Rustic Horizons I Fabric

Helpful Tools:
Waypoints (press ctrl to open waypoint GUI, and hover over an existing waypoint and press T to tp to it)
Zoom (a smooth and fancy cinematic zoom)
Boss Checklist (a neat little GUI next to your pause menu that details boss drops, locations, and lore)
Villager Trade Reroll (press tab to reroll)
Exporer's Compass (points to any structure you choose)
Backpacked (check JEI and craft a backpack, press B to open and unlock more slots with xp)
JEI (we all know this one)

-System Requirements: -

This modpack is meant to be as optmized as possible without sacrificing, so most sytems can run it smoothly. Lower end pc's and laptops should be fine as well, (just a few hiccups here and there) but I wouldn't reccomend playing on something that's not meant for gaming. If you run into any issues, it may be your hardwares fault as this pack runs fine on an old i7 integrated graphics laptop I have and averages 100 fps with shaders. If there are any glaring issues, like crashes even on powerful systems, please let me know.

-Minimaps and World Maps?-

No. These things reveal too much, you shouldn’t be able to see something you actually haven’t seen. Instead, there’s simple waypoints, which allow you to save locations, and teleport between them, and if you really need it, an Explorer’s Compass can lead you to certain structures.

-Performance Mods-

I already put together a pretty powerful stack of optimization mods. Even with that old laptop I mentioned, I was getting 70-180 FPS with shaders on. Adding more perf mods might result in overlaps and a waste of system resources. 

-Ports?-

No, not likely. RH is on Fabric 1.21.1 and a lot of its mods are exclusive to that version.

-Multiplayer

You can play RH with friends, but I recommend adding your multiplayer QoL mods first, to improve your experience (e.g. Simple Voice Chat, Lootr)

-Shaders

Ahh yes. Add any shader you want! I don’t know if ALL of the shaders in the world are compatible, but if you have a decent system, go for it! For low end users, RH comes with the Mellow Shader pretweaked for performance.

–World Gen–

The look of the world has gotten a huge glow up. Step into a transformed world, with not only overhauled existing biomes, but new, wondrous new biomes filling the earth. Traverse through breathtaking landscapes, whether it's an epic mountain range, an ancient forest, or a crystal cavern deep underground. Exploration shouldn’t disappoint, since mods like Terralith, BYG, and Regions Unexplored make every horizon different than the last

–Wildlife–

Rustic Horizons is packed with wildlife, each serving to either add ambience to the world or to have some purpose or function the player can utilize. You can hunt mobs from WilderNature for bounties, discover IRL animals from Domix’s Creatures, or come across some truly fantastic beasts from Alex’s Mobs.

–Structures–

Yes yes, of course there are structures. I won’t list all the mods in this genre, but here’s what you should know. I only pick ones that feel grounded and believable, not huge castles and towers that are on whole nother scale (cough WDA cough cough). 

–Dimensions–

The only two new dimensions are the Aether and the Starlight, do distinct worlds that immediately feel different than the other dimensions. They both play a part in progression, as they have bosses within, which you’ll need to slay in order to continue. The Nether has a transformed layout now, with a doubled world height as well as dozens of new biomes. This also applies to the End, with layered End Islands and new alien ecosystems to explore. Both existing dimensions should truly feel like whole other realities, if not universes, now.

–Building and Decor–

Building is actually very fun and easy now. You can choose from hundreds of different block sets, whether they be missing vanilla variants, extra vanilla variants, or just completely new ones. There is also a whole box of tools you can use to make building more quick. A hammer can clear large areas, while a trowel can place random blocks from your inventory. Also enjoy the new Bedrock-like placement system, letting you reach around other blocks

–Farming and Food–

Now this is a big chunk of what the modpack is all about. Forage and sow dozens of new crops and herbs to take your farming game to the next level. Once you have some ingredients, build a cozy kitchen and cook a delicious meal with incredible buffs that you will NEED to defeat bosses and survive in hostile environments. For RH, I didn’t choose Farmer’s Delight and its 50M addons, instead, I stuck to Let’s Do, which is a lot more balanced, cozy, and aesthetically pleasing. Just know as you head in that you’ll need proper meals to get through tough situations.

–Ambience and Immersion–

Oh boy. Once you step into RH, it will be a whole new world, even without shaders. You’ll notice depth in the air with better environmental sounds, as well as new, updated sounds around the game, even in GUIs and such. Take a walk and you’ll notice subtle ambient effects and particles that really makes the game feel like something alive. Even regular playing is affected: Better animations for mobs, third person, AND first person, as well as updated textures for many things. You’ll see more mob variants, more pleasing textures on blocks and items, a more cozy dark brown GUI, and lots of small texture tweaks that make sense. It truly makes you feel like you're IN the game.

–Quality of Life–

There’s so much to mention that I can’t cover it on the Curseforge word limit. Basically the minimum for all modpacks and THEN some.

It's pretty simple; you head for the mines, gather ores, smelt them up, upgrade your tools, and repeat. However, there have been some added steps in between just to help prolong certain stages of the game so you appreciate them more. Up until iron, your upgrade system stays the same, wooden>stone>iron (there’s also copper gear but who does that?). After that, you can try to rush into diamond, but it won’t be easy. Since diamonds are a little commoner due to structures and such, you now require multiple diamonds just for a single ingot, which those ingots behave like regular diamonds for armor, weapons, and tools. While you grind your  sparkly gems, you can consider Bronze (copper plus tin) for a better alternative in between iron and diamond. Then, once you get diamonds, you can upgrade to netherite, but like all modpacks, that’s not the end of the line. Choose any of the Mythic Upgrades gear sets for your next step, which have certain themed buffs, and that’s your final endgame armor. 

This system in particular has a massive rework: Instead of getting random enchants from an enchantment table, you can pick specific enchantments for your gear, but at a cost. Enchantments require not only lapis and xp, but also a material cost relating to the enchant’s function (which scale with each level). For example, knockback requires stick pistons. This is much funner than regular enchanting, as it’s not just you rerolling enchantments in a dark cave relying on a RNG system that you can’t influence. Cough cough bad game design cough. Progression should never rely on something random that you can’t increase the odds of you getting. Instead, you get to guarantee your enchantment by crafting or even going out to explore to get ingredients. There’s also tons of new unique enchants that work with this system as well. If you want to keep your enchantments that you worked hard for, there is a option to upgrade your iron tools to diamond via upgrade templete netherite, but you don't have to.

This also has a pretty significant rework. Vanilla food is now not viable to use. Sure, it gets you by during early game, but it’s so easy to make, like bread or golden carrots, which is why we nerfed them. Vanilla food has lower saturation and nutrition value, which is why you should invest in modded food from Farm and Charm or Bakery. They have doubled sat and nutr values, as well as effect buffs, and they’re actually not that hard to make. Take some time, build a farm and a kitchen, and see the difference. Trying to scrape by on bread, steak, and a prayer won’t get you very far.

As mentioned before, you need to defeat every boss, some of which are located in other dimensions. This means The Aether and Starlight are core parts of “completing” this pack. If you need some help though, you can go to your pause menu and see a full boss checklist of where bosses are, their drops, as well as basic descriptions. And as I said a little ways back, there is also an Explorer’s Compass that will help you locate specific structures. 

Why remake Rustic Horizons?

To be honest, the pack was starting to feel cluttered and messy, especially since the profile I was using was originally made for my personal wants. There were too many mods that didn’t serve or purpose or fit the theme well, so I did a hard reset from the ground up. Now, you can expect a simpler mod list, cleaner gameplay, smooth performance, and less bloat content.

What happened to Deeper and Darker?

Everybody knows about the mod that adds a Deep Dark dimension, but I felt it was a little overused only for the sole reason of it looking cool. It doesn’t provide the players anything, nor does it impact the progression in any way , so it just felt like a waste or resources to build around.

When should I expect updates?

I work a little slow, especially since I have school as well. Updates do come out slowly though, but not just because I’m lazy. I try my best to take time and make sure all updates are meaningful and high quality. I won’t just dump in a bunch of mods I discovered, I’ll make sure they all correlate.

Where are the quests?

Previous versions had FTB quests with completed quest lines, but since the pack was rebuilt, the quests have to be rebuilt too. They’ll come out over the next few updates once they’re ready.

What about Farmer’s Delight?

Farmer’s Delight is a great mod with tons of addons, but that’s exactly the problem: it can add hundreds of food items and push the pack into the kitchen sink area. For Rustic Horizons, the cooking experience aims to be cozier and more focused. The only reason FD was in older versions was because of all of its addons, which this new version doesn’t need. Here, Farm ‘n Charm and its three addons are the main culinary mods in the kitchen.