I just finished my 200+ hour run-through of the All the Mods 10 modpack and spent roughly 75% of that time working on my Minecolony (Crimson Keep). I have a lot of things I want to say about this mod, some good and some bad.
First, I absolutely love the concept of this mod. The idea of creating a city using pre-made structures and placing them wherever you want is fantastic. And creating the automation loops for making those structures was also really satisfying. I started out super excited to put together my Minecolony, but there were a lot of things that turned me off to this mod too. I rage-quit roughly 5 times because of this mod, saying to myself “I’m done! I’m not coming back this time,” only to come back the next day and try again. I wanted to list out all those problems here:
CONS:
1. Bugs – Broken citizen pathing, Needing to fire and re-hire builders so they actually do their job, or fulfilling 100% of builder material requirements only to check back later and see it’s now 95% because some of the materials mysteriously disappeared.
2. Balance – This could be just because I’m using ATM10 which includes other difficulty mods such as Apotheosis, but in the late game, Barbarians drastically outnumbered and outgunned my guards. Luckily, I had aoe spells from the Iron’s Spells and Spellbooks mod, which allowed me to wipe them out before they could even reach my colony. But occasionally I would be afk when the invaders arrived and would come back to my citizens being slaughtered because my guards didn’t stand a chance. I became very familiar with how to load a backup after this mod (unfortunately).
3. Time Sink – Easily my biggest complaint with this mod. I made the awful mistake of choosing Crimson Keep, which I hear is the most expensive colony theme. However, I’ve heard that even for those who didn’t choose Crimson Keep, this mod is still a HUGE time sink. And the main reason for that is how long it takes for builders to make your structures. And even worse, they stop construction while you’re away, meaning when you’re out adventuring and come back, they will have made no progress. (I’ve heard that there might be a way around this however by keeping a set of chunks active at all times somehow via another mod in ATM10, but I was unable to figure it out).
4. Frustrating Upkeep – For a mod centered around the idea of automation, the early and mid-game of this mod require WAY too much manual labor from the player. For the first half, I had to craft and supply everything for my builders because I was still working on the other necessary structures (Farm/Restaurant etc.) before I could make the building-automation ones such as the Stonemason Hut.
5. Lack of Food - My other biggest gripe (and reason for rage-quitting so many times) is with the built-in food system for the Minecolonies mod. Even when I built a farm AND a fisher’s hut early on, it STILL was not enough to keep my citizens fed and happy. Every few days I would need to feed them manually, which ruins the point of the automation I thought I had set up perfectly. They would crowd around the restaurant begging for food but would not get any because amongst this crowd of starving citizens was the waiter, chef, and baker; all of the people who I needed to make that food, but who couldn’t because they were starving. It would be nice if at the start of this mod, you were given several stacks of something like Yogurt and Berries to get you started, so your citizens aren’t constantly complaining while you build the necessary structures to keep them happy.
6. Confusing – Had to watch dozens of hours of guide videos to understand this mod. Trying to figure out every little thing each building could do, as well as how to automate everything was extremely overwhelming at the start, as well as planning out the locations of every structure ahead of time, when I didn’t know what each one would do. I genuinely could make this section of this post several pages long because of how convoluted the systems in this mod were, but I won’t. If there was some sort of implemented tutorial for each building, or at least one for setting up automation in general, maybe it would’ve been easier for me to get into this mod.
All that being said, I still enjoyed like 60% of my time spent on this mod. When the automation DID work, it felt amazing. When my builders finished an important structure, I felt relieved.
I know all those cons I just listed make it seem like I hate this mod, but there were actually a lot of good things that kept me invested until the end and I wanted to list those out too:
PROS:
1. Satisfying Automation - In the late game, I finally had one of every structure that I wanted and was able to automate the building process using huts like the Stonemason hut. Most of the roofs on my Minecolony were built utilizing this automation. All I had to do was put a bunch of cobblestone deepslate and red nether bricks in my warehouse, teach the recipes to some of the huts such as the Stonemason, and select the building types and their locations, and my builders did the rest.
2. Fun colony raids – Even though I had issues with the difficulty spikes of the barbarians and pirates attacking my colony, I still had a lot of fun fighting them and looting the ships.
3. Beautiful Structures – There were so many aesthetically pleasing colony themes to choose from at the start. I was overly excited before finally making my choice. And even though Crimson Keep was a pain to build, I’m still satisfied with how it looked in the end.
4. Memorable Citizens – Giving the citizens each their own names was a great touch and boosted my immersion in this mod drastically. Being able to walk around my city and having little touching moments like “Oh hey Grey, how’s that roof coming along?” or “Tripp, where are those Fish n’ Chips I told you to make!? …Starving? You can’t be starving, you’re the one who’s supposed to make the food!!”
In summary, I enjoyed a majority of my time playing this mod, but I’m hesitant to recommend it to any of my friends until the biggest problems are fixed.
Also a recommendation for anyone playing this mod (especially crimson keep): Once you start feeling drained because of the tedious/time consuming building process in the end game, don't be afraid to just switch to creative mode so you can deposit all the necessary materials with the press of a few buttons at the builder's huts. I found myself needing to do this for the final stretch, as I was mentally over everything near the end.
But of course this is all personal preference, so many of you may think differently.
If there’s anything you agree or disagree with, I’d love to discuss it. Or if there’s anything I missed or misspoke about, don’t be afraid to let me know.
I hope this post was informative for people trying to get into this mod. Thanks for reading!