Getting Started with The Remain Mod Pack: Surviving the First 10 Days
Remain isn’t your typical Minecraft modpack. It’s a survival challenge set in a world where relentless zombie hordes, escaped SCP anomalies, and extreme weather make every moment a battle for survival. In Hardcore mode, every decision matters—one mistake could mean the end. If you’re up for the challenge, here’s your guide to surviving the first 10 days and beyond. Get it here on Curseforge.
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Starting Strong
Flint tools are your first priority. Unlike in vanilla Minecraft, punching trees won’t get you anywhere. To get started, search for sticks scattered on the ground and find gravel to collect raw flint. Once you’ve gathered flint, right-click it on stone blocks to craft usable flint.
With your flint, craft a flint knife by combining one stick and one piece of flint. Use the knife to cut grass and gather plant fibers, which are essential for crafting rope. Once you have rope, combine it with flint and sticks to craft a flint axe. This allows you to chop trees and collect logs.
Even then, crafting works differently in Remain. Place logs in your offhand and use the flint knife in your main hand to right-click and create blocks of wood. Burn these blocks using a short-lived fire made from plant fiber piles to produce tough blocks of wood. These are required for crafting wood tools and progressing further.
Progressing to Wood and Stone
Advancing to stone tools is your next goal. Use tough blocks of wood to craft a pickaxe and other essential tools. This allows you to mine stone, craft furnaces, and purify water—critical for managing your thirst. Unlike in standard Minecraft, eating food doesn’t regenerate health. Use bandages to heal injuries and recover your health.
During this time, find a shelter to call home, such as a gas station or garage. These locations often contain valuable loot, such as compressed iron boots or golden apples. Seal off entrances, light the area, and start salvaging materials from nearby buildings to fortify your base.
Fortify and Gather Resources
The days before the horde require preparation. Expand your base and strengthen your defenses. Brick walls or other salvaged materials make excellent barriers against zombies. Focus on gathering resources like food, water, and bandages to keep yourself sustained through tough nights. Explore cautiously to find iron, diamonds, and redstone for advanced tools.
For bandages you'll need string and wool. You can grow hemp for string, and salvage wool from the highways. Many of the blocks in abandoned cars and trucks are made of wool.
Tornadoes and SCP anomalies add additional risk. Tornadoes can sweep you (and mobs) into the air, potentially dropping you far from safety. If you get caught in one, aim to land in water to minimize fall damage. Stay indoors during storms and prioritize securing your base against environmental hazards.
Surviving the First Horde
The first zombie horde arrives on Day 10. This is your chance to test your preparations. Stay inside your fortified base and use ranged weapons like pistols to pick off zombies safely. Repair your defenses as needed and keep an eye on structural weaknesses.
If weather disrupts the fight, adapt quickly. Tornadoes can displace zombies—or even sweep them into your base—so always stay vigilant.
Zombie Awareness: Smarter, Deadlier Zombies
The Zombie Awareness mod changes the way zombies behave, making them more intelligent and reactive to your presence. This makes surviving hordes even more challenging and requires a stealthier, more strategic approach.
Zombies can now sense you in new ways:
Blood Scent: If you take damage and start bleeding, zombies will be drawn to the scent of your blood. The more you bleed, the stronger the scent trail becomes, attracting larger groups of zombies over time.
Sound Detection: Actions like mining, breaking blocks, opening doors, or even eating create noise that can alert nearby zombies. The louder the sound, the farther away zombies can detect you.
Light Awareness: Zombies are drawn to light sources, making torches, lanterns, and other lit areas potential danger zones if not properly secured.
How to Survive the Smarter Horde:
Stay Quiet: Avoid unnecessary noise, especially during horde nights. Use traps or ranged weapons to deal with zombies silently.
Manage Blood Loss: Heal as quickly as possible with bandages to reduce the scent trail. If you’re injured, stay inside a well-fortified area.
Control Light: Use light strategically to draw zombies away from critical areas or trap them in specific zones.
With Zombie Awareness, hordes are no longer mindless—they actively hunt you based on your actions. Surviving requires staying one step ahead, whether through careful resource management or creative defenses.
Leveraging the Modpack's Tech: Surviving Beyond Day 10
Once you’ve survived the first horde, it’s time to start taking full advantage of the mods in Remain. These tools and systems will give you the edge you need against the growing zombie hordes and increasingly complex challenges.
Immersive Engineering offers power systems and automated machines. Use windmills and water wheels to power defenses like floodlights, which illuminate your base and deter zombies. Crushers and other machines help automate resource processing, saving you valuable time.
PneumaticCraft: Repressurized introduces air-powered turrets and traps. Turrets are essential for defending against hordes, while traps can slow or eliminate enemies before they reach your walls. Drones also help automate resource gathering.
Point Blank equips you with firearms like pistols, shotguns, and rifles. These are vital for taking out large groups of zombies, but ammo is limited—use it strategically.
Refined Storage helps organize your growing inventory. Automate crafting and manage your resources more efficiently as your base expands and demands increase.
Immersive Aircraft provides mobility in a world fraught with danger. Aircraft let you scout locations, escape from overwhelming situations, or transport supplies safely.
Mastering these mods opens up new strategies for both defense and offense, allowing you to adapt to the increasingly harsh conditions of Remain.
Optional Modes: Mediumcore
If Hardcore mode feels too punishing, Remain includes the Mediumcore mod. This mode strikes a balance by penalizing deaths without outright ending the game. Each death reduces your maximum health by one heart, down to a minimum of three. You can restore lost hearts by consuming Golden Apples or Enchanted Golden Apples, encouraging strategic resource management.
The Butchery Mod: A New Way to Harvest Resources
The Butchery mod redefines how you gather resources from animals. Instead of animals dropping meat and leather upon death, they leave behind corpses that must be processed. Use a butcher’s knife to harvest the corpse and hang it on hooks to drain blood. Skin racks allow you to process hides into leather, while advanced tools like a meat grinder let you create new food items.
This system adds realism and depth to resource gathering, requiring careful planning and time management.
The first 10 days in Remain are all about setting a strong foundation, from crafting flint tools to building defenses and surviving the first zombie horde. Once you’ve secured your base, the mods in this pack offer powerful tools to help you fight back and thrive. Whether you’re battling zombies, SCPs, or the elements, Remain demands creativity, strategy, and resilience.
The Nether is no Better
While you won't likely be heading into the Nether on your first 10 days, it's good to know what you're in for. There are Zombies there too. Not the zombie pigmen. Like fast, mean, hard-hitting zombies. Since you don't ever know where you'll spawn, you may get completely swarmed the second you drop in. And there's no day-time reprieve. Be prepared.
Are you ready to take on Remain?
Play with Friends
This pack is a blast to take on the zombie hordes with your friends. Check out my comprehensive post about the best Minecraft server hosting providers.