Age 1 was a heck of a ride. Things have started to get grindy!
This post will cover the start of Age 2 as Age 2 seems to be much longer than the previous 2. Through this stage, I found myself stumbling through mods which I have never before seen and am quite impressed by.
Sparkly Gold
The first thing we did when we progressed to Age 2 was to look for ore. We wanted to find hematite, but was instantly greeted by a vein of gold ore instead, right beside our base. We dug down to it and quickly dug it all out. There was a lot of lava around the vein and we unfortunately lost some pieces. This gold ore was eventually enough to sustain us through almost the entirety of Age 2.
We saw that the progression tree required us to progress through Astral Sorcery in order to finish Age 2. We wanted to shake things up a little bit before we progressed, so we covered the other advancements first. Seeing that the Betweenlands mod was installed and we have never tried it out before, we tackled that first.
Rafts
We made some rafts to get us to the Swamp where we would find the altar to make the Swamp Talisman, which is required to open a portal to the Betweenlands. The raft has a great model but is rather slow.
Swamp Altar
We arrived at the altar and destroyed a bunch of Druids to obtain the pieces required to make the Swamp Talisman. The formation of the item on the altar was very interesting to look at and objectively one of the best animations I have seen in-game.
Portal Tree
When I right-clicked a sapling with my Swamp Talisman, this gigantic tree appeared! It took me a while to figure out how to get into the portal (standing in it for a period of time just like a vanilla Nether portal).
When I phased into the Betweenlands, I was spawned in a wall and suffocated to death. I spent the following 3 hours trying to find my grave and rage-quit a couple times.
Evil Creatures
This thing is a Chiromaw. While it only has 5 hearts of health, it takes a while to kill it if you're using your fist because you lost all your equipment in a wall.
Once I got my items back, I could finally appreciate how much of a masterpiece this mod is. The sprawling swampland with detailed fine flora and fauna scattered amongst the murky waters and Weedwood Trees was a sight to behold. I was deeply impressed by the intricate, immersive textures and the complex block models which somehow fit entirely into the game. Unfortunately, so far, the progression tree in SevTech: Ages required little of this mod. Our spelunking gathered us a volley of interesting ores and metals which have special uses. Due to limited equipment in the overworld, I adopted Octine tools from the Betweenlands as my primary tool material. TehPiyoNoob managed to get his hands on some Valonite and used those instead.
Valiant Armor
TehPiyoNoob is clothed in a shiny new set of gear (minus the boots).
Despite the greatness of the mod, I have yet to venture further into it since the progression did not require me to do so yet. From JEI, however, I saw a plethora of intriguing machinery like the Animator and Alembic, as well as all kinds of weaponry like the Shockwave Sword and Hag Hacker.