Was Nietzsche a great philosopher? Was Proust an incredible author, or a bedridden noble with a serious addiction to pen and paper? Perhaps by answering these questions one can determine the quality of Divine Journey 2. Is it always an excellent pack? No. There are moments, especially regarding the progression through various later dimensions and the tedious and tortuous process of nested chapter 28 crafting, where one would be excused, nay triumphed! For the suggestion that Divine Journey 2 was a mistake, a farce, the ultimate proof of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. But then, when you cross the thicket, beaten and battered from poison ivy and stinging nettle, when you emerge into the glorious glade of Rigorous Automation, then, my friends, you may see the light. “No!” Cried the audience, “Eureka!” shouted the actors, so the play went on. Divine Journey, it seems, could not be adored from the rows, the pews, ye weary folks gathered at the foot pedestal of Modded Minecraft. No, tis the actors, those beneficent clamorous and bored actors, they are those who love this pack. Those who spend their days pondering and playing. No passive consumer may enjoy. Viewer beware. Restricted from All Ages. Rejoice!

Best modpack ever played. This is beyond imagination. Just perfect (a bit old nowadays but still perfect)

One of the greatest packs I have ever played, I will not forget my journey with it. Perfect balancing and cohesive progression, with an engaging initial hook and a uniquely satisfying ending. It may have taken me 2 years of on and off playing and 796 hours total, but I don’t regret a second spent with this pack. If you want a challenging 1.12 Expert experience without gregtech that you can really sink your teeth in to, I haven’t found anything better yet!

First time I finished a modpack. It was fun, it was interesting, it was divine.

Time to complete: ~500 hours

DJ2 takes you on a tightly-tailored journey through a wide variety of mods. Progression is carefully structured to ensure a curated experience through each of the modpack’s 30 chapters, with most chapters building on the work done in previous chapters. This progression applies not only to the tech aspects of the pack, but also to the exploration aspect, with various dimensions being gated behind achieving certain tech milestones, and then further tech advancement being gated by needing materials acquired through exploration.

The mods featured range from ubiquitous mods like Mekanism to less-frequently-seen mods like Bewitchment and Divine RPG. Many of the mods, especially those in later chapters, pose unusual-but-not-insurmountable automation challenges that helps to break up the typical endgame recipe-encoding-simulator portion of many expert modpacks.

If I had to choose a weak element for the pack, it would be the exploration segments, particularly those featuring the Divine RPG dimensions. The custom-made structures are really neat, but the mobs in these dimensions range from annoying-behavior-with-unbelievably-annoying-sound-effects to incredibly-frustrating-and-now-I-hate-all-ents. Practically speaking, though, these represent a small fraction of the time most players will spend playing the pack.

TL;DR if you came here and wonder “should I try this pack?” yes you should. “will I like this pack?” well this I can’t answer lmao.

To put things into perspective: I played somewhere around 300 hours and got to chapter 19 (out of 30), then quit because of lack of free time and lag induced by Thaumcraft.

The pack starts with dimension exploration (Nether, TF optional, Atum, Erebus optional, Aether, Iceika and the End) followed by a short technical block, at the end of which ME Interfaces are unlocked in chapter 13 (around 80-250 hours into the pack depending on how focused you are). Then comes the key thing of this pack which is *passiving*, aka you have to set up lines producing every item in the game from raw items, and scale them throughout the pack. After a bit more dimension hopping in chapter you begin the magic block, which involves having to set up many processing lines in those mod’s machines and altars, which then requires scaling the prior lines higher, and higher, and higher… Most of the pack’s remainder has this gameplay loop: unlock new item, try to passive it, (sometimes) find out you’re out of 100500 different components, upscale their production. This is further amplified in chapter 24 and beyond when Mystical Agriculture is unlocked, with apparently “hundreds of thousands of an item being used for literally one craft which you have to do a few hundred times”.

Despite this loop, there is almost no time spent doing nothing and waiting on the recipes to complete. I probably only afk’d a couple hours total (+ however much time was spent dimension hopping if that can be considered afk’ing). There is like 1 recipe early on which takes 10 minutes to execute, and then not setting up resource generation will force you to be in the cave for a few hours, but afterwards I haven’t ever ran into this again.

Also wow this quest book. This quest book is legitimately amazing. The best one I’ve seen in any pack (I haven’t played GTNH as early game things like steam age GT is too annoying for me to go through)

Now for the bad parts of the pack in my opinion:

– Despite this innovative gameplay loop, the gameplay ends up pretty repetitive as you have to set up hundreds of automatic crafting tables from the mod of your choice, and then dozens (or hundreds) of automatic runic altars, thaumatoriums, etc.

– The pack also includes a quite basic collection of mods that are present everywhere, so if you’re into “inherently more interesting” mods this is not for you (some examples of this include Extreme Reactors, Galacticraft, IE), although they’re usually turned on their head which is quite nice.