Apocalypse

Remarks

It wasn't supposed to take this long for a final release of 0.6.0 but upon testing I wasn't entirely happy with the overall quality of Apocalypse and what would have been 0.6.0 so now we're at 0.6.4. With no other way to put it, I apologize for the extremely long delay.

Now back onto the point, I wasn't happy with player progression and the synchronization (or lack thereof) between it and the steadily increasing difficulty, the very taxing memory usage, numerous bugs and overlapping and redundant mods. In other words, 0.6.4 is made in mind for quality control and making progression more sensible, with difficulty increase centerpiece.

General Changes

Removed Lithosphere, this is important as all worlds made prior to 0.6.4 will break regardless. After Lithosphere was implemented, I noticed that oftentimes you'd spawn in rivers or even oceans, though I'm not sure if it's the mod's issue or some compatibility issue.

Removed Paladin's Furniture Mod. This is done mainly to reduce overlap between mods, namely between PFM, Handcrafted and Supplementaries. However, PFM may make a comeback should it be optimized overall, and with a less RAM intensive Furniture Bench.

Removed Cannibal Conundrum. Upon some rethinking, I don't think madman-like mobs are fitting for a Zombie Apocalypse modpack.

Removed HT's Treechops, Better Trees and Panda's Falling Trees. This is done because Dynamic Trees and their add-on mods are now implemented for balancing and immersion.

Reduced the minimum and maximum radius of Lost Cities. This is particularly done to reduce load on CPU and RAM.

Implemented It Takes a Pillage. This is a placeholder mod, and the structures the mod implements can readily serve as bases for other hostile mobs in the near future, namely TaCZ: NPCs (I won't implement it until some of the bugs in TaCZ: NPCs are resolved.).

Implemented Dynamic Trees, DT Biomes O' Plenty and DT+. When Better Trees and Treechops are used together, log farming was exponentially easy as you could just continuously bone meal Oak Saplings for quick and extremely large amounts of Wood. Furthermore, Better Trees do not impact Biomes O' Plenty tree species so it's relatively silly to see a vanilla tree next to a Biomes O' Plenty one.

Implemented William Wyther's Overhauled Overworld.

Implemented Create: Diesel Generators.

No Tree Punching knives are no longer craftable, as Farmer's Delight knives share an NBT data with the former's knives that allows them to collect Plant Fiber. This is also done because Better Combat essentially treats No Tree Punching knives as purely weapons, at least from my personal testing, so you can now harvest Plant Fibers without issues.

Both the Civilian and Lumberjack starter kits now features the P320 pistol (and its ammunition).

Implemented a new skill tree for Pufferfish's Skills.

Added a crafting recipe for the Enigmatic Engine, allowing players to build a Submarine for better traveling. This is done because initially I wanted to implement Small Ships, but the terms of usage apparently doesn't allow you to profit off of modpacks using it, and Aleki's Nifty Ships (namely the larger boat) controls can be too difficult.

Removed the Beginner's Tutorial as post-0.4.4 updates have rendered it obsolete.

Zombie Changes

Removed Improved Mobs. This is due to the progressive difficulty system has instead been redone with implementations via In Control and implementing Zombies Reworked. Zombies will not spawn within the radius of Diamond Magnum Torches as the pre-Alpha Apocalypse implementation of an In Control-lead progressive difficulty had configuration issues (In other words, it was on my end). Zombie stats will improve every 10 days until the daycount is over 80, and stats improvements will focus on damage done, with speed and health taking a nearby secondary focus. They will also sometimes spawn with either Shields, Ender Pearls, or Totems of Undying.

Separated Crawler Zombie spawns from the regular (vanilla and Vile) Zombies and granting them a specific spawning condition in In Control. This is done because Crawler Zombies have hitbox issues that allow them to attack through fences and even blocks.

Villager Trade Changes

Aside from Zombie spawns, this is where I wasn't the most happy about as oftentimes the trades felt a bit random and some professions just simply felt as if they were there for purely immersion or aesthetic purposes without any real utility or difficulty behind them. On top of that, important trades (such as for firearms or Mending books) can be easily farmed, which I would like to change.

With 0.6.4, Villager professions can be divided into two categories (or perhaps an axiom between): The Providers and the Provided. Providers are the ones who will provide the tools and items needed, such as potions, armor, Diamond Magnum Torches, and firearms, and they can let you trade in items for Emeralds, albeit less desirable as the profit margins are lower than the Provided or the items needed are of great importance to the players themselves or not easy to obtain.

Professions categorized as Providers: Armorer, Toolsmith, Weaponsmith, Cartographer, Fletcher, Cleric, and Librarian.

The Provided Professions are: Fisherman, Butcher, Farmer, Leatherworker, Shepherd. Eventually I would like to add the Carpenter, but I haven't figured out proper trades for Carpenters yet.

In between the two is the Mason.

Fletchers will no longer sell Mk14, HK-416D, or SCAR-L as their Level 5 trades; they will sell M4A1, M16A4, or SKS instead, with some attachments on them. Fletchers now will only accept rifle ammunition trade-ins, while only selling 12 Gauge, 9mm or .45 rounds. They will also sell some repair tools for firearms when at Level 4 and 5 (see the Firearm Balance Changes for more information).

Librarians will not sell Bookshelves, and a fully-leveled up Librarian can now sell Totems of Undying at 64 Emeralds. Mending Books are now far more expensive.

This is a non-exhaustive list of trade changes as there are many more.

Firearm Balance Changes

Updated TaCZ from 1.0.3 to 1.1.4-hotfix, thereby introducing several firearms, most notably the M870 pump-action shotgun and the M1911 handgun.

Reverted all firearms' reload time back to their specified TaCZ default (except for Sniper Rifles, as most possess an easy instant kill capability against a fully skilled-up player with late-game armor, namely with the Attacker Set).

All non-handgun firearms now have better default ADS accuracy and, for rifles, improved damage per shot and armor penetration. This is important later on.

Shotguns now have significantly improved damage and accuracy to further improve their usability, especially in late game scenarios.

Late-game firearms, namely the HK-416D, SCAR-L, SCAR-H, Mk14, AWM, M107 (new), QBZ-95 (new), M95, AA-12, M249, RPG-7, are now significantly more expensive, requiring much more Steel (and Steel sheets), with Sturdy Sheets now being necessary for fabrication.

Implemented TaCZ: Durability. Every firearm now have a durability of 2000. The more you use them, the less accurate they shall be as the threshold eventually reaches zero, where the weapon will jam every time you fire. To clear a jam, you have to inspect your weapon for 5 seconds (default key: H). All TaCZ: Durability, except for the Repair Bench, recipes have been changed for both balancing and immersion purposes.

Implemented TaCZ Tweaks. You can now reload while sprinting!