One of the first packs I’ve actually completed(although I’m not quite at the end lol, close enough!).

Unlike most similar packs there’s no sieving or ex nihilo-esque stuff of any kind, there’s a very unique early game that uses vanilla brushes, with a bit of villager slavery to automate it later.

The whole pack is centralized around crafting with and upgrading a device known as the World Engine. The texturing and theming for it is great, and it’s not the most intuitive thing in the world at first but a very great questbook gives you enough to figure it out.

Speaking of, the questline feels great. It’s got a sort of asymmetrical layout where you work on three different quest chains per chapter, and at the end of each questline is an upgrade for the World Engine(which unlocks new crafts to progress through whichever mods you want or need). Completing each quest gives a bit of money to purchase things at the spawn’s shops. These shops are fully voice-acted characters which you talk to throughout the quests.

The quests are not fully exploration or crafting/techy stuff, I think there’s a great balance. If you get bored of one or the other it’s great to have two other quest chains to go through.

Mods are a nice mix of the ol’ standards and some I hadn’t really heard of until playing this pack. You’ve got your Mekanism, Ars, AE2, Apotheosis, etc.; Create is here but not super necessary like in SB3 or a lot of other packs, which is great. Two great mods that were new to me were Just Dire Things and Roost Ultimate.

Exploration is a mix of custom dungeons and bosses, mostly L_EC or Twilight Forest. The dungeons are all themed around one specific thing; there’s a Create dungeon, a Portal dungeon, a puzzly MFFS(a forcefield mod) dungeon, etc. which are all very fun to go through.

Overall, progression never felt blocked in any way. It was like when going through a certain mod for the questline you’d watch a great cutscene as your World Engine grew and gain access to everything you’d need for that mod. The grind is minimal, and AE2 is very much buffed so once you get autocrafting it becomes even less tedious.

This pack’s 100% worth playing, even if you’re not a huge skyblock enjoyer I think it’s worth it for the custom stuff alone.

it was a smooth steady gameplay for my friend and I, its a little rough early game. However, the “gambling” system makes it a little easier for early game, until mid game gets way easier and more enjoyable if you were to follow quests.

After around 80ish hours out into the pack, I can confidently say it is leagues above stoneblock 3. Where stoneblock 3 for example had quests which felt not that well put together, stoneblock 4 ended up being one of the best out together quest books with literal voice acting and lore!

The end game is satisfying. While there are technically creative items you can make after the end game, the story itself ends off at a good note with each upgrade of the world engine needing work done from different mods, all while progression gating some recipes depending on what world engine upgrades you have made. Quite a interesting way to gate progression in a well made way

This one was very competently done, with a skeleton story centred around upgrading “the World Engine”. In practice that means working through different mods to create the necessary upgrades, and then watching the World Engine build itself in cutscenes.

**Exploration**

The world is made entirely of stone, so it’s not one for sightseers. As you dig further out in the stoneblock world, you’ll reach other dimensions. Teleportation mods make this less painful than it sounds, although some midgame quests require a lot of digging to find dungeons buried in the outer rings – there were slightly too many of those for my tastes.

The quest dungeons themselves are very well done, each centering around one mod in particular – e.g. Create, or Portal Gun. They often call on platforming abilities, and seemed of the perfect length.

Other more generic dungeons exist in each ring. These tend to be very rich on loot in the inner rings (the Nether dungeons in particular) and very loot poor beyond that.

**The mod offering**

There are a lot of mods in this pack, although quests do not force you through these. Many mods seem to be here to provide options – there are several storage mods, for example, and you’ll only ever need one.

Particular focus is given to Oritech and Draconic Evolution, especially in the late game, although other technology focused mods include Industrial Foregoing, Mekanism, Create and Immersive Engineering. The magic mods in the pack (Occultism, Psi, Ars Nouveau, Malum and Iron’s Spellbooks) are barely touched, although progression along Apotheosis’ enchanting path is a core part of progression.

Resource generation is done firstly through villagers, and then through specialised cows and chickens – meaning that you’ll never be short of resources. Although you may at times be short of the right chicken.

**Pacing**

Cataclysm and Twilight Forest bosses are in the pack. Some of the Cataclysm bosses appear first, and are much harder than the Twilight ones. The pacing is otherwise good, although the very late game really amps up the resource requirements (a collection of chickens is practically essential by this point). I did get bogged down with Industrial Foregoing’s laser fluid drill, which gathers resources essential for progression incredibly slowly. It might be that there was a way to speed this up that I missed (that wasn’t just craft two dozen identical complex machines), but it did mark the point at which I burned out, just before the end of the final act.

**Summary**

A world of stone might not be for everyone, but I would still personally recommend the first half of the pack. The quest dungeons are well put together, the generic dungeons are very rewarding, and progression flies along. Seeing the World Engine upgrade is a satisfying conclusion to each questline. The later half of the pack is more for the factory-minded, requiring a command of an array of tech mods, with magic by that point having been thoroughly sidelined. That half – while not for me – was nonetheless very well done, and there’s a lot of joy to be found there by those with that kind of head.