Hey all,

I'm new to minecraft and I've been working on a mod. I'm just about finished but before I release it into the wild, I wanted to get some feedback on the concepts I've implemented. Below is a description. Let me know if it sounds good!

Apocacist Mod, designed to enhance single player survival mode. Bug free and well balanced (nothing OP was added). Not likely to be compatible with other mods
• New material progression: wood -> stone -> bronze -> iron -> steel -> diamond -> nether diamond -> infernium
• Coal can only be mined by bronze or better. This means that your first bronze ingots will need to be smelted with a different fuel source. Iron spawns lower than before. In general, you must have the material 1 level below the one you're attempting to mine. Take note of how long the block is taking to break to know if you're using a high enough level.
• Bronze is made by mixing copper with tin to make 'bronze base' and then smelting it to make 'bronze ingot'. To make 'bronze base', you can use either a copper ingot or the raw copper ore. Tin is randomly dropped when digging dirt much like flint drops when digging gravel
• Copper and bronze ingots can be made into a wall type block building material by crafting 4 ingots into a 2x2 square. This crafting is completely reversible. The look of this pair of blocks is designed to complement each other. This is the only use for raw copper (so far). Not only does this provide new great looking building materials, but it serves as a good way to compress your inventory when you’re on long trips. Half blocks can also be created.
• Shears can be made with bronze ingots as well as iron.
• Bronze buckets can be made just like iron buckets. They work just like iron buckets except they cannot hold lava.
• Steel is made by mixing iron with 'carbon powder' to make 'steel base' and then smelting it into 'steel ingot'. Either an iron ingot or the ore can be used. 
• 'Carbon powder' is made by smelting lapis lazuli. 
• Battleaxes can be crafted from bronze or better. The crafting recipe is basically a double sided ax. They are stronger than swords, they have a knockback, and they can be used to chop wood. However, you cannot block with them and you walk VERY slowly while they are equipped. They can be enchanted with tool enchantments (efficiency, etc) or with weapon enchantments.
• Bronze and steel scuba helmets can be made. Bronze is made like a helmet with glass in the obvious place. For the steel scuba helmet, replace the glass with redstone. They are crap when it comes to defense but they allow you to breath underwater. They will take slow damage while in use underwater until they break. When they get to less than 25% durability, you will see bubbles start to appear around you. The bronze can be repaired like any armor (put 2 scuba helmets in the crafting matrix) but the steel can be "recharged" using a single redstone.
• Special underwater flares can be crafted from tin, redstone, and wood sticks. These are basically torches that can only be placed underwater.
• Bronze and steel spyglasses (telescopes) can be made. They are crafted with two vertical lines of ingots with glass connecting them at the top and bottom. Bronze has 1 level of zoom, steel has 3 levels.
• Trees will randomly drop apples so you don't have to chop them to get apples (although they ALSO drop them when chopping them down).
• Apples are about as good as watermelon slices now (I made them worse). Both a raw pumpkin pie and raw apple pie can be crafted: 1 sugar, 2 wheats, and 1 pumpkin (or 6 apples). Each ingredient needs to be in its own craft table matrix slot (meaning the apple pie should take up every slot). They have to be cooked in the furnace to produce cooked pies. They can then be "crafted" into 6 slices. These foods are pretty good, almost as good as steaks.
• chickens can be "plucked" (punched) for a chance to drop a feather. They will give off little stars to indicate they are hurt and probably shouldn't be punched again if you want to keep them alive. They will eventually heal over time.
• Iron and steel ingots can be crafted into building block material just like the copper and bronze by placing 4 in a 2X2 square. The 3X3 crafting of an iron block still exists. Also like the copper and bronze blocks, the iron / steel textures are designed to complement each other. This crafting is completely reversible. Incidentally, the copper/bronze and iron/steel building blocks are an excellent way to compress your inventory when you're gone on a long resource gathering trip. Half blocks can also be created.
• A "pressure chamber" can be crafted by placing 4 pistons at N, S, E, W positions with steel ingots in the 4 corners. The center square is left empty.
• Diamonds can be shattered by crafting them with a bucket of lava to produce 8 diamond shards. You get the empty bucket back.
• The pressure chamber will turn a stack of 64 coal and 1 diamond shard into a whole diamond. The most you can fit into the pressure chamber is 8 shards and 8 stacks of coal. In this example, the pressure chamber will eventually turn all of these materials into 8 diamonds. The pressure chamber takes a long time to work. It will "smoke" while it is churning away. If you open it up before it's done, it will reset the time counter for the current diamond it is working on. In other words, you can open it up early to grab say 4 of the diamonds at the cost of resetting the current counter it was on in producing the 5th one. Right now, this is the only recipe for the pressure chamber.
• Obsidian sticks can be crafted much like wood sticks from wood planks except made with obsidian blocks. They are used as the tool/weapon handles for the greater than diamond materials as well as a few other uses.
• Nether diamond is found only in the Nether. It is more plentiful than diamond is in the overworld. When used as an armor, it is identical to diamond except not as durable. When used as a weapon / tool, it is identical to diamond except it has fewer uses. Use obsidian sticks to craft any Nether Diamond tools. Nether diamond can only be mined with diamond or better. 
• Infernium ore is found only in the Nether. Infernium ore must be mixed with blaze powder and glowstone dust to make an "infernium base" which can then be smelted in ingots. This is the best armor / tool /weapon material in the game. Infernium can only be mined with Nether Diamond.
• When Endermen are struck with an infernium sword or battleaxe, they lose their ability to teleport. 
• A special Infernium bow can be crafted by replacing the wood in the regular bow recipe with infernium ingots and the string with blaze string. 3 Blaze strings are crafted with a bucket of lava, blaze powder, and 3 spider silk strings. Each ingredient needs to be in it's own craft table matrix slot so these blaze strings will take 5 crafting slots to make. 
• The Infernium bow fires special "blaze arrows". These are crafted with a diamond shard, blaze rod, and chicken feather. This crafting recipe produces only one arrow. This weapon shoots flaming arrows that will set fire to your target. 
• A "Glowstone Light" can be constructed from redstone, glowstone, and obsidian stick. These are similar to torches except they can be placed anywhere including upside down on the ceiling. They must be powered to be "turned on" allowing for controlled lighting (useful for activating / deactivating mob spawners or auto-harvesting mushrooms if they are close enough to them). 
• An obsidian boat can be constructed just like a wooden boat but out of obsidian blocks. This boat only works in lava. This boat cannot be destroyed by bumping into terrain.
• 2 types of ankhs can be created, one for the overworld and one for the nether. They are one time use objects that allow you to set a portal at a location and then teleport back to that spot later. If the portal location is not set, you can set it to your current location by right clicking. If the portal location is already set, you can move it by holding shift and right clicking. They are used by right clicking which will teleport you back to the portal location. Using it will consume the ankh. You can have more than one ankh at any given time but they share the same portal spawn location. They are crafted with obsidian sticks in the E, W, and S positions, a diamond (or nether diamond) in the N position and an ender pearl (or eye of ender) in the center position.
• End portal squares can be picked up using an Infernium pickaxe.

Recommendation for gameplay: 
• Always mine coal since they can be turned into diamonds.
• Bring a telescope with you into the Nether. They are extremely useful for locating resources. 
• You cannot expect to find very much infernium ore unless you strip mine in the nether.