chore(analysis): archive finished reviews, drop stale duplicates

Move the completed 2026-09 candidate review (MODLIST-REVIEW/-GROUPS,
CANDIDATE-APPENDIX, PACK-CONTEXT), FINDINGS.md and the shipped FTB Chunks swap
write-up into analysis/archive/, with a README mapping their old paths. The
review's build pieces, subagent intermediates and Modrinth API dumps are
deleted: the assembled reports carry their content. MODLIST-GROUPS.md was a
byte-for-byte duplicate of analysis/groups-table.md.

Also: drop the now-pointless FINDINGS/MODLIST packwizignore lines (analysis/
covers the archive), and gitignore *.tar.gz so the 650 MB map-migration world
tarball can't be committed by accident.

analysis/archive/2026-09-candidate-review/MODLIST-GROUPS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,265 @@
+# Onion MC — candidate mods grouped for review
+
+Every candidate grouped by what it is *for*, with what it brings, what it costs in dependencies, how much it changes gameplay, the verdict, and the thing to watch. **ADDED** = already added on the `mod-pack-additions` branch. **ALREADY-IN-PACK** = duplicate of an installed mod.
+
+Verdict legend: **ADD** (ship in the core cohort) · **ADD-OPTIONAL** (good; taste/library decision) · **MAYBE** (test or design decision first) · **SKIP** (don't) · **ALREADY-IN-PACK** · **ADDED**. `New deps` lists required libraries not already in the pack (candidate deps marked).
+
+
+## Shaders & render stack
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Iris Shaders** (`iris`) | Shader-pack loader compatible with existing OptiFine shader packs | — | Overhaul | ADDED | Already added on branch mod-pack-additions (see Post-review update) |
+| **Iris Veil Compat** (`iris-veil-compat`) | Bridges the Veil rendering engine into Iris shaderpacks so Veil-rendered visuals (Aeronautics wings, glass panels, contrails) render correctly under a shaderpack; r… | Iris Shaders | None | ADDED | Already added on branch mod-pack-additions (see Post-review update) |
+| **Veil** (`veil`) | developer tooling for advanced rendering — JSON-defined framebuffers, custom post-processing pipeline, full OpenGL shader support + shader injection, color themes/e… | — | None by itself | SKIP | rendering-engine tooling with no dependent mod in the pack, on the most fragile part of the stack |
+| **Shine** (`shine`) | Shader-free visual effects: bloom, colored lighting, atmosphere, weather, particles, interactive details; in-game config screen | — | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | confirmed Sodium 0.8.12 compatibility, but partial feature loss on that version, overlap with Subtle Effects, and a privileged positio… |
+| **Grassier Grass** (`grassier-grass`) | Per-blade custom wind shader: grass leans and ripples with rolling gusts | — | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | best-looking pick in the batch, but Sodium 0.8-alpha compatibility is unproven; gate on a crash/visual test |
+| **Fog** (`fog`) | Complete fog revamp: start/end distance, cave fog that thickens with depth, weather- and time-based (sunset/moon-phase) fog colors, biome-tinted fog including modde… | MRU | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | attractive but unproven next to DH/SSRD; only add after an in-game fog + DH visual test |
+| **ATMOSPHERICS** (`atmospherics`) | Real-time per-biome customization of fog, sky, clouds, haze and stars with smooth biome transitions; day/night split, comets, star editing | — | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | visual upside not worth the risk on the Sodium+DH+SSRD stack; no shader-adjacent additions should ride on that axis per pack rules |
+| **Immersive Winds** (`immersive-winds`) | Wind system driving particle rain/snow, rain-splash particles, and sway animation for grass, plants, lanterns, and fire | — | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | Sinytra-only NeoForge support is a red flag by pack policy, and Grassier Grass already covers sway if that's added |
+| **Puddles & Floods** (`puddles-floods`) | Puddle blocks appearing from rain, dripping blocks, flowing water, splash potions, broken cauldrons, and melting snow; puddles combine into floods in low-lying terr… | Forgified Fabric API | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | Fabric-API-derived dependency (red flag) for a cosmetic payoff with real server tick cost; revisit only if the pack accepts Forgified… |
+
+## Client ambience & visual FX
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **AAA Particles** (`aaa-particles`) | Library that loads Effekseer (`.efkefc`) particle effects; by default replaces the vanilla lightning effect with an Effekseer one | — | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | a library with no in-pack consumer; standalone value is only a lightning visual swap |
+| **AAA Particles: World** (`aaa-particles-world`) | In-world Effekseer effects: restored world lightning, explosion effect replacement (default on since 1.0.2), loot beams (1.0.3) | AAA Particles | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | purely cosmetic addon whose required base (AAA Particles) is itself a skip |
+| **Particle Effects** (`particle-effects`) | Unique textured particle visuals for every vanilla status effect | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | pure client polish, zero server footprint |
+| **Perception** (`perception`) | Immersive client visuals: projectile/entity trails and directional screen-shake triggered by loud sounds, explosions, fast movement (also aids threat localization) | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe client ambience; optional enough that individual players could skip it |
+| **Visuality: Reforged** (`visuality-forge`) | cosmetic particles — crystal sparkles, mob-hit particles, custom slime blobs, environmental particles | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe client-only polish; consider whether Subtle Effects already covers the need |
+| **Inventory Particles** (`inventory-particles`) | Data-driven particles on inventory items (dust for gunpowder/dyes, glow for luminous items, etc.), with physics/rotation customization | MossyLib | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | pretty and unusually modded-item-friendly; fine as a client-side optional, but pure cosmetics |
+| **Fancy World Animations [FWA]** (`fwa`) | Smooth open/close animations for doors, trapdoors, fence gates, levers, buttons, repeaters, cauldrons, composters, lecterns, campfires, chiseled bookshelves, vaults… | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong client polish with a blacklist safety valve; verify against Sable/ImmediatelyFast rendering before shipping |
+| **Cosy Critters & Creepy Crawlies** (`cosy-critters`) | Client-side ambient fauna: bird flocks that land high and scatter from entities/projectiles; tiny spiders emerging from cobwebs; moths around sky-exposed light bloc… | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap atmosphere for explorers; skip if the ambience budget is full |
+| **Better Animations Collection** (`better-animations-collection`) | Re-animated vanilla mob models: wiggly ghast/squid tentacles, fluffy wagging wolf tails, flowing ocelot/cat tails, pig snout+ears, cow udder, chicken bills, etc., w… | Puzzles Lib | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | pure atmosphere polish for one new library dep |
+| **Immersive UI** (`immersive-ui`) | Animated UI: particle trail for carried items of non-common rarity, carried-item wiggle/scaling, smooth hotbar selector animation, floating matched container items | ShatterLib | OctoLib | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | two extra libraries for cosmetic overlap with Inventory Particles; poor value per pin |
+| **Effectual** (`effectual`) | Atmospheric particles: breath steam in cold biomes, underwater bubbles (mouth/chests/pots), drip on exiting water, footprints + snow residue, cave dust, lava-adjace… | TLib | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | duplicates Subtle Effects' niche and drags in a new lib; only add after an overlap audit, which the config-less pack model makes costly |
+| **Blur+** (`blur-plus`) | Gaussian-blur shader behind all GUI backgrounds, with fade animations, ARGB gradient/colors, per-GUI exclusions and radius config | MidnightLib | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe cosmetic; only bother if the pack wants GUI polish |
+| **Camera Overhaul** (`cameraoverhaul`) | Client-side camera rotation effects: strafe/turn tilt, jump/fall pitch, explosion shake, idle sway; per-effect intensity config (0 disables) | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap and configurable, entirely a taste/accessibility call |
+| **Cinematic Respawn** (`cinematic-respawn`) | Replaces the death screen with a cinematic camera + fade transition into respawn; optional auto-respawn and skippable animation; fully client-side | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | pleasant, zero-risk client polish; taste call on auto-respawn |
+| **Smart Particles** (`smart-particles`) | Distance-prioritized particle culling ("smart particle culling") plus camera/frustum culling of off-screen particles | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | targeted client-side stabilizer with no server footprint; watch mixin overlap with ImmediatelyFast |
+
+## World mechanics & hazards
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Burnt** (`burnt-basic`) | Persistent, spreading fire: lit blocks smolder → burn → leave burnt block variants (with charcoal drops), integrated wind system (read via flags), biome-aware burn… | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | distinctive survival flavor with controls, but server-grief/tick cost means it's a taste call, not a default |
+| **Burnt + Additions** (`burnt`) | Everything in `burnt-basic` plus: Flint Bow (flame arrows), Fire/Blaze Barrels (delayed blast + ignition), random structural collapse events, smoker→burnt-wood reci… | — | Moderate | MAYBE | the fuller variant is attractive but heavier; if fire flavor is wanted, choose this over basic deliberately (and still treat as option… |
+| **Tree Physics** (`tree-physics`) | cutting a tree with Rooted Dirt beneath it assembles the trunk/canopy into a Sable physics sub-level and topples it realistically; crouch-chop opts out; building on… | — | Moderate | MAYBE | the most on-theme Sable use possible, but per-tree physics sub-levels on the Aeronautics stack demand a dev-server soak test before sh… |
+| **Sable Beyond** (`sable_beyond`) | Create interop with Sable sublevels: mechanical arms interacting with sublevels, encased fans pushing/pulling sublevels, dynamic mass for fluid tanks/spouts/drains/… | — | Moderate | MAYBE | the most functionally attractive Aeronautics enhancement in the batch, but alpha software on the pack's most fragile stack; isolated t… |
+| **Ragdoll Reactions** (`ragdoll-reactions`) | Players ragdoll in reaction to crashes, being run over, sharp direction changes, and explosions | Sable: Ragdolls | Minor | MAYBE | only alongside Sable: Ragdolls, and only after crash-testing with Aeronautics |
+| **Sable: Ragdolls** (`sable-ragdolls`) | Physics-driven player ragdolls using Sable's physics system (H to tumble, Shift to get up) | — | Minor | MAYBE | fun, Sable-native, and unlocks two other candidates; test with Aeronautics before adopting |
+| **Sable: Ragdoll Corpse** (`sable-ragdoll-corpse`) | On death, a fully simulated ragdoll corpse holding your entire inventory (items safe in an internal inventory) | Sable: Ragdolls | Minor | SKIP | Gravestone already owns this job; stacking two death-item systems on the Sable physics stack adds fragility for no new capability |
+| **Lunar** (`lunar`) | Cycle of lunar events: Bad Omen Moon, Big/Tiny Moon (gravity changes), Blood Moon (harder mobs), Crimson Moon (nether mob spawning in Overworld), Hero/Miner Moon (b… | — | Moderate | MAYBE | fun server-wide content, but gravity/spawn events touching Aeronautics physics is an unquantified risk in this pack |
+| **Celestria** (`celestria`) | Server-triggered, synced shooting stars at night (grant Luck; command-spawnable; client renders via a WorldRenderer mixin, with a client-only fallback mode for vani… | — | Minor | MAYBE | nice ambience, but stale build + WorldRenderer mixin on the Sodium/DH/Sable stack needs an in-pack smoke test first |
+| **Mystical Oak Tree** (`mystical-oak-tree`) | A rare talking oak tree with 300+ written lore/joke/fact lines, trust mechanic, self-defense; "dynamically grabbed from the web" content | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | harmless flavor for a friends pack; nothing about it strains the stack |
+
+## HUD & client UI
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Auto HUD** (`autohud`) | Dynamically hides HUD elements that aren't currently interesting (keybind toggle, per-element config); hides persistent status effects and shows remaining effect ti… | Fabric API | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | Metadata Fabric-API dep is Fabric-build-only; native NeoForge build |
+| **Armor Hud** (`armor-hud`) | HUD overlay showing each equipped armor piece with icons and color-coded durability bars (green/yellow/red/black thresholds) | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | tiny, dependency-free HUD addition |
+| **Immersive Armor HUD** (`immersive-armor-hud`) | Pixel-perfect 7×7 armor icons above the vanilla armor bar showing which armor pieces are worn and per-piece durability warnings | TxniLib | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap vanilla-style HUD upgrade; minor recency caveat |
+| **Health Bars** (`new-health-bars`) | HUD health panel: mob name, health, armor, damage taken with animated bars | Puzzles Lib | Client-cosmetic (informational) | MAYBE | redundant with Jade unless the group wants damage numbers; if added, de-overlap with Jade deliberately |
+| **Neat** (`neat`) | Minimalistic unit frames (health bars colored by HP %, armor, smite/arthropod attribute icons, stack grouping, team colors, toggle keybind) over entities | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | mature, zero-risk combat readability; prefer over the Damage Indicator if choosing one |
+| **JeremySeq's Damage Indicator** (`jeremyseqs-damage-indicator`) | Client-side directional damage arrow, floating damage text, text health bars for mobs, optional blood overlay | — | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | harmless, but functionally redundant with Neat if both are added; pick one combat-info mod |
+| **Advancement Plaques** (`advancement-plaques`) | Replaces advancement toasts with glowing plaques for Task/Goal/Challenge; configurable position, distance, whitelist; resource-pack customizable | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe client polish on a dep already in pack; one test-instance check on the sound caveat |
+| **GUI Effect Timer** (`gui-effect-timer`) | Countdown text (s/m/h/d abbreviations) inside status-effect HUD badges, updated per tick; color configurable; supports infinite/command-set effects | Collective | Client-cosmetic (informational) | ADD-OPTIONAL | tiny, safe, useful; effectively free once Collective is pinned for Followers Teleport Too |
+| **Keybind Atlas** (`keybind-atlas`) | Client-side visual keyboard/mouse overlay showing every keybinding, color-coded assigned/unused/hidden, with source-mod attribution and in-overlay rebinding | — | None | ADD-OPTIONAL | genuinely useful in a pack this size, zero risk |
+| **Distinct Potions** (`distinct-potions`) | Distinct bottle styles for greater/extended potions, distinct colors for awkward/mundane/thick base potions | Puzzles Lib | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap visual QoL; only worth it if the pack accepts pulling in Puzzles Lib for a single client mod |
+| **Obscure Tooltips** (`obscure-tooltips`) | Fully animated tooltip styling: glowing borders, particle effects, rarity-adaptive ornaments, integrated 3D gear previews inside tooltips, smooth scrolling and line… | Fragmentum | None | MAYBE | attractive but redundant with Legendary Tooltips; only add after confirming they don't fight over tooltip rendering, or as a replaceme… |
+| **Tooltip Overhaul** (`tooltip-overhaul`) | complete vanilla tooltip replacement — scrollable/wrapping tooltips, equipment comparison, pinned tooltips, 30+ frames, 37+ effects, animations, 3D item icons/previ… | — | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | collides with Legendary Tooltips; the pack should carry one tooltip restyler, and it already does |
+| **Visual Workbench** (`visual-workbench`) | crafting tables retain items in the grid between crafts; ingredients + result rendered on top of the table; contents drop when broken | Puzzles Lib | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | popular, polished Fuzs mod; costs one small library |
+| **Held Item Tooltips** (`held-item-tooltips`) | Rich info plate above the hotbar on item switch: enchantments, durability, potion effects, item attributes, map IDs, firework/banner/book details | Puzzles Lib | Client-cosmetic (informational) | ADD | low-risk, high-frequency QoL; library cost shared with other Puzzles-Lib picks |
+| **GUI Compass** (`gui-compass`) | HUD text readout of direction + coordinates ("FXYZ"), shown only with a compass in inventory (default) | Collective | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | harmless, but marginal over F3 and redundant if Field Guide (with Immersive Overlays) is added |
+| **Better Third Person** (`better-third-person`) | Independent free-rotating third-person camera (full 360°), 8-direction movement without camera rotation, full item use in third person, vehicle/swim/elytra support… | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe, popular camera QoL with no deps; just smoke-test it while piloting Aeronautics contraptions |
+| **Dynamic Crosshair** (`dynamiccrosshair`) | Context-sensitive crosshair: hides/changes based on what is looked at, held item, and action; highly configurable with optional YACL config screen | Fabric API | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | pure client polish, but must be tested against ImmediatelyFast and dropped if HUD glitches appear |
+| **Emojiful** (`emojiful`) | Emojis in chat, including animated ones, with autocomplete and an emoji picker | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | fun for a 10-player social server with zero gameplay footprint |
+| **Quick Skin** (`quick-skin`) | In-game skin library GUI (import by username or drag & drop), Classic/Slim model swapping | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | client nicety; preferred over SkinChanger (newer, GUI, more features) |
+| **SkinChanger** (`skinchanger`) | `/skin set|clear` and `/cape set|clear` commands by username or URL, working on offline-mode servers; admin variants targeting other players | — | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | redundant with Quick Skin (GUI, HD skins, animated capes) and stale: last updated 2024-10-26 vs. Quick Skin's 2026-09-28 |
+| **Akashic Tome** (`akashic-tome`) | A single "Book of Books" item (craft: book + bookshelf) that stores all mod documentation books and transforms into any of them; right-click menu to switch, sneak-r… | — | None | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap, low-risk QoL that scales well with a 142-mod pack |
+| **Field Guide** (`field-guide`) | Spyglass-based scanning of entities/blocks to unlock entries in a personal in-game encyclopedia | Item Descriptions, Immersive Overlays | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | excellent fit for a 10-player exploration pack; price of admission is two extra NeoForge libs |
+| **Certain Questing Additions** (`certain-questing-additions`) | FTB Quests UI upgrades: entity rendering in quest descriptions/backgrounds, APNG image support, per-chapter shader-based backgrounds, hover/open/zoom animations, gl… | — | None | ADD-OPTIONAL | nice polish for a quested pack; harmless if dropped |
+| **FindMe** (`findme`) | Hover an item in JEI and press Y to mark which nearby inventories contain it (cloud particles) | — | Minor | ADD | zero-dep, low-risk, high-frequency QoL |
+| **Zume** (`zume`) | hold-to-zoom keybind (FOV zoom) with zoom-level increase/decrease keybinds; auto-reloading JSON5 config in the global `.minecraft` dir | — | None (view convenience; no gamepl… | ADD | zero-dep, zero-server, fills an obvious gap next to Sodium+DH distance viewing |
+
+## Audio & music
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Sounds** (`sound`) | 170+ new/reworked SFX (UI, chat, item, block sounds); configurable per event and extensible via resource packs; spiritual successor to ExtraSounds/Auditory | MRU | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | high polish, zero server footprint; costs one new small library |
+| **Extreme sound muffler** (`extreme_sound_muffler`) | Client-side selective sound muffling via an inventory-button/keybind GUI with per-sound volume sliders | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | zero-risk, zero-server-cost QoL that is actively maintained (3.56, 2026-09-22) |
+| **Sounds Be Gone!** (`soundsbegone`) | Mute any vanilla/modded sound event from a "recently played" list, with unmute audit trail | — | Client-cosmetic (no gameplay chan… | ADD-OPTIONAL | tiny, safe, real accessibility value for a 10-player group |
+| **Simple Music Control** (`simple-music-control`) | Halved delay between background music tracks, next-track keybind (default M), now-playing widget | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | zero-risk client QoL whose only dependency is already present |
+| **Now Playing** (`now-playing`) | Toast/hotbar popup announcing the current music track (background music and jukeboxes), with placement/timing/sprite resource-pack options | — | None | ADD-OPTIONAL | trivial, safe; most valuable if music-content mods are added |
+| **More Music Discs** (`more-music-discs`) | Custom music discs (YouTube-sourced tracks, used with permission) found as chest loot, mob drops, or creative tab; loot-table injection fully configurable/disableab… | Deimos | None-Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap flavor; verify default disc-in-every-loot-pool density is wanted |
+| **Net Music: Better Experience** (`net-music-play-list`) | Playlist items and a portable music player built on the "Net Music" mod; playlist discs for jukeboxes/CD burners | Net Music | None-Minor | SKIP | dependent on an absent streaming-music base mod with service/licensing baggage; poor fit |
+| **VinURL** (`vinurl`) | custom music discs that download and play audio from YouTube/file-hosting URLs via jukebox; `/vinurl` commands; auto-downloads yt-dlp, deno, and FFmpeg binaries at… | Sinytra Connector, Forgified Fabric API, oωo (owo-lib) | Minor (custom music per player) | SKIP | Connector red flag, runtime binary downloads, and licensing minefield; not worth it for jukebox music |
+| **Immersive Melodies** (`immersive-melodies`) | 7 instruments playing 25 bundled songs; custom melodies via in-game drag-and-drop or datapacks (MIDI/ABC) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | fun multiplayer toy at essentially zero mechanical risk |
+| **Even More Instruments!** (`evenmoreinstruments`) | Playable instruments: trombone, violin, keyboard, guitar, saxophone, koto, shamisen, pipa; all 16 note blocks as playable instruments | Genshin Instruments | Minor | SKIP | abandoned per its own README and requires Genshin Instruments, which the pack does not have |
+| **cat_jam** (`cat_jam`) | Client-side animation: cats bob/jam to the rhythm of music discs, with per-disc routines | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | tiny, client-only, documented compat with a mod already in the pack |
+| **Etched** (`etched`) | Custom music discs burned from URLs (MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud) via the Etching Table with label customization | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | great social toy for a small server; settle the URL-content policy first |
+
+## Food & farming
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Chef's Delight - Farmer's Delight Villagers** (`chefs-delight`) | Two villager professions (Cook, Chef) trading FD food, plus village structures for them (cook/chef houses) | — | Minor (if it worked) | SKIP | 1.21.1 build is bound to FD Refabricated, which conflicts with the pack's existing Farmer's Delight |
+| **Expanded Delight** (`expanded-delight`) | Farmer's Delight expansion: new crops, blocks, workstations and more, added "gradually" on top of the base mod | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | strongly on-theme and the best-covered addon for Display Delight, but accept the author-declared beta instability or wait for stable |
+| **More Delight (for Farmer's Delight)** (`more-delight`) | Extra Farmer's Delight meals and ingredients, bread-slice sandwiches, toast, wooden/stone knives | Delight Lib | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe, on-theme content; the Delight family is already large, so it's cumulative rather than filling a gap |
+| **Miner's Delight** (`miners-delight`) | Farmer's Delight cave-food addon: cave carrots (new crop + gossypium flower), bat/silverfish snacks, copper pot and copper cup cooking utensils, cave-themed meals | Lodestone | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong thematic fit with the Delight family, but the author's own beta warning plus a new library dep argue for wait-and-see |
+| **Dungeon's Delight** (`dungeons_delight`) | Monster Pot cooking station (heated by spawner-like blocks) producing Monster Foods | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | thematically perfect next to the pack's existing Delight collection; sanity-check the new effect types against Apotheosis stacking |
+| **Barbeque's Delight [Forge/NeoForge]** (`barbeques-delight-forge`) | Grills + skewer cooking loop (place → smoke cue → sneak-flip → collect; burning on failure), ingredients basin crafting of skewers | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | frictionless fit with the existing Delight stack |
+| **Fright's Delight** (`frights-delight`) | 56 horror-themed Farmer's Delight foods/drinks/candies crafted from hostile-mob drops (rotten flesh, spider eye, ghast tear, slime, cobweb, wither/soul berries) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | fits the pack's Delight collection; horror theme is a taste call |
+| **Veggies Delight** (`veggies-delight`) | 7 new vegetables (bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, sweet potato, turnip, zucchini) + forageable dandelion leaf; temperature-based wild veggie worldgen; v… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | low-risk content that deepens the pack's largest content family |
+| **Fruits Delight** (`fruits-delight`) | 17 fruits (peach, mango, lychee, durian, …) with unique per-fruit processed-food effects (Strength+Rage Aura, Night Vision, Healing Aura, walk-on-ice, eat-when-full… | — | Moderate | ADD | big, popular (2.2M downloads) FD expansion that plugs into two pack pillars (Create, Terralith) |
+| **Rustic Delight** (`rustic-delight`) | New crops: bell peppers (red/yellow/green), coffee, cotton, with wild spawns (e.g., jungle wild bell peppers/coffee) | — | Minor | ADD | textbook fit: same-dependency addon for an existing content pillar |
+| **Cultural Delights** (`cultural-delights`) | New world-cuisine crops: avocado, eggplant, cucumber, corn, beans, cinnamon | Cook's Collection | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | on-theme food content, but it requires adopting Cook's Collection and the Delight shelf is already crowded |
+| **Hearth and Harvest** (`hearth-and-harvest`) | New farmable crops, some with unique growth mechanics, plus new interactive food/resource crafting systems | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | solid FD-family expansion; coordinate corn overlap with Haunted Harvest before adding both |
+| **Haunted Harvest** (`haunted-harvest`) | Trick-or-treating: baby villagers wear 9 mask types, walk at night, collect candy from adult villagers (with witch interactions and egg-throwing on refusal); candy-… | Moonlight Lib | Minor | MAYBE | charming, but adds a lib, modifies villager AI, and double-buys corn with Hearth and Harvest |
+| **Overweight Farming** (`overweight-farming`) | Rare "overweight" super-crops (beets/carrots/potatoes/beans) with boosted yields, moonlight growth bonus, straw hat (breeding twins/triplets), peeling/waxing/melon-… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | small, self-contained farming charm |
+| **AlcoCraft+** (`alcocraft`) | Brewing keg with 10+ beer recipes (hops, sugar, apples, water) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | small, self-contained fun; no flags |
+| **Fishing Real** (`fishing-real`) | Fish hooked as items spawn as live entities instead (salmon → live salmon, etc.) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap, fun, low-risk; worth a small datapack pass to include Aquaculture species |
+| **FishingOverhaul** (`fishingoverhaul`) | Reel-in minigame: fish circles a bar; right-click inside the catch region to land loot; crit region doubles loot | — | Minor | ADD | declared Aquaculture 2 compat makes this a natural pack fit |
+| **Fisherman's Haven** (`fishermans-haven`) | Fishing expansion: new rods, traps and nets that catch multiple fish at once | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | no deps, distinct fishing mechanics that complement Aquaculture 2; accept the niche overlap deliberately |
+| **Farmer's Knives** (`farmers-knives`) | Farmer's Delight knives in many modded materials — for mods actually in this pack that means The Twilight Forest (Ironwood, Fiery, Steeleaf, Knightmetal) plus a cop… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap thematic glue whose payoff is real but limited to Twilight Forest materials since the other supported tool mods aren't in the pa… |
+| **Display Delight** (`display-delight`) | Placeable 3D food blocks for every Farmer's Delight (+ addon) food; placed foods are neither block entities nor entities (explicitly lag-friendly) | — | Minor | ADD | direct, low-risk upgrade to the pack's food-and-decor identity |
+| **Create: Factory** (`create-factory`) | Create-themed foods: rolls, waffles, apples and related items/recipes; optional extra recipes when Create: Confectionery or Ecologics are present | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | harmless, but the food family is already the pack's most crowded content lane; low marginal value |
+| **Delightful Creators** (`delightful-creators`) | Farmer's Delight ↔ Create automation bridge: new fluids for soups, stews and sauces; mixer recipes to produce them; bowl filling from fluids | — | Moderate | MAYBE | pick one FD↔Create bridge; Slice & Dice is already installed and proven, so this needs a deliberate "both approaches" decision |
+| **Berry Good** (`berry-good`) | Berry QoL: bush placement moved to "pips" so bushes aren't placed accidentally; other simple berry-use improvements (excerpt details only the placement change) | Blueprint | Minor | SKIP | an entire additional library dependency (Blueprint) for one minor placement QoL; revisit only if the pack adopts Team Abnormals mods w… |
+| **Abnormals Delight** (`abnormals-delight`) | Farmer's Delight integration for Team Abnormals mods: FD cabinets in every Abnormals wood type, Duck/Deer meat cuts, cake slices alongside Neapolitan | Blueprint | Minor (and in this pack, near-zer… | SKIP | required Blueprint dep plus an ecosystem (Team Abnormals) the pack doesn't run; mostly dead content |
+| **ExtraDelight** (`extradelight`) | Kitchen workstations: Oven (3×3 slow-baking), Dough Shaping Station, Mixing Bowl, Mortar & Pestle, Drying Rack, Melting Pot (solids→fluids), Chiller (fluids→solids) | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | the meatiest Delight addon in the batch and a natural kitchen-tier progression; confirm the block-entity load on the dedicated server… |
+
+## Create & technology
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Create: Bells & Whistles** (`bellsandwhistles`) | 36 decorative/utility Create blocks: station platforms, headlights, "Metro" casing/panel/window palette, andesite/brass/copper grab bars & bogie steps & door steps… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong deco value for a Create pack; verify blocks behave on Aeronautics contraptions first |
+| **Create: Design n' Decor** (`create-design-n-decor`) | Create-focused QOL decoration: block variants (multiple crushing-wheel variants), containers, and extra factory-styled deco blocks | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe factory decoration; nice with the pack's Chipped/Rechiseled angle |
+| **Create: Teleporters** (`create-teleporters`) | Create-styled teleportation: TP Links with a configurable range, plus entity and item teleporters in multiple sizes | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | clean fit for Create logistics with no flagged conflicts; decide whether the pack wants dimensional play |
+| **Create: Structures Arise** (`create-structures-arise`) | 28 new Create-themed worldgen structures scattered across the world | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong fit for a Create + exploration pack, but it thickens an already structure-saturated worldgen stack with no config knobs shipped |
+| **Create Waystones Recipes** (`create-waystones-recipes`) | Replaces all Waystones crafting recipes with Create-style (machine/mechanical) recipes and rebalances them; pairs with an optional texture/GUI resource pack | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe; a deliberate progression/taste decision for the questbook rather than a technical one |
+| **Create: Sophisticated Backpacks Compat** (`create-sophisticated-backpacks-compat`) | A curated set of Create machine recipes for Sophisticated Backpacks items/components, enabling automation of key SB components inside Create factories (only "carefu… | — | Minor | MAYBE | plausible value, but check for recipe collisions with the official Create Integration already in the pack before committing |
+| **Create: Dynamic Lights** (`create-dynamic-lights`) | Dynamic lighting for moving Create contraptions (client-side light via Sodium-family dynamic lights), plus an optional server-side "light block" mode that places re… | Sodium Dynamic Lights | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | redundant with LambDynamicLights, wrong rendering stack assumptions (Embeddium/Rubidium), and its niche is better covered (or delibera… |
+| **Create Sable Dynamic Lights** (`create-sable-dynamic-lights`) | Dynamic-light support for Create contraptions and Sable sub-levels (moving contraptions/sub-levels actually illuminate surroundings, incl. on Aeronautics ships) | Sodium Dynamic Lights | Client-cosmetic | SKIP | requires a second dynamic-lights engine that duplicates LambDynamicLights and couples to the fragile Sodium/Sable version pin |
+| **CreateBetterFps** (`createbetterfps`) | FPS optimization for Create scenes ("up to 50%" with a shaderpack, 7→35 fps with 512 waterwheels) via Sodium API usage and backface culling | — | None | MAYBE | Iris + Sodium now in pack, so unblocked in principle, but it patches Create's code on the Aeronautics/Sable stack - test first |
+| **Sophisticated Inventory Interactions** (`sophisticated-inventory-interactions`) | Search field inside vanilla/modded container GUIs; sort modes (name/mod/count/tags) | — | Minor (pure inventory-management… | MAYBE | good mod, but it replaces rather than stacks with Client Sort; pick one container-sorting solution |
+| **Sophisticated Item Actions** (`sophisticated-item-actions`) | Keybind highlights nearby storages containing the held/hovered/JEI-bookmarked item (green exact / blue type match) | — | Minor (inventory-flow QoL, Terrar… | ADD-OPTIONAL | genuinely new capability that plays well with the Sophisticated + JEI stack already in the pack |
+| **Sophisticated Sorter** (`sophisticated-sorter`) | Sophisticated Core sort buttons on most regular container screens (name/mod/count/tags modes) | — | Minor | SKIP | redundant with Client Sort in-pack and with Sophisticated Inventory Interactions in this same batch; side metadata is also "unknown" f… |
+| **Refined Storage - JEI Integration** (`refined-storage-jei-integration`) | JEI ↔ Refined Storage recipe transfer for Crafting Grid and Pattern Grid, incl. autocrafting tasks from JEI preview | Refined Storage | None in this pack | SKIP | dead weight without Refined Storage |
+
+## Decoration & building
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Beautiful Campfires** (`beautiful-campfires`) | Wood-themed campfire variants (birch, etc.) so the crafted wood determines appearance; vanilla campfire recipe restricted to oak; includes the fire-type variants (r… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap cosmetic polish; document the oak-only recipe change in pack notes |
+| **Sooty Chimneys** (`sooty-chimneys`) | Brick, Cobblestone, Mud Brick, Stone Brick, Iron, Copper, and Terracotta chimneys emitting smoke | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe, charming builder content with negligible cost |
+| **Items Displayed [NeoForge]** (`items-displayed-forge`) | Sneak-right-click placement of items (sherds, smithing templates, ingots, etc.) as world-facing 3D models; craftable "Item Display" stand rotatable to any angle, va… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | safe builder content that fits the pack's decoration mods |
+| **Too Many Paintings!** (`too-many-paintings`) | 50+ new paintings including famous artworks (Van Gogh, da Vinci); works in existing worlds | — | Client-cosmetic (placed paintings… | ADD-OPTIONAL | zero-dep cosmetic content, safe on both sides |
+| **Portfolio** (`portfolio`) | 100+ paintings by artist Yapetto across 10 themed catalogues (Still Life, Void Manor, Death, Rana, Far Lands, Anchor, Giant, Elemental, Cloud Cuckoo, Keeping Up) | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | zero-dependency pure content that fills an empty decorative niche |
+| **Display Case** (`displaycase`) | A decorative single-item display block; clicking with honeycomb stops the spin (axe unwaxes) | — | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | fine in isolation, but choose between this and Fetzi's Displays (same batch) rather than shipping both display systems |
+| **Fetzi's Displays** (`fetzis-displays`) | Glass cloches in 16 colors, katana stands, and wall holders with item-name plaques | — | Client-cosmetic | MAYBE | good feature set but redundant with Display Case (batch) + Handcrafted; pick one display system for the pack |
+| **Gallery** (`gallery`) | Icon textures for all painting variants; right-click-with-painting GUI to search/select variants | Blueprint | Client-cosmetic (decorator QoL) | MAYBE | nice decorator QoL but drags in the Blueprint library for a niche feature |
+| **Spooky Doors** (`spooky-doors`) | horror-game door behavior for all doors — drag to half-open/peek, slam by fast drag, run-into to open, creak sound set; Honeycomb/Ghast Tear toggle | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | small, charming, Balm-based and low-risk |
+| **Boatload** (`boatload`) | Boats with chests, boats with furnaces, large boats, and boats with banners | Blueprint | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | pleasant water QoL, but chest-boat overlap with vanilla makes it low-value; needs Blueprint |
+| **Supplementaries** (`supplementaries`) | Vanilla+ block set: jars, signposts, faucets, weather vanes, spring launchers, sconces, planters, lights, decoration + automation | Moonlight Lib | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | Create conflict issues all closed; NeoForge-first. Needs Moonlight Lib; smoke-test |
+| **Accents** (`accents`) | Dyeable cosmetic accessories (hats, back items, e.g. partial-coloring Top/Pirate Hat) with small situational stat bonuses (e.g. Sheathed Katana +5% damage worn on b… | Fragmentum | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | low-risk cosmetic+minor-stat layer; costs one new library dep |
+
+## Mobs & wildlife
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Animal Garden - Porcupine** (`animal-garden-porcupine`) | Tamable/breedable porcupines spawning in forests (JSON-configurable spawn tags); quill damage to nearby attackers; apple taming, sweet-berry breeding/healing, incre… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | tiny, dependency-free, fits the existing tameable-mob theme |
+| **Fowl Play** (`fowlplay`) | ~13 bird species (hawks, gulls, ravens, crows, ducks, geese incl. swan/emden variants, songbirds, penguins) with realistic flight, sounds, and ecosystem behavior; s… | SmartBrainLib | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong ambience fit for the pack's mob roster; costs one AI lib |
+| **Companions!** (`companions-mod`) | 10 tamable companion creatures with abilities, hostile mobs with unique skills, new weapons, a boss; Small/Great Essence economy (Great Chalice, Soul Furnace, fille… | Knight Lib | Moderate | MAYBE | decent content but redundant with the existing mob roster and it drags in a new library; only if the pack wants more combat-pet content |
+| **Hybrid Aquatic** (`hybrid-aquatic`) | Large marine mob roster: new fish species, sharks, crustaceans, critters, otters, nautiluses, and a new miniboss | Hybrid API [HAPI], Biolith | Major | ADD-OPTIONAL | biggest content win in this batch; gate on a worldgen + Aquaculture overlap test because of the two new library pins |
+| **Alex's Mobs Continued** (`alexs-mobs-continued`) | Unofficial continuation of Alex's Mobs: the full ~116-mob roster (grizzly bears, tigers, gorillas, sharks, orcas, soul vultures...), taming/breeding/mounts/bucketin… | CodxLib | Overhaul (if it *replaced* the ex… | SKIP | direct duplicate of an existing pack mod; would only ever be a 1:1 swap project |
+| **Friends&Foes - Flowery Mooblooms (Forge/NeoForge)** (`friends-and-foes-flowery-mooblooms-forge`) | One moobloom cow variant per flower (allium, sunflower, lilac, etc.) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | cheap flavor that slots into an installed mod; skip only if moobloom density is unwanted |
+| **Pet Cemetery** (`pet-cemetery`) | Dead pets drop Pet Collars; use a charged Respawn Anchor to revive them as Zombie pets (tankier, curable) or Skeleton pets (faster, unrecoverable) with stat tradeof… | Blueprint | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | emotionally valuable on a friends server; verify modded-pet support first |
+| **PetProtect** (`petprotect`) | Server-side protection toggles for tamed mobs in PvP: prevent pet player-damage, pet death, pet attacks on players; owner-damage, creative, and totem-effect options… | — | Minor | ADD | tiny, dependency-free, and directly prevents grief/accident on a 10-player PvP-capable server full of tamed mods' pets |
+| **Mob Lassos** (`mob-lassos`) | Craftable lassos to carry mobs in inventory: golden (land), aquatic, diamond (no timer), emerald (villagers via contract), hostile (target below 50% HP, bites carri… | Puzzles Lib | Minor-Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | useful QoL; check boss exclusion config before shipping to a pack with Apotheosis |
+| **Realm RPG: Fallen Adventurers** (`realm-rpg-fallen-adventurers`) | 50+ treasure-bearing skeleton types generating across biomes and dimensions, dropping ores, materials, food, gear, and enchanted books | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | easy exploration flavor; note the 1.21.1 build dates to 2025-01 (aging but stable, 2.3M downloads) |
+| **Spawn** (`spawn-mod`) | Overworld wilderness overhaul: new biomes, many animal mobs with variants, ambience, mechanics | Teal Lib | Major | MAYBE | substantial content but collides with the pack's curated worldgen and mob roster; needs Teal Lib and dedicated testing before inclusion |
+| **Mermod** (`mermod`) | Magical necklace (Curios-style accessory) that transforms the wearer into a merperson in water (per description; details on wiki, not README) | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | small, cheap, fits the pack's exploration theme; low information confidence due to thin README |
+| **Punchy! x Tiny Takeover** (`tiny-takeover-x-punchy`) | Carry baby mobs in first person with dedicated animations (crouch + right-click; "I" key playful animation) | — | Minor | MAYBE | verify whether Punchy/Tiny Takeover base mods are actually required and that the NeoForge build is real before adding |
+| **Environmental** (`environmental`) | New overworld biomes: Blossom Woods, Pine Barrens, Marshes | Blueprint | Moderate | MAYBE | its content substantially duplicates what Terralith + Alex's Mobs already deliver, and it requires pulling in Blueprint for a single m… |
+| **Primal** (`mod-primal`) | Wilderness-immersion content released in "Hunters" (1.0) and "Hunt & Gather" (1.1) updates; further specifics are deferred to an external wiki that the README itsel… | — | unknown | MAYBE | sparse documentation; inspect the wiki and jar contents before committing |
+| **Pixelmon** (`pixelmon`) | Every Pokémon Gen 1–9 (1000+) with handmade models/animations, plus battling, trading, breeding | — | Overhaul | SKIP | total-conversion-scale content that steamrolls the pack's identity, worldgen, and mob budget |
+
+## Combat, gear & magic
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Too Many Bows** (`too-many-bows`) | 38 unique bows with special abilities; new attributes (Bow Draw Speed, Bow Damage, Ranged Weapon Damage) | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong synergy with Better Combat and Curios already in the pack |
+| **Reliquary Reincarnations** (`reliquary-reincarnations`) | Magical utility items: Coin of Fortune (item/XP magnet), Interdiction Torch (pushes mobs), Mob Charms (per-mob-type ignore), Sojourner's Staff (torch staff), Void T… | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | content-rich and maintained, but demands a balance pass against Apotheosis/Artifacts |
+| **More Relics** (`more-relics`) | 25+ relics (accessory items with unique/evolved forms, e.g. Tyrant Mask, Whispering Amulet evolution chains) distributed across structure chests | ShatterLib | OctoLib, Relics | Moderate | SKIP | needs a missing base mod + two libraries, carries self-documented version-pin fragility, and duplicates the Artifacts niche the pack a… |
+| **Relics: Arcane Abilities** (`arcane-abilities`) | Dungeons containing three relic artifacts: Fate Beacon (structure finding + teleport marks), Shadow Lantern (darkness abilities: blinding, invisibility, time manipu… | — | Moderate | SKIP | its own README requires Relics + Hammer Lib (missing); would need both plus a balance review to reconsider |
+| **Dream Relics** (`dream-relics`) | Curios-integrated accessories: necklaces/rings/bracelets/special items with abilities (damage scaling vs missing/target health, multi-jump boots, XP-granting grail) | — | Moderate | MAYBE | duplicate niche vs Artifacts with Apotheosis balance implications; needs a curation pass before adding |
+| **TarotCards: Remastered** (`tarotcards-remastered`) | 22 Major Arcana cards found only in loot chests (buried treasure, shipwrecks, dungeons), each granting a passive buff while carried; dedicated Curios slot; deck com… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | clean fit for an exploration/loot pack; explicitly team-aware |
+| **Skillcloaks** (`skillcloaks`) | Curios back-slot cloaks from villager trades (colored sacks from master-tier villagers): Agility, Attack, Construction (teleport to spawn), Cooking, Crafting (porta… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | solid Curios content on an existing dependency; consider adding Lucent for the full feature set |
+| **Ars Elixirum** (`ars-elixirum`) | Free-form elixir brewing: ingredients with seed-dependent alchemical properties, player-authored/saveable/shareable recipes (recipe books on lecterns) | Fragmentum | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | deep alchemy content with one new library dep; confirm in testing that it doesn't hard-require anything beyond Fragmentum |
+| **Ars Ocultas** (`ars-ocultas`) | Ars Nouveau ↔ Occultism compatibility: spirits usable from Containment Jars, 7×7 auto item-processing around jars, item-capability piping into jars (pipes/hoppers/s… | Occultism | Moderate if Occultism were presen… | SKIP | required dependency Occultism is absent from both the pack and this batch |
+| **Estrogen** (`estrogen`) | Estrogen Pill → "Girl Power" effect enabling a dash movement ability (+ hidden abilities); Estrogen Patches worn in their own Curios-style slots | Cynosure | Moderate | SKIP | meme-toned content whose headline feature alters player movement near a fragile physics stack, and which costs two extra pieces (Cynos… |
+| **Create: Estrogen** (`create-estrogen`) | The Create module of the Estrogen mod: a Centrifuge multiblock/machine for new fluid processing recipes, plus custom package (Create packager) shipping recipes; JEI… | Estrogen | Moderate | MAYBE | can't be evaluated in isolation (dep is a batch candidate), self-declared in-development, and tone may not fit the pack; decide togeth… |
+| **Small Ships** (`small-ships`) | Medieval sailable ships (R to open/close sail, W/S speed), biome-temperature speed bonuses, ship inventory | — | Moderate | MAYBE | appealing content, but a beta build with old updates parked next to Aeronautics/Sable physics; needs a dedicated compat test or should… |
+
+## Exploration & worldgen
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Dynamic Trees** (`dynamictrees`) | Trees as growing multiblock structures: seeds self-plant, trees grow biome/temperature/rainfall-dependently, grow around obstacles, die in darkness | — | Major | SKIP | a transformative tree overhaul whose coverage against the pack's 10+ worldgen mods is unverified and which demands config curation the… |
+| **Spawn Animations** (`spawn-animations`) | hostile mobs dig out of the ground or poof into existence when spawning (works for zombies, skeletons, creepers, endermen, etc.); server-side, command-driven settin… | Quilted Fabric API (QFAPI)…, Fabric API | None | MAYBE | mild flourish; if wanted, use the datapack form to dodge the Fabric dep chain rather than the mod |
+| **Spawn Animations Compats** (`spawn-animations-compats`) | datapack adding Spawn Animations support to 50+ modded mobs (Enderman Overhaul, Deeper and Darker, The Graveyard, Galosphere, etc.) | Spawn Animations | None | SKIP | only meaningful if Spawn Animations is added, and its supported mob list barely overlaps this pack |
+| **Loot Journal: Pickup Notifier** (`loot-journal`) | Animated item/XP pickup notifications with smart stacking, rare-find highlights, nearby-player pickup tracking, themes, and in-game config | Fragmentum | Client-cosmetic | ADD-OPTIONAL | nice HUD polish; in-game config means no shipped-config maintenance |
+| **Traveler's Titles** (`travelers-titles`) | RPG-style fade-in titles when entering biomes/dimensions; Waystone-named region titles (1.18+ Forge/NeoForge), custom sounds via resource pack, dimension/biome blac… | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | cheap, polished, and it makes the pack's giant curated worldgen legible to players |
+| **Death Count** (`death-count`) | A per-player death counter displayed in the tab player list | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | harmless novelty for a 10-player server, though equally achievable with a one-line vanilla scoreboard datapack |
+| **Chalk** (`chalk-mod`) | Craftable chalk (calcite / loot) that draws arrow/dot/symbol marks on block faces; dyeable 16 colors; glowstone/glow-ink glowing marks; chalk box for storing/select… | — | Minor | ADD | cheap, self-contained, fills a real gap for cave exploration |
+
+## Social, sleep & death
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Comforts** (`comforts`) | Sleeping bags (portable bed that doesn't set spawn) and hammocks (sleep day→night), 16 colors + dyeing; optional config mechanics (well-rested, sleepiness, break ch… | — | Minor–Moderate | ADD | staple adventure QoL, well-maintained, no dependency cost |
+| **Sleep Tight** (`sleep-tight`) | Sleep overhaul: hammocks (day rest), night bags (spawn-less temporary beds), dream essence, home-bed rewards, slower early-game sleep progression | Moonlight Lib | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | popular, well-scoped sleep rework; requires adding Moonlight Lib and choosing between it and Room For Two rather than stacking blindly |
+| **Room For Two** (`room-for-two`) | Multiple players sharing one bed; >2 players stack; camera faces your sleeping direction; `/sleeppos [front|back|left|right]` preference | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | harmless fun at BETA maturity; pick it OR Sleep Tight's ecosystem, and test if both |
+| **PlayerRevive** (`playerrevive`) | A 60-second post-death window in which friends can revive you instead of a hard respawn | — | Moderate | ADD-OPTIONAL | strong social fit, but it rebalances death and needs a Gravestone interplay check |
+| **Incapacitated** (`incapacitated`) | Downed state between life and death: crawling, bleed-out timer, 3 downs before true death (configurable); lava and similar causes bypass instantly | — | Major | MAYBE | great co-op mechanic but changes core death rules; needs owner sign-off plus a Gravestone interaction test |
+| **Death Knell** (`death-knell`) | 35+ new death messages, including circumstance-specific ones (cookie-weapon kills, axe dismemberment) and generic variants | — | Client-cosmetic | ADD | zero-risk flavor whose deps are already installed |
+| **Charta** (`charta`) | Card-game system: 3 games (Crazy Eights, "Fun", Solitaire), card tables in 3 sizes for up to 8 players, decks found in village/dungeon loot, in-game tutorials; API… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | charming multiplayer flavor, zero risk if unused |
+| **Mino++** (`minopp`) | Playable Uno-style card game: placeable table, scroll-wheel card selection, bot players (`/summon minopp:mino_auto_player`, bot config requires YACL), rule variants… | — | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | charming social content with no risk surface; pure taste call |
+| **Piggyback** (`piggyback`) | Replaces the default sit-on-head player mechanic with a piggyback-style ride (right-click a crouching player with an empty hand) | Faewulf's Lib | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | harmless co-op fun, but requires adding Faewulf's Lib to the pack |
+| **What Are They Up To (Watut)** (`what-are-they-up-to`) | in-world indicators when other players are typing (speed-animated), GUI-activity visuals (hand clicking at a screen), idle/sleeping player visuals, and Zz idle mark… | CoroUtil | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | genuinely fun on a small friend group; costs one small library |
+| **Open Parties and Claims** (`open-parties-and-claims`) | Chunk claiming + forceload, player parties, party chat, admin controls, permission-API integration (FTB Ranks, LuckPerms), explicit FTB Teams and Xaero's map integr… | — | Overhaul of base-protection/socia… | SKIP | direct duplicate of FTB Chunks + FTB Teams; would only make sense as a wholesale replacement, which contradicts the installed FTB Ques… |
+| **Welcome Screen** (`welcome-screen`) | one-time welcome screen on first world/server join and update-"what's new" screens, fully customizable via FancyMenu | FancyMenu, Necronomicon API | None | SKIP | 2-3 new dependencies for a screen a server MOTD/pin note can replace |
+| **Early Bedtime** (`early-bedtime`) | Server-side configurable earlier sleeping threshold (default 1000 ticks / ~50s sooner) | TxniLib | Minor | SKIP | solves a shader-specific problem this shaderless pack doesn't have, at the cost of adopting TxniLib |
+| **Horror messages** (`horror-messages`) | A random horror chat message ("Help me", "Behind you", binary "LEAVE") broadcast to all players every 10–15 minutes | — | None | SKIP | chat-spam gimmick; only defensible if the pack deliberately becomes a horror pack |
+
+## Server, admin & performance
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **BlueMap** (`bluemap`) | Reads world files and generates 3D maps of the whole surface, viewable in a browser via its own built-in web app | — | None | ADD-OPTIONAL | genuinely useful for a small dedicated server, but it's ops overhead (webserver, ports, configs) rather than content |
+| **Better Compatibility Checker** (`better-compatibility-checker`) | Replaces the default loader server-list compatibility check with modpack project-ID/version comparison, showing tick/X for players adding the pack's server | — | None | MAYBE | only earns its slot if the build pipeline commits to updating its config each release |
+| **Let Me Despawn** (`lmd`) | Lets mobs that picked up/equipped items despawn naturally (dropping the items first), with configurable exclusion list and live `/letmedespawn add|remove` commands;… | Almanac | Minor | ADD | clear server-side perf win for a 10-player mob-dense pack; add Almanac with it |
+| **More Culling** (`moreculling`) | Client-side culling changes for multiple render categories (per description/wiki: e.g. leaves, block-entity type cases) to cut rendered geometry | — | None | MAYBE | plausible FPS gain, but redundant-adjacent to Entity Culling and unvetted against the pack's fragile rendering core; test in isolation… |
+| **BadOptimizations** (`badoptimizations`) | Client micro-optimizations: skip lightmap texture re-uploads when nothing affecting brightness changed; gate debug renderers (bees/game events/gametest/villager AI)… | — | None | SKIP | marginal, hard-to-measure gains on a stack that already covers these areas (constraint 6); not worth extra mixin surface for a ~4% syn… |
+| **AsyncParticles** (`asyncparticles`) | Client particle optimizations: GPU-accelerated particle vertex rendering, async particle ticking, particle culling, async light cache | — | None (pure client optimization) | SKIP | a named crash interaction with in-pack C2ME that the pack cannot pre-configure, plus beta render-layer mixins against the fragile Sabl… |
+| **Followers Teleport Too** (`followers-teleport-too`) | Non-sitting pets (wolves/cats) near the player teleport along with them on any teleport | Collective | Minor | ADD-OPTIONAL | clear QoL win with Waystones for ~10 players; costs one shared lib |
+| **Waystones Teleport Pets** (`waystones-teleport-pets`) | pets teleport alongside players using Waystones without needing a lead attached | — | Minor QoL for pet owners | ADD | tiny, targeted, and fixes a real annoyance for a 10-player server full of tamed pets |
+| **Carry On + Create Aeronautics Compat** (`carryon-aeronautics-compat`) | Patches Carry On so blocks can be picked up from Aeronautics/Sable simulated contraptions | Carry On | Moderate (when it applied); effec… | SKIP | self-declared obsolete (fix upstreamed to Carry On 2.2.6+), base mod absent, documented server-hang known issue |
+| **Carry On Extend** (`carry-on-extend`) | Shift+Q to throw the entity/block you are currently carrying (Carry On add-on) | Carry On | Minor | SKIP | dead on arrival without Carry On; revisit only if the pack adopts Carry On itself |
+
+## Already in pack (duplicates)
+
+| Mod | What it brings | New deps | Impact | Verdict | Watch-out |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Aquaculture 2** (`aquaculture`) | (duplicate entry) — 30+ biome-specific fish, neptunium gear, hooks/bait/line rods, tackle box, fish fillets and fishing loot | — | Moderate (as installed) | ALREADY-IN-PACK | exact duplicate of the existing Aquaculture 2 entry |
+| **Aquaculture Delight** (`aquaculture-delight`) | (duplicate entry) — Farmer's Delight × Aquaculture 2 compatibility: fish dishes, Neptunium knife, knife cross-compat, cooking pot/cutting board recipes | — | Minor (as installed) | ALREADY-IN-PACK | exact duplicate of the existing Aquaculture Delight entry |
+| **Apothic Combat** (`apothic-combat`) | (duplicate entry) — Compatibility between Apotheosis and Better Combat: registers two-handed Better Combat weapons as HEAVY_WEAPON; removes the Entity Reach attribu… | — | Major (as installed) | ALREADY-IN-PACK | duplicates the pack's existing Apothic Combat entry |
+| **Ars Creo** (`ars-creo`) | (duplicate entry) — Ars Nouveau × Create addon: Starbuncle Wheel (SU generation), spell/timer turrets on contraptions, Source Jars as contraption parts | — | Moderate (as installed) | ALREADY-IN-PACK | duplicate of the existing Ars Creo entry; the "missing dep" line is a dead-ID artifact, not a real gap |
+| **Create Aeronautics: Compatibility** (`create-aeronautics-compatability`) | (per README) Fixes for mods that break on Sable sub-levels/physics ships: Etched, WATERFrAMES, Alex's Mobs + Alex's Caves (pathfinding RAM/OOM fix), Another Furnitu… | — | Moderate | ALREADY-IN-PACK | duplicates the existing "Create Aeronautics: Compatibility" entry in the pack list; do not add a second copy |
+| **Nature's Compass** (`natures-compass`) | (Duplicate entry) Biome-locating compass with searchable GUI, HUD info, config blacklists | — | N/A | ALREADY-IN-PACK | byte-for-byte duplicate of the existing Nature's Compass entry; drop from the candidate list |
+| **Separate Sable Render Distance** (`ssrd`) | (duplicate) — Sable physics objects rendering beyond view distance with Distant Horizons/Voxy; Sodium-menu sub-level render distance slider; server-friendly `/ssrd… | — | None | ALREADY-IN-PACK | duplicate of the pack's existing SSRD entry; exclude from the candidate list |
+| **Sophisticated Backpacks Create Integration** (`sophisticated-backpacks-create-integration`) | Lets Sophisticated Backpacks sit on Create contraptions with all upgrades (Pickup, Magnet, Filter, Void) functional while in motion | — | Minor (already shipped; storage a… | ALREADY-IN-PACK | exact duplicate of the pack's own Sophisticated Backpacks Create Integration entry |
+| **Sophisticated Storage Create Integration** (`sophisticated-storage-create-integration`) | Sophisticated Storage barrels/chests/shulker boxes usable on Create contraptions (trains, gantries, flywheels) with upgrades, tier upgrades, and Storage Tool functi… | — | Minor (already shipped) | ALREADY-IN-PACK | exact duplicate of the pack's own Sophisticated Storage Create Integration entry |

analysis/archive/2026-09-candidate-review/MODLIST-REVIEW.md

@@ -0,0 +1,688 @@
+# Onion MC — Candidate Modlist Review
+
+**Pack:** Onion MC 0.1.0 — Minecraft 1.21.1 / NeoForge 21.1.251 (packwiz)
+**Candidates reviewed:** 189 minetest/mod links (mods, plugins, datapacks) supplied by the operator
+**Existing pack:** 142 tracked entries (133 Modrinth + 9 CurseForge)
+**Date:** 2026-09-29 (post-review update: see Section 0)
+
+---
+
+## 0. Post-review update — new commits and the `mod-pack-additions` branch
+
+After the first pass of this review, the remote was fetched and two things changed the premises:
+
+**A. New commits on `origin/main`** (local `main` was 2 commits behind):
+- `be07001` — **Clumps** added (XP-orb merging, `side = both`): cuts XP-orb entity count, entity packets
+  and server tick cost. Low-risk, standard server-perf mod; no conflict with anything reviewed here.
+- `25b3f78` — C2ME runtime `cache/` untracked from the pack index (housekeeping).
+
+**B. Branch `mod-pack-additions`** (2 commits ahead of the local `main`; **not merged**, and checked
+out in a separate worktree at `~/.herdr/worktrees/onion-mc/mod-pack-additions`). It adds:
+
+| Added | Detail |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Iris Shaders** | `iris-neoforge-1.8.14-beta.1+mc1.21.1`, `side = client` |
+| **Iris Veil Compat** | `irisveil-0.3.0.jar` — bridges Veil (embedded in Sable) through Iris so Create Aeronautics visuals render correctly under shaders |
+| **Aeronautics Iris Fix** | CurseForge `aero-shadow-fix-2.1.0.jar` — third-party fix for Create Aeronautics balloon envelopes rendering as ghost artifacts under Iris |
+| **Shaderpacks** | Complementary Reimagined r5.9.3, MakeUp Ultra Fast 9.5f |
+| **Resourcepacks** | Motschen's Better Leaves 9.6, Fresh Animations: Extensions v1.8.1 |
+
+**What this changes in this report:**
+- The **"no shaders" premise is retired**. Onion MC is moving to Iris + a curated shader list, with two
+  purpose-built compat patches for the exact Aeronautics/Iris problems `FINDINGS.md` flagged.
+- **`iris` and `iris-veil-compat` move from SKIP to `ADDED`** — they are now pack content.
+- **`createbetterfps` moves from SKIP to MAYBE.** Its blocker was *"1.21.1 needs Sodium and Iris"*;
+  with Iris now present it is technically unblocked, but it patches Create's code directly and benefits
+  only shader scenes, so it must be tested against the Aeronautics/Sable stack before shipping.
+- **Shader-adjacent candidates get a second look**: `shine`, `grassier-grass`, `fog`, and
+  `ATMOSPHERICS` now sit next to a real shader pipeline. `shine`/`grassier-grass` (Sodium terrain
+  shaders) become more relevant; `fog`/`ATMOSPHERICS` (sky/fog rewrites) now conflict with the
+  shaderpacks' own fog/sky, so their SKIP/MAYBE verdicts stand for a stronger reason.
+- **Residual risk is not zero.** The fix chain is `iris` + `iris-veil-compat` + `aeronautics-iris-fix`,
+  and `aeronautics-iris-fix` is a small third-party CurseForge patch (~2.6K downloads, present in ~11
+  modpacks). Known Aeronautics/Iris issues beyond balloon shadows exist (e.g. heat-particle rendering
+  has a separate fix mod). Treat the Aeronaautics-under-shaders combination as **verified-in-progress**,
+  and keep the `phase0/` measurement plan for shader on/off before/after.
+- Sections below are otherwise unchanged, except where marked **(updated)**.
+
+---
+
+## 1. Executive summary
+
+**Every one of the 189 candidates has a 1.21.1 NeoForge-compatible build.** Nothing on the list is
+blocked by version availability. The real filters are **dependency cost**, **overlap**, and a small
+number of **hard conflicts**.
+
+Headline result:
+
+| Verdict | Count |
+| --- | --- |
+| **ADD** — clear, low-risk win | **18** |
+| **ADD-OPTIONAL** — good, but a taste/librarary decision | **88** |
+| **MAYBE** — needs an in-pack test or a design decision first | **36** |
+| **SKIP** — conflict, dead dependency, duplication, or wrong stack | **36** |
+| **ALREADY-IN-PACK** — duplicate of an installed mod | **9** |
+| **ADDED** — already on `mod-pack-additions` | **2** |
+
+The single most useful finding is that **the candidate list is dominated by "more of what the pack
+already has"**. Onion MC already runs five Farmer's Delight addons, a full Create stack, ~20 structure
+mods, a large mob roster, and a saturated client-performance stack. Most candidates are another Delight
+addon, another decoration mod, another HUD mod, or another culling/perf mod. Adding all the safe ones
+would bloat the pack and its library surface without changing the shape of the game.
+
+**Recommended core: 20 mods + 2 libraries** (Section 4). Everything else is either a deliberate
+expansion choice, a test-first item, or a skip.
+
+The second finding is **dependency economics**. The candidates would collectively drag in **~25 new
+NeoForge library mods** (`Puzzles Lib`, `Moonlight Lib`, `Blueprint`, `Fragmentum`, `Collective`,
+`Almanac`, `Delight Lib`, `Lodestone`, `SmartBrainLib`, `Coralib`, `Faewulf's Lib`, `Teal Lib`, etc.).
+Several are shared by multiple candidates, so the sane strategy is to **pick one or two content
+families and pay for the libraries those need** — not to adopt candidates piecemeal.
+
+The third finding is that a **few candidates are actively dangerous** in this specific pack: anything
+that needs **Iris/shaders** (the pack deliberately has none; Create Aeronautics and SSRD both
+document Iris rendering issues), anything **Fabric-only via Sinytra Connector**, a **second dynamic
+lights engine** next to LambDynamicLights, and a **second claim/party system** next to FTB.
+See the risk register in Section 8.
+
+---
+
+## 2. How this review was produced (and how much to trust it)
+
+- **Deterministic data (high confidence).** All 189 links were resolved through the **Modrinth API v2**
+  — project metadata, loader/side support, every 1.21.1 build, and the **required-dependency graph**
+  of the selected 1.21.1 NeoForge build. The existing pack was read directly from its 142 `.pw.toml`
+  files. Counts, loader support, version availability and required dependencies in this report are
+  machine-derived, not guessed.
+- **README/feature analysis (medium-high confidence).** Each candidate's Modrinth README was used as
+  the primary source for what it adds and for author-declared compatibility notes. Where the README
+  was silent, the assessment says so.
+- **Compatibility claims (medium confidence).** Named conflict claims come from mod READMEs, official
+  issue trackers, or the pack's own `FINDINGS.md`. They are cited in the detailed appendix and should
+  be re-tested in a dev instance before shipping — a closed issue or a fixed version can invalidate any
+  of them.
+- **Where this report is uncertain** it says `unknown`, `unverified`, or lists a test gate. Treat the
+  verdict as a prior, not a guarantee.
+
+### Corrections applied after validation
+
+The bulk research pass was independently checked on the highest-impact claims. Three corrections were
+made; the full per-mod appendix retains the corrected view:
+
+1. **`veil` — the "no consumer mod" rationale was wrong.** Veil is **embedded inside Sable**
+   (`embedded` dependency in Sable's own metadata), which is why `iris-veil-compat` exists. The verdict
+   is still **SKIP**, but the correct reason is *"Veil is already jar-in-jar inside Sable; adding it
+   standalone is a duplicate/conflict on the fragile render stack"* — not "nothing uses it".
+2. **`autohud` — the Fabric-API "red flag" was a metadata artifact.** The README explicitly scopes the
+   Fabric API requirement to the Fabric build; the NeoForge build is native. Verdict raised from MAYBE
+   to ADD-OPTIONAL.
+3. **`supplementaries` — the Create conflict is stale.** All three cited issues (Create #7405,
+   Create #9755, Supplementaries #1436) are **closed**, and both mods are now ~18 months newer. Verdict
+   raised from MAYBE to ADD-OPTIONAL, with a Create smoke test still recommended.
+
+---
+
+## 3. Baseline: what the pack is, and what that implies
+
+From `FINDINGS.md`, `pack.toml`, `index.toml` and the `phase0/` tuning docs, the decision-relevant
+facts are:
+
+| Fact | Consequence for candidate screening |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Shaders: now being added via `mod-pack-additions`** — Iris + shaderpacks + two compat patches (see Section 0); previously none by design. | Iris, `iris-veil-compat` and the shaderpacks are now pack content. Shader-adjacent candidates are re-evaluated in Section 0; sky/fog rewrites now also conflict with the shaderpacks themselves. |
+| **Fragile render core:** Sodium `0.8.13` + Distant Horizons + SSRD + Sable's intrusive mixins. Sodium is version-pinned by Sable (≥ 0.8.12-alpha.2). | Any mod that hooks the sky/fog/weather/terrain render path or couples to a Sodium version is test-first at best. |
+| **Create + Sable + Aeronautics is the highest-risk component.** Five Sable compat patches already exist. | Create addons and anything touching player/block physics (gradient, ragdolls, tree physics, ships) need a dev-server test. |
+| **Client-perf stack is saturated:** Sodium, Lithium, ModernFix, FerriteCore, EntityCulling, ImmediatelyFast, Dynamic FPS, AllTheLeaks, C2ME, Noisium. | Additional generic perf/culling mods have small marginal gains and add mixin surface. |
+| **No configs shipped.** `.packwizignore` excludes `config/*` except one FTB Chunks file. | Candidates that require config curation (Burnt, More Music Discs, Lunar, Celestia, Sleep Tight, Worldgen structure tuning) carry a maintenance cost the pack does not currently pay. |
+| **Worldgen is curated and already dense:** Terralith + Tectonic + Incendium + Nullscape + Towns and Towers + When Dungeons Arise + 9 YUNG's mods + Explorify + Sparse Structures. | Biome-adding and structure-adding candidates meet a stack that is already at the "loading" end and already uses Sparse Structures to tame it. |
+| **Content pillars:** Farmer's Delight (+5 addons), Create, Aquaculture 2, Apotheosis, Sophisticated Storage/Backpacks, Waystones/Gravestone/Lootr, Alex's Mobs/Caves, Ars Nouveau, Twilight Forest. | The best candidates are those that *plug into* a pillar with the same dependencies, not those that start a new one. |
+| **~10-player dedicated server matters as much as the client.** | Server-side candidates (`lmd`, PetProtect, claim mods, structure mods, BlueMap) are judged on TPS/ops cost, not just fun. |
+| **A dedicated Create Aeronautics compatibility mod is installed** and explicitly patches `Sleep Tight` and `Etched` among others. | Those two candidates have a positive, author-provided compatibility signal for the Sable stack. |
+
+---
+
+## 4. Recommended core — add these
+
+Chosen for **value ÷ risk**: high player-facing value, no hard conflicts, and either zero new
+libraries or one small, widely-used library. This is the set I would ship as a first cohort.
+
+| # | Mod | What it adds | Anchor / relationship | Gameplay impact | New libs | Compat notes |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| 1 | **Supplementaries** (`supplementaries`) | Large Vanilla+ block set: jars, signposts, faucets, spring launchers, sconces, planters, rope, lights, decoration + light automation | Decoration family (Chipped/Handcrafted/Rechiseled); NeoForge-first project | **Moderate** | **Moonlight Lib** | Old Create 1.21.1 conflicts all closed; smoke-test with Create. Also unlocks Sleep Tight/Haunted Harvest. |
+| 2 | **Let Me Despawn** (`lmd`) | Mobs that picked up gear despawn naturally (dropping the gear first) | Server perf next to Lithium/ModernFix; does **not** replace the chunk engine | Minor (server **perf gain**) | **Almanac** | Directly helps a mob-dense Apotheosis/Alex's Mobs server. Check affixed-mob drops. |
+| 3 | **Comforts** (`comforts`) | Sleeping bags (no spawn-set) + hammocks (skip day); dyeable | Expedition QoL next to Waystones/Gravestone | Minor | none | 22.9M downloads, current 1.21.1 NeoForge build. |
+| 4 | **Traveler's Titles** (`travelers-titles`) | RPG biome/dimension entry titles; Waystones region titles; Twilight Forest built in | Exploration family | Client-cosmetic | none (YUNG's API in pack) | Makes the curated Terralith/Tectonic world legible. |
+| 5 | **Zume** (`zume`) | Hold-to-zoom keybind with adjustable zoom levels | Client utility; no zoom mod in pack | Client-cosmetic | none | Zero server footprint. |
+| 6 | **FindMe** (`findme`) | Hover an item in JEI, press Y to locate it in nearby inventories | JEI + Sophisticated Storage loop | Minor | none (Architectury in pack) | High-frequency QoL for a storage-heavy pack. |
+| 7 | **Sophisticated Item Actions** (`sophisticated-item-actions`) | Keybind-highlight nearby storages holding an item; deposit/restock without opening GUIs | Sophisticated Core/Backpacks/Storage + JEI | Minor | none | Fills a real gap; JEI-aware. |
+| 8 | **Chalk** (`chalk-mod`) | Dyeable chalk marks on block faces (glow variants) + chalk box | Navigation next to Waystones/compasses/Ping Wheel | Minor | none | Fills the cave-marking niche nothing else covers. |
+| 9 | **PetProtect** (`petprotect`) | Server toggle: tamed mobs can't be hurt/killed by players in PvP | Pet family | Minor (server policy) | none | Cheap grief insurance on a friends server. |
+| 10 | **Waystones Teleport Pets** (`waystones-teleport-pets`) | Pets follow you through Waystones without a lead | Direct **Waystones** addon | Minor | none | Server-side. |
+| 11 | **Extreme Sound Muffler** (`extreme_sound_muffler`) | Per-sound volume/mute GUI + ranged "anchor" muffling | Client audio control over AmbientSounds + Sound Physics + Create noise | Client-cosmetic | none | Client-only; complements (doesn't replace) Sound Physics Remastered. |
+| 12 | **Simple Music Control** (`simple-music-control`) | Halved music delay, next-track key, now-playing widget | Client audio QoL | Client-cosmetic | none (Fzzy Config in pack) | Zero risk. |
+| 13 | **Held Item Tooltips** (`held-item-tooltips`) | Info plate on item switch: enchants, durability, effects, shulker previews | Complements Enchantment Descriptions + Legendary Tooltips (different surface) | Client-cosmetic | **Puzzles Lib** | Puzzles Lib also unlocks Visual Workbench / Distinct Potions / Mob Lassos. |
+| 14 | **Display Delight** (`display-delight`) | Placeable 3D models of every Delight food (no block entities — lag-friendly), food plates | **All five** installed Delight addons | Minor | none | README lists explicit compat with Ocean's/End's/Aquaculture Delight. |
+| 15 | **Fruits Delight** (`fruits-delight`) | 17 fruits, 90 fruit foods, jam/jello cauldrons, 18 plants/14 fruit trees | Farmer's Delight; author-claimed **Create + Terralith** compat | **Moderate** | none | 2.2M downloads; plugs into two existing pillars. |
+| 16 | **Rustic Delight** (`rustic-delight`) | Bell peppers, coffee (Speed/Haste), cotton, pancakes, fried foods | Farmer's Delight | Minor | none | Textbook same-dependency addon. |
+| 17 | **Cat Jam** (`cat_jam`) | Cats bob to music discs, with per-disc routines | Client charm; **Alex's Mobs** discs explicitly supported | Client-cosmetic | none | Client-only, oldest-but-stable build. |
+| 18 | **Death Knell** (`death-knell`) | 35+ situational death messages | Flavor | Client-cosmetic | none (Prickle + Bookshelf in pack) | Zero risk, deps already installed. |
+| 19 | **Portfolio** (`portfolio`) | 100+ paintings in 10 themed catalogues | Decoration family | Client-cosmetic | none | Ships as mod or datapack; zero deps. |
+| 20 | **FishingOverhaul** (`fishingoverhaul`) | Reel-in fishing minigame with crit regions and per-fish tuning | **Aquaculture 2** (README states compat) | Minor | none | Changes the fishing interaction, not progression. |
+
+**Bundle cost:** 20 mods, 2 new libraries (`Moonlight Lib`, `Almanac`), one of which (`Moonlight Lib`)
+unlocks further candidates later. No config maintenance. No server-render risk. Nothing here touches
+Sodium, DH, Sable, Create physics, or worldgen.
+
+**Runner-up core picks** (equally safe, pick if the theme appeals): **Sounds** (`sound`, +MRU) for
+170+ upgraded SFX; **Particle Effects** and **Perception** for client ambience; **Distinct Potions**
+(+Puzzles Lib, already paid for by Held Item Tooltips); **GUI Effect Timer** (+Collective);
+**Neat** for mob health bars; **Advancement Plaques** (Iceberg already in pack); **Visual Workbench**
+(+Puzzles Lib).
+
+---
+
+## 5. Strong optional additions, by content family
+
+These are all defensible `ADD-OPTIONAL`s. Use them to steer the pack deliberately, not to accumulate.
+
+### 5.1 Farmer's Delight expansion (the pack's most crowded lane)
+Farmer's Delight already has 5 addons. Adding more is cumulative, not gap-filling.
+
+| Mod | What it adds | New libs | Notes |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Expanded Delight** | More crops/workstations; best-covered by Display Delight (37 foods) | none | Author-declared **beta**. |
+| **ExtraDelight** | 7 kitchen workstations (oven, chiller, melting pot…), cookware | none | Block-entity heavy; confirm server load. |
+| **Miner's Delight** | Cave-food addon (cave carrots, copper pot/cup) | **Lodestone** | Author-declared **beta**. |
+| **More Delight** | Sandwiches, toast, stone/wood knives; Create-compatible | **Delight Lib** | Safe, low marginal value. |
+| **Dungeon's Delight** | Monster Pot, inverted "monster effects", Rotbulb crop | none | Check effect stacking with Apotheosis. |
+| **Barbeque's Delight** | Grill/skewer loop + seasonings | none | Frictionless. |
+| **Fright's Delight** | 56 horror foods from mob drops, cursed berries | none | Horror theme is a taste call. |
+| **Veggies Delight** | 7 vegetables, temperature-based wild spawns, village Depot Houses | none | Low-risk; village structures are additive. |
+| **Hearth and Harvest** | Crops, corn mazes, salt caverns, ranching utilities | none | Corn overlaps Haunted Harvest — pick one. |
+| **Haunted Harvest** | Trick-or-treating villagers, pumpkin carving, corn | **Moonlight Lib** | Shares Moonlight with Supplementaries. |
+| **Cultural Delights** | Avocado/eggplant/cucumber/corn/beans/cinnamon, world cuisine | **Cook's Collection** | Extra lib for one addon. |
+| **Delightful Creators** | Second FD↔Create automation bridge (fluids/soups) | none | **Overlaps the installed Slice & Dice** — deliberate "both routes" decision. |
+
+### 5.2 Create expansion (test every one against Aeronautics/Sable)
+| Mod | What it adds | New libs | Notes |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Create: Bells & Whistles** | 36 deco/utility blocks (platforms, headlights, train grab bars) | none | Decorative; smoke-test on contraptions. |
+| **Create: Design n' Decor** | Create-styled deco/variant blocks | none | Active maintenance; low risk. |
+| **Create: Teleporters** | TP links, entity/item teleporters, pocket-dimension portal | none | Adds a dimension; independent of worldgen. |
+| **Create: Waystones Recipes** | Replaces Waystones recipes with Create machine recipes | none | Progression design decision. |
+| **Create: Factory** | Create-themed foods | none | Crowded food lane; low value. |
+| **Create: Structures Arise** | 28 Create-themed worldgen structures | none | Thickens an already structure-saturated worldgen stack. |
+| **Create: Sophisticated Backpacks Compat** | Third-party recipe pack for SB components | none | Likely partial **recipe overlap** with the installed official integration — check JEI. |
+
+### 5.3 Decoration & building
+**Items Displayed**, **Beautiful Campfires**, **Sooty Chimneys**, **Too Many Paintings**, **Spooky Doors**,
+**Boatload** (+Blueprint), **Display Case** / **Fetzi's Displays** / **Gallery** (+Blueprint, *pick one
+display system*), **Etched** (music discs from URLs — note: **Create Aeronautics Compat explicitly
+patches Etched**, a positive signal; content-policy caveat), **Accents** (+Fragmentum).
+
+### 5.4 HUD, client polish & ambience
+**Neat** (prefer over **JeremySeq's Damage Indicator** — pick one mob-info mod), **Armor HUD** or
+**Immersive Armor HUD** (+TxniLib), **Advancement Plaques**, **AutoHUD**, **GUI Effect Timer** (+Collective),
+**Keybind Atlas**, **Blur+** (+MidnightLib), **Distinct Potions** (+Puzzles Lib), **Emojiful**,
+**Quick Skin** (prefer over SkinChanger), **Sounds Be Gone**, **Now Playing** (+Deimos for discs),
+**Loot Journal** (+Fragmentum), **Particle Effects**, **Perception**, **Smart Particles**,
+**Better Animations Collection** (+Puzzles Lib), **Visuality: Reforged**, **Better Third Person**,
+**Camera Overhaul**, **Cinematic Respawn**, **Mermod**, **Piggyback** (+Faewulf's Lib),
+**Cosy Critters**, **Fancy World Animations** (blacklist safety valve exists).
+
+### 5.5 Mobs, combat & gear
+**Fowl Play** (+SmartBrainLib), **Animal Garden – Porcupine** (zero deps), **Hybrid Aquatic**
+(+Hybrid API + Biolith; big ocean overhaul — gate on a worldgen/Aquaculture test), **Realm RPG: Fallen
+Adventurers** (explicit Twilight Forest support), **Reliquary Reincarnations** (needs a balance pass vs
+Apotheosis/Artifacts), **Too Many Bows** (explicitly recommends Better Combat + Curios, both in pack),
+**Skillcloaks** (Curios), **TarotCards: Remastered** (team-aware via FTB Teams), **Mob Lassos**
+(+Puzzles Lib; check boss exclusion), **Friends&Foes – Flowery Mooblooms** (same author as installed F&F),
+**Pet Cemetery** (+Blueprint; verify modded-pet support), **Animal Garden**, **Dream Relics** (balance overlap with Artifacts).
+
+### 5.6 Social & minigames
+**Immersive Melodies**, **Charta**, **Mino++**, **Watut** (+CoroUtil), **PlayerRevive** (Gravestone
+interplay test), **Incapacitated** (changes core death rules — owner sign-off).
+
+### 5.7 Sleep
+**Sleep Tight** (+Moonlight Lib; **explicitly patched by the installed Create Aeronautics Compat**, a
+positive signal; adds bedbugs/nightmares), **Room For Two** (beta; pick **one** of these two).
+
+### 5.8 Server / admin
+**BlueMap** (web map — ops overhead: port, web server, bStats opt-out; async to the server thread),
+**Followers Teleport Too** (+Collective; overlaps Waystones Teleport Pets — pick one),
+**Better Compatibility Checker** (only if the pack pipeline will update `bcc-common.toml` each release).
+
+### 5.9 Fishing & food extras
+**Fishing Real** (fish spawn as live entities; defaults cover vanilla only — needs datapack JSONs for
+Aquaculture species), **Overweight Farming**, **AlcoCraft+**, **Create: Factory**.
+
+---
+
+## 6. Full master table (all 189 candidates)
+
+Verdicts and one-line rationale per candidate. `MAYBE` = test-first or a design decision. The detailed
+**Adds / Relationship / Missing deps / Compatibility / Perf** breakdown for every mod is in the
+appendix (`analysis/assess/chunk*.md`, consolidated in `analysis/CANDIDATE-APPENDIX.md`). The same
+candidates grouped by purpose with a **“what it brings”** column are in **`MODLIST-GROUPS.md`**.
+
+> **(updated)** `iris` and `iris-veil-compat` are now `ADDED` (branch), and `createbetterfps` is now
+> `MAYBE` — see Section 0.
+
+
+### ADD (18)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **cat_jam** (`cat_jam`) | Client-cosmetic | tiny, client-only, documented compat with a mod already in the pack. |
+| **Chalk** (`chalk-mod`) | Minor | cheap, self-contained, fills a real gap for cave exploration. |
+| **Comforts** (`comforts`) | Minor–Moderate | staple adventure QoL, well-maintained, no dependency cost. |
+| **Death Knell** (`death-knell`) | Client-cosmetic | zero-risk flavor whose deps are already installed. |
+| **Display Delight** (`display-delight`) | Minor | direct, low-risk upgrade to the pack's food-and-decor identity. |
+| **Extreme sound muffler** (`extreme_sound_muffler`) | Client-cosmetic | zero-risk, zero-server-cost QoL that is actively maintained (3.56, 2026-09-22). |
+| **FindMe** (`findme`) | Minor | zero-dep, low-risk, high-frequency QoL. |
+| **FishingOverhaul** (`fishingoverhaul`) | Minor | declared Aquaculture 2 compat makes this a natural pack fit. |
+| **Fruits Delight** (`fruits-delight`) | Moderate | big, popular (2.2M downloads) FD expansion that plugs into two pack pillars (Create, Terralith). |
+| **Held Item Tooltips** (`held-item-tooltips`) | Client-cosmetic (informational). | low-risk, high-frequency QoL; library cost shared with other Puzzles-Lib picks. |
+| **Let Me Despawn** (`lmd`) | Minor | clear server-side perf win for a 10-player mob-dense pack; add Almanac with it. |
+| **PetProtect** (`petprotect`) | Minor | tiny, dependency-free, and directly prevents grief/accident on a 10-player PvP-capable server full of tamed mods' pets. |
+| **Portfolio** (`portfolio`) | Client-cosmetic | zero-dependency pure content that fills an empty decorative niche. |
+| **Rustic Delight** (`rustic-delight`) | Minor | textbook fit: same-dependency addon for an existing content pillar. |
+| **Simple Music Control** (`simple-music-control`) | Client-cosmetic. | zero-risk client QoL whose only dependency is already present. |
+| **Traveler's Titles** (`travelers-titles`) | Client-cosmetic. | cheap, polished, and it makes the pack's giant curated worldgen legible to players. |
+| **Waystones Teleport Pets** (`waystones-teleport-pets`) | Minor QoL for pet owners. | tiny, targeted, and fixes a real annoyance for a 10-player server full of tamed pets. |
+| **Zume** (`zume`) | None (view convenience; no gameplay ch | zero-dep, zero-server, fills an obvious gap next to Sodium+DH distance viewing. |
+
+### ADD-OPTIONAL (88)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **Fisherman's Haven** (`fishermans-haven`) | Moderate | no deps, distinct fishing mechanics that complement Aquaculture 2; accept the niche overlap deliberately. |
+| **Accents** (`accents`) | Minor | low-risk cosmetic+minor-stat layer; costs one new library dep. |
+| **Advancement Plaques** (`advancement-plaques`) | Client-cosmetic. | safe client polish on a dep already in pack; one test-instance check on the sound caveat. |
+| **Akashic Tome** (`akashic-tome`) | None | cheap, low-risk QoL that scales well with a 142-mod pack. |
+| **AlcoCraft+** (`alcocraft`) | Minor | small, self-contained fun; no flags. |
+| **Animal Garden - Porcupine** (`animal-garden-porcupine`) | Minor | tiny, dependency-free, fits the existing tameable-mob theme. |
+| **Armor Hud** (`armor-hud`) | Client-cosmetic. | tiny, dependency-free HUD addition. |
+| **Ars Elixirum** (`ars-elixirum`) | Moderate | deep alchemy content with one new library dep; confirm in testing that it doesn't hard-require anything beyond Fragmentum. |
+| **Auto HUD** (`autohud`) | Client-cosmetic. | Metadata Fabric-API dep is Fabric-build-only; native NeoForge build. |
+| **Barbeque's Delight [Forge/NeoForge]** (`barbeques-delight-forge`) | Minor | frictionless fit with the existing Delight stack. |
+| **Beautiful Campfires** (`beautiful-campfires`) | Minor | cheap cosmetic polish; document the oak-only recipe change in pack notes. |
+| **Better Animations Collection** (`better-animations-collection`) | Client-cosmetic. | pure atmosphere polish for one new library dep. |
+| **Better Third Person** (`better-third-person`) | Client-cosmetic. | safe, popular camera QoL with no deps; just smoke-test it while piloting Aeronautics contraptions. |
+| **BlueMap** (`bluemap`) | None | genuinely useful for a small dedicated server, but it's ops overhead (webserver, ports, configs) rather than content. |
+| **Blur+** (`blur-plus`) | Client-cosmetic | safe cosmetic; only bother if the pack wants GUI polish. |
+| **Boatload** (`boatload`) | Minor | pleasant water QoL, but chest-boat overlap with vanilla makes it low-value; needs Blueprint. |
+| **Burnt** (`burnt-basic`) | Moderate | distinctive survival flavor with controls, but server-grief/tick cost means it's a taste call, not a default. |
+| **Camera Overhaul** (`cameraoverhaul`) | Client-cosmetic | cheap and configurable, entirely a taste/accessibility call. |
+| **Certain Questing Additions** (`certain-questing-additions`) | None | nice polish for a quested pack; harmless if dropped. |
+| **Charta** (`charta`) | Minor | charming multiplayer flavor, zero risk if unused. |
+| **Cinematic Respawn** (`cinematic-respawn`) | Client-cosmetic | pleasant, zero-risk client polish; taste call on auto-respawn. |
+| **Cosy Critters & Creepy Crawlies** (`cosy-critters`) | Client-cosmetic | cheap atmosphere for explorers; skip if the ambience budget is full. |
+| **Create Waystones Recipes** (`create-waystones-recipes`) | Minor | safe; a deliberate progression/taste decision for the questbook rather than a technical one. |
+| **Create: Bells & Whistles** (`bellsandwhistles`) | Minor | strong deco value for a Create pack; verify blocks behave on Aeronautics contraptions first. |
+| **Create: Design n' Decor** (`create-design-n-decor`) | Minor | safe factory decoration; nice with the pack's Chipped/Rechiseled angle. |
+| **Create: Factory** (`create-factory`) | Minor | harmless, but the food family is already the pack's most crowded content lane; low marginal value. |
+| **Create: Structures Arise** (`create-structures-arise`) | Moderate | strong fit for a Create + exploration pack, but it thickens an already structure-saturated worldgen stack with no config knobs shipped. |
+| **Create: Teleporters** (`create-teleporters`) | Moderate | clean fit for Create logistics with no flagged conflicts; decide whether the pack wants dimensional play. |
+| **Cultural Delights** (`cultural-delights`) | Moderate | on-theme food content, but it requires adopting Cook's Collection and the Delight shelf is already crowded. |
+| **Death Count** (`death-count`) | Minor | harmless novelty for a 10-player server, though equally achievable with a one-line vanilla scoreboard datapack. |
+| **Distinct Potions** (`distinct-potions`) | Client-cosmetic | cheap visual QoL; only worth it if the pack accepts pulling in Puzzles Lib for a single client mod. |
+| **Dungeon's Delight** (`dungeons_delight`) | Moderate | thematically perfect next to the pack's existing Delight collection; sanity-check the new effect types against Apotheosis stacking. |
+| **Dynamic Crosshair** (`dynamiccrosshair`) | Client-cosmetic | pure client polish, but must be tested against ImmediatelyFast and dropped if HUD glitches appear. |
+| **Emojiful** (`emojiful`) | Client-cosmetic | fun for a 10-player social server with zero gameplay footprint. |
+| **Etched** (`etched`) | Minor | great social toy for a small server; settle the URL-content policy first. |
+| **Expanded Delight** (`expanded-delight`) | Moderate | strongly on-theme and the best-covered addon for Display Delight, but accept the author-declared beta instability or wait for stable. |
+| **ExtraDelight** (`extradelight`) | Moderate | the meatiest Delight addon in the batch and a natural kitchen-tier progression; confirm the block-entity load on the dedicated server before committing. |
+| **Fancy World Animations [FWA]** (`fwa`) | Client-cosmetic | strong client polish with a blacklist safety valve; verify against Sable/ImmediatelyFast rendering before shipping. |
+| **Farmer's Knives** (`farmers-knives`) | Minor | cheap thematic glue whose payoff is real but limited to Twilight Forest materials since the other supported tool mods aren't in the pack. |
+| **Field Guide** (`field-guide`) | Minor | excellent fit for a 10-player exploration pack; price of admission is two extra NeoForge libs. |
+| **Fishing Real** (`fishing-real`) | Minor | cheap, fun, low-risk; worth a small datapack pass to include Aquaculture species. |
+| **Followers Teleport Too** (`followers-teleport-too`) | Minor | clear QoL win with Waystones for ~10 players; costs one shared lib. |
+| **Fowl Play** (`fowlplay`) | Minor | strong ambience fit for the pack's mob roster; costs one AI lib. |
+| **Friends&Foes - Flowery Mooblooms (Forge/NeoForge)** (`friends-and-foes-flowery-mooblooms-forge`) | Minor | cheap flavor that slots into an installed mod; skip only if moobloom density is unwanted. |
+| **Fright's Delight** (`frights-delight`) | Minor | fits the pack's Delight collection; horror theme is a taste call. |
+| **GUI Effect Timer** (`gui-effect-timer`) | Client-cosmetic (informational). | tiny, safe, useful; effectively free once Collective is pinned for Followers Teleport Too. |
+| **Hearth and Harvest** (`hearth-and-harvest`) | Moderate | solid FD-family expansion; coordinate corn overlap with Haunted Harvest before adding both. |
+| **Hybrid Aquatic** (`hybrid-aquatic`) | Major | biggest content win in this batch; gate on a worldgen + Aquaculture overlap test because of the two new library pins. |
+| **Immersive Armor HUD** (`immersive-armor-hud`) | Client-cosmetic. | cheap vanilla-style HUD upgrade; minor recency caveat. |
+| **Immersive Melodies** (`immersive-melodies`) | Minor | fun multiplayer toy at essentially zero mechanical risk. |
+| **Items Displayed [NeoForge]** (`items-displayed-forge`) | Minor | safe builder content that fits the pack's decoration mods. |
+| **Keybind Atlas** (`keybind-atlas`) | None | genuinely useful in a pack this size, zero risk. |
+| **Loot Journal: Pickup Notifier** (`loot-journal`) | Client-cosmetic | nice HUD polish; in-game config means no shipped-config maintenance. |
+| **Mermod** (`mermod`) | Minor | small, cheap, fits the pack's exploration theme; low information confidence due to thin README. |
+| **Miner's Delight** (`miners-delight`) | Minor | strong thematic fit with the Delight family, but the author's own beta warning plus a new library dep argue for wait-and-see. |
+| **Mino++** (`minopp`) | Minor | charming social content with no risk surface; pure taste call. |
+| **Mob Lassos** (`mob-lassos`) | Minor-Moderate | useful QoL; check boss exclusion config before shipping to a pack with Apotheosis. |
+| **More Delight (for Farmer's Delight)** (`more-delight`) | Minor | safe, on-theme content; the Delight family is already large, so it's cumulative rather than filling a gap. |
+| **More Music Discs** (`more-music-discs`) | None-Minor | cheap flavor; verify default disc-in-every-loot-pool density is wanted. |
+| **Mystical Oak Tree** (`mystical-oak-tree`) | Minor | harmless flavor for a friends pack; nothing about it strains the stack. |
+| **Neat** (`neat`) | Client-cosmetic | mature, zero-risk combat readability; prefer over the Damage Indicator if choosing one. |
+| **Now Playing** (`now-playing`) | None | trivial, safe; most valuable if music-content mods are added. |
+| **Overweight Farming** (`overweight-farming`) | Minor | small, self-contained farming charm. |
+| **Particle Effects** (`particle-effects`) | Client-cosmetic | pure client polish, zero server footprint. |
+| **Perception** (`perception`) | Client-cosmetic | safe client ambience; optional enough that individual players could skip it. |
+| **Pet Cemetery** (`pet-cemetery`) | Minor | emotionally valuable on a friends server; verify modded-pet support first. |
+| **Piggyback** (`piggyback`) | Minor | harmless co-op fun, but requires adding Faewulf's Lib to the pack. |
+| **PlayerRevive** (`playerrevive`) | Moderate | strong social fit, but it rebalances death and needs a Gravestone interplay check. |
+| **Quick Skin** (`quick-skin`) | Client-cosmetic | client nicety; preferred over SkinChanger (newer, GUI, more features). |
+| **Realm RPG: Fallen Adventurers** (`realm-rpg-fallen-adventurers`) | Minor | easy exploration flavor; note the 1.21.1 build dates to 2025-01 (aging but stable, 2.3M downloads). |
+| **Reliquary Reincarnations** (`reliquary-reincarnations`) | Moderate | content-rich and maintained, but demands a balance pass against Apotheosis/Artifacts. |
+| **Room For Two** (`room-for-two`) | Minor | harmless fun at BETA maturity; pick it OR Sleep Tight's ecosystem, and test if both. |
+| **Skillcloaks** (`skillcloaks`) | Minor | solid Curios content on an existing dependency; consider adding Lucent for the full feature set. |
+| **Sleep Tight** (`sleep-tight`) | Moderate | popular, well-scoped sleep rework; requires adding Moonlight Lib and choosing between it and Room For Two rather than stacking blindly. |
+| **Smart Particles** (`smart-particles`) | Client-cosmetic | targeted client-side stabilizer with no server footprint; watch mixin overlap with ImmediatelyFast. |
+| **Sooty Chimneys** (`sooty-chimneys`) | Minor | safe, charming builder content with negligible cost. |
+| **Sophisticated Item Actions** (`sophisticated-item-actions`) | Minor (inventory-flow QoL, Terraria-st | genuinely new capability that plays well with the Sophisticated + JEI stack already in the pack. |
+| **Sounds** (`sound`) | Client-cosmetic. | high polish, zero server footprint; costs one new small library. |
+| **Sounds Be Gone!** (`soundsbegone`) | Client-cosmetic (no gameplay change; p | tiny, safe, real accessibility value for a 10-player group. |
+| **Spooky Doors** (`spooky-doors`) | Minor | small, charming, Balm-based and low-risk. |
+| **Supplementaries** (`supplementaries`) | Moderate | Create conflict issues all closed; NeoForge-first. Needs Moonlight Lib; smoke-test. |
+| **TarotCards: Remastered** (`tarotcards-remastered`) | Minor | clean fit for an exploration/loot pack; explicitly team-aware. |
+| **Too Many Bows** (`too-many-bows`) | Moderate | strong synergy with Better Combat and Curios already in the pack. |
+| **Too Many Paintings!** (`too-many-paintings`) | Client-cosmetic (placed paintings are  | zero-dep cosmetic content, safe on both sides. |
+| **Veggies Delight** (`veggies-delight`) | Minor | low-risk content that deepens the pack's largest content family. |
+| **Visual Workbench** (`visual-workbench`) | Minor | popular, polished Fuzs mod; costs one small library. |
+| **Visuality: Reforged** (`visuality-forge`) | Client-cosmetic. | safe client-only polish; consider whether Subtle Effects already covers the need. |
+| **What Are They Up To (Watut)** (`what-are-they-up-to`) | Minor | genuinely fun on a small friend group; costs one small library. |
+
+### MAYBE (36)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **Better Compatibility Checker** (`better-compatibility-checker`) | None. | only earns its slot if the build pipeline commits to updating its config each release. |
+| **Burnt + Additions** (`burnt`) | Moderate | the fuller variant is attractive but heavier; if fire flavor is wanted, choose this over basic deliberately (and still treat as optional). |
+| **Celestria** (`celestria`) | Minor | nice ambience, but stale build + WorldRenderer mixin on the Sodium/DH/Sable stack needs an in-pack smoke test first. |
+| **Companions!** (`companions-mod`) | Moderate | decent content but redundant with the existing mob roster and it drags in a new library; only if the pack wants more combat-pet content. |
+| **Create: Estrogen** (`create-estrogen`) | Moderate | can't be evaluated in isolation (dep is a batch candidate), self-declared in-development, and tone may not fit the pack; decide together with the Estrogen entry. |
+| **Create: Sophisticated Backpacks Compat** (`create-sophisticated-backpacks-compat`) | Minor | plausible value, but check for recipe collisions with the official Create Integration already in the pack before committing. |
+| **CreateBetterFps** (`createbetterfps`) | None | Iris + Sodium now in pack, so unblocked in principle, but it patches Create's code on the Aeronautics/Sable stack - test first. |
+| **Delightful Creators** (`delightful-creators`) | Moderate | pick one FD↔Create bridge; Slice & Dice is already installed and proven, so this needs a deliberate "both approaches" decision. |
+| **Display Case** (`displaycase`) | Client-cosmetic | fine in isolation, but choose between this and Fetzi's Displays (same batch) rather than shipping both display systems. |
+| **Dream Relics** (`dream-relics`) | Moderate | duplicate niche vs Artifacts with Apotheosis balance implications; needs a curation pass before adding. |
+| **Effectual** (`effectual`) | Client-cosmetic | duplicates Subtle Effects' niche and drags in a new lib; only add after an overlap audit, which the config-less pack model makes costly. |
+| **Environmental** (`environmental`) | Moderate | its content substantially duplicates what Terralith + Alex's Mobs already deliver, and it requires pulling in Blueprint for a single mod. |
+| **Fetzi's Displays** (`fetzis-displays`) | Client-cosmetic | good feature set but redundant with Display Case (batch) + Handcrafted; pick one display system for the pack. |
+| **Fog** (`fog`) | Client-cosmetic. | attractive but unproven next to DH/SSRD; only add after an in-game fog + DH visual test. |
+| **Gallery** (`gallery`) | Client-cosmetic (decorator QoL). | nice decorator QoL but drags in the Blueprint library for a niche feature. |
+| **Grassier Grass** (`grassier-grass`) | Client-cosmetic. | best-looking pick in the batch, but Sodium 0.8-alpha compatibility is unproven; gate on a crash/visual test. |
+| **GUI Compass** (`gui-compass`) | Client-cosmetic. | harmless, but marginal over F3 and redundant if Field Guide (with Immersive Overlays) is added. |
+| **Haunted Harvest** (`haunted-harvest`) | Minor | charming, but adds a lib, modifies villager AI, and double-buys corn with Hearth and Harvest. |
+| **Health Bars** (`new-health-bars`) | Client-cosmetic (informational). | redundant with Jade unless the group wants damage numbers; if added, de-overlap with Jade deliberately. |
+| **Incapacitated** (`incapacitated`) | Major | great co-op mechanic but changes core death rules; needs owner sign-off plus a Gravestone interaction test. |
+| **Inventory Particles** (`inventory-particles`) | Client-cosmetic. | pretty and unusually modded-item-friendly; fine as a client-side optional, but pure cosmetics. |
+| **JeremySeq's Damage Indicator** (`jeremyseqs-damage-indicator`) | Client-cosmetic | harmless, but functionally redundant with Neat if both are added; pick one combat-info mod. |
+| **Lunar** (`lunar`) | Moderate | fun server-wide content, but gravity/spawn events touching Aeronautics physics is an unquantified risk in this pack. |
+| **More Culling** (`moreculling`) | None | plausible FPS gain, but redundant-adjacent to Entity Culling and unvetted against the pack's fragile rendering core; test in isolation or skip. |
+| **Obscure Tooltips** (`obscure-tooltips`) | None | attractive but redundant with Legendary Tooltips; only add after confirming they don't fight over tooltip rendering, or as a replacement. |
+| **Primal** (`mod-primal`) | unknown | sparse documentation; inspect the wiki and jar contents before committing. |
+| **Punchy! x Tiny Takeover** (`tiny-takeover-x-punchy`) | Minor | verify whether Punchy/Tiny Takeover base mods are actually required and that the NeoForge build is real before adding. |
+| **Ragdoll Reactions** (`ragdoll-reactions`) | Minor | only alongside Sable: Ragdolls, and only after crash-testing with Aeronautics. |
+| **Sable Beyond** (`sable_beyond`) | Moderate | the most functionally attractive Aeronautics enhancement in the batch, but alpha software on the pack's most fragile stack; isolated testing and backups are mandatory. |
+| **Sable: Ragdolls** (`sable-ragdolls`) | Minor | fun, Sable-native, and unlocks two other candidates; test with Aeronautics before adopting. |
+| **Shine** (`shine`) | Client-cosmetic. | confirmed Sodium 0.8.12 compatibility, but partial feature loss on that version, overlap with Subtle Effects, and a privileged position on the fragile rendering stack. |
+| **Small Ships** (`small-ships`) | Moderate | appealing content, but a beta build with old updates parked next to Aeronautics/Sable physics; needs a dedicated compat test or should pass. |
+| **Sophisticated Inventory Interactions** (`sophisticated-inventory-interactions`) | Minor (pure inventory-management QoL). | good mod, but it replaces rather than stacks with Client Sort; pick one container-sorting solution. |
+| **Spawn** (`spawn-mod`) | Major | substantial content but collides with the pack's curated worldgen and mob roster; needs Teal Lib and dedicated testing before inclusion. |
+| **Spawn Animations** (`spawn-animations`) | None | mild flourish; if wanted, use the datapack form to dodge the Fabric dep chain rather than the mod. |
+| **Tree Physics** (`tree-physics`) | Moderate | the most on-theme Sable use possible, but per-tree physics sub-levels on the Aeronautics stack demand a dev-server soak test before shipping. |
+
+### SKIP (36)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **AAA Particles** (`aaa-particles`) | Client-cosmetic. | a library with no in-pack consumer; standalone value is only a lightning visual swap. |
+| **AAA Particles: World** (`aaa-particles-world`) | Client-cosmetic. | purely cosmetic addon whose required base (AAA Particles) is itself a skip. |
+| **Abnormals Delight** (`abnormals-delight`) | Minor (and in this pack, near-zero). | required Blueprint dep plus an ecosystem (Team Abnormals) the pack doesn't run; mostly dead content. |
+| **Alex's Mobs Continued** (`alexs-mobs-continued`) | Overhaul (if it *replaced* the existin | direct duplicate of an existing pack mod; would only ever be a 1:1 swap project. |
+| **Ars Ocultas** (`ars-ocultas`) | Moderate if Occultism were present; in | required dependency Occultism is absent from both the pack and this batch. |
+| **AsyncParticles** (`asyncparticles`) | None (pure client optimization). | a named crash interaction with in-pack C2ME that the pack cannot pre-configure, plus beta render-layer mixins against the fragile Sable/Create stack; revisit only if particle load measurably hurts cli |
+| **ATMOSPHERICS** (`atmospherics`) | Client-cosmetic. | visual upside not worth the risk on the Sodium+DH+SSRD stack; no shader-adjacent additions should ride on that axis per pack rules. |
+| **BadOptimizations** (`badoptimizations`) | None. | marginal, hard-to-measure gains on a stack that already covers these areas (constraint 6); not worth extra mixin surface for a ~4% synthetic-FPS delta per the author's own screenshots. |
+| **Berry Good** (`berry-good`) | Minor. | an entire additional library dependency (Blueprint) for one minor placement QoL; revisit only if the pack adopts Team Abnormals mods wholesale. |
+| **Carry On + Create Aeronautics Compat** (`carryon-aeronautics-compat`) | Moderate (when it applied); effectivel | self-declared obsolete (fix upstreamed to Carry On 2.2.6+), base mod absent, documented server-hang known issue. |
+| **Carry On Extend** (`carry-on-extend`) | Minor | dead on arrival without Carry On; revisit only if the pack adopts Carry On itself. |
+| **Chef's Delight - Farmer's Delight Villagers** (`chefs-delight`) | Minor (if it worked) | 1.21.1 build is bound to FD Refabricated, which conflicts with the pack's existing Farmer's Delight. |
+| **Create Sable Dynamic Lights** (`create-sable-dynamic-lights`) | Client-cosmetic | requires a second dynamic-lights engine that duplicates LambDynamicLights and couples to the fragile Sodium/Sable version pin. |
+| **Create: Dynamic Lights** (`create-dynamic-lights`) | Client-cosmetic | redundant with LambDynamicLights, wrong rendering stack assumptions (Embeddium/Rubidium), and its niche is better covered (or deliberately declined) elsewhere. |
+| **Dynamic Trees** (`dynamictrees`) | Major | a transformative tree overhaul whose coverage against the pack's 10+ worldgen mods is unverified and which demands config curation the pack explicitly does not ship. |
+| **Early Bedtime** (`early-bedtime`) | Minor | solves a shader-specific problem this shaderless pack doesn't have, at the cost of adopting TxniLib. |
+| **Estrogen** (`estrogen`) | Moderate | meme-toned content whose headline feature alters player movement near a fragile physics stack, and which costs two extra pieces (Cynosure + separate Create module) for weak fit. |
+| **Even More Instruments!** (`evenmoreinstruments`) | Minor | abandoned per its own README and requires Genshin Instruments, which the pack does not have. |
+| **Horror messages** (`horror-messages`) | None | chat-spam gimmick; only defensible if the pack deliberately becomes a horror pack. |
+| **Immersive UI** (`immersive-ui`) | Client-cosmetic. | two extra libraries for cosmetic overlap with Inventory Particles; poor value per pin. |
+| **Immersive Winds** (`immersive-winds`) | Client-cosmetic. | Sinytra-only NeoForge support is a red flag by pack policy, and Grassier Grass already covers sway if that's added. |
+| **More Relics** (`more-relics`) | Moderate | needs a missing base mod + two libraries, carries self-documented version-pin fragility, and duplicates the Artifacts niche the pack already covers. |
+| **Net Music: Better Experience** (`net-music-play-list`) | None-Minor | dependent on an absent streaming-music base mod with service/licensing baggage; poor fit. |
+| **Open Parties and Claims** (`open-parties-and-claims`) | Overhaul of base-protection/social sys | direct duplicate of FTB Chunks + FTB Teams; would only make sense as a wholesale replacement, which contradicts the installed FTB Quests/Chunks/Teams chain. |
+| **Pixelmon** (`pixelmon`) | Overhaul | total-conversion-scale content that steamrolls the pack's identity, worldgen, and mob budget. |
+| **Puddles & Floods** (`puddles-floods`) | Client-cosmetic | Fabric-API-derived dependency (red flag) for a cosmetic payoff with real server tick cost; revisit only if the pack accepts Forgified Fabric API. |
+| **Refined Storage - JEI Integration** (`refined-storage-jei-integration`) | None in this pack | dead weight without Refined Storage. |
+| **Relics: Arcane Abilities** (`arcane-abilities`) | Moderate | its own README requires Relics + Hammer Lib (missing); would need both plus a balance review to reconsider. |
+| **Sable: Ragdoll Corpse** (`sable-ragdoll-corpse`) | Minor | Gravestone already owns this job; stacking two death-item systems on the Sable physics stack adds fragility for no new capability. |
+| **SkinChanger** (`skinchanger`) | Client-cosmetic. | redundant with Quick Skin (GUI, HD skins, animated capes) and stale: last updated 2024-10-26 vs. Quick Skin's 2026-09-28. |
+| **Sophisticated Sorter** (`sophisticated-sorter`) | Minor. | redundant with Client Sort in-pack and with Sophisticated Inventory Interactions in this same batch; side metadata is also "unknown" for both sides. |
+| **Spawn Animations Compats** (`spawn-animations-compats`) | None. | only meaningful if Spawn Animations is added, and its supported mob list barely overlaps this pack. |
+| **Tooltip Overhaul** (`tooltip-overhaul`) | Client-cosmetic. | collides with Legendary Tooltips; the pack should carry one tooltip restyler, and it already does. |
+| **Veil** (`veil`) | None by itself | rendering-engine tooling with no dependent mod in the pack, on the most fragile part of the stack. |
+| **VinURL** (`vinurl`) | Minor (custom music per player). | Connector red flag, runtime binary downloads, and licensing minefield; not worth it for jukebox music. |
+| **Welcome Screen** (`welcome-screen`) | None. | 2-3 new dependencies for a screen a server MOTD/pin note can replace. |
+
+### ALREADY-IN-PACK (9)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **Apothic Combat** (`apothic-combat`) | Major (as installed) | duplicates the pack's existing Apothic Combat entry. |
+| **Aquaculture 2** (`aquaculture`) | Moderate (as installed). | exact duplicate of the existing Aquaculture 2 entry. |
+| **Aquaculture Delight** (`aquaculture-delight`) | Minor (as installed). | exact duplicate of the existing Aquaculture Delight entry. |
+| **Ars Creo** (`ars-creo`) | Moderate (as installed). | duplicate of the existing Ars Creo entry; the "missing dep" line is a dead-ID artifact, not a real gap. |
+| **Create Aeronautics: Compatibility** (`create-aeronautics-compatability`) | Moderate | duplicates the existing "Create Aeronautics: Compatibility" entry in the pack list; do not add a second copy. |
+| **Nature's Compass** (`natures-compass`) | N/A | byte-for-byte duplicate of the existing Nature's Compass entry; drop from the candidate list. |
+| **Separate Sable Render Distance** (`ssrd`) | None | duplicate of the pack's existing SSRD entry; exclude from the candidate list. |
+| **Sophisticated Backpacks Create Integration** (`sophisticated-backpacks-create-integration`) | Minor (already shipped; storage automa | exact duplicate of the pack's own Sophisticated Backpacks Create Integration entry. |
+| **Sophisticated Storage Create Integration** (`sophisticated-storage-create-integration`) | Minor (already shipped). | exact duplicate of the pack's own Sophisticated Storage Create Integration entry. |
+
+### ADDED (2)
+
+| Mod | Impact | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **Iris Shaders** (`iris`) | Overhaul | Already added on branch mod-pack-additions (see Post-review update). |
+| **Iris Veil Compat** (`iris-veil-compat`) | None | Already added on branch mod-pack-additions (see Post-review update). |
+
+## 7. Skip list — the 36 I would not add, by reason
+
+### 7.1 Render-stack violations (updated)
+
+**`Iris Shaders` and `Iris Veil Compat` are no longer skips — they are now `ADDED` on the
+`mod-pack-additions` branch (Section 0).** The entries below remain rejected.
+
+| Mod | Reason |
+| --- | --- |
+| **ATMOSPHERICS** | Rewrites sky/fog/cloud rendering. It already clashed with the Sodium + DH + SSRD axis and warned about Sodium *"Improved Transparency"*; now it also fights the shaderpacks' own sky/fog. |
+| **Veil** | Already **embedded inside Sable**; adding it standalone duplicates the render engine. |
+| **Fog** | Fog/sky coverage the newly added shaderpacks already provide; Distant Horizons compatibility is an open upstream question. |
+
+**(updated)** The previously listed `Iris Shaders`, `Iris Veil Compat` and `CreateBetterFps` moved:
+`iris`/`iris-veil-compat` to **ADDED**; `CreateBetterFps` to **MAYBE** (its blocker was *"1.21.1 needs
+Sodium and Iris"*, and Iris is now present, but it patches Create's code on the Aeronautics/Sable stack).
+`Shine` and `Grassier Grass` stay **MAYBE**; both are Sodium-coupled and now also sit next to a real
+shader pipeline.
+
+### 7.2 Fabric-only / Sinytra Connector dependency (hard)
+| Mod | Reason |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Immersive Winds** | README: *"NEOFORGE REQUIRES SINYTRA TO RUN, ALL MOD FILES ARE FABRIC."* |
+| **VinURL** | Sinytra + Forgified Fabric API + owo-lib, **and** it auto-downloads and executes `yt-dlp`/`deno`/`FFmpeg` at runtime — supply-chain and licensing exposure on the server. |
+| **Puddles & Floods** | Requires Forgified Fabric API for a cosmetic puddle effect with real rain-driven tick cost. |
+
+### 7.3 Dead dependency / missing base mod (hard)
+| Mod | Reason |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Ars Ocultas** | Requires **Occultism**, absent from pack and list. |
+| **Carry On Extend** | Requires **Carry On**, absent. |
+| **Carry On + Create Aeronautics Compat** | Author-declared **obsolete** (fix upstreamed to Carry On 2.2.6+); base absent; documented server-hang on picking up players onto contraptions. |
+| **Net Music: Better Experience** | Requires **Net Music**, an external NetEase streaming service with login/licensing baggage. |
+| **Refined Storage – JEI Integration** | Requires **Refined Storage**, absent — the pack uses Sophisticated Storage. |
+| **Relics: Arcane Abilities** | README requires **Relics + Hammer Lib** (contradicting its metadata); both absent. |
+| **Even More Instruments!** | Author has **retired** the project; requires **Genshin Instruments**, absent. |
+| **AAA Particles / AAA Particles: World** | A library with no consumer mod in this pack; the addon depends on the skipped base. |
+| **Spawn Animations Compats** | Only meaningful with Spawn Animations, and its supported mob list barely overlaps this pack (Alex's Mobs is not on it). |
+
+### 7.4 Duplication — the pack already owns this (hard)
+| Mod | Duplicates |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Alex's Mobs Continued** | The installed **Alex's Mobs (Unofficial Port)** — same mod/ID namespace; only a 1:1 swap is possible. |
+| **Open Parties and Claims** | **FTB Chunks + FTB Teams** (and FTB Quests assumes that ecosystem). Two claim systems = split protection logic. |
+| **Sable: Ragdoll Corpse** | **Gravestone** (which already ships Sable + Curios compat) — two death-item systems on the physics stack. |
+| **SkinChanger** | **Quick Skin** (newer, GUI, HD skins); SkinChanger is stale (2024-10). |
+| **Sophisticated Sorter** | **Client Sort** (installed). Three-way overlap with Sophisticated Inventory Interactions. |
+| **Tooltip Overhaul** | **Legendary Tooltips** — the pack should carry one tooltip restyler. |
+| **Create: Dynamic Lights** / **Create Sable Dynamic Lights** | **LambDynamicLights** (installed) — a second dynamic-lights engine; both also assume Embeddium/Rubidium or Sodium Dynamic Lights and recommend the banned shader stack. |
+| **Chef's Delight** | Its 1.21.1 builds target **Farmer's Delight Refabricated**, a colliding reimplementation of the installed Farmer's Delight. |
+
+### 7.5 Wrong shape for this pack — scale, worldgen, or marginal value
+| Mod | Reason |
+| --- | --- |
+| **Pixelmon** | Total-conversion scale (1000+ entities, its own structures/economy); its README recommends a dedicated Pixelmon pack. Would steamroll the pack identity, worldgen and mob budget. |
+| **Dynamic Trees** | Transformative tree overhaul with unverified coverage across 10+ worldgen mods and no config shipped. |
+| **Estrogen / Create: Estrogen** | Meme content; movement-dash mechanic near the Sable physics stack; needs Cynosure + the Create module. |
+| **More Relics** | Needs the absent Relics base + two libs; self-documented version-pin fragility; duplicates the Artifacts niche. |
+| **AsyncParticles** | Documents a C2ME crash (in-pack) that needs a config edit; beta render-layer mixins against the Sable/Create axis. A candidate for a later test, not now. |
+| **BadOptimizations** | Marginal gains on an already-saturated client perf stack; author's own screenshots show ~4%. |
+| **Welcome Screen** | Three new libraries (FancyMenu + Necronomicon + Better Compatibility Checker) for a cosmetic first-join screen. |
+| **Horror messages** | Chat-spam gimmick; tone mismatch with the pack. |
+| **Immersive UI** | Two libraries for cosmetic overlap with Inventory Particles. |
+| **Early Bedtime** | Solves a shader-only darkness problem this pack does not have; costs TxniLib. |
+| **Abnormals Delight / Berry Good** | Require **Blueprint** for content that is inert (no Team Abnormals mods) or tiny. |
+| **Sophisticated Sorter / SkinChanger** | (See duplication above.) |
+
+---
+
+## 8. Swap candidates — is replacing an installed mod justified?
+
+Yes, for a small number of pairs — but the bar is higher than "the new one is shinier". A swap is only
+worth it when the candidate is **(a) strictly more capable or better maintained, (b) no worse against
+the fragile stack** (Sodium/DH/SSRD/Sable/Create), and **(c) safe for existing worlds** (entity/item
+IDs, already-generated chunks, claims, quest data). Otherwise the incumbent wins by default.
+
+The newly fetched branch is itself an example of a justified swap: the pack's "no shaders" stance was
+replaced only because purpose-built compatibility patches (`iris-veil-compat`, `aeronautics-iris-fix`)
+neutralised the specific blocker.
+
+| Installed mod | Candidate replacement | Case for swapping | Case against | Recommendation |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **Alex's Mobs (Unofficial Port)** | **Alex's Mobs Continued** | Actively-maintained continuation, same content, deliberately Citadel-free (bundles what it needs); removes reliance on an unofficial port. | Two forks of one mod: entity/item IDs and NBT may differ, so an in-place swap can orphan tamed mobs/items. Citadel still needed by Alex's Caves. | **Evaluate on a world copy.** Best maintenance swap on the list, not urgent. |
+| **Client Sort** | **Sophisticated Inventory Interactions** | Built on Sophisticated Core (installed); adds GUI search, container↔player transfer, remembered searches; deepens an existing pillar. | Newer/less proven; keybind and sort-button overlap; sorts containers, not the whole UI. | **Plausible upgrade — test UI collisions.** Do not also add Sophisticated Sorter. |
+| **Legendary Tooltips** | **Obscure Tooltips** | Animated styling plus in-tooltip 3D gear previews — a real capability gain. | Adds Fragmentum; per-frame cost; coexistence unverified, so it must be a *swap*, never a stack. | **Swap-or-keep, never both.** |
+| **LambDynamicLights** | **Sodium Dynamic Lights + Create Sable Dynamic Lights** | Would light moving Create contraptions and Aeronautics sub-levels, which LambDynamicLights does not. | SDL is coupled to the exact Sodium alpha Sable pins, and the Create mods assume Embeddium/Rubidium or the shader ecosystem. Trades a stable engine-agnostic mod for a version-fragile one. | **Do not swap now.** Revisit if contraption lighting becomes a pain point. |
+| **Gravestone (+ Sable/Curios compat)** | **Sable: Ragdoll Corpse** | Novel physics-corpse recovery, Sable-native. | Gravestone is proven and already Sable/Curios-patched; two death-item systems risk item-loss precedence bugs on the physics stack. | **Keep Gravestone.** |
+| **FTB Chunks + FTB Teams** | **Open Parties and Claims** | More granular party/claim permissions; LuckPerms/FTB Ranks hooks. | Wholesale replacement breaks FTB Quests/Teams and FTB's permission model; two claim systems cannot coexist. | **Keep FTB.** |
+| **Client Sort** | **Sophisticated Sorter** | Sophisticated styling. | Less proven, unknown side metadata, duplicates Client Sort *and* Sophisticated Inventory Interactions. | **No** — if replacing, choose Sophisticated Inventory Interactions. |
+| **Slice & Dice** | **Delightful Creators** | Different FD↔Create automation flavor (fluids/soups vs sequenced assembly). | Slice & Dice is installed and proven; running both duplicates recipes and clutters JEI. | **Only as a deliberate flavor swap**, never alongside. |
+| **EntityCulling** | **More Culling** | — | Different scope (entities vs block/other culling); complementary, not alternatives. | **Not a swap.** |
+| *(no skin mod installed)* | **SkinChanger vs Quick Skin** | — | — | If adding one, **Quick Skin** (newer, GUI, HD skins, animated capes). |
+
+**Swap mechanics note:** packwiz makes the file change trivial, but the risk lives in the world. For any
+swap that touches registered content (Alex's Mobs, dynamic lights, death handling), test on a **copy of
+the live world** and diff entity/item IDs. Structural swaps (claim system, sorting UI, tooltip layer)
+mostly affect client UI and are lower risk, but still change player muscle memory.
+
+---
+
+## 9. Dependency economics and the collision map
+
+### 9.1 New libraries the candidates would introduce
+Ordered by how many candidates each unlocks. **Bold** = recommended if you adopt that family.
+
+| Library | Unlocks | Recommendation |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **Puzzles Lib** | Held Item Tooltips, Visual Workbench, Distinct Potions, Health Bars, Mob Lassos, Better Animations Collection | Buy once — high value |
+| **Moonlight Lib** | Supplementaries, Sleep Tight, Haunted Harvest | Buy once — high value; also a Supplementaries prerequisite |
+| Blueprint | Environmental, Pet Cemetery, Gallery, Boatload, Berry Good, Abnormals Delight | Only if you adopt several |
+| Fragmentum | Accents, Ars Elixirum, Obscure Tooltips, Loot Journal | Only if you adopt several |
+| Collective | Followers Teleport Too, GUI Compass, GUI Effect Timer | Cheap; bundle or skip |
+| **Almanac** | Let Me Despawn | Buy (core pick) |
+| MRU | Sounds, Fog | Cheap; pairs well |
+| TxniLib | Early Bedtime, Immersive Armor HUD | Only if adopting |
+| Delight Lib / Lodestone / Cook's Collection / Deimos / SmartBrainLib / CoroUtil / Faewulf's Lib / Teal Lib / MidnightLib / TLib / MossyLib / Knight Lib | one Delight/utility candidate each | Weigh individually |
+| Item Descriptions + Immersive Overlays | Field Guide | Two libs for one mod |
+| Hybrid API + Biolith | Hybrid Aquatic | Gate on a worldgen test |
+| Sable: Ragdolls | Ragdoll Reactions (and the skipped corpse mod) | Only with Aeronautics crash-testing |
+| Sinytra Connector + Forgified Fabric API | VinURL, Immersive Winds, Puddles & Floods | **Avoid** |
+
+### 9.2 Candidate-vs-candidate collisions (pick one)
+- **Mob health UI:** Neat vs JeremySeq's Damage Indicator
+- **Tooltip restyler:** Obscure Tooltips vs existing Legendary Tooltips (prefer existing)
+- **Display furniture:** Display Case vs Fetzi's Displays (+ existing Handcrafted)
+- **Corn crop:** Hearth and Harvest vs Haunted Harvest
+- **Grass sway:** Grassier Grass vs Immersive Winds (Immersive Winds is Fabric-only — Grassier Grass wins)
+- **Carried-item particles:** Immersive UI (skipped) vs Inventory Particles
+- **HUD coordinates:** GUI Compass vs Field Guide's Immersive Overlays dependency
+- **Pet teleport:** Waystones Teleport Pets vs Followers Teleport Too
+- **Container sorting:** Client Sort (installed) vs Sophisticated Inventory Interactions / Sophisticated Sorter
+- **Sleep overhaul:** Room For Two vs Sleep Tight
+- **Fire flavor:** Burnt vs Burnt + Additions (never both)
+- **FD↔Create bridge:** Slice & Dice (installed) vs Delightful Creators
+
+### 9.3 Test-first items (not rejections — gates)
+| Candidate | Gate |
+| --- | --- |
+| Supplementaries | Create 6.0.10 smoke test (old conflicts are closed) |
+| CreateBetterFps | Iris now present, but it patches Create directly — test on the Aeronautics/Sable stack |
+| Grassier Grass | Sodium 0.8.12/0.8.13-alpha compatibility; custom terrain shader; interaction with shaderpacks |
+| Fog | Distant Horizons/SSRD visual test (upstream DH issue history); shaderpack fog already covers this |
+| Shine | Sodium 0.8.12+ confirmed, but partial feature loss on the pinned alpha |
+| More Culling | Rendering-core test next to EntityCulling/Sable/DH |
+| Tree Physics | Dev-server soak test; per-tree Sable physics sub-levels |
+| Sable Beyond | Alpha software; backup + crash-test with Aeronautics |
+| Ragdoll Reactions / Sable: Ragdolls | Crash-test with Aeronautics before adopting the cluster |
+| Lunar | Gravity/spawn events vs Create Aeronautics physics + Apothic Spawners |
+| AutoHUD | Confirm the NeoForge jar's real dependency list (metadata artifact) |
+| Spawn Animations | Confirm NeoForge jar deps; prefer the datapack form |
+| Hybrid Aquatic | Terralith/Tectonic/Lithostitched worldgen + Aquaculture loot overlap |
+| Dream Relics / Reliquary / Too Many Bows | Balance pass vs Apotheosis + Artifacts |
+| PlayerRevive / Incapacitated | Gravestone interplay; owner sign-off on death-rule changes |
+
+---
+
+## 10. Adoption plan
+
+**Phase A — Core cohort (this is the recommendation).** Add the 20 mods in Section 4 plus
+`Moonlight Lib` and `Almanac`. Expected result: a noticeably richer QoL/exploration/decor layer,
+one clear server-perf gain (`lmd`), zero new render/physics risk, no config maintenance.
+
+**Phase B — Pick one expansion family.** Choose **one** of: (a) Farmer's Delight expansion, (b) Create
+decoration, (c) client ambience, (d) mobs/combat gear. Adopt its shared library and 3–6 mods. Run a
+`/spark health` baseline before and after.
+
+**Phase C — Test-first candidates on a dev server.** Take the Section 9.3 gates one at a time, one
+variable per run, with backups. Promote only what survives.
+
+**Phase D — Server infrastructure.** Decide on BlueMap (ops cost) and the FTB Chunks tuning already
+recommended in `FINDINGS.md`; neither is urgent game content.
+
+**Never / not without a rewrite:** Sinytra-Connector dependency chains, a second dynamic-lights engine,
+and a second claim system. (Shaders are no longer on this list — the pack has adopted them with purpose-
+built compat patches; see Section 0.)
+
+---
+
+## 11. Appendix — detailed per-mod assessments
+
+The full per-candidate breakdown (Adds / Relationship / Missing deps / Gameplay impact /
+Compatibility / Perf cost / Verdict, with citations where web sources were used) is retained:
+
+- Raw per-chunk assessments: `analysis/assess/chunk01.md` … `chunk07.md`
+  (27 mods each, 189 total). `analysis/CANDIDATE-APPENDIX.md` consolidates these and carries a
+  corrections note (Section 2).
+- **Grouped decision table (start here for “which should I add?”): `MODLIST-GROUPS.md`** — every
+  candidate by purpose, with what it brings, new deps, gameplay impact, verdict and the watch-out.
+- Machine-readable candidate data: `analysis/summary.json` (title, side, loaders, 1.21.1 build,
+  required deps, in-pack flag) and `analysis/verdicts.json`.
+- Research digest used for the assessments: `analysis/chunks/chunk*.md`,
+  `analysis/raw/projects.json`, `analysis/raw/versions.json`.
+- Pack context given to the reviewers: `analysis/PACK-CONTEXT.md`.
+
+### Confidence legend used throughout
+- **High** — read from Modrinth/loader metadata, the mod's own README, or the pack's own files.
+- **Medium** — inferred from the README, or a compatibility claim from a third-party source.
+- **Unknown/unverified** — evidence absent; the report says so rather than guessing.

analysis/archive/2026-09-candidate-review/PACK-CONTEXT.md

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+# Onion MC — pack context for candidate-mod assessment
+
+## Target platform
+- Minecraft **1.21.1**, **NeoForge 21.1.251** (packwiz). Loader = NeoForge. Forge-only mods
+  generally work; Fabric-only mods do **not** work without Sinytra Connector (a red flag).
+- Mixed **client + dedicated server** pack (~10 players). Server performance matters as much
+  as client FPS.
+- Existing pack: ~142 mod entries (133 Modrinth + 9 CurseForge).
+
+## Existing mods (titles, for compatibility reasoning)
+3D Skin Layers, Adorable Hamster Pets, Alex's Caves (Unofficial Port), Alex's Mobs (Unofficial
+Port), AllTheLeaks, AmbientSounds, Apotheosis (+ Apothic Attributes, Apothic Category Compat,
+Apothic Combat, Apothic Enchanting, Apothic Spawners), AppleSkin, Aquaculture 2, Aquaculture
+Delight, Architectury API, Ars Creo, Ars Nouveau, Ars Nouveau's Flavors & Delight, Artifacts,
+Athena, BaguetteLib, Balm, Better Combat, Bookshelf, Chipped, Chunky, Citadel (unofficial port),
+Client Sort, Cloth Config, Collapsible Groups, Controlify, Create, Create Aeronautics, Create
+Aeronautics: Compatibility, Create: Dragons Plus, Create: Enchantment Industry, Create Slice &
+Dice, CreativeCore, Cristel Lib, Critters and Companions, Curios API, Distant Horizons, Duper's
+Auto Walk, Dynamic FPS, EMF (Entity Model Features), Emotecraft, Enchantment Descriptions, End's
+Delight, Entity Culling, ETF (Entity Texture Features), Explorer's Compass, Explorify, Exposure,
+Farmer's Cutting: Twilight Forest, Farmer's Delight, FerriteCore, Friends&Foes, FTB Backups 3,
+FTB Chunks, FTB Library, FTB Quests, FTB Teams, FTB XMod Compat, Fusion, Fzzy Config, Geckolib,
+Gravestone (+ Sable & Curios compat), Handcrafted, Iceberg, ImmediatelyFast, Incendium, Jade,
+Jade Sable Compat, JEI, Kotlin for Forge, LambDynamicLights, Legendary Tooltips, Lithium,
+Lithostitched, Lootr, Macaw's (Bridges/Doors/Lights/Roofs/Windows), MezzConfig, ModernFix,
+Mouse Tweaks, Mowzie's Mobs, Nature's Compass, Noisium, Nullscape, Ocean's Delight, Patchouli,
+Ping Wheel, Placebo, playerAnimator, Prickle, Prism, Rechiseled (+ Chipped), Resourceful Lib,
+Sable, Sable Physics Compat, SSRD, Sodium, Sophisticated Backpacks (+ Create Integration),
+Sophisticated Core, Sophisticated Storage (+ Create Integration), Sound Physics Remastered,
+spark, Sparse Structures, Subtle Effects, SuperMartijn642's Config/Core Lib, Tectonic, Terralith,
+The Twilight Forest, Tiny Dragons, Towns and Towers, Twilight's Flavor & Delight, Waystones
+(+ Sable), When Dungeons Arise, Wings Of Fire, YACL, YUNG's API + 9 YUNG's structure mods,
+C2ME, Noisium.
+
+## Hard constraints / known landmines (do not contradict these)
+1. **No shaders.** `Create Aeronautics` README says it has visual issues with **Iris**; SSRD also
+   warns certain Iris packs cause rendering issues. The pack deliberately has no Iris/Oculus.
+2. **Sodium must stay >= 0.8.12-alpha.2.** `sable` declares older Sodium incompatible.
+3. **Create declares `radium` and `palladium` incompatible.** Never add them. Avoid server-perf
+   mods that wholesale replace the chunk/lighting engine in ways Lithium/ModernFix already cover.
+4. **SSRD requires Sodium + Distant Horizons**, and DH must be >= 1.8.7 for SSRD (already).
+5. **Sable is self-described as "incredibly intrusive", mixin-heavy, prone to compat issues.**
+   Treat any mod that touches Create/Sable rendering or physics as high-risk.
+6. Client perf stack already includes: Sodium, Lithium, ModernFix, FerriteCore, EntityCulling,
+   ImmediatelyFast, Dynamic FPS, AllTheLeaks, C2ME, Noisium, EMF/ETF, Distant Horizons. Assume
+   overlap when a candidate is another perf/culling/memory mod.
+7. Pack ships **no configs** except one FTB Chunks client file (`.packwizignore` excludes
+   `config/*`), so any candidate that needs config editing is a maintenance cost.
+8. `sky/weather/render`-engine replacements (Veil, Iris, shaders) sit on the most fragile part of
+   the stack (Sodium + DH + Sable).
+
+## Existing content families a candidate may enhance or duplicate
+- **Farming/food:** Farmer's Delight + Ars Delight, Aquaculture Delight, End's Delight, Ocean's
+  Delight, Twilight's Flavor & Delight, Farmer's Cutting: Twilight Forest.
+- **Create:** base Create + Aeronautics + Dragons Plus + Enchantment Industry + Slice & Dice, plus
+  Sophisticated Backpacks/Storage Create integrations.
+- **Aquaculture 2** already present.
+- **Exploration:** Terralith, Tectonic, Incendium, Nullscape, Towns and Towers, When Dungeons
+  Arise, 9 YUNG's mods, Explorify, Sparse Structures.
+- **Mobs:** Alex's Mobs/Caves, Mowzie's Mobs, Friends&Foes, Critters and Companions, Tiny Dragons,
+  Wings of Fire, Adorable Hamster Pets.
+- **QoL/HUD:** AppleSkin, Jade, JEI, Client Sort, Mouse Tweaks, Ping Wheel, Nature's Compass,
+  Explorer's Compass, Waystones, Gravestone, Lootr, Controlify, Emotecraft, 3D Skin Layers,
+  Enchantment Descriptions, Legendary Tooltips, Subtle Effects, Rechiseled/Chipped/Handcrafted.
+- **Apotheosis** governs affixes, spawners, enchanting, bosses, world tiers.
+- **Better Combat x Apotheosis Compat** (apothic-combat) is already installed — it disables the
+  attack-range attribute and makes the attack-range affix inert.
+
+## Deliverable requested from the subagent
+A per-mod structured assessment. Be evidence-based: use the supplied Modrinth README excerpt as
+the primary source; use `web_search`/`read_url` only to resolve genuine uncertainty (notable
+incompatibilities, hard dependencies, whether a mod is abandoned, whether it conflicts with
+anything in the existing list). Never invent compatibility claims. Mark confidence.