Minecraft Enigmatica 2: Expert

World Started: 11/22/2021

World Status: In progress as of 1/8/2025

Intro

E2E is one of the more popular Minecraft modpacks out there.

Even though it was created in 2017, it still remains as one of the ones that people still talk about.

This modpack aims to weave many different mods together into a cohesive progression system by changing recipes around and adding quests. The ultimate goal of the modpack is to endure convoluted recipes to craft cheat items that give you infinite resources.

This certainly isn't the first modpack that I've played before, and I thought that I should give it a try given it was so popular.

Of course, the traditional Minecraft experience is to be very motivated for like the first two weeks, and then eventually just stop playing it at some point.

I vowed that "this time would be different" and that I would actually complete the modpack.

I set some initial rules that would hopefully help me to stay motivated. I accepted the fact that my interest in this game will ebb and flow over time. However, I set the rule that I will not start a new modpack until I complete this one. I may play for a bit and then grow tired of it, but if I ever get that itch to play modded Minecraft ever again, this would be the modpack that I continue. It may take years for me to complete it this way, but this ensures that I'm never truly giving up on it.

And... those rules have worked out quite well!

As of 1/8/2025, I'm in the endgame! The endgame crafting recipes are very extensive, but I am still making forward progress!

Maybe one day, I'll actually complete this modpack.

The Base

I've never had a mega base before, and so I went out of my way to make one.

It's in an RFTools void dimension.

It has a size of 243x243x243 blocks and it is absolutely massive.

The scale of the base is not conveyed well in this image

The base is based on the Menger Sponge because I thought it would be cool.

If a single block is the 0th iteration of the menger sponge, then this base is the 5th iteration of a menger sponge.

It's the largest menger sponge that you can fit into the world height limit in this version of Minecraft.

A 6th iteration menger sponge would have a height of 243 x 3 = 729 blocks, so that's probably never going to happen.

Building Materials

I made it out of white blocks from the Flat Colored Blocks mod and the holes are filled with EnderIO's quite clear glass. The whole thing is lit up with torches, so no mobs spawn in it.

In total, there are 3,200,000 white blocks in the whole structure.

I had to be strategic with building materials, because whatever I chose to use, I would have to make a lot of them.

It costs 1 cobblestone and one bone meal to make 16 white blocks, so that's a good return.

Cobblestone and bone meal are trivial to get in this stage of the game.

It also requires the colored block crafter, but is reusable. However, it means that Applied Energestics 2 can't be used to craft the recipe because it doesn't know that it's reusable.

I ended up using a bunch of EnderIO crafters, because all you need to do is re-pipe the colored block crafter back into the machine after the crafting is done. I just let the crafters do their thing and eventually, I made 3.2 million white blocks.

In comparison, Quite Clear Glass and torches are much simpler to craft because AE2 can do it and they aren't used nearly as much.

Construction

Building it was supposed to be simple because it's a highly repeating structure. Unfortunately, RFTools' Builder didn't function when I tried to build level 4 iterations in one go. It just froze without doing anything.

I ended up using the Building Gadgets' Building Gadget for this because it is fast to position and place blocks. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to build the base 1/400ths at a time (8,000 white blocks at a time) because the max building size for Building Gadgets is 32x32x32 (A level 3 iteration would be 81x81x81).

Luckily, Building Gadgets can pull from Dank Nulls, because 8,000 white blocks is 125 stacks and can't fit in a normal inventory.

This is more space than I will ever use, but I'm very happy that I did it. It's also surprisingly geared towards having a bunch of machines in it. A few very big places to put big things, many places to put medium-size things, and very many places to put small things.

Screenshots

Complete

Horse for scale. Only horses keep spawning for some reason.

In Progress

Checking to make sure that it will actually fit in build height limits.

That one time I messed up. The floor is too high.

The Building Gadgets undo button did not work well. At least it wasn't that difficult to fix errors in general.

Stray Thought Forest