TLDR: Long, fun, immersive, somewhat grindy story-driven progression pack with a well crafted custom world and many unique mechanics. Personally believe it is worth trying. Performance is not the best.

The only people said to have finished Journey Beyond the Abyss (to my knowledge) are the creator, austinsupercar, and his brother. Either way the actual list of people who have completed the pack officially on its curseforge page is empty!

This pack is very hard to say the least, but very rewarding. In other expert packs you often have to just embrace the grind, and in JBTA this is also very much something you can do. What is interesting though is that, yes, there is always an obvious, mindlessly grindy way to progress, but the pack will often have alternative ways to get resources that are much faster. The pack organically encourages you to do things that are not explicitly spelt in its quest book: exploring the world, investing in your millenaire town, interacting with various custom NPC’s, checking for new improved recipes in the recipe book, and progressing in the story to gain more “knowledge”. I know this is mostly just reiterating the stuff already said in the pack description, but I want to emphasize that these things make the world JBTA is set in feel immersive and dynamic and make the progression fun.

There are things I could definitely see turning people off from even trying the pack or continuing it once they have started. Obviously the length (600 – 2000 hr estimate) of completion makes it seem daunting, but unlike most other expert packs, there is always something you can be doing during that time; not just waiting for a recipe so you can continue. Another thing is the way certain items are gated behind gamestages. The pack makes you drop items you don’t “have knowledge for” as a way of introducing lore to the mysterious books of knowledge you find in the abyss that grant you new “skills” (unlocking new mods) upon reading them. It is a very annoying and a somewhat artificial way of gating progression, but I can understand the decision behind it. There is also pollution of the realms, which may not be most people’s cup of tea. The weight limit mechanic may also be extremely annoying before one gets access to carriable storage, but like the other things I mentioned, it fits with the pack’s theme.

The performance is also not great. The curseforge page recommends 8-10GB of RAM allocation. I’m able to run it with 7 (as that’s all I can give) but it’s not silky smooth. Either way one needs a pretty decent computer to run this, making it not very accessible. I suspect the performance issues likely result from how many “dynamic” things are going on, as the main island with its millenaire town is supposedly always chunk loaded.

Ok this rant is getting too long, I’ll stop here. Give the pack a try if you can!

7 hours to make a crafting table. Poggers