Low-ish tech progression modpack. Objectively the best modpack ever conceived.
- multiblock airships, such as Valkyrien Skies
- sky island terrain generation, such as The Aether
- low-tech power mod, especially mechanical like Create
- something like like Grappling Hook Mod
- large flying hostile animals, like Ice & Fire
- some sort of mod that allows for items in a player’s inventory to change the player’s gravity, like Valkyrien Skies had back in 1.12.2
- something like Vertically Stacked Dimensions
The player navigates between floating islands via airship. It is entirely possible to make your base be mobile. Resources are found in various situations, like lining cave walls, in large veins, in clouds, and forming deposits underneath the islands. Ideally, there will be flying mobs to discourage naively bridging across the large gaps between islands. The player increases the size of their flying factory by harvesting islands for their resources. Ideally, there will be significant biome differences, giving reason to travel between islands other than just depleting their resources. Though it would also be nice if there was a way to limit the amount of resources you can extract from an island behind tech tiers, causing you to come back to old islands.
The Aether mod specifically is lacking in the variety you’d get from biomes, and may not have large enough gaps between islands, though it might be made better with an add-on like Deep Aether. The Highlands terrain generation of Aether 2 looked promising, but was abandoned in 1.12.2 and effort is going towards an Aether 2 for a newer version, which will hopefully be releasing somewhat soon. Other options are Eden Ring which apparently has gravity control mechanics, Sky Lands, Stratospherical Expansion which seems to generate crevasses for fun grappling hook travel, Revamped Floating Islands, which has terraced floating oceans too, Skylands over the Sea, which has an ocean and larger distances between islands, or Aetherial Islands. I’d also quite like to have significant variety in island altitude.
While the player may exist in a floating island dimension for their entire playthrough, it’s also an option to use vertically stacked dimensions and have them fly through layers of floating island dimensions, likely with an ocean world beneath them all, but only if airships can travel between dimensions. Maybe spawning at ocean level and scavenging for the ability to fly upwards. Perhaps dimensions should be gated by tech levels somehow, but requiring portals is pretty boring.
It will be important to add custom structures to the world to make the world generation feel integrated with the other mods, such as modified versions of Khanaris’s airships, along with the ores and other natural features of those mods.
Create Aeronautics is a very good looking mod, but as of writing it is still under development. But be it that or Valkyrien Skies, I’d likely want to base the modpack around Create. Other mechanical power mods like Better with Mods don’t hold up when considering power scaling or compatibility. I’d tweak the recipes, maybe to disincentivise making renewable farms for everything and incentivise travel. Additional tech mods don’t merge that well with Create, but Create: The Factory Must Grow or Crafts & Additions and possibly PneumaticCraft could work well. Though if they work in moving airships is another question. Something like Project Red might be nice too, though the forge multiblocks feel like they clash with Create. Maybe a computer mod for automation of the ship would help, but something lower-power like Project Red’s integrated circuit may be better for compact control logic.