[Im editing the body text give me a second]

♥[I may be updating this review with further updates or playthroughs.]♥

[er, self-reviewish sorta? i left the team before 3.0 was fully released]

Where do I even begin with this? RotN has been close to my heart ever since I started working on it in 2019, and what a ride it was. Though, I’m gonna (try to) refrain from discussing anything about my developer experience and rather review the pack for what it is. I will of course be a little biased, but also a bit harsh because I know the potential this pack has.

This pack has given me hundreds if not thousands of hours of just pure addictive fun. It makes you feel like a genius at times because it really forces you to think and be creative. It tries to steer you in the right direction without being handholdy. It lets you explore whatever aspect of the pack you wish to explore. Especially in a multiplayer setting, you can really focus on whatever it is you enjoy. You can literally spelunk forever if you wanted to (and you will want to), or focus on the in-depth cooking system, the long but rewarding crafting system, the base-building aspect with so many fitting cosmetics, the defense aspect with unique approaches and traps, the progression with incredible lore and thrilling boss fights, etc. Of course, many aspects of the pack are gated by conquest elements (ie, killing bosses and discovering dimensions), but the best part is you can tackle that at your own pace. Hell, I’m an advocate of playing this pack on peaceful if that’s your thing because it’s *still* fun and such a chill experience, mostly because of how god damn good this pack’s aesthetics are.

RotN has absolutely NAILED aesthetics. The moment you spawn in you are tossed into a BEAUTIFUL world with such a diverse and immersive ecosystem with a variety of animals and fantasy creatures alike. The music couldn’t be more perfect, the ambience, the recommended shaders, the custom textures and CTM, dynamic trees, villages that actually feel alive and part of the world, everything just comes together to make you want to protect this world and explore every aspect of it. Not to mention just how quickly the environment and ambience can change the moment you step into a cave and hear the echoes of hostile mobs, or when the sky darkens and coupled with the soothing piano backing track and falling stars… it just feels mystical, yet not free of dangers; you’re still on your toes. If you haven’t spent a moment to truly take in and enjoy this pack’s aesthetics and environment, I implore that you do so.

Now, unfortunately with all that being said, this pack is held back immensely by it’s instability. This is not a discredit to the developers, because dear god I know how difficult, painful, and stressful it is to deal with bugs in extra large modpacks. I can not even begin to tell you how many hours I’ve spent debugging and troubleshooting this pack. However, when a pack such as this is not patched for many months at a time, leaving very crucial and game-breaking bugs that were already fixed months ago, it’s extremely disheartening. I recognize how difficult and time-consuming it is to keep track of all the issues and commits and to release a hopefully not broken build, but hundreds of new players are experiencing this unique pack for this first time likely every single day, only to be let down when they realize they have to modify their pack install to even be playable or have their hard work become corrupted because of an outdated mod that was updated internally 5 months ago. Many of these players are likely never going to play RotN again, not because they didn’t have fun, but because it was broken. And that hurts me.

I truly believe that if RotN wants to be the underdog that rises into the mainstream to show the entire modded Minecraft community what incredible talent, creativity, passion, love, and attention to detail can do for a modpack, it *must* develop a more efficient release schedule that prioritizes small semi-frequent patches that will lead to a more positive experience for all players.

I played minecraft modpacks since 2012 and this modpack is easily one of the best ones out there to date. Where other modpacks spend time kitbashing mods together, ROTN spends its time balancing progression, and tuning the game to create a challenging but fun experience for the player. This combined with the custom textures, music, AI, and commissioned mods perfectly synergize to make the game feel familiar to anyone used to the vanilla game loop. This modpack is awesome, play it and enjoy

I’ve been playing different versions of this modpack on and off for the past 2 years, and I have to say that there’s nothing like it. It’s surprising that a single modpack has had continuous development for as long as RoTN has, and every version brings new and improved progression and mechanics that slowly inch towards the grand vision behind the modpack.

RoTN is a “hardcore” survival modpack with achievement-based progression, and a very integrated collection of mods. Every 10-13 days, an invasion happens, prefaced by a Terraria-boss-like message, that you must defend against. The current version of the modpack has particularly difficult invasions. The strength and type of mobs in the invasions scales with your achievement progression, starting with getting good armor, then unlocking the Nether, the Aether, the Beneath, the End, and the Twilight Forest. Many of the mobs in invasions can break through blocks, and later, fly. It is up to you to build a base that can withstand the onslaught.

This modpack fully integrates each of the mods within it. Gone are the days when modpacks have Botania or Thaumcraft or some other huge mod with an entirely separate progression system. Nor are there any huge tech mods isolated from all other mods, like Tech:Reborn, AE2, or Mystical Agr. RoTN has magic, tech, and exploration within its progression system, but everything flows smoothly. You never feel like going down one path means you are at a standstill somewhere else. Regardless of what you focus on, everything is going to help you survive the night, and maybe even get to a new dimension.

The modpack has its own soundtrack and texture packs. These help in setting the atmosphere, and integrating all of the different mods with a consistent art style. You’re also always free to turn off these things by adjusting your setting if you prefer the original look, or would like to play your own music.

The performance of this modpack is one of the best things about it. I use an 8 year old gaming laptop, and my CPU often struggles with running other modpacks, especially the really large ones like DDSS, SevTech, or any Kitchen Sink stuff. RoTN has way better performance. Of course, it’s not perfect, but for the quantity of new and original content in the modpack, the gameplay experience and the FPS I can play it at is fantastic. I would still recommend closing as much as you can while playing though, if you’re on a weak computer like mine.

Finally, the modpack has a great community on its discord. You don’t have to scour old wikis or reddit posts, but instead receive near-immediate help from experienced players. And, the modpack is far from being completed; future updates promise a ton of new content that will make this modpack even more enjoyable. RoTN hits the sweet spot for a challenging progression-based pack, without the non-sensical BS of RLCraft or the monotonous grind of SevTech. Without a doubt, my favorite modpack.

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not very far in the modpack. This modpack apparently has bosses and a long progression path, but I have not faced a single boss yet. This review is only for the early game, and I can not comment on the balance or design decisions made further into progression.

The mod was quite good. It feels like RLcraft but actually designed around being a playable game. I was honestly surprised, considering this modpack creator’s other modpack, trepidation, is a mess of bugs and strange design choices.

This modpack is similar to RLcraft in that you have the realistic crafting trees, with more enemies and items, but thankfully this modpack is much more fair than RLcraft. It doesn’t have the stupid thirst mechanic, it doesn’t have the dumb heat/cold mechanic, and it doesn’t have the extremely frustrating enemies that instakill you from nowhere.

This modpack also has mechanical mods, which normally I hate, but it seems to have been done tastefully here. Other mods usually have super complex mechanical blocks right from the start, but this mod focuses more on primitive mechanics, like having a mill powered by a river, or using a campfire to heat a crucible. This is so much more reasonable and enjoyable.

There are also quality of life features, like the ability to track teammates on your HUD with a compass at the top of your screen (which for some reason required restarting the server for us after we joined a team, but oh well), the ability to sprint left and right, appleskin to track your hunger, JEI, et cetera.

More interestingly, this modpack gives enemies the ability to raid your home, break blocks, and tower up. This makes enemies much more of a threat, and makes minecraft combat feel, dare I say… dynamic? It still has issues, but it does fix minecraft’s old problem of enemies being completely unthreatening if you use the ability to build/break blocks.

My personal favorite modpack. The gameplay speaks for itself. Also try Underdog.