Gregtech 1.7.10 ore harvest levels?

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RamblinWreckGT

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Jul 29, 2019
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Is there anywhere that lists what harvestability all the 1.7 Gregtech ores are? My progress has come to a screeching halt after I discovered my usual early-game pickaxe (TiC flint head, stone binding, wood handle) isn't able to mine iron. I've managed to find enough small iron to make an iron hammer and a bucket (you have no idea how useful a water bucket is for caving until you try it), but that process is too unrewarding to keep doing. I added the WAILA harvestability plugin, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with Gregtech ores.

Also, secondary question: any recommendations for early-game tools to use? The modpack is Beyond Reality, to give you an idea of what's available to me.
 
The only way I've found is to go into the folder /instances/BeyondReality/config/GregTech and open the WorldGeneration.cfg file just to look at it. Scroll down and you'll see

ore {

small {

copper {
I:Amount_32=32
I:MaxHeight_120=120
I:MinHeight_60=60
B:Nether_true=true
I:Ore_35=35
B:Overworld_true=true
B:TheEnd_true=true

which means small copper ores spawn between y=60 and y=120. Further down is another section called "mix" that shows copper ore between elev 10 and 30. But there's no entry for lead, and right now I need lead ore and can't find any. While I love the ore generation to some degree, it's also very frustrating in other ways. Exploring caves is very tedious and boring, you often find zero ores at all save for an infrequent small ore. Branch mining seems like a waste of time, I've dug for lead for hours with zero luck. I haven't use the hammer to prospect for ore, but I read it isn't very helpful anyways.

For early game tools I just used the standard stone tools, I think perhaps BeyondReality un-did the severe nerf Greg did to durability of stone tools. They seemed normal to me, and with materials at such a premium I didn't want to waste any on tools. I never had to use flint tools, for instance. Now that I made my Bronze Age machines, I did use a little steel to make a sword, and I did make steel armor.

Here's my tip for early game bronze - look up high in mountains for tetrahedrite ore, it's bright red and hard to miss when you find a vein. That smelts to copper but you'll need one bronze pickaxe in order to mine it initially. And of course Cassiterite for tin, but it looks just like normal stone so good luck (you'll need it) or else use a resource pack which I should have done to make it stand out better. There was very little copper amongst the tetrahedrite so I smelted a lot of the tetra, but for tin, I was able to find many stacks of normal tin ore amongst the cassiterite so I didn't have to figure out what to do with the cassiterite.

I don't think I'm gonna play BeyondReality much longer. That "Primitive Mobs" thing is horrid, I just was making my first steam turbine when suddenly I realized there was some sort of red-colored creeper inside my base and he dropped TNT all over the place. Seriously? Yeah seriously. Then the TNT exploded and I saw my chests disappear and all my stuff lying on the floor. I just shut the game down in disgust. LOL sigh I also died walking thru a desert, these pink slime things suddenly swarmed me. I don't like Primitive Mobs at all and in BeyondReality I cannot uninstall most of the mods (by design). Yuck.

Once FTB comes out with a 1.7 modpack that includes GT5, I'm in! I've missed you Greg... :D
 
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I think the "main" GT ore nodes are the same mining level as the material- so iron for iron, diamond for diamond ect...
The small ores should all work with lower grade tools.​

I stumbled across a Stronghold (I think that's what it is anyway), dug inside and the very first thing I discover is a room with about 20 diamond ore blocks. My lucky day!! I only broke two of them for the two diamonds needed to make my Steam Macerator (will save the rest for when I get silk touch)... but I believe I was able to break the diamond ore with a Bronze pickaxe... or it could have been a Steel pickaxe, but I'm fairly certain it was only a Bronze. But yeah, in general, I break all "small" ores with my basic stone pickaxe, and I switch to my steel pickaxe to break all the regular ores like Tetrahedrite or Iron. Some ores can be broken with a simple stone pickaxe (such as Chalcopyrite I think?) so I always check one block first to see if stone works or not.

Another thing I learned is that crushed ores (that you get from the "small" ores) should be put into the Forge Hammer machine. I was using the macerator on them, and it was so slow. Forge Hammer is far quicker even if it uses more steam. Then use a cauldron by hand to turn them from impure to pure dusts.
 
The best way is probably to use secondary materials for the right material. E.g. Bronze for Iron, TC Shards for Diamond, Tungsten for Iridium, etc.
 
If you've found an iron vein, that means you've also found limonite. Brown Limonite iirc has a lower mining level than the others and will give you the iron you need to mine the rest.
 
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Is there anywhere that lists what harvestability all the 1.7 Gregtech ores are? My progress has come to a screeching halt after I discovered my usual early-game pickaxe (TiC flint head, stone binding, wood handle) isn't able to mine iron. I've managed to find enough small iron to make an iron hammer and a bucket (you have no idea how useful a water bucket is for caving until you try it), but that process is too unrewarding to keep doing. I added the WAILA harvestability plugin, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with Gregtech ores.

Also, secondary question: any recommendations for early-game tools to use? The modpack is Beyond Reality, to give you an idea of what's available to me.
http://pastebin.com/t8U3vDu6
look lines with "ore.mix."
example:
new GT_Worldgen_GT_Ore_Layer("ore.mix.naquadah", false, 10, 60, 10, 5, 32, false, false, true, Materials.Naquadah, Materials.Naquadah, Materials.Naquadah, Materials.NaquadahEnriched);
ores "Materials.Naquadah, Materials.Naquadah, Materials.Naquadah, Materials.NaquadahEnriched" lay on levels 10-60
 
You might want to try Infitech2.

Well, well, well... I had no idea! Thank you. As much as I hate to leave behind all my hard work in my other world, I'll just view it as a good learning experience and begin anew with that knowledge in hand. I'm not certain I like this trend of "no Thermal Expansion" in all the GT5 packs, that was always my go-to mod for essentials like tesseracts. And at first glance I don't see the Endertank mod either. How are people transporting liquids long-distance (such as lava from the nether oceans) around their worlds?
 
Well, well, well... I had no idea! Thank you. As much as I hate to leave behind all my hard work in my other world, I'll just view it as a good learning experience and begin anew with that knowledge in hand. I'm not certain I like this trend of "no Thermal Expansion" in all the GT5 packs, that was always my go-to mod for essentials like tesseracts. And at first glance I don't see the Endertank mod either. How are people transporting liquids long-distance (such as lava from the nether oceans) around their worlds?
* Regarding lack of TE: It doesn't balance well with GT unless you minetweak it to the point of "why bother". Otherwise, the tools are all so cheap and handholdy that the GT variants become instantly deprecated
* I believe one of the high end GT blocks can transport liquids. Generally speaking though most of the players of this sort of pack avoid nether-lava-energy so it hasn't been a problem.

In retrospect, this pack may actually not be for you at all. Its a sort of high-end hard-core tech challenge pack. I think if I approached it having come from something like Monster or Direwolf20, it would be a pretty hard transition.
 
* Regarding lack of TE: It doesn't balance well with GT unless you minetweak it to the point of "why bother". Otherwise, the tools are all so cheap and handholdy that the GT variants become instantly deprecated
* I believe one of the high end GT blocks can transport liquids. Generally speaking though most of the players of this sort of pack avoid nether-lava-energy so it hasn't been a problem.

In retrospect, this pack may actually not be for you at all. Its a sort of high-end hard-core tech challenge pack. I think if I approached it having come from something like Monster or Direwolf20, it would be a pretty hard transition.

I did play Ultimate and loved it. Best modpack I ever played, and a big part of it was due to Gregtech. But yeah, I'm not sure I'm into "challenge" packs, I didn't like Agrarian Skies or Crash Landing, just too difficult for my laid-back tastes I guess. And too much "connect-the-dots" too. I like to do my own thing, in the way that I like to do it... such as tesseracts and lava for early game power. If there's no way to transport lava in mass quantity from nether to overworld, or a more simple example, no way to transport oil in mass quantity from far-off discovered geysers... what's the point then? Why have oil in the game at all?

I realized from a few days playing BeyondReality that steam power is what everybody is doing now. And I also realized that in all my many hours of FTB, I never once used steam power. Never built a railcraft boiler or a tree farm. LOL I gotta get with the program I guess. sigh
 
If there's no easy way to transport lava in mass quantity from nether to overworld, or a more simple example, no way to transport oil in mass quantity from far-off discovered geysers... what's the point then? Why have oil in the game at all?

Because oil is a brilliant fuel source thats worth the investment in exploiting it.

You could always set up closer to the fuel source.
Or think about transport a little more; railcraft springs to mind.​
 
I did play Ultimate and loved it. Best modpack I ever played, and a big part of it was due to Gregtech. But yeah, I'm not sure I'm into "challenge" packs, I didn't like Agrarian Skies or Crash Landing, just too difficult for my laid-back tastes I guess. And too much "connect-the-dots" too. I like to do my own thing, in the way that I like to do it... such as tesseracts and lava for early game power. If there's no way to transport lava in mass quantity from nether to overworld, or a more simple example, no way to transport oil in mass quantity from far-off discovered geysers... what's the point then? Why have oil in the game at all?

I realized from a few days playing BeyondReality that steam power is what everybody is doing now. And I also realized that in all my many hours of FTB, I never once used steam power. Never built a railcraft boiler or a tree farm. LOL I gotta get with the program I guess. sigh
This pack is more difficult techwise than Crash Landing :) (Definitely not more difficult in terms of survival)

Regarding oil: @Celestialphoenix covered it.

I play on a server with @MigukNamja. Our base is adjacent to an oily desert. He set up oil wells using those BC pumps and those high-capacity drums and simply ran back occasionally to reap the output. The oil, once refined, helped us transition to better energy sources (such as nuclear and biofuel)
 
If you're playing Beyond Reality 1.7.10 on the BY website there's charts with complete breakdowns of ores, I'd link it but it seems either he forgot to pay the domain bill or DNS is screwed up atm and the website isn't working.

Saying that here's a cached link which I think is the right page (when it's working) http://www.mcbeyondreality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page#Ore_Gen

That's not the cached link sir. (I'm trying to help you find it. Got the main page but can't convince google to give me the ore gen version)

Too bad, its a great chart.[DOUBLEPOST=1413577026][/DOUBLEPOST]http://webcache.googleusercontent.c.../thumb/1/12/NetherOre.png/120px-NetherOre.png

Well, I can't get it to reproduce the charts, just the page. But ppl have pasted it everywhere, I'm sure we'll dig it up :)
 
Just by examining the .cfg files I can already tell that Galena (for lead and silver) is found between elev 30-60. But that doesn't help me very much because the nearest deposit might be hundreds of blocks from my location. So how am I supposed to find it?

It seems like we're supposed to live off the meager "small" ores we find for lead and silver. I think I collected 30 or 40 dusts of each, which might be enough to get me going but certainly won't be enough for more than a few "starter" machines/solar gens/batteries, whatever its used for.

So I dig and dig and dig in every direction at elevs 30 thru 60 knowing that just beyond that next block will be that coveted ore vein... nope. Maybe the next block? Nope. How about this one? sigh It's a good way to go insane. LOL
 
Just by examining the .cfg files I can already tell that Galena (for lead and silver) is found between elev 30-60. But that doesn't help me very much because the nearest deposit might be hundreds of blocks from my location. So how am I supposed to find it?

It seems like we're supposed to live off the meager "small" ores we find for lead and silver. I think I collected 30 or 40 dusts of each, which might be enough to get me going but certainly won't be enough for more than a few "starter" machines/solar gens/batteries, whatever its used for.

So I dig and dig and dig in every direction at elevs 30 thru 60 knowing that just beyond that next block will be that coveted ore vein... nope. Maybe the next block? Nope. How about this one? sigh It's a good way to go insane. LOL
When you think about it, the random-factor of finding a single gigantic silver vein balances really well against the random factor of finding a hundred tiny ones.

Once you find one, you'll be set for the majority of a single player game. You'll set up a mine there and get what you need in bulk when you need it and occassionally run back for more.

Kinda more realistic that way when you think about it :)
 
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Yes, it is more realistic and in some ways I like it. But in other ways, I don't. "Caving" (spelunking) used to be exciting and productive. But now, I'll discover a large cave network or a huge ravine/chasm... and after some examination I realize there's literally nothing there - a few amber, a few small ores, maybe a salt ore or two... but no veins showing. Just a lot of blank stone walls.

The only balance against that is either "its realistic" or else "when you find an ore pocket you will celebrate and be set for life". Those are the only two plusses to it that I can see. And quite honestly, I already exhausted one major coal vein, probably 25 stacks of coal and I've already used them. I started to collect wood and smelt it for charcoal (which I can do in BeyondReality but I cannot do in InfiTech2 modpack) because I am realizing one or two veins of coal will not be enough. I'm gonna need a forest and turn it into charcoal. So that's what I'm doing. By hand. Just the way Greg likes it - the more pain involved, the better. LOL
 
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Yes, it is more realistic and in some ways I like it. But in other ways, I don't. "Caving" (spelunking) used to be exciting and productive. But now, I'll discover a large cave network or a huge ravine/chasm... and after some examination I realize there's literally nothing there - a few amber, a few small ores, maybe a salt ore or two... but no veins showing. Just a lot of blank stone walls.

The only balance against that is either "its realistic" or else "when you find an ore pocket you will celebrate and be set for life". Those are the only two plusses to it that I can see. And quite honestly, I already exhausted one major coal vein, probably 25 stacks of coal and I've already used them. I started to collect wood and smelt it for charcoal (which I can do in BeyondReality but I cannot do in InfiTech2 modpack) because I am realizing one or two veins of coal will not be enough. I'm gonna need a forest and turn it into charcoal. So that's what I'm doing. By hand. Just the way Greg likes it - the more pain involved, the better. LOL
You sure you're up to this? Doesn't sound like your cup of tea at all, although I respect that you're grinding it at anyway :p