Getting Started (Magic Farm)

In this tutorial series I will guide you through the dangerous world of Magic Farm Modpack.

Day 1
Make sure you're in a nice place, first. By this I mean you'll need a vanilla wood supply (oak trees, preferably), a water source (a lake), grass and  mushrooms. Other than that, it's very nice to be close to cows, sheep and any kind of shelter (a cave or wall you can dig into, or even better would be a village). You should try to smash bushes on your way, and collect berries. Smashing some grass doesn't hurt either, because it gives you all kinds of seeds. Make sure you don't fill your whole inventory with seeds, though. They are not important enough yet. Berries restore your hunger very little, but that's what most food does. You should not kill all cows and pigs for food yet; later on you'll need them, and you can breed them.

Pro tip: ''do not run and jump all the time. Try to find an easier way around obstacles without jumping, and use it as a last resort.''

If you found a nice spot, you'll want to gather some vanilla wood (or rubber wood - as long as it can be converted to vanilla planks). You won't need stacks of it, but enough to make some basic tools and some extra for charcoal if you're not certain if there's coal in the area. Oak trees are high priority here, because they drop valuable apples. If you find any mushrooms during your lumberjacking, you should grab them. Vanilla mushrooms can be made into stew, and mod mushrooms can be made into mushroom powder. They are both quite good food sources.

Craft a crafting bench and make some wooden tools. What? You don't know how to make sticks? They come out as planks? Oh yeah, that's another feature of this modpack. Planks are crafted into planks, and can then be crafted into sticks like you normally would. Now that you know that, craft a wooden pick and maybe a wooden axe, if you're not happy about your wood supply.

If you're not secure of a place to stay the night, you should find some cliff or cave to dig in. Get 3 cobble for a stone pick and dig a nice room in the cave wall. Place a crafting bench in the room, so you can craft 1-2 furnaces and a stone sword and axe. It's very important to plant your seeds early on, if you're gonna rely on them, because they take a long time to grow. If you're close to water, you should plant them there. Craft a wooden hoe (or stone hoe) and cultivate those blocks! It's not important to sort the seeds on type, really, because you can eat close to every crop there is.

Pro tip: ''try to grab some sugarcane, and cultivate it close to your base. It's used in a few recipes, but sugar can be crafted into some high-end food later on.''

Night 1
There is a lot of things you could do on your first night. I'm listing a few possibilities here;

Mining
You might think this one is obvious; you want to get resources as quickly as possible. But, the Hunger Overhaul makes it way harder to run through caves. These are the things you will need to wonder whenever you want to go mining: Do I have enough food?, What do I need the resources for? and Do I have enough stairs?. I'm not even kidding; stairs are your best friend in any activity. But I'll cover them in a bit.

Pro tip: ''don't jump while mining. Use stairs. Stairs don't deplete your hunger bar, jumping depletes about 1 hunger every 2 jumps.''

In your first night, it's worthwhile to get some tin and copper; these are needed to make bronze. Keep in mind that tin and copper can be found on the surface aswell. If you have some torches and stairs, you could walk around to search for them, eventually. Some mining techniques;

Strip mining: This technique consists of mining long hallways and branching smaller 5-blocks-long holes every two blocks. Due to your 'jumping restriction', this technique could help you get some resources without depleting your hunger bar, because you won't have to jump at all. Pros are obvious; you don't have to jump at all, and your biggest restrictions are your torch and pickaxe supplies. Cons are that you have no idea when it's light again, and that you won't come across natural caves as easily. You also won't find any ores from lower levels. Another con is that you can't really mine a lot of ores on your first night. Iron is off-limits.

Stair mining: This technique is great to start with. Dig a staircase down as far as you can go. When you come across the side or bottom of a cave, light it up and loot it. If you come across the top of a cave, go in another direction with your staircase. Pros are that you could get to bedrock in no-time, profiting from the ores down there when you have the tech to mine it. If you come across a nice cave, you can also get lots of resources. Another pro is that you could branch off the stairway to strip mine in many different layers. Cons are that if you don't get lucky, you don't get resources. But the chance is not that big. You'll also get less cobblestone for stairs or other crafts than you would if you went strip mining.

Cave exploring: Pretty straightforward; find a hole in the ground and explore it. This might be great if you got loads of stairs from previous mining operations, but not really if you do not. There's a lot of elevation in caves, and if you jump all the 1-blocks you have to travel, you're starving in no time. Pros are that you do not have to mine the whole night; you can wander through the caves and mine whatever you like. If the cave leads down to bedrock, you're a step further towards higher techs aswell. Cons are that you never know how far a cave will lead you. Also, if you're unlucky with coal you could run out of torches. And caves are not really famous for the huge food supplies they have either.

Farming
If you've got a load of seeds left in your inventory, you could make a fenced-off farmland area close to your house and plant them. Seeds will only grow with sunlight making them take longer then normal, so plant them as soon as possible. Fencing off your seeds is a good idea anyways, because spiders, slimes and pretty much mobs in general like to jump around on crops.

Pro Tip: ''bonemeal is nerfed in 1.5 vanilla minecraft and takes multiple applications, so you won't be able to grow crops a lot faster. Your best bet is to plant your seeds close to water, or create a wooden bucket using 3 birch logs (not planks) in the regular bucket shape to move water.''

Mob Hunting
Don't. No seriously; you're not equipped to take on more than one mob at a time, especially because swinging your sword is very bad for your hunger. Mining doesn't cost any hunger, on the other hand, and is way better for resources.

Week 1
The first few days (or week) should be dedicated to getting some things done; set up a farm or other food supply (food is priority #1 in the modpack) and progress to the "Iron Age" (MineFantasy makes Iron a harder-to-reach tier). If you're in a village, it's still important to stay on top of your food supplies. Adding a few wheat farms is handy, because bread is a very good meal.

Food Supplies
What you'll want to do whenever you have the time is build a huge farm with every seed you have - almost all crops are edible, and later on it's not bad to have a lot of crops to make advanced food. If you're close to a lake, build big 9x9 farms (center square for water, outer line of squares for fencing) for your crops - four crops per farm tends to be the best, because although it's good to have food, there's no need for ten stacks of the same crop. Expanding farms on water is easy - just add another 9x9 next to it, with two fences touching.

Iron Age
Advancing to the "Iron Age" is important if you want to mine any resource like Diamond, Redstone or Gold. To start, you'll need 9 Copper Ingots for a Copper Block. Your first step towards Iron is getting a Bloom. A bloom is crafted with 4 Cobblestone Bricks (4 cobblestone in a crafting grid in a square shape), 2 Furnaces and a Copper Block (9 Copper Ingots). Three Cobblestone Bricks go on the bottom, the Copper Block goes in the center, the two Furnaces go next to the Copper Block and then the Cobblestone Brick goes on top of the Copper Block. You can't pick up a Bloom after you've placed, it without an Iron Pick or better. You do now need a Survivalist's Pick. It's crafted with Bronze Ingots, but you can ONLY use the Bronze Ingots you get from a Bloom - put Tin Ingots and Copper Ingots in the Bloom's top slots, and some Coal in the bottom slot. The Bloom spits out lots of smoke, which you can lead away with a Cobblestone Chimney, which is made with 6 Cobblestone Bricks - put 3 in the left cell row and 3 in the right, and you can craft one.

Now that you have Bronze Ingots, you'll want to get that pick. It's crafted like all pickaxes, but upside-down. This pick can mine Iron Ore, and you should try to preserve it a bit for that, possibly. You should now go mining, and get at least 7 Iron Ore, 29 Copper Ore and 20 Tin Ore. Throw 18 Copper and 18 Tin in the Bloom, and the Iron in the Furnace. What? Iron Ore doesn't turn into Iron Ingots? Yes - you get Wrought Iron. It's not very useful later on, so you better get only 7 Wrought Iron. You will need 6 Wrought Iron to get yourself an Iron Anvil, and 1 more to get a Hammer.

An Iron Anvil is made by putting Wrought Iron in the crafting table, leaving the upper-left, lower-left and lower-right cells open. A Hammer is made with one Wrought Iron above one Plank. Put the Iron Anvil down and keep the Hammer in your inventory. You will now need a Bronze Bloom to make Iron Ingots. A Bronze Bloom takes 18 Bronze and a normal Bloom to make. Take the Bronze Ingots you got from the Bloom, and cook up 9 Copper Ingots with the Copper Ore you have left. Craft a Bloom like you did before, and craft one Block Of Bronze. Then, craft a Forge. A forge is crafted with 4 Coal and 4 Stone. Put 3 Coal on the bottom row and 1 in the center. Then put Stone everywhere, except for the top rows' center. Place the Forge down, and put your 11 Bronze Ingots in it, and some Coal. They will come out as Hot Bronze. Now that you have all the resources for a Bronze Bloom, open the Iron Anvil's interface. Put the resources in it like so:

And leave the interface. Now take your Hammer and left-click the Anvil (don't hold LMB, just click it) until you hear a slightly different noise from the *clung*'s and *cling*'s. This will take a while. If you hear the noise, you're done, and you can take the Bronze Bloom from the grid.

Setting Goals
An important part of mod items you're not familiar with is, obviously, familiarizing with them.