Beyond Arcadia

 Argon Labs presents Beyond Arcadia, a pack focused on exploration and colonization! 

Beyond Arcadia is the spiritual successor to Beyond Vivacity, our revival of the old Vivacity modpack.  Many of our favorite mods from BV have been brought into BA, with new versions of those mods included where possible.  Additionally, we have merged in elements of the Lands of Adventure modpack, created by one of our members, to enhance the exploration and adventure possibilities.  The result is a curated experience where you can explore a diverse overworld ranging from the fantastic to the realistic, or somewhere in between, thanks to Terraforged.  Or go Beyond Earth to explore space and discover new planets.  If that's not enough, take your adventures into the multiverse and delve into mysterious and magical realms using Occultism, Ars Nouveau, Blue Skies, and more!  And if that's still not enough, you can build Extreme Reactors to power the machinery that makes building your own RFTools-Dimensions possible, or find Mysterious books hidden away across the world that can take you to the infinite realms of Mystcraft 2.  Wherever you go, don't forget to get Backpacked before you leave.

Beyond Arcadia presents a more dynamic challenge than vanilla Minecraft, with a variety of creatures that can be found in the wilderness and fearsome monsters that lurk in Yung's Better Caves and the Caves & Cliffs Backport.  You'll need to use caution when exploring, pick your battles, and upgrade your gear to survive in the most treacherous of places.  Fortunately, there are safe places as well as dangerous ones and the more you explore, the more options you will have.  Exploration is encouraged, and there are many mods which enhance your mobility and survivability through magic, technology, vehicles, and more.  Baubles Reborn and Random Loot ensures that your adventures will be rewarded with a huge variety of amazing treasures and magical items, while Waystones will give you a fast travel solution to move between places you've already discovered.  Place one in your home and you'll never have to walk far to expand the limits of your known world.  Take care when planning your next journey, you'll need to be properly supplied if you want to Survive, but we've provided a more forgiving default configuration to balance against the difficulty presented by other parts of the pack.  You could also build a powerful Nomadic Tent, so that you'll always have a home away from home with everything you need to brave the wilderness in comfort.  Combine all of these and there will be no place you can't go.  Legends even speak of a powerful machine capable of traversing both time and space, but surely these are just rumors? 

When you've decided to settle down for a bit (or longer), or if you simply want to leave your mark on the world, there are all kinds of devices and constructions you can build with Create, Immersive Engineering, and Macaw's many building mods.  Mr. Crayfish has some furniture and vehicles in the pack too, if you want even more options.  But you might want to craft a Chisel first..  With Simply Seasons, the world will change over time, and your farms will respond in kind.  Don't worry, we've configured these mods to provide a more forgiving farming experience in case you forget your crops for too long while out on an adventure, which I'm sure is a Farmer's Delight.  Of course, you can adjust the configurations all you'd like in an easy to access format thanks to Configured.  If you're not satisfied with just building a homestead for yourself, you could move to a village where Minecraft Comes Alive (Reborn), where you can live in a community of NPC's who you can work for, hire, help them to colonize new lands, and even raise a family with.  And if you want even more control over your population, CustomNPC's provides everything a gamemaster, storyteller, or megalomaniacal overlord could want.  Want a touch of modern technology?  Delve into the Lost Cities to investigate what happened to a technologically advanced civilization.  While you're at it, unlock the secrets of ComputerCraft to build your own modern marvels. 

Of course, there are many more mods than what I've mentioned here in this pack, including a lot of QoL stuff like Cyclic but I didn't want to spoil everything!  You'll just have to discover them for yourself.  Or check the modlist in the CurseForge app. 

Premise:
Beyond Arcadia is built around a combination of simplicity and depth, delivered in a curated fashion.  We've tried to provide simplified mechanics to simulate parts of the experience that would be otherwise tedious for the player, while adding depth to the parts that should be fun to delve into.  We want to provide more of the fun stuff, while turning the less fun stuff into something that can enhance the fun stuff in a way that doesn't burden the player too much.   

Tech Stuff:
  Optimal RAM allocation: 6gb* (8gb with shaders)
* Note that allocating more RAM may actually make everything run WORSE, as is often the case with modded Minecraft.  If 6gb isn't working for you, try setting it to half your system's total, or between 4gb and 8gb. 

  SERVER CONFIGURATION AND TIPS:
We are currently running the pack on a BisectHosting 6gb Budget server without issues, with a small playerbase (1-3 concurrent).  Chunkloaders, high player counts, and wide player distribution will all increase server RAM needs accordingly, so be prepared for that if you intend to run a large server.  Also, due to the large amount of discoverable content, chunk generation can occasionally slow down or take a long time to generate a chunk.  It will eventually generate the chunk, and we are working to identify the causes and try to speed up this process, but the sheer amount of content in the pack means that there will be delays in world gen.  Either use a chunk pregenerator or make sure your players know what to expect when exploring new chunks.  This also carries over to dimension generation.  When dimensions are first visited there will be a lot of chunk generation going on and this could cause slowdowns or even stall clients.  Be patient with the process.  Actual errors should still be noted and reported if not already known.

Unique Dimensions*:
This pack provides four unique dimensions not found in other packs:
New Magincia (otherworlds:new_magincia): This is an alternate overworld dimension based on the Multi_Improved continent type from Terraforged, with our Magincia preset.  See below for more info.
Arcadia (otherworlds:arcadia): A dimension based on our cityworld from the Mysteries of Arcadia Youtube series, but something is different!
Cthonos (otherworlds:cthonos): A mysterious dimension deep within the underworld where refugee Arcadians built a subterranean society.
Argonia (otherworlds:argonia): A world forgotten by time, utilizing the Origin Valley biome to resemble early builds of Minecraft.
* These dimensions can only be initially reached via Tardis or teleport commands!  Once there, waystones, sharestones, and matter recievers can be built to open up access from other dimensions.

BEYOND ARCADIA TERRAFORGED PRESETS:
Adventuria: Our vanilla-esque worldgen preset designed to provide interesting, fantastical landscapes to explore but somewhat more realistic than vanilla by using the power of Terraforged.
Celestial Isles: A fantastical island-themed world gen that is a little more realistic than Adventuria, based on New Zealand.
New Horizons: Our custom realistic world gen, themed around large primordial islands.
Pangaea: Our realistic primordial continent world gen. 
Magincia (Default): A preset using the new Multi_Improved continent type, creates a variety of continents and islands that resemble a cross between all of the above presets.  Creates realistic oceans.  This preset is used in the New Magincia dimension (otherworlds:new_magincia) which is included with the modpack.

FAQ:

Q: Why 1.16.5?
A: Many of the mods we wanted to include have 1.16.5 versions as well as the current version of Mystcraft 2, which is still early in development.  We will be updating the pack as development progresses on this and other mods included, but it's likely to remain a 1.16.5 pack for the foreseeable future. 

Q: Why not use Serene Seasons?
A: I prefer Simply Seasons, but we may end up switching to Serene Seasons at some point if there is a good reason to do so. 

Q: This modpack is almost exactly like <insert modpack here>
A: There's so many modpacks available these days, so there's always going to be some very similar ones.  What makes any modpack stand out from the rest is how it's configured and how it's curated.  A modpack creator should strive to deliver a specific experience to the players, focused or broad as it may be.  If ours isn't suited to you, you're free to try another one!  

NOTE: While we would have liked to bring over every mod from Beyond Vivacity, there were some that we couldn't find updates for, such as the Portal Gun mod.  If a 1.16.5 version of this comes out, we'll try to add it in later! 

KNOWN ISSUES:  (We will update these mods as soon as a fix is released by the respective mod authors)

* Shaders are known to cause issues with several mods.  While we do like to use them, be aware that you may experience instability while running shaders with this pack.

* Lost Cities causes occasional chunk generation issues when used with Terraforged (cities under mountains, chunk edge cuts, terrain warping)
* Lost Cities are generating normal building chunks inside craters and explosion damage.
* Sun does not set in Lost City dimension. 
* FML incompatibility message on server browser, but can still join without problems.
* our fix to make tetra axes compatible with fallingtree will allow other double-headed tetra items like pickaxes to cut trees as well.  until proper compatibility is added to tetra, this won't be fixable by us.
* Create will randomly crash on startup when using shaders.  Known incompatibility between Create and shaders.  Relaunching usually fixes it.
* pondering Create constructions causes crashes when using shaders.  Use a wiki instead or don't use shaders.
* Union Inventory Amulet Slots duplicate any items placed there when killing mobs.  Until this issue is fixed by the creator, don't use these slots.
* We are currently investigating a potential Java-related memory leak which impacts performance after a significant amount of activity during a single session.  If you experience this issue, restart Minecraft to clear the memory and continue.
* Fluid Mixer from Crayfish Vehicle Mod does not accept fluids into the second slot due to a known bug, making it impossible to create fuelium.  A crafting recipe to manually combine the ingredients is being added while we wait for a fix.
* Scopes for guns do not work properly with shaders.