Danger and Darkness is a combination modpack.

It combines elements of base defense, dungeon delving, magic, tech. There is also a talent tree to help offset the growth of your enemies.

Major Features

The current mod total (according to curseforge launcher) is 319. So this would probably be considered a heavy modpack. That said I have done my best to help alleviate this by adding the standard array of optimization mods.

TECHNOLOGY: Create and a fair number of addons are featured heavily in this modpack. Most of the recipes remain unchanged as of the pre-release version, but certain major components for the various mods have had their recipes changed in some fashion. Typically this means relying heavily on Sequenced or Mechanical crafting, adding a tier-esq progression for it, or gating certain mods/parts of mods behind more advanced resources. The final chapters introduce you to Ad Astra, and Mekanism. Allowing you to really lean into advanced tech for your production chains if you so desire.

BASE DEFENSE: Enhanced Celestials, Improved Mobs, Zombie Awareness, The Hordes, and Majrusz's Progressive Difficulty mods are the primary focus for this section.

Enhanced Celestials adds its standard moons, but blood moons are far more common, expect to see 2 or 3 of them per 10 day period.
The Hordes as a horde night are every 10th minecraft day cycle. These start off pretty scary, especially if you didn't prepare for them and will scale up significantly over time.
Improved Mobs allows mobs to mine a certain selection of "weak" blocks, additionally the "difficulty" of the world will scale up over time with breakpoints in difficulty modifiers increasing in rate being the 10th day, 30th, 60th, 90th, and 120th days of the world.
Zombie awareness modifies the AI slightly to make impromptu hordes appear on the surface, track you down as you do make noise. They will also be attracted to light sources.
Majrusz's Progressive Difficulty adds additional hordes. These hordes are not random and will happen as you personally slay undead creatures, and trigger village raids.

DUNGEON DELVING: If adventuring is more your style, this pack has you covered. "Integrated Villages, Strongholds, Dungeons and Structures", Dimensional Dungeons, Awesome Dungeons set, Yung's set, When Dungeons Arise - Seven Seas, Dimensional Dungeons, Gateways to Eternity. With the inclusion of global packs and custom datapacks these structures will be less frequent so as to not overwhelm the environment.

Integrated Set adds/changes how various dungeons work. They incorporate various modded elements into their construction, layout, and loot. The dungeons in this mod are massive.
Awesome Dungeons set & Yung's adds additional dungeons and structures the overworld, nether, and end.
When Dungeons Arise - Seven Seas adds various ships and nautical themed stuff to the oceans
Dimensional Dungeons allow you to randomly generate dungeons in a pocket dimension for you to explore and loot.
Gateways to Eternity allows you to craft mystic orbs that summon hordes of enemies for you to fight. Should you survive all the waves the rewards will be great.

MAGIC: This modpack doesn't exclusively focus on tech mods... Ars Nouevu, Apotheosis, and Relics with their related addons are also included in this modpack. Currently they are there just for fun/player power increase, later releases of this modpack will incorporate them more into the main questline/progression system somehow.

QoL / UTILITY / MISC: There are quite a few that I could add to this list, but the main ones in my opinion are Serene Seasons, "Weather, Storms and Tornados" (Weather2), Mine Colonies, Lootr, Valkyrian Skies/Eureka/Clockwork/Trackwork, Thirst Was Taken.

Serene Seasons adds dynamic seasons to minecraft. Just like those we have IRL, but in minecraft the seasons are more condensed. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter only last 30 in game days.
Weather Storms and Tornados makes all weather related aspects much more "intense". Be it rain being affected by wind, hail storms, or tornados this weather mod is sure to add some atmosphere to your playthrough. NOTE: by default tornado damage is turned off, but they will still pick up mobs/you.
Mine Colonies: Build a small village to a sprawling city. Help retake the world from the monsters the surround you.
Lootr: If you play with friends, you need not worry about dungeon loot with this mod. Each loot chest is randomly generated at the time of opening for each person that opens it.
Valkyrian Skies/Eureka/Clockwork/Trackwork: Build ships, cars, planes with this mod set. NOTE: Valkyrian skies is not as stable on 1.20.1 as it is on 1.18. Use at your own discretion.
Thirst was Taken: Adds thirst/hydration to the game. This mechanic works much like Hunger and Saturation... but for water. Just don't drink water without purifying it first or you may get sick.

Known Issues
None as of Pre-release V2

Changelog

9/15/2024 -- Pre-Release V2

Config Changes
-- Possibly some small changes I forgot to put into log...
-- Changed difficulty scaling to be slower overall. First 10 days is at .1 difficulty/day. Next 20 days is at .5 difficulty per day. Next 30 days is at 1 difficulty / day. Then it goes to 2 difficulty per day until cap of 250.
-- Removed a few of the more annoying modifiers from infernal mobs (Ender/Ninja/Gravity)
-- Increased kill requirement for Majrusz's Difficulty raids. -- First raid is now 30 from 25. Set warning is set to 75 from 10 (will only really apply to any raids past first.
-- Changed create infinite liquid source to allow_all, from allow_by_tag -- this means that all liquids can now be considered infinite if you have more than 10k source blocks. I mean, if you can make that many you already have it automated...
-- Increased vault capacity to 30 stacks per block from 20. (Why do vaults lose capacity in exchange for being a multiblock by default, if anything they should gain, which now they do, especially when they get outshined by pmuch all storage mods)
-- More dragon eggs mods now causes a dragon head to spawn on the pedestal in addition to the egg.
-- Changed Steam n Rails config to require fuel for trains
-- Changed Combat experience to 1 + 10% of mob max hp from, from experience dropped + 5% of mob max hp. This is lower overall, which is needed due to my tallent tree being much smaller node count wise, but more impactful per node than the default tallent tree.
-- Added new merchant to "advanced wares" tab. The Lord of War, who sells turrets, ammo, and guardian capacitors.
-- Added new items for sale to Shady Merchant
-- Changed Guardian defense beam turrets to ignore I-frames.

Changed the some recipes
-- All electrical connectors build off IE connectors.
-- Barbed wire is gated behind mechanical crafters, razor wire no longer gated behind IE.
-- Added IE Logic Circuit recipe, added said circuit to Steel casing for Mekanism.
-- Added new recipe for brass hand using gold sheets, increased output of hands for brass sheet and bronze sheet recipes by 1 each to 2 and 3 respectively.

Mod Updates
-- Create to 5.1.h from 5.1.f
-- Create:Encased to 1.6.1 fix 3 from 1.6.1 fix 1
-- Steam n Rails to 1.6.5 from 1.6.4
-- TFMG to 0.9.2 from 0.9.1b

-- Apotheosis to 7.4.2 from 7.4.0
-- Apothic Attributes to 1.3.7 from 1.3.6
-- Amendments to 1.2.11 from 1.2.8
-- Create: Interiors to 0.5.6 from 0.5.4
-- Relics to 0.8.0.6 from 0.8.0.5
-- Octolib to 0.4.2 from 0.3

8/25/2024: -- Pre-release version
Includes all of the basics of the modpack, questbook to give a guideline on progression, initial pass of balancing.
Aspects that are incomplete: Magic side of modpack and how it incorporates into the questline. Magic currently only has "basic help" chapters.