't do this and cut some of these biome mods. However, this was one of the foundational 'opinionated' ideas that inspired this entire modpack and I think forcing this kooky idea of mine to work and tackling every possible problem with it has been much more satisfying. I think the work speaks for itself and most people will agree when they play the pack.

Premier Feature; Bestiary

Araxer's Bestiary has been included WITH full entries for every in-game mob. There was one datapack for this mod which I've used and added onto heavily but nearly 80% of the remaining mobs were entryless so I wrote entries for all of them.

Use your Spyglass to 'Discover' a mob. Once Discovered, that mob is added to your Bestiary where you can immediately read a description detailing that mob's primary location, utility and some other pieces of important information. Interact with that mob further, through slaying, feeding, taming, etc. and more information will be added to your bestiary like drops and stats. I'll probably be replacing this with Field Guide later on

Alongside the mechanic added by Spice of Life (audience groans) Carrot Edition (audience groans slightly quieter), whereby new foods grant the player more maximum hearts, a compelling early-game gameplay loop involves exploring tons of different biomes for a suitable base location, scanning lots of different mobs for your bestiary and foraging for many new foods to increase your maximum health in preparation for impending caving trips. Since, if you die in the caves, you will come back with one maximum heart fewer.

Revamped Death System

By default, KeepInventory is ON but dying removes a maximum heart and you drop ALL XP at your death point (not just 7 levels; All of it, and you're free to return to your death location to recover it, however the pack includes no mechanism to find it so you might still find use for a Recovery Compass) but nothing else; no items or gear are lost. In order to recover a lost maximum heart, you must eat a golden or enchanted golden apple. To make recovering lost hearts with new foods less tedious, you're also able to eat food even while full! KeepInventory can be turned off if you want the additional challenge of losing hearts AND gear when you die but still want to recover all your XP. MediumCore, the mod by which you lose hearts when you die, can also freely be disabled, allowing you to shirk all consequence for death aside from XP loss, if you're so inclined. So to recap, these are the default realities of death in this pack;

• XP; Losslessly dropped at death point for later recovery
• Items/Gear; Never dropped (Optional)
• Losing Maximum HP; Lose 1 Heart by dying; recover that heart specifically by eating Golden Apples (Optional)
• Gaining Maximum HP; Gain 1 Heart by eating enough new foods to make the next rank

Revamped Ore Rarities

Iron is somewhat less common to incentivize using other materials in the early/mid game as well as finding other methods to obtain iron in greater quantities such as Large Iron Veins & the Magnetic Caves.

Diamonds are much less common to encourage players to loot structures for them and to use special techniques to find them like using the Extractinator, mining under water/lava AND to restore some of what it used to mean to acquire diamonds– that feeling of rarity provides a much more satisfying feeling of reward once they're found, those of us who played as kids during beta and would never find any know what I'm talking about. The way those diamond ore which generate much more often and erase themselves when exposed to air generate is changed– they now mostly spawn between the blocks of bedrock at the bottom of the world. Strip-miners are now encouraged to tediously mine around unbreakable blocks and in the main areas in which lava also generates if they want to maximize their diamonds per minute.

To compensate for the lack of diamonds found mining, gemstones in Tanzanite, Topaz, Ruby and Sapphire (Gemspark) fill in for general tool use. Diamonds are, in this pack, best suited for things other than tools.

Other resources which generated a little too frequently underground like Caverns and Chasms' Spinel, have had their gen-rate cut as well.

Premier Feature; The Extractinator

You may know it from Terraria; The Extractinator can be used to convert silt, slush, gravel and other like-blocks into potential resources. However, unlike in Terraria where the machine can give you alternative ores that don't generate in your world, Minecraft's Extractinator mod is rarely, if ever, able to spit out any otherwise-unobtainable resources. In this pack, just like in Terraria, the Extractinator can provide some materials not found anywhere else. One resource, Ancient Silver, is a mostly removed silver variant that doesn't generate underground but can be given by the Extractinator and sometimes can be found as structure loot. Rather than wiping all trace of the resource, it's been made obtainable in obscure ways so that the building blocks it provides can still potentially be used. Ancient Silver is also completely usable as silver in all recipes requiring silver.

Another resource, Ancient Ruby, even provides a pathway to an entirely new Dimension (Rediscovered) with a whole new dragon to fight and the journey can only start with the Extractinator. This is the only additional dimension present in this pack and unlike the incredible Musketeer and Raspberry Flavoured modpacks, this pack elects not to remove any vanilla dimensions.

Resource Unification+

Despite 8 Biome Mods, no wood type shares a name BUT no wood types were removed either. Despite containing 3 variants of silver, they're all named differently (Silver, Soul Silver, Ancient Silver), found in different places (Underground, Nether, Loot/Extractinator) and alt variants of silver can be used for every crafting recipe that requires silver. However, as a twist, some recipes explicitly require Soul Silver, which is a more implemented variant with its own special highly enchantable armor set and it's the only silver the player is able to build tools out of. Block Swapping Soul Silver out of the nether would have been very ugly and awkward due to the way it generates so I came up with a way to keep it and turn it into something that makes for fun gameplay.

Many useful items from various mods like Supplementaries, Quark and others are craftable only with Electrum, Lead, or Silver, providing ample reason to mine all types of resources without giving the player a bunch of machines to build.

Enchanting Overhaul

All enchantable items now have a maximum number of enchantments. Enchantment Limiter makes this possible and thankfully it scales from vanilla enchantability so much of the process of assigning enchantability values to items was done automatically, but many, many more items were not assigned automatically or simply had 0 base enchantability, resulting in items that could have enchantments but could not be enchanted. I've went through every single one of these instances and corrected them with well-balanced values.

This system is to encourage the player to craft different tools for different use-cases and/or to make difficult decisions when enchanting about what kind of item they want, rather than simply XP-gating a God-Item. When choosing where to do your enchanting, you have a few options.

• Enchanting Table; Tried and true, made better with Easy Magic which allows rerolls for lapis and a few other QoL features.
• Enchanting Infuser; More expensive to use than the Enchanting Table but completely takes the RNG (and Lapis) out of the process
• Advanced Enchanting Infuser; Even more expensive to use than the Infusing Table but
• Anvil; Applying enchanted books to items in an anvil costs zero XP
• Gemstones; Some rare gemstones (Mining Master) contain enchantments within; simply take them to a Smithing Table and apply the enchantment to a desired tool, the gemstone will disappear. Costs no XP.

Iron Bookshelves is included, wooden bookshelves will provide a pitiful amount of Enchant Power (for your Table and your Infuser). You must upgrade to the end-game Enderite Bookshelves in order to get the rarest enchantments at maximum level. As a result, you'll find your general power level somewhat lower than average per vanilla and much lower than in most modpacks until you reach The End.

Repairing Overhaul

Goodbye, Mending. You were a contradiction that invalidated several core features of the game and according to what can be inferred from the words of Mojang themselves, should not exist. It cannot be traded, selected in the Infusing table, fished up, looted, or any such thing. Even if you somehow got it on your tool, it would have no effect.

Instead, the anvil doesn't suck anymore, you can just use it without spending XP now. You don't have to worry about TOO EXPENSIVE anymore. There's also the Reforming enchantment which just repairs over time while in use but it's incredibly slow so only suitable for certain kinds of items.

Brewing Overhaul

Dave's Potioneering. Do I need to say more? That one mod fixes potions, basically singlehandedly. I think Amendments adds potion-filled cauldrons? Caverns & Chasms adds Tether Potions? Loads of mods included in this pack add lots of things and then also throw in a potion or two so the variety for different potions is very nice here. I never really thought the potion system needed a dire overhaul, the tweaks Dave makes are more than enough in my view. I've also removed one of overlapping potions like Lava Vision (Nether Depths Upgrade) and Lava Vision (Alex's Mobs), leaving only Lava Vision (Alex's Mobs) for example.

Fishing Overhaul

Tide 2.0 does so much heavy lifting and the incredible support data pack actually includes every single mod which adds fish. Tide adds a new minigame, a weight system for it's fish, a rarity system, a fish journal to track your catches, a bait system, and a customizable Fishing Rod system. Thanks to the datapack adding Fish Journal support to every mod included in this pack, a completionist angler has a lot of content to work with in this pack. Fishing Loot Tables are scheduled for post-release but spear fishing will be fully realized at beta, allowing the player to hunt fish up close and personal in a wide variety of different ecosystems supporting different aquatic wildlife.

Undersea Overhaul

Hybrid Aquatic alone does so much to make the oceans feel vibrant but Upgrade Aquatic, Tide, Spawn and the various biome mods coalesce to create a truly engaging diver/scuba experience. I don't want to speak negatively about anybody else's packs but from my experience playtesting, this pack gives many other modpacks built specifically for undersea gameplay a run for their money, especially if you're not into tech gameplay.

Paleo/Archeology Overhaul

This pack takes advantage of being on 1.20 by greatly expanding the brushing system; valuable artifacts to find, tons of new Sniffer flowers, dinosaur eggs that hatch into useful mobs designed with Minecraft sensibilities in mind, new sherds and features relating, etc. Species adds a few dinos but the bulk of them come from Alex's Caves and Wan's Ancient Beasts.

Custom Recipes

Taking the word Craft in Minecraft very seriously here, this pack makes almost every vanilla item craftable in some way including Saddles, Name Tags, Spawners, even End Portal Frames. Almost every custom recipe involves 2 or more items from separate mods to create a true sense of interdependency among resources and mods within the pack. Every custom recipe was made with both consistency and balance in mind; you craft things that look like the things you crafted them with and since some of these things were uncraftable for a good reason, they don't have easy recipes.

Many, many recipes for items from other mods have been changed and added as well, including new Capsid Transformation recipes for Alex's Mobs.

Custom Mob Drops

Using datapacks, over 150 different loot tables for entities have been affected, both vanilla and modded. Introducing consistency, renewability, variety and intrigue, these mob drops solve a lot of different design problems I've had and do a lot of different things to make the world feel more polished and fun to play in. Various loot pinata effects have been added to some mobs, many mobs that dropped nothing now drop stuff, etc. etc.

Premier Feature; Revamped Night Mobs

It seems like ever since shortly after the very earliest days of Minecraft, Mojang has been doing everything possible to avoid adding more mobs like Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, etc. We instead see Creaking, Warden, Breeze, Bogged, Strider, etc. more and more monsters which are totally unique to Minecraft and less monsters pulled from the pre-established playbook of fantasy video games. Some packs choose to include mods like Ice & Fire, exacerbating this design contradiction. This pack chooses to attempt to resolve it.

Common threats are now all totally unique to Minecraft and often biome-specific. Spiders have two regional variants and regular ones are now only found in 3 ecosystems as well as their unique dungeon. Creepers are rarely found everywhere still but regional and subterranean variants are more common. Endermen spawn only at The End and in temperate biomes, otherwise a regional variant spawns. Zombies are only found in Crypts & during Zombie Sieges, Zombie Villagers replace their spawns otherwise and Husk/Chilled spawn in Desert and Snowy biomes respectively. Skeletons are now only found in Skeleton Dungeons and The Soul Sand Valley but can still sometimes be seen riding spiders where they spawn. New Skeleton Villagers mostly replace Skeleton spawns.

New to the surface are the Sluggus, which only spawns in places wet and warm enough. The Bewereager which only spawns on Full Moons but not in warmer biomes. Many other new hostile mobs have been added but since most of them are underground, they'll be competing for spawn space. I've also reduced hostile mob spawns to allow for a higher animal mob cap. As a result, you'll find the caves are more dangerous than in vanilla but that the surface is much safer at night than in vanilla.

Revamped Inventory Management

My biggest problem with vanilla Minecraft is inventory management. We all love the convenience of a sophisticated smart storage system with a mod like AE2 but this is a Vanilla+ pack, sir. In this pack you may sort your inventory and chests with a button press. A quickstack button, ala Terraria, is also placed in your inventory screen, granting your base or storage room an instant automatic sorting system; spend your time playing the game PLAYING the game, not fiddling through inventories.

For storage blocks themselves, Copper, Iron, Gold & Diamond chests offer greatly increased storage capacity; Quark's Iron Crate gives you a Mega-Bundle for storing hundreds of tools and other non-stackable items; The Nether Chest has similar slots to an iron chest but each slot contains a significantly higher maximum capacity, allowing for mass storage of like-items. For portable storage, the vanilla Bundles & Shulker Boxes are present but a few other options exist as well like Bags of Holding, Quivers and Quark's Seed Pouch.

Revamped Transportation

Let's review your options, because regular rockets no longer boost your Elytra but campfires do. Blue Ice doesn't make your boat go supersonic anymore, either, but you can now enchant your boat instead. Also they can jump.

• Build Elytra Campfire Infrastructure
• Build Waystone Infrastructure (Nerfed! Might still be useful for extremely long-range transport to places you don't visit often but Waystones are much more expensive in this pack than in the default configuration)
• Enchant your boat (Swift Swim grants extreme speed in water, Ground Adaption grants near run speed on ground)
• Get a mount (MANY options, some extremely competent)
• Some rare rocket variants still boost your Elytra, scavenging an obscene number of those is an option
• Build Minecart Infrastructure (Minecarts with Furnace become Blue Ice Boat fast when fueled; you can attach a regular minecart to a furnace one, get inside and use that as transport)
• Hang Glider Progression (3 different Hang Gliders for different phases of the game to allow better vertical transport throughout some of the extreme biomes present in the pack)
• Weird Stuff (Alex's Mobs adds the Grappling Squok. Alex's Caves adds the Candy Cane Hook)
• S̷H̸A̷T̸T̸E̷R̸E̷D̶ ̸D̸I̴M̶E̴N̷S̵I̷O̶N̶A̵L̸ ̶C̴A̴R̶V̵E̶R̶

Revamped Navigation

You might be familiar with this pack's set of navigation changes already if you've played Raspberry Flavoured. Here's the short of it, if you haven't; rather than using a minimap mod like Journey or Xaero's, this pack includes Map Atlases for it's vanilla-like integration and right clicking while holding a compass will display X/Z coordinates. The Depth Gauge is also included for finding ones' Y level. Not specific to navigation but placing any 4 ingots around a redstone dust will result in some kind of gauge, whether it's a thermostat, speedometer, barometer, clock, compass, etc.

The reason Raspberry Flavoured chose not to have a minimap mod like Xaero's and the reason I'm doing it too is mainly to make the world feel bigger. The difference between having an easily accessible world map vs not is massive in terms of making the player feel small and I've noticed an improvement in play patterns when minimap mods like Xaero's are not installed.

You can also just install Xaero's anyway if you don't respect my vision. I get it, I don't always trust pack authors either.

Because finding things is fun and looking for things is not, Nature's Compass is included but since friction makes for compelling gameplay, crafting it now requires a Recovery Compass. But since Ancient Cities are rare, Echo Shards are now renewable and can also be found outside of Ancient Cities. Also, Recovery Compasses only require 4 echo shards now. Explorer's Compass is included as well but crafting one requires a Nature's Compass 😉

Revamped Chillin'

Part of this pack's inspiration was my experience on Xbox 360 Edition of using the game as a social platform and just vibing in your world with your friends. Furniture, Arts & Crafts, Musical Instruments, Album crafting, even photography; TONS of different ways to relax and express yourself aside from just building.

Starter Kits

To encourage the player to consider the breadth of options at their disposal for different playstyles, over 12 detailed starter kits were created with a bunch of class-specific items in the hotbar and perhaps on the armor slots (rarely in the inventory proper). Included in every starter kit is a bag of holding containing a few essential items and a journal detailing some of the most immediately relevant features of the pack, some tips on how to progress and even a blank notes section to encourage the player to continue their journal. This journal will obviously be unsigned to allow the player to continue writing. From Gardener to Miner, every obvious occupation you could think of is likely included as well as a few niche options to cover obscure playstyles and new playstyles facilitated by the mods in the pack.

Revamped Progression: Smell the FU&!NG Flowers

Nether Remastered and End Remastered do most of the heavy lifting here and I'll probably swap them out with something more custom much later down the line but for now I like these mods and I especially like what I've done with these mods.

I don't even tell you how to get to the Nether. Portals don't work until you craft the Seal of the Underworld and your journal contains one hint on how to get one. You'll stumble upon the pieces needed to craft the seal naturally eventually but not knowing immediately gives you more than enough of a barrier to rushing things. Once you know, it's a bit different but for that first playthrough, you won't know so maybe you'll slow down a bit and just enjoy the pleasures of the Overworld for a while.

As for the End, JEI pretty much gives the whole game away, but I don't see that as a problem. You have to craft Eyes. Some of them are obtainable in other ways besides crafting but for the most part, you collect stuff from the mods in the pack and with them you craft some Eyes. There's 15 but you only need 12. Without going to the Nether you can only craft 10.

Villager Revamp

Villagers now have 3 items to trade with instead of only 2. Useful considering every level of trade from novice to master for every villager from cleric to fletcher now has on average an additional 6 trades. Tons of mod interaction, basically every modded resource of significance in the pack interacts with Villagers in some way. Each villager individually enables and fuels a certain playstyle with their trades; buying things from a villager will usually make it easier to collect whatever it is that villager wants to buy from you. Some special villagers like the Enderian, Netherologist and Oceanographer don't even trade in Emeralds, using things like Ender Shards, Sanguine Ruby or Prismarine Crystals to trade instead.

Premier Feature; Wandering Trader Revamp

The Wandering Trader now trades in all kinds of different gemstones instead of just Emerald. Each gemstone represents a different kind of item the Wandering Trader sells and by collecting lots of that gemstone you can focus specifically on certain things. Also adds lots of additional usefulness to the myriad of gemstones present in the pack like Spinel, which I still couldn't find adequate use for even after all the custom recipes. They're now useable in trades with the Wanderer focused primarily on raw practicality, typically being tradeable for things like Bread, Gunpowder, Clay, Slimeballs, and even Totem of Undying.

When slain, the Wandering Trader becomes a loot pinata, dropping a random assortment of items, most mundane, some rare.

Superflat Progression

I like the base game's progression well enough but if I'm ever forced to play vanilla Minecraft, I want to play Superflat. I enjoy almost everything about the challenge but particularly how wacky the actual progression path is when it plays out. Inspired by that weirdness, this pack bridges the missing gaps with similarly weird progression points and allows the player to access stone, lava and eventually both the nether AND the End in Superflat. That is, even despite including Nether Remastered and End Remastered. Not just that, but nearly every mob/item that's otherwise inaccessible in Superflat has been made accessible through one path or another.

Included is Biome Blends, the only mod included specifically for Superflat Progression, which allows the player to craft consumables which create biomes, and there's compatibility with BoP, meaning there are enough ecosystems accessible in Superflat that you can see /almost/ every single mob in the pack without ever generating a real world. Feel free to drop a skyblock world into your folder and play that instead if Superflat isn't your thing, it's all the same. It was all made to work without world gen, including structures. No structures needed to beat the game here, no sir.

Skyblock pro tip; You can install Overworld Mirror when you're done in skyblock if you want that world to continue but are out of progression

Farmer's Delight

It has it. Also some custom cutting recipes, expanded leather scavenging, and even a secondary meat scavenging system allowing you to get bushmeat from animals which don't normally drop meat by slaying them with a cleaver from Dungeons Delight. Also included is Fruits Delight, Collector's Reap, Miner's Delight, Delightful, Farmer's Respite, Brewin' And Chewin', Oceanic Delight, My Nether's Delight and some others.

~Post-Release

Some additional features like Peaceful Progression, Wandering Trader Revenge, Tiered Anvils and others are planned for post-release, should this pack be successful.

~~Extra Features

• Oak Trees drop Acorns, not ever Apples. Apple Trees are required for apples. This surprisingly does not make gathering golden apples for HP recovery tedious in any way. Apples are still quite common but with these changes, there just might come a day where you're in need of apples rather than in need of a place to store them. Friction makes for compelling gameplay and that belief of mine drives much of this pack's design philosophy
• CarryOn Block Grabbing feature is enabled by default with a balanced/relatively bug-free blacklist
• Despite being a 1.20.1 pack, older versions of Minecraft are given several hat-tips in this pack with BoP's Origin Valley which has been renamed to Beta Valley and modeled after Beta Minecraft and RU's Alpha Grove, modeled after Alpha Minecraft. These special biomes typically spawn as isolated islands and have a custom mob spawn list tailored to make you feel like you're back in 2011. Not to mention Rediscovered's Skylands, an entire dimension with only vanilla mobs and the occasional Giant. Yes, that Giant. As well as tons of blocks and mobs from Minecraft's past and/or alternate development paths.
• Red meat for the r/minecraftlore crowd; this pack contains several subtle references to the ancient builders, various theories regarding Endermen and other neat pieces of quasi-lore. I've got some detailed and well-supported supplemental theories about all that stuff that I think most people will find agreeable and interesting, all presented subtly in the pack but tucked way out of the way. Shout out TeamAbnormals for that excellent video on quasi-lore, I've found it very fun to incorporate in some elements of this pack
• Thanks to Respawning Animals and the increased animal mob cap, you will likely never run into conspicuously lifeless areas or biomes, making mob encounters a regular and unavoidable part of exploration
• Wood blocks craft similarly colored things made of that wood; thank Every Compat
• Slaying a 'Treeper' causes it to drop a loot pinata of saplings of different trees from various mods within the pack
• Slaying a 'Coral Enderman' causes it to drop a random (likely modded) coral from within the pack
• New Versions; I don't know about at release but at the moment I think this is the only modpack to prominently feature and integrate Opposing Force 2.0, Tide 2.0 and the latest versions of More Critters and Wan's Ancient Beasts.
• Your inventory screen contains a scroll button from Waystones that lets you teleport to your nearest discovered Waystone for free so long as it isn't too far away. I do a lot of stupid things in this game when I'm distracted like drop down into my strip mine when I was supposed to go chop trees; this feature allows me to quickly correct little mistakes like that for almost no cost. There is a cooldown.
• Fletching Table has a use! It is now a 3-slot crafting table that can craft all arrows from vanilla & every mod in the pack for half cost
• Custom Bait; 63 different items are now usable as fishing bait, including some very exotic and potent ones
• Despite being on 1.20, this pack also includes the End Biomes from later versions of Biomes o' Plenty (and disables the Anomalies from The End Corruption)
• BWG's Dead Sea & Lush Stacks ocean biomes have had their pillars disabled; they don't look right and they never have
• All mobs have a 1% chance to drop their spawn egg; useful if you happen to craft a spawner
• Some common annoyances with Alex's Mobs have been tweaked; Seagulls don't spawn on Beaches, they only spawn on Tropical Beaches. Crimson Mosquitos have a smaller portion of the Crimson Forest spawn weight.
• Dog Breeding; find unique wolf breeds in specific biomes and then discover even rarer breeds that don't generate in the wild by breeding those together
• Zoo building; This pack evolved from a much older personal modpack originally built around the idea of building a zoo. Many, many of the mods used for that function have since been cut but the clear focus on adding more mobs is still somewhat visible and Mob Lassos and Terrariums & Cages represent the remainder of this pack's Zoo Pack DNA
• Audio Experience; A mod or two and a few resource packs are included to improve the audio experience of the game to provide more immersion (I changed the eating sound and chest sounds too)
• Every Nether/End Biome is named using the scheme "The ________". It's not important, I just think it's neat
• Some modpacks are so wrapped in their integrations and scripts that adding mods on top of a modpack will sometimes just break it. I have done everything in my power to avoid this, allowing players to make modifications to this experience if desired.

~~~If you made it this far..

You probably care enough to know that I will be releasing Expeditions in around two weeks, on March 30th.

Anyone who'd like to assist with this project may do so during post-release, please contact me through DM then either here or Curse. I especially need help with scripting and art, that blockbench logo is just a placeholder.

Addendum; My Resource Pack, The Rename Compat Project recently hit 3,000,000 Downloads, if you ever downloaded it, I thank you from the bottom of my heart <3 yes this modpack is why there hasn't been updates for the RCP lately