[1.6.4] Surg's Skyblocks

[Surgonan]

Nope I haven't tried.

It looks like it is only used to make the seared bricks though. To make the bigger smeltery "easier" to build.

You can melt those little stones you get from smashing rocks and sieving dirt in a crucible to get seared brick. Only 72 stones per brick ITEM.

Personally i don't think it is easier, since all you need for the seared bricks is clay, sand, and gravel. All easy to get with Ex Nahilo.

 

[AlCapella]

No, what that statement means that instead of combining the stones into cobble (which would yield lava in the crucible) you could choose to get seared bricks out of stones by dumping it as-is into a crucible. And indeed it is pretty convoluted to do a mini-smeltery (72 stone pieces for one measly brick!). I tried it for the heck of it. I actually created a few seared bricks the TiC way and made myself all the needed ingredients based on this image

from the exaquilo mod. *But*, the seared faucet just wouldn't fix itself.

Suppose what you say is right, how did he get a seared faucet in that picture w/o having the means if the crucible is supposed to cook the seared brick for us in the first place. On top of it, the ingot in the bottom does look like clay and the item frame looks like a gold ingot and the molten metal looks like molten gold as well! So the image is prone to mislead, I suppose.

But in the end, we simply made ourselves more clay bricks and did the proper smeltery. Seems no one tries to build this one, or at least no one other than one poster seemed to ask for it on the mod thread.

I quote here:

Mini smeltery needs a crucible with a heat source below it (torch, lit furnace or netherrack) put a faucet on the crucible and a casting table with ingot cast (to make an ingot cast you mast put 3 aluminum and 1 copper ingot/ore and make aluminum brass then put and ingot or ingot shaped item (seared bricks,brick item) and pour the aluminum brass to the casting table and take the ingot out and replace the ingot cast and now you can smelt your ores! (Note that it must be enabled in the configs of ex aliquo)

It is disabled by default, and I realised this and enabled it after a few hours of gameplay but I couldn't get it to work.

EDIT: flubs and rewording to clarify

 

[AlCapella]

Oh, and two quick tips if you haven't figured it out already.

1. My coplayer simply uses the hammer on the generated cobblestone directly thereby saving us one intermediate step. When we actually need the cobble we use a pickaxe... So, get gravel from the cobble directly and get the ore from that.
2. direwolf built a mob spawner higher up that uses water and fall damage to kill all the mobs that spawn. That design is safer, no fear of accidental blowing up of the base, and the loot is easier to get at.

 

[Surgonan]

from the exaquilo mod. *But*, the seared faucet just wouldn't fix itself.

I would suggest that you post on the mod forums. Unfortunately it isn't something I have tried, and most likely won't as it is too easy to get a full smeltery anyway.

On a side note, I have asked mDiyo if he might consider adding a Tinkerer's "Hammer" that works with Ex Nihilo. Only time will tell.

 

[AlCapella]

Youtube 'recommended' your vlog (based on browser history I suppose) and it was a pleasant surprise to see the face as a contrast to the soft voice in the video. Cute dogs! Pahimar's videos are peppered with dog barks too, so you're in good company hehe ;-)

So, regarding your questions on the vlog, just leaving my comments here for your feedback. Having looked at one or two of your videos, I found the the skyblocks series a refreshingly different take on all the usual modded minecraft plays. And, as a series I think skyblocks holds a lot of promise in terms of standing out in modded minecraft LPs. Also, 30 mins of video captures the sweet spot in terms of people's commitment/attention span to the series. Hope that gives you the feedback you were looking for. ;-)

Good luck with it all.

 

[Surgonan]

v1.0.4 is now out.

Please see the change log for what mods were updated and added. Hope you guys are enjoying the pack

 

[Pyrocantaes]

Quite enjoying your series .. although I'me now quite a bit ahead of you..

Apart from getting spiders to spawn mob drops (other than Ender pearls) aren't an issue .. I would suggest doing a search on the ATLauncher SkyFactor pack and building the long narrow half block mob spawner.. It's a much safer and more prolific method of obtaining bones and zombie flesh.

Animal spawning is sort of an issue .. although I now have a few cows, pigs and sheep, and a stack of occelots which I can't tame (no fish..). The next issue is working out how to get the vast ammounts of ink required for Thaumcraft...

One thing from your series.. you end up with more resources if you following the following

gravel ->(sieve)->ore chunk->(packager)->ore gravel->(hammer)->crushed ore->(packager)->ore sand->(hammer)->ore dust->dust block->furnace

as the gravel to crushed ore step, and the ore sand to ore dust step both have a chance to yield 5 units as opposed to 4.

Most of this can be automated using Thermal Expansion's Autonamous Activator.. and the sieving can be speeded up by using multiple activators..

I have to following 3 layer setup (A=Autonamous Act, C=Chest, V = Vacuum hopper

Layer 1 (floor)
A
A S A
A S A
A
Layer2 (1 up - the chests are above the left hand activators

C
C V

Layer2 (2 Up - the gap between the activators is above the vacuum hopper)

A

A

I only feed gravel, sand, or dust (from pulverizers) into the two left hand activators on Layer 1
The upper activator on Layer 2 is set to right click and is where all the ore gravel, ore sand is placed
The lower activator on layer 2 is set to left click and filled with stone hammers

One of my current issues is I can't work out how to automate the packaging of the ore chunks, crushed ore, or ore dust .. Logistic Pipes would help immensely.
The other one is storage .. Iron Chests would help here as would JABBA .. the barrels are much better than factorization barrels and you have that nice dolly to move them about with.

I also now have a Mekanism jet pack and a nether portal .. although there doesn't appear to be a great deal in the nether.. a few areas of soul sand and a number of hanging Natura vines are all I can currently see from my portal over the void... I haven't explored yet .. are there actually fortresses and blaze spawners?
I assume you can get nether quartz from soul sand or do I need to go down the MFR sludge boiler route?

Update: Whilst I think about it I have noticed a few other things..
Some of the drop rates appear unbalanced like Tin, Lead, and Osmium are 3 times more abundant than either iron or copper..
The drop rates for flint, quicksilver, and amber also seem excessive ( I currently have 15 stacks of flint, and 5 stacks of quicksilver and amber) in relation to redstone and lapis.
In you lets play you've manager to gets seeds and saplings for trees/plants other than oak/birch/spruce and wheat/cactus/melon/pumkin. Other than 2 IC rubber tree drops I've manager I can't get anything else to drop from dirt/sand.

 

[Surgonan]

Quite enjoying your series .. although I'me now quite a bit ahead of you..

Thank You for watching... Juggling multiple series, it is very easy for others to get ahead of me
My videos are slow enough for those that know nothing about the mods to follow along, but fast enough for all to enjoy

Animal spawning is sort of an issue .. although I now have a few cows, pigs and sheep, and a stack of occelots which I can't tame (no fish..). The next issue is working out how to get the vast ammounts of ink required for Thaumcraft...

You can easily fix both issues (Fish and ink) with a small pool of water, 3 blocks deep should do it

One thing from your series.. you end up with more resources if you following the following

gravel ->(sieve)->ore chunk->(packager)->ore gravel->(hammer)->crushed ore->(packager)->ore sand->(hammer)->ore dust->dust block->furnace

Actually you could double the output...

gravel ->(sieve)->ore chunk->(packager)->ore gravel->(hammer)->crushed ore->(packager)->ore sand->(hammer)->ore dust->dust block->Pulverizer->furnace

Due to time constraints, cause I'm always busy doing something, I just pulverize the Ore gravel to get 2 ingots.

One of my current issues is I can't work out how to automate the packaging of the ore chunks, crushed ore, or ore dust .. Logistic Pipes would help immensely.
The other one is storage .. Iron Chests would help here as would JABBA .. the barrels are much better than factorization barrels and you have that nice dolly to move them about with.

I also now have a Mekanism jet pack and a nether portal .. although there doesn't appear to be a great deal in the nether.. a few areas of soul sand and a number of hanging Natura vines are all I can currently see from my portal over the void... I haven't explored yet .. are there actually fortresses and blaze spawners?
I assume you can get nether quartz from soul sand or do I need to go down the MFR sludge boiler route?

Item Ducts with pneumatic servos installed should pull out of the packager, or you could use a cyclic assembler.
I agree storage may be an issue, but to be honest with the amount of Certus you get an AE system is not hard to do. That's why I didn't add any storage other than the factorization barrels.

Yes fortresses will still spawn.
Soul sand gives nether quartz 100% of the time in the sieve. It's like the little rocks with dirt.

Update: Whilst I think about it I have noticed a few other things..
Some of the drop rates appear unbalanced like Tin, Lead, and Osmium are 3 times more abundant than either iron or copper..
The drop rates for flint, quicksilver, and amber also seem excessive ( I currently have 15 stacks of flint, and 5 stacks of quicksilver and amber) in relation to redstone and lapis.
In you lets play you've manager to gets seeds and saplings for trees/plants other than oak/birch/spruce and wheat/cactus/melon/pumkin. Other than 2 IC rubber tree drops I've manager I can't get anything else to drop from dirt/sand.

I know the authors of Ex Nihilo and Ex Aliquo are trying to balance the drops. As they update their mods, the pack will be updated.

 

[Pyrocantaes]

Item Ducts with pneumatic servos installed should pull out of the packager, or you could use a cyclic assembler.

Thanks for the reply...
Having posted a question relating to factorization I can now extract from the packager..basically all the wikis are wrong you have to extract from the bottom of the packager.
The next issue is only pulling from inventories in multiples of 4. TE3 itemducts with servo's pull upto the stack size of items and pull from a chest in slot order, as do transfer nodes, and buildcraft pipes.
The only way I can currently see of automating this (I haven't check out the cyclic assembler) would be with Project Red Crafting pipes, but until you move to version 4.3.5 I don't think this is going to work due to known pipe issues.
The other option is having 48 packagers each with a whitelisted input to handle each of the broken ore/crushed ore/ore sand/ore dust types and I'm not going down this route.

 

[Surgonan]

Well to be honest, the best option is to build a small AE system with autocrafting.

I could add logistics pipes to the pack, but then it just makes the pack too easy. You can basically have unlimited resources as soon as you get 1 autonomous activator, a pulverizer, and a packager.

Keep in mind this pack is designed to be harder. Because you don't need a quarry, is building a bunch of packagers that bad?

 

[Pyrocantaes]

So I've progressed a bit further .. making soul sand and hence extracting nether quartz and a few nuggets of cobalt and ardite..

I've automated the ore extraction as much as I can.. but my only current solution is to manually move stacks of broken/crushed/dust into the packager chain when they reach a full stack.

I've made a 5x5x5 (internal) pool, partially in a river biome but no squid spawn.. endermen seem to be rare enough, but squid are non-existant, so apparently are chickens ... unless the over abundant Ocelots are eating them all and then frightening away all the wolves, unless the latter is also a biome issue.

My current problem is slimes, otherwise no sticky pistons and no import buses for the AE system..

I've also given up on the nether for the time being.. nothing useful there (ash clouds give charcoal which I'm not short of, and I have no use for sulphur clouds), and no nether fortress visible even on far render distance from my entry portal.

I've also discovered a major issue with TE3 item ducts.... they treat each half of a double chest as a separate inventory for both input and output.

My other storage issues stem from the removal of the extra-dimensional barrel upgrade from Factorization, so there is no barrel upgrade route any longer, and without a decent ender pearl supply the MFR deep storage unit is out.
Whilst I could in theory make dedicated (single item) 64K AE drives .. I have the Nether quartz to do so.. the limiting factor on doing this is the supply of redstone, it being dropped at about 1/8 the rate of nether quartz and 1/4 the rate of cestus quartz/dust.

As I suggested in a earlier post both JABBA and iron chests would make life a lot easier.. Iron chests would get around the TE3 single inventory issue and JABBA barrels are both upgradeable and portable (as are chests with it's dolly), which would make storing the wood output of my forestry tree farm a lot easier.

I also need to work out a tank solution (no railcraft tanks), and then start making fuel, to power either/both of biogas engines and/or the buildcraft electric generator, although I'm barely using the output of the 3 magmatic dynamo's I have (powering them from a bank of 8 stone barrels heated by netherack flame, it being 10% better than using a lava source block).
I'm using a vanilla cobble generator with a transfer node to supply both these 8 stone barrels, an overflow barrel, and a pulverizer to create gravel, and still can't make a significant dent in it's output....
Also, whilst I initially went the Igneous Extruder route to create Obsidian, the fluiduct lava feed into a stone barrel under a water source block (use half slabs) is about 20 times faster..

I'm interested to see where you go next with your forestry farm..

 

[Pyrocantaes]

Update on progress since Saturday..

I solved the tank problem using Mekanism's dynamic tanks...

I've solved the import bus problem..
The easy(ish) way is putting rubber woold through a TE sawmill which has a 50% chance of yielding a glue ball, which can be substituted for slime in making sticky pistons.
The other way .. is that there is a slime island not that far from spawn (within 256 half slabs) .. so I now have a souce of blue slime..
I've also now got a stock of UU matter .. powered by 6 biogenerators, 6 fermentors, 2 squeezers, and two 5x3 base forestry tree farms. I'm running 2 recyclers and have had to add a second cobble generator, 2 more crucibles (10 total), and 2 more magmatic engines to keep it all running. Note I've found that adding speed upgrades to the transfer nodes on the cobble generator (I have 2 nodes per cobble block) appears to break the cobble supply.. I've not yet tried the mining upgrade..

I'm hoping that with the UU matter I can solve the ender pearl shortage..that's tonights task .. add a scanner and replicator, and find out.

Still not solved the lack of ink (squid spawning) issue..

 

[Surgonan]

My current problem is slimes, otherwise no sticky pistons and no import buses for the AE system..

Try adding milk to a barrel of water

I've also discovered a major issue with TE3 item ducts.... they treat each half of a double chest as a separate inventory for both input and output.

It's always been that way. Technically, Each chest is a separate inventory even in vanilla. When you break one side of a double chest it only spills out the items from that side.
Thats not a TE3 bug, its vanilla code.

My other storage issues stem from the removal of the extra-dimensional barrel upgrade from Factorization, so there is no barrel upgrade route any longer, and without a decent ender pearl supply the MFR deep storage unit is out.
Whilst I could in theory make dedicated (single item) 64K AE drives .. I have the Nether quartz to do so.. the limiting factor on doing this is the supply of redstone, it being dropped at about 1/8 the rate of nether quartz and 1/4 the rate of cestus quartz/dust.

Factorization has large barrels now. No more upgrades, its a separate item.

Still not solved the lack of ink (squid spawning) issue..

Straight from the Minecraft Wiki...

Squids will spawn in 1 or more blocks of water, no matter whether it's a water source or flowing water. The level of light is not important. However, they will only spawn if their spawning block (the solid block underneath the water) is between Y (vertical) level 46 and 62, inclusive.

Make sure you are not too high up or too low...[DOUBLEPOST=1396366637][/DOUBLEPOST]If you fix your squid problem, ender pearls are easy...

Check out the Ex Nihilo dolls

 

[AlCapella]

If you fix your squid problem, ender pearls are easy...

^^ What? How? When? Who? Where?

 

[Pyrocantaes]

^^ What? How? When? Who? Where?

Surg answered that in the following line.. even with an alumite sword with nether quartz and looting upgrades killing endermen is not difficult..

I've now advance in several regards ..
I have 4 off forestry tree farms, based upon the 5x3 form, just to supply enough wood for the 8 iron furnces needed to keep a high temperature generator running. I'd have preferred to use steam generators but without railcraft there's no steam boiler.

I've seen a solitary butterfly around the tree farms...

I have most of my ore/dust production automated with Project Red .. but I'm running the latest version .. I suggest you update to this..

I've solved the squid issue ...

Next on my list is bees(if at all possible, it woulld make getting roses [red dye] much easier, rather than relying on the 25% drop chance for red dye when pulverising red wool), chickens (either they don't spawn or the over population of ocelots just kill them), and iridum .. I have the UU-matter just need a template...

My only other (current) problems are
1) MFR - no MFR rubber tree seed drops .. yes I know I can get plastic by resmelting IC2 rubber
2) Open blocks - Elevators forgetting they are elevators so space/shift don't work don't know if this is an issue due to mekanism
3) The recipe for the mekanism armoured jetpack doesn't work - so I've had to spawn it in and trash the equivalent materials. It's a nice piece of kit when used in conjunction with the hanglider.

Currently working on IC2 advanced bat-pack, CESU, and more IC2 power (geothermal looks to be most efficient with forestry bio-generators a close second)..

 

[Plasma_Blazer]

I seem to have a bug with fluiducts and lava, the lava will not go into anything (dynamos, tanks ect.)

 

[Surgonan]

Plasma can you post a screen shot?

 

[Plasma_Blazer]

I took quite a few screenshot so I put them into a zip file and if it dosent work here is a link to a dropbox page that hopefully will https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/176676924/BugScreenshots.zip

 

[Plasma_Blazer]

Could you add Hydraulicraft to pack?[DOUBLEPOST=1397739653][/DOUBLEPOST]BTW there is no way to get dark iron in the pack

 

[Marsupilami]

I took quite a few screenshot so I put them into a zip file and if it dosent work here is a link to a dropbox page that hopefully will https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/176676924/BugScreenshots.zip

Not sure if fluid ducts can pull out of the bottom of crucibles. Try the sides. Also, can't tell if you have a servo installed on the output connected to the crucibles. Kind of looks like you do. I always put the fluid ducts on the sides with a servo and never have any problems.