cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/62472035

I want to get back to modded Minecraft, but I am lost on where to begin. Would love tips on how to find a fitting modpack!

I would love something like GregTech for multiblock stuffs and complexity, or Immersive Engineering for the interactivity and multiblocks.

I considered GregTech New Horizons, but it looks too difficult at a glance, especially with the infernal mobs. I want a casual play through with some complexity added in.
Would be great if you could recommend a modpack, or give tips on choosing the right modpack!

AllTheMods has plenty of progression options that are reasonably casual but also quite deeply technical, at least depending on what path you choose to pursue. They tend not to be the kind of modpacks that force you into too narrow of a progression path, so as long as you can trust yourself to intentionally explore some new mods instead of falling back on familiar patterns, they're generally a very friendly and well-made experience (and because they're AllTheMods, you'll probably also have a wide selection of comfortable, familiar mods to fall back on if you get stuck with some aspect)

Without knowing too much about what you like and what you've tried before, that would be my recommendation. I can try to suggest some others if you want to go a bit deeper into what you're looking for. How deeply have you played around with Create?

Have you looked at Create? Disclaimer: I've never actually played it myself so I'm not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for

Not OP, but I think part of the reason Create is always so intimidating for me because it uses so many Minecraft mechanics in such crazy and unexpected ways that it feels like it must be absolutely janky as heck, like there's no way this can possibly work reliably. But if you can get over that and just trust the system, it really does work, and it's truly impressive. It's a crazy mod. It can be pretty tedious, depending how it's tuned (and I don't think it's tuned particularly comfortably out of the box, and most modpacks honestly don't do a great job tuning it either) but it's really, really slick and the more I use it the more I actually like it, it's sort of like playing a different game though, and I know some people don't like that aspect of it. It's not very Minecraft-y in some ways. But in some ways, it's much better.

From what I've found, I think the best way to really experience Create is to get into a modpack that really forces you to. Something like Create 2 Mekanism, or Create Above and Beyond.

I gave GT a go playing Nomifactory and it was a ton of fun actually. Quite an old MC version now but it holds up.

It's designed to be played on Peaceful, just you and your machines, and it has the lost cities world spawn so the vibes were really chill.

I'm currently playing through Star Technology which is similar but on a skyblock. Both are a bit grindy to start with but very satisfying once you get an ME system going.

Oh, peaceful modpack? Sounds like a great recommendation! Thanks, will try!

I had some distrust on kitchen sink modpacks, mostly afraid of duplicated ores. but I am hearing good things about the AllTheMods modpack. Definitely .

I played Create mod for some time, it definitely is well-made but I found it difficult to build a factory based on the mod. Idk why, but it was hard to plan around.

Maybe that was the difficulty I was having - while mechanics like elevator is nice, I felt creating a proper factory very difficult with the Create mod. It seems to require quite a bit of planning ahead..

the Enigmatica expert packs might be of interest to you. a bit older, buit still good to play.