GregTech: New Horizons
Posted by brilokuloj on Jul 2, 2026
GregTech: New Horizons is what is known as an Expert modpack, which means essentially that all crafting recipes have been altered to be way more complicated. It might be the Expert modpack. If you ask for any modpack recommendation on Reddit, people will tell you to play this one, no matter what you’re looking for. It’s a rite of passage to play GT:NH and either burn out on it or fall in love it, which I can finally say I’ve done.
This pack is built around the core of the GregTech mod, and people will often mistakenly refer to them as synonymous. GregTech is a mod, and GregTech: New Horizons is a modpack that uses it. Got that? We don’t seem to have this problem with Create: Above & Beyond, which makes modifications to Create’s base recipes that people correctly don’t assume to be canonical. I don’t know why this one has to be such a problem! Anyway.
The example that people give most frequently is that of the wooden door, which I will walk you through:
- A wooden door requires: 4 oak planks, 1 oak trapdoor, 1 iron ring, 1 iron screw, a screwdriver and saw
- 1 oak trapdoor: 4 oak slabs, 4 sticks, 1 flint
- Flint: 3 gravel
- 1 iron ring: 1 iron rod, a hammer and file
- 1 iron rod: 1 ingot and a file
- 1 iron screw: 2 iron bolts and a file
- 2 iron bolts: another iron rod
That’s not even getting into making the tools!
To remind you, a door is one of the first things you’ll want for your base. In vanilla Minecraft, you can make a door within the first 5 minutes of playing.
This process is called “microcrafting”, and it seems to be generally either loved or hated. I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. I liked the idea of it a lot, but Minecraft just isn’t built for it. You have to carry all these things in your inventory, or a chest by your Tinkers crafting table. I had upgraded my worktable chest up to gold and it still didn’t seem to hold enough space for making all the things I wanted. The alternative would have been dividing them up by recipe types and running between them, which … also didn’t sound fun.
Speaking of not having fun! The enemies in this modpack are just insane. The mod “Infernal Mobs” adds combat encounters with named enemies that get HP buffs and special effects. Here’s a sample of ones that I met, their names and ability modifiers:
- Rare defensive Gravel Creeper the Raiden, Storm Vengeance Bulwark
- Rare Dark Lord Ghost Spider of Hunger, Choke Sapper
- Rare deceiving Brutish Zombie the Drainer, Exhaust Weakness
- Rare turtling Fishing Zombie of Apathy, Poisonous Bulwark Weakness Regen Sapper
- Rare thorny Plague Zombie Doomskull, Vengeance Wither Quicksand Blastoff Gravity
- Rare nigh unkillable Giant Skeleton the Unseen, Cloaking Regen
- Rare Sith Lord Mighty Skeleton the slowing Bitch, Quicksand Choke
- Ultra webbing Husk the NASA, Blastoff Wither Darkness Quicksand Berserk Weakness Webber
- Ultra hungering Gatling Skeleton the Mutated, Sprint Exhaust Alchemist Weakness Sapper Webber
- Rare Sith Lord Vampiric Zombie Pigman the Singed, Alchemist Choke
- Rare singed Spirit of Hunger, Bulwark Webber Alchemist Sapper
- Rare burning Brutish Zombie of effing Armor, 1UP Fiery Bulwark Gravity
- Rare repulsing Hellhound of Hunger, Regen Cloaking Gravity Sapper
- Rare Dark Lord Brutish Zombie Pigman the Thorned, Vengeance Berserk Gravity Choke
- Rare unseen Magma Cube the Cancerous, Berserk Darkness Cloaking Regen
- Rare nigh unkillable Hellhound of Stalking, Regen Cloaking Gravity Sapper
- Rare sprinting Unholy Ghast the Raging, Sprint Berserk Exhaust Choke
- Rare trolling Brutish Zombie Pigman the slowing Bitch, Poisonous Darkness Blastoff Quicksand
- Rare poisonous Fire Zombie of You-Cant-Run, Weakness Webber Poisonous Quicksand
- Rare swift Zombie of Balls of Fire, Ghastly Storm Vengeance Berserk Sprint
That isn’t even getting started on the Blood Moon events, where your character refuses to sleep and the map becomes flooded with all kinds of ghouls and ghasts.
I feel like all I’ve done is complain. There were aspects of this pack that I did enjoy. One of those is that finishing quests gets you a “LootBag” (this spelling has become echolalia for me), which you can open for a chance at a rare item, though they mostly gave me food. Another thing I enjoyed was searching out structures, like the underground minigame rooms that also gave you random loot.
But … in this way, the positives remind me of the problem: GT:NH is just too reliant on RNG for me to have fun with it. I never thought I’d be in this position, as I’m of the opinion that games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart are more fun for having bullshit party game elements, but it just doesn’t work for me here. Maybe because the pack places such an emphasis on immersive crafting? I don’t know.
My favorite part of this game was Stone Age farming. The modpack integrates Pam’s Harvestcraft modded foods with GregTech in a way I found really pleasant and could have played a lot of, if it weren’t for how the game’s progression completely stalled out when I did so. My favorite thing that I built was a windmill multiblock structure, which online guides directly advised me to not bother with, and which was inexplicably broken for most of my game until I fixed it in Creative Mode by means unknown.
There was just something relaxing about walking my farmland, taking wheat to the windmill and grinding it up into flour, which I processed into dough to make bread. This was microcrafting that was intuitive, didn’t clog my inventory, and really made me feel like I was doing something. As soon as I hit the Steam Age, it just kind of felt like I was standing around waiting for my cubes to do stuff that I didn’t care about.
I’ve said it maybe half a dozen times by now, but this is a pack that would go really good with some friends and a voice call. I do think there’s a lot of potential here and I can see why people like it so much.
Maybe someone further into this pack than me can tell me if I haven’t given it a fair shake. I just don’t think it was the right modpack for me to play for a month while I was already suffering from intensive burnout.
Some tips:
- Make yogurt. Carrying a variety of fruit yogurts in your lunch bag keeps your dairy nutrition up and also makes sure you don’t get diminishing returns on food.
- The windmill is really cool.
- Just play with mob griefing off and peaceful on if you want. I tried playing this fairly and the mobs are just too stupid. It’s not a real challenge, it’s half an hour down the drain.
- If you’re playing this singleplayer and you have any kind of job, just cheat in an ore scanner, because hunting for ores alone is not gameplay. Seriously, cheat as much of this as you need to stay sane, because I don’t think this is designed for singleplayer.
- I’ve heard you want to get started on bees as soon as possible. I wouldn’t know about that because I tried starting on bees and got scared for my life. This modpack needs some seriously better guides if people are going to keep recommending it to newbies.
Categories: gaming
Tagged: modded minecraft minecraft
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