The Enigmatica series have always been some of my favorite kitchen sinks, but Enigmatica 9 Expert really surprised me from the start and is, from my short playtime so far, a very tightly crafted and unique challenge.

While I’m not usually into expert packs, I’m a sucker for any pack that starts you off in a dimension that’s not the overworld.

More on that:

|| The pack has you start in the Twilight Forest, and this is the first time I’ve experienced Twilight Forest without god-like abilities, much less with progression mode turned off. I now have a newfound appreciation for this, let’s be honest, somewhat overused staple || and I think getting you to look at old content in new ways is what expert packs are meant to do at their best.

Enigmatica 9 Expert has very quickly become one of my all-time favorite expert packs to date. Not only was the gameplay stellar as a player, but as an aspiring pack developer, this pack truly opened my eyes to what is possible.

Context: A couple of my friends and I have been playing off and on on a private server. It has been running chunkloaded for a few months so our farms are overflowing – we have yet to update past version 1.12.1 so far because of how long our “off” seasons are, and we have been putting off automating a necessary ingredient from a prior update (abjuration essence for potions). We have only just about gotten to soul steel, which is early in Chapter 3, but it is the final chapter. I feel like we tend to move a bit slower than what I see for reported playtime in most packs, so you may beat the pack in a far shorter period of time.

*Highlights:*

There are many great things to say about this pack, but here are some I found particularly impactful.

Recipes Respect your Time:

Have you ever been playing a pack when you realize the next step in progression will take hours, and the only thing you can do to speed it up is to upscale your infrastructure? It’s kind of like hitting a wall when trying to speed past a Mario level. It gets rid of all of your momentum. E9E attempts to do away with this. First off, there are no singularities in E9E. The closest thing to a resource dump is each of the Tree of Life capstone items, which aren’t even close. E9E has very little “grind”, and every item or block you need a lot of is designed to take very little time to make. Heck, they even start you out with an unbreaking hoe that has a bone meal effect so you don’t have to wait for crops to grow!

This sort of respect for the player’s time already been somewhat of a mantra for me as a pack developer, but this pack does it amazingly.

A note, though: while a large portion of the pack can be completed with big batch crafts, I have heard that later in Chapter 3 (we haven’t gotten there yet) automation becomes a fair bit more necessary. From what I can tell, the final item that officially beats the pack is probably the most automation and resource intensive. (It’s still nowhere near singularities, though!)

Theming:

This really blew my mind. The pack doesn’t have much “lore” per se, but the magical theming is baked into the quests, the recipes, the gameplay, and even the item and block names. You may be a player beating a modpack, but in E9E, you are a Witch restoring life to a Tree of Life. You may be plopping down familiar tech mod machines, but in E9E, those are helpful spirits bound to arcane frames, trading your magical energy for their labor. And you may be constructing your workshop of multiblocks and kinetics, but in E9E, those are built out of orichalcum, artificing blocks, and runic manifolds – and probably powered by magical gold-hungry squirrels. It’s almost as if they thought, “What if Forge Energy was based entirely on magic?” and then went off the deep end with ideas – and it is amazing!

Attention to Detail:

This pack truly leaves no stone unturned as far as I know it. When I say “You start in the Twilight Forest” it may sound like a cute little detail. Surely it will be just another pack with the TF as a fun little side attraction, right? Not in E9E! The Twilight Forest is fully integrated – Slaying each boss provides a material necessary for your progression. Customized Twilight mobs spawn with knives and bombs. Ironwood serves as an early iron-like alternative, as iron is a midgame material. And much, much more. You can’t even get to the overworld until the end of Chapter 2. And did I mention iron was a midgame material? Every single recipe that once required iron has been updated to align with its part in pack progression. Every. Single. Recipe.

To me, this pack is the pinnacle of attention to detail. From rebalanced Apotheosis to overhauled ore processing to modified loot tables, almost nothing is left to the potentially progression-breaking whims of vanilla or any unmodified mods. As far as I know it, E9E is bulletproof. And that has taken a LOT of dedication and time.

Uniqueness:

I may not have as much to compare it to because of how few packs I’ve completed, but this pack is probably one of the most unique packs I have ever played. (From what I’ve heard, E6E may be the closest? But I haven’t played enough E6E to compare.) Iron midgame? Start in the Twilight Forest? Easy examples. However what I wanted to highlight is that you probably will not be doing the same things you do in other packs to progress. If machines are bound spirits, then you will have to bind a spirit to that machine. This probably means you’ll have to summon the spirit through an Occultism ritual, and then bind it with another. You don’t have much access to pipes, so you’ll have to get those magical squirrels to move things around. You can probably use a Nature’s Aura altar to summon a few of those. And when you need to transport between dimensions? Modular Routers for small jobs, AE2 Quantum Tunnels for big ones.

Again, I’m not sure how common those are (I may have been playing too many kitchen sinks recently where those almost never show up too significantly) but I have learned so much about so many cool mods from playing E9E and I love it.

Something I’m very certain isn’t used much in other packs is potions. You make potions in E9E. Wild!

*Negatives:*

I absolutely adore E9E so I don’t really find these to be too bothersome, but this is what I’ve heard from some other players that I can agree may turn some people away.

Few Viable Solutions:

In E9E there is a “Golden Path” (or a railroad, if you prefer) that directs you to what you should be doing for progression. If you want power, you should probably make Source. If you want mob drops, Drygmies are best. If you need crops, Whirlisprigs are the way to go. (I know all of those are from the same mod but bear with me) This sort of thing is somewhat common in expert packs (and kitchen sinks, if you really want to optimize things) but it’s really limited in E9E, especially for power generation for which there is usually a plethora of options. Some of the mods have been stripped of most of their content for this purpose (Powah comes to mind). If this sounds unplayable, this may not the pack for you.

Short:

I find this to be a positive myself, but if you’re a speed demon and you want a pack to keep you occupied for a long time, E9E might be too short for you. The quick recipes and the streamlined progression options lend themselves to a pack that is shorter than many expert packs to the point where some have considered speedrunning it. I think it’s cool, but again, that’s me.

Unfamiliarity:

I gushed about how unique the pack is, but if you do not feel like learning new mod mechanics you may not care much for E9E. This is, of course, speaking as someone who knew nothing of many of the mods beforehand (PneumaticCraft, Ars Nouveau, Nature’s Aura, Occultism, Modular Routers, etc.) so it was a wonderful learning experience for me. I love learning, though, and I understand some may not want to bother with all that in their leisure time.

All that aside, I honestly believe that this pack is a work of art, and it is worth at least a look for any expert pack player (or pack developer) just to see all of the innovation and care that was pumped into it, including those who may dislike it based on my reported negatives.

(I have also heard that many players who claim not to like magic mods have loved it despite all the mystical theming. Seriously folks, give this one a try.)