What would you like in a Botania-focused expert pack?

mathwiz617

As much as I am obsessed with Floramancer, the pack is… a little outdated. For more modern packs, Create: Above and Beyond does a great job of showcasing Create, but there does not seem to be anything like that for Botania. So, discussion time! (See thread title for discussion topic)

Custom recipes? Additional mods in the pack? Tweaked mechanics? Endgame goals? Anything else?

lillyOfWorlds

Lots of expert mode packs are based around making things difficult by making them grindy to get, which conflicts with one of the design principles of the mod. This makes me think: what other types of gameplay could the pack expand on to really test the expertise of players?

current rune recipes use pretty common items. What if the rune of water (for example) required prismarine, coral, pufferfish, and blue ice (in addition to manasteel and mana powder). The rune of fire could require something from each of the vanilla nether biomes, or a new item only dropped from trading with piglins.
some kind of gating for flowers. Maybe more powerful flowers require runes made from lower-tier flowers (with these lower tier flowers possibly not being consumed like lower-tier runes? possibly.)
encouraging exploration for all the different kinds of petals. Maybe the Jaded Amranthus could be modified to only generate certain flowers depending on the biome, encouraging exploration, and reasons to spread out operations throughout the overworld. Some flower types could even be locked to nether/end biomes.
I think recipes for automation components should remain relatively simple though. Progression should be the same up until players get the pure daisy. That way the focus is on mana and automation related to that, not just grinding out the basics.

I’ve only been exposed to expert-mode packs in passing, so let me know if I’ve misinterpreted what you’re asking. Good luck! I hope you find something that fits your playstyle!

fish

lillyOfWorlds coral, pufferfish

are those possible to automate?

lillyOfWorlds a new item only dropped from trading with piglins

this could be interesting, but it would probably just result in vanilla bartering farms instead of interacting with botania's mechanics

mathwiz617

Hmm... I like the idea of more exploration being useful. Maybe each flower past a certain point in progression requires a different of metamorphic stones? That way, exploration is not 100% required, but having different bases in different biomes would help. Then, later in progression, you require shimmerrock instead of metamorphic stones. Even later would require bifrost blocks, with the bifrost rod having a dragon head in the recipe.

Custom items from piglin bartering is also neat. Maybe villagers can trade "elemental catalyst", required for elemental runes, piglins can trade "seasons catalyst", for seasonal runes, and a dragon egg can serve as a "sin catalyst" for the sin runes. Of course, you'd want to be able to duplicate the dragon egg, but that's not hard. The egg would not be used up, but the other catalysts would be.

So, the progression would be:

Overworld, T1 flowers - get the runic altar
Overworld and Nether, T2 flowers, trading with villagers - get the marimorphis
Overworld and Nether, T3 flowers, metamorphic stones - get terrasteel for access to elven trading
Overworld and Nether, T4 flowers, elven materials - Prep for Gaia 1 and dragon fights (maybe blacklist the end portal from generating, making you craft one?
All three dimensions, egg and dragon head - Gaia 2 fight
Endgame, see below.

Endgame goals might just be the guilty mana pool, but that's not to say it'd be easy. Something on the runic altar like 8 blocks of terasteel, a dice of fate (and maybe a SS tera shatterer) sounds sufficiently grindy for a creative tablet. Then, use four of those and five blocks of gaiasteel to craft the guilty pool.

adarsh

I like how Floramancer made Thermalilies and Rosa Arcana viable by making Lava infinite below a certain y-level and making mobs/ores always drop experience. I'd probably make cobbleworks-powered Entros more viable by raising flint drop chances, either from directly being mined or in an explosion (entropy lens). A purist Botania expert pack could probably see the Kekimurus being significantly buffed too.

Doubling the mana cost of making Terrasteel might seem radical but I think it makes sense. It's a pivotal part of Botania progression which opens up Elementium and by extension Gaia spirits, and the gate should be a bit more difficult to get past. On the topic of gating, I'd move Ender Air (so Corporea and Redstring) to pre-End (by making Endermen release a cloud of Ender Air when killed with a Soulscribe) so players can incorporate (haha) these devices into their builds earlier.

[maybe all mana items, baubles and equipment hould be made more expensive hmm]

I like the idea of making runes more complex to craft. Metamorphic stones have already been suggested, another no-brainer imo is replacing sugarcane in the water rune recipe with kelp. Different quartz types could be interesting too.

The Everlasting Guilty Pool and Creative Mana Tablet should not be endgame goals. They basically invalidate all the infrastructure you've created up to that point. Endgame goals should be intrinsic, like fighting Gaia (or hell, Gaia 2) without armour, max streak Raff, automating every single flower etc. stuff that the player can challenge themselves to do.

mathwiz617

As far as endgame goes, I would want a “true end” to the pack. The everlasting guilty pool is as good a mark for that as any, I think. The other goals mentioned above could be good optional quests with nice rewards (if a questing mod can detect those).

lillyOfWorlds

fish good thought. The whole goal should be to automate as much as possible. Adding some way to automate coral would be good. Maybe “tactical fishing” for a bucket of pufferfish could be done with an aquatic equivalent of the drum of the wild: water buckets dropped into the water will catch nearby fish. This could also be used in rivers to catch salmon, adding another food item to the gourmarillis.
I like @mathwiz617 ’s idea of elemental catalysts. More than an item you’d need to farm. That way you only need a large quantity for large setups. Maybe they could drop rarely, but in large stacks.

Goldenlion5648

This sounds interesting. I also recently thought about making a new botania expert pack. Did you end up pursuing this idea? (Not that I'm asking to use your idea, I'd would go a different route with progression)

mathwiz617

Goldenlion5648 Wow, I totally missed this reply. I started on this pack, but ADHD and GTNH got to me. If you, or anyone else, ends up making a pack like this, let me know - I'd love to play it.

Goldenlion5648

mathwiz617 No worries about the slow reply haha. A lot has changed since my last message. I started a mod discussion youtube channel and got laid off from my job, so your odds of this happening probably went up haha. I have not started it though, and its a bit hard to justify making something that takes so long with little return. I'll let you know if it happens though!