The Homestead Essentials is an amalgamation of some of my favorite mods to date, condensed into a small pack that anyone can enjoy. I attempted to create a pack that would be small, yet well rounded; a pack that leaves nothing (major) to be desired. Simply put, you could define it as "jack of all trades" modpack. It has a focus on magic, cultivation, exploration, and machinery/automation, with some decorative mods on the side to spruce things up a bit (no pun intended). I plan on adding other mods in the future, but for the time being, I am happy with the list I have so far. I am willing to take suggestions as well!
Mod List
Aether II
Animania Base
Animania Cats & Dogs
Animania Extra Animals
Animania Farm
Applied Energistics
Aquaculture
Baubles
BetterFPS
Bewitchment (Legacy)
Bibliocraft
BiomesOPlenty
Blood Magic
Botania
Buildcraft
Carry On
Chisel
Clumps
CodeChicken Lib 1.8.+
CoFH Core
CoFH World
Connected Textures Mod
Cooking For Blockheads
CraftStudio API
Craft Tweaker
Custom Mob Spawner
Decocraft
ElectroBlob's Wizardry
ElectroBlob's Wizardry: Twilight Forest Spell Pack
Extreme Reactors
Fast Leaf Decay
Forestry
Galacticraft Planets
Galacticraft Tweaker
GraveStone Mod
Guide API
Here's What You're Looking At (HWYLA)
Ice and Fire: Dragons
Inventory Tweaks [1.12 only]
Iron Chests
Just Enough Items (JEI)
Journey Map
LLibrary
Mantle
MicDoodleCore
MineColonies
Mo' Creatures
Mouse Tweaks
MrCrayfish's Furniture Mod
Natura
Open Blocks Elevator
Pam's Harvestcraft
Patchouli
PTRLib
Redstone Flux
Thaumcraft
Thermal Cultivation
Thermal Dynamics
Thermal Expansion
Thermal Foundation
Tinker's Construct
Twilight Forest
Vampirism
WAILA/HWYLA Harvestability
ZeroCore
RAM Requirements/Notes
I have found that manually allocating 5.5+ GB (5,632+ mb) of RAM should allow you to run this modpack smoothly. During my test runs with the modpack, allocating anything under that caused it to be choppy (assuming the rest of your specs are up to par as well). I haven't done any test runs (yet) where I have a bunch of machinery, a huge base, tons of end-game items, etc., so it may require even more RAM towards the end game. At the moment, this is to be determined. If you want to play creative, and mess around with the mobs contained within these mods, then you will want to allocate even more RAM, or you risk it stuttering. As I mentioned in the latest update file changelog, I will be looking to trim down the mod list a bit (if there is overlap between them) and/or add AI/combat improvement mods to reduce the overall stress, as I want this modpack to be accessible to anyone with a semi-decent computer.