So Minecraft, amirite? I did say I’d do one of these eventually, but I don’t really know how to tag or categorise it, so uhhhh, time for a ‘Mods’ category, I suppose. Anyway, you’ll need Minecraft for this one, of course. Skyblock is a genre of map/modpack where you start from a tree on a block in the sky, and eventually work your way up towards everything.
Now a lot of you may be thinking “But vanilla skyblock gives you a whole island, ice, lava, and a few other bits, and nothing else, how do you do a skyblock with just a tree?” and the answer obviously is going to be mods, but it kinda depends what mods. Usually skyblock modpacks will use a mod called Ex Nihilo, but this one has bucked the trend in a fairly unique way. Sky Orchards. You see, the tree you start with isnt just your everyday oak tree, you start with a Dirt tree. Chopping it down gives you oak wood, dirt saplings, dirt acorns, and dirt resin.
You can then craft those acorns and resins into dirt, and through some other mod interactions (the first tab of the advancements menu is an early game guide don’t worry) eventually you’ll get a Petrified tree, which gives you the same resin and acorns, except these ones craft into cobblestone.
If you’re coming from Ex Nihilo, there will be a few interactions that you sorely miss. For me it was barrels. Not being able to put leaves into a barrel for dirt, or lava into a barrel for obsidian, netherrack, or endstone, or cobble into a crucible for lava, really did hurt a lot, but there is some content tweaker interactions with cauldrons that reintroduces those interactions albeit with limitations. (namely needing to use an automated user instead of a hopper to automate them…)
The pack comes with something like 20 prebuilt maps with their own unique challenges and playstyles, from the traditional single block and tree down to the outright absured, a small glass box under a sea of lava, a regular skyblock world in eternal night, or worse eternal darkness, or the one I’ve currently been playing: Being confined to a single Compact Machines tiny machine.
The only saving grace to the map I’m playing is that instead of starting with a tree, you start with a bonsai pot with a tree in it, and a wooden axe to harvest it with. It’s greatly appreciated because it’s really difficult to grow a tree in a single 3x3x3 cube. Of course the game gives you options to expand, getting grass will reward you with a second 3x3x3 cube, and other specific resources as you go up the tech tree gives you more space to work with, 5x5x5 will be achieveable early on, 7x7x7 requires netherrack, 9x9x9 requires endstone (both of which you can obtain via Sky Orchards and a variety of other interactions you can do without leaving your box.
Once you reach 9x9x9 you can also do 2 new important things. Firstly, a 9 tall room is finally tall enough to grow most of the sky orchards trees, which gets you resin a lot faster than the bonsai pots can, and secondly, you can create a small miniaturisation crafting grid (which is a 9x3x9 multiblock structure) that will allow you to actually craft compact machines up to 7x7x7. As of the time of writing, this is the part I’m up to in the pack. I’m aware from the achievement tree that there are 11x11x11 amd 13x13x13 spaces I’ll get to use later on, but those require Wither and Dragon drops respectively. Excited to get there though, because I believe having a 13x13x13 space will let me produce more 13x13x13 spaces, which would ultimately open up the game world significantly.
Mod Link: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/modpacks/skyfactory-4
Prism Launcher: https://prismlauncher.org/
Note: None of the mods in the pack require manual download when importing to Prism Launcher.
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