Twilight Forest Starting Guide.

Getting started with Twilight Forest.

Alright so, this guide will demonstrate how to start yourself with the mod Twilight Forest, or TF for short.

The materials needed to do so are fairly minimal. You will need;

12 "Natural" items, these include items such as flowers, or mushrooms, (for example, 3 brown mushrooms, 4 red mushrooms, and 5 roses.)
1 Diamond
4 water source blocks* (can be natural or manually placed via a bucket)

Now, to create the portal to the dimension in which the Twilight Forest resides, you must create a 2 by 2 hole in the ground, that is one deep. then fill it in with water using a bucket, another, cheaper method, is by finding a body of water, such as a lake, and filling in a "cast" for the portal, Make sure that the bordering blocks are made of dirt/grass for each flower you plan on using! so that a 2x2x1 hole is filled with still/source water.  Next step is to place the Natural/plant items around the portal, this is where the dirt or grass border is necessary as flowers cannot be placed on other blocks. This can be avoided by using all mushrooms, which can be placed on  other surfaces, such as stone.

Now you should have a pretty little pool,  why isn't there a portal yet you ask? That's because the portal needs a Catalyst to activate it,  so all you need to do is walk up to the pool, and use "Q" to throw a diamond into the pool.  Shortly after it falls in, you should hear the crack of thunder and see lightning strike the pool. (don't worry this will not set your house on fire if the portal is in your basement :D)  If successful, you should see portal blocks where the water was,
that looks a little like this (insert link code to http://i.imgur.com/sT8Dt.png) what's left is to hop in!

A few things i should mention about the TF, first off, it is constantly Twilight, as it's name implies, so it will remain in constant dusk, but default undead mobs will not spawn above ground.  Next off is that there are many new passive mobs in the TF such as;

Boars: (Equivalent to pigs in the overworld)
Deer: (Equivalent to cows in the overworld, only difference is that they drop venison, and are aesthetically different)
Small Birds: these little guys make chirping noises, and can be found hopping around the forest, and in trees, they drop only feathers.
Ravens: These look similar to small birds, and are basically the same except for one key difference, they drop Raven's feathers which are essential in the magic map recipe.

I would like to mention that mining in the Twilight Forest is a generally easy task, as the Y of the world is around 30, as opposed to the overworld which can be 60-90, this makes getting to diamonds much less arduous. Torch berries are glowing plants found in caves, which emit light, you can harvest them to combine with sticks (which can be harvested from the root blocks found underground) to make 5 torches per craft.  Another feature of the underground is that some of the roots you will find have a greenish texture, these contain Liveroot, which can be combined with a gold nugget, and an iron ingot to make an Ironwood, mixture, which can be smelted into 2 ironwood ingots.  These magically infused ingots produce pre-enchanted items, when crafted.  such as an unbreaking I shovel, efficiency I pick, or featherfall I boots. (the only exception is the hoe, as enchantments are fairly useless on these)

You might think "Great! Now where can i get gold nuggets, gold is rare to find :( "  well there is a solution, while roaming the underground, you will find small little purple creatures, these are called goblins, and while they are numerous, they will run temporarily from you if one dies.
They have a chance to drop gold nuggets, and Wheat. all these features make for a fairly "friendly" mining experience, and certainly one that prolongs mining trips, by providing you with the resources you need to keep mining.

I have just scratched the surface, but there are many fantastical features of the Forest, including fearsome Hollow hills, filled with treasure and valuable ores, but guarded by dozens of dangerous mobs. to the mystical grove where a certain magical animal can spawn.

Watch out for the massive Lich's keeps, as they are fairly powerful, and filled with mobs,  and the few bosses that are found throughout the world.

One last tip, the magical map, can track an area much larger than the default map, but in the Twilight Forest, it holds and additional feature, it shows the prominent features in each biome, such as the lich's keeps, mazes, and large mangrove forests.