Shanghaied Nightmare

Who hasn't played a pack containing Ex-nihilo and spent hour after grinding hour sifting blocks for needed items? It was fun the first time I encountered it. Even enjoyable setting up automation to relieve my poor withered mouse clicking finger. But enough is enough, no more the sifting nightmare shall I endure. That's why sifting has been totally removed from Shanghaied Nightmare while the best bits of Exnihilo remain.

Next we turn our attention to the smeltery found in TConstruct. Great for mixing metals hey? Unless you accidentally mix vital metals that you wanted for something else. Or wind up with a smidgen of molten metal from making tool parts, grrrr. Then I thought, we've got a perfectly functional Alloy Smelter that only makes a limited amount of alloys? An idea was born and we've managed to expand its repertoire to include every alloy available in this new pack, plus a few new things we thought might come in handy. As for the lumbering smeltery, it has been consigned to history.

But wait I hear you say, with all those new recipes, it will be a nightmare trying to find each recipe as they're required. And you'd be right if we hadn't switched to a new beaut Crafting Guide that is easy and safe to use and doesn't glitch at the drop of a hat. It doesn't show machine recipes but we've taken care of that by adding extensive tooltips to every recipe that wouldn't otherwise show up in the guide. Oh, and don't worry, you'll still be able to make those snazzy tinkers tools without the smeltery because we've taken care of it by expanding the use of our ever popular Industrial Wizz. Best of all, no more left over bits of metal.

Who loved Enviromine the first time it turned up in a pack? Me neither, I mean I liked the idea of needing to drink water, and those camel packs were handy but not at the expense of not being able to wear it with certain armors. Then there was the temperature factor and don't get me started on sanity, having to sleep when there's so much to do? No thanks, so we removed the sanity and temperature aspect entirely and only included the best bits and then made some changes to make those more user friendly, like only needing 3 bottles to fill a camel pack so that it can be done in one go in your inventory. Not easy enough? We figured you'd say that so we also included easy to make and fill stackable 'disposable' camel fillers that let you explore further and not take up valuable inventory space with bottles of water or spare camel packs. Oh, and camel packs can now be worn with ALL available chest armors.

So what else is new? We've swapped the Aether for a new world I personally hadn't come across before and it's really rather impressive. Something of a nightmare to survive in lol, but that is kinda the idea of this pack, right? Lots of new things to do and discover and not as grindy as last season's challenge. So why are you still wasting time reading this when you could be out there getting slaughtered by our friendly team of monsters? You can't win if you don't begin.

BEGINNING YOUR ADVENTURE: Ho hum, another day, yet another survival game, but it has some differences you need to hear about. You start out on a dying planet with a few possessions including a frying pan that can not only be used to cook food, it also doubles as your primary weapon. Don't like noisy Frying Pans? Me neither, so I had our local weapons dealer fit it with a muffler to make it quieter. You'd be advised to spend the day searching for dying trees and some all important 'dead' wood to make your first liquefier that you can use to make life saving water. Hopefully you'll have collected enough wood to make a bunker before night falls and the nightly mobs come out to play. Oh, and if you find a pool of water somewhere, that would be a great place to set up your first base and get some fishing done.

COMPLETING THE QUEST: Although this is your primary goal, there are heaps of things you need to accomplish before you can take on that final challenge. Read all the quests carefully as they are not only designed to keep you occupied, many of them are filled with useful information that could help your progress. Visiting new worlds to plunder their riches should be a priority as that is the key to progression. One more thing, although you can complete the final quest on the Winners Circle page without completing every quest in the book, be assured that the book can be completed 100%, in fact we give out a completionist ribbon for those persistent contestants that do manage to finish every quest.

DISCLAIMER BOOK: As always, we've provided a disclaimer for your reading pleasure. If you're playing alone, you'll be able to read it in complete safety as opening it freezes time along with those nasty mobs. There's a lot of information in it including some that might even be a bit helpful, but we aren't passing out guarantee's, just letting you know the lay of the land so to speak. We do however highly recommend you read it sooner rather than later so that you don't miss out on any unexpected bonuses that you might stumble upon during your upcoming ordeal.

FOOD: Food is still a requirement for survival, and you'll likely spend the first few weeks on the brink of starvation and have to spend every waking moment in the pursuit of yet another morsel to stave off death. Only kidding, there will still be time to progress through the challenges at a steady pace until you eventually become established enough to want to automate some of your growing number of daily tasks.

 Our crazy botanist has managed to mutate what were once innocent berry bushes into more staple produce that make even more recipes than before. These mutated bushes along with traditional melons and pumpkins can be obtained via Lucky Dips and quest rewards so if you're lucky by nature, you'll get a head start on the opposition.

 Some crops are now only obtainable offworld so you'd be well advised to do the quests that will help you travel to new worlds as soon as possible. In the meantime catch and cook fish to combine with monster jerky and keep eating those delicious Zombie Steaks until your new player threshold has been reached.

 Hopefully you'll last long enough to get started on your new crops and make all the wonderful recipes our chef created during our 'off' season. He reckons some of them are to die for. Not sure what he meant by that remark, hopefully its just a metaphor and not to be taken literally. Eventually you'll be able to grow prodigious quantities of regular crops when you ramp up to mass production. This is a good thing as there are quests where you can earn magnificent rewards for handing in your surplus produce.

 Did I mention the hidden recipe treasure hunt? No? Well its not quite the same as last season when we gave out hints, but I think its best to let you discover it for yourself after you get started. Oh, and we've changed the secret recipe challenge this year so that you actually have to make the secret recipes rather than relying on a lucky break from a reward bag. So you might find yourself having to make some foods that you have already received in a reward bag if you want to get your hands on the totally awesome reward we give to contestants who 'crack' the secret recipes code.

MOBS: In this game you get rewarded for killing mobs, in fact its a requirement so if you prefer playing on peaceful, you'll find you can't progress much further than the first few challenges. This is not to say you'll be spending every waking hour defending yourself. Its a relatively small part of the game, but necessary as there's no point in having mobs if you're going to spend every night hiding away from them.

ORES: Now that we've got that concern out of the way, lets think about how we get ores. In the beginning you will only have access to the five basic ores that grow on bushes. Other ores will become available once you go offworld. Some of them can initially be blasted out of the ground using TNT. Some require SDX. All can be removed using various level pickaxes, but you'll find out more as you progress through the game. To simplify the pickaxe progression system we've reduced the number of required mining levels for ores to just three, obsidian, alumite and manyullyn. The basic 'stone' level for mining stone blocks etc is still available.

REWARD BAGS: The reward bags have been specially designed to help improve your lot in life. They can help you immensely, or just a little bit. How useful a reward is often depends on how advanced into the game you are when you receive it. Although there are a limited number of reward bags, we've been generous enough to include a second tier group of reserve bags that should ensure you never come up empty handed when opening your reward bag.

So what about when you band together with other adventurers to form a pack? Well as this competition is primarily designed for single players, we wouldn't want multiple players gaining an unfair advantage by rewarding every one of them with reward bags just for completing the same quest. Instead we thought you'd prefer to decide for yourselves how you're going to share around all that lovely 'free' loot.

RUINS: There are heaps of ruins scattered randomly about that may or may not contain hidden treasures and of course not so hidden adversaries. As this world has multiple biomes, you'll discover that some ruins and plants only spawn in certain biomes, like cactus in desert regions. Traveling extensively will expand your chances of finding items that will enhance your chances of survival.

TOOLS and WEAPONS: Have you ever wondered why tinkers tools and weapons only level up 5 times? I mean, you become a master of the weapon in no time flat and that's it? Well our boffin's managed to find the key to unlocking more of those hidden levels to give you a greater incentive to keep hacking and slashing with them? How many levels? Ahh well, we wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, so we'll let you find out for yourself.

WATER: Water is a requirement for survival. Do the two quests that give free water to get you started. Gather dead wood and make a liquefier to make water. Harvest maple trees for saplings that can be used to make water. Plant any cactus you find as soon as possible as it also makes water. Keep a lookout for the quests that will help you automate your water production.

Do read carefully each challenge as there are many hints thrown in to help the newcomers.

Don't just assume the recipe you used in your last game will be the same here as there have been heaps of changes, mostly to allow the flow of this game to work as intended and some simply because I thought they made more sense.

Do download it and try it out today. You won't know if its any good unless you actually play it. Don't worry about the 99.99% of players that said they'd rather have a lobotomy than go through the ordeal of being shanghaied yet again. You're an individual and as such have every right to be shanghaied into playing our ramshackle survival game. Besides, the likelihood of your making it all the way through to the WINNERS circle without dying at least once and undergoing our patented RIP service is a billion to one, so don't pay for a lobotomy, let our technicians lobotomise you instead.

Don't give up if you die on the first day. Sometimes you need to play a game a few times to get an idea of which is the best tactic for you to employ. Try going in a different direction next time, you never know what you'll find. As they say, practice makes perfect, so give those mobs more time to hone their skills so they can mercilessly slay you even faster. Who knows, you might even get better at staying alive longer yourself.

Do believe me when I say this game has been exhaustively tested by our totally unbiased team of just me and was unanimously voted as the best minecraft survival game bearing the name 'Shanghaied Nightmare' ever played, this year.

Don't add any mods or change any existing mod versions. This pack is designed to be played exactly as it is and any changes could actually break the pack and make it unplayable. Even if it doesn't break, you'll no longer be playing the pack as it was intended and won't know if you 'could' have made it all the way through as was originally intended.

Do tell all your friends about this pack if you totally enjoy playing it. In fact tell everyone, even the old hermit living in his underground bunker down the road. After all, he needs something to occupy his mind while waiting for his next shipment of overpriced zombie steaks from my gourmet home delivery service.

Don't be afraid to make a comment about your experience playing this pack, even if its an incredulous tale on how you reached that elusive Winners Circle on the first day. We'll almost certainly believe your totally unbelievable claim, and might not even throw you down a cave shaft filled with waiting cave spiders. So go ahead, make our day.