Yesterday and the day before, @
Pyure logged in for a few hours and helped a ton. He helped re-organize the mess I called a 'base', did a lot of mining/exporing, and found a huge Iron vein and a huge Copper vein. Yeah !! Had enough copper to fully convert all Tin to Bronze and get a good start in the bronze age. Then, ran out of Tin.
=== Exploration ===
So, late last night, I went searching for:
- more bee hives
- chicken feathers (needed those for Thaumcraft)
- tin
I found all three ! I went due North, well past the Extreme Hills that's NW of our base. I found another Extreme Hills. At first, I was only finding Lignite and Coal. I went around the entire biome, and was about to leave, when I noticed a *very* faint white coloring on the stone. Tin !!! It was at Y=84. I marked it on my map and started picking. I only found half a stack from the small outcropping that peaked around Y=86. However, I had enough wits to check a nearby (maybe 15m away) dirt-covered peak and found Tin there ! I had run out of torches, so I didn't pick all of it. But, I did bring back 3 stacks of Tin and a single Cassiterite. Odd that there was a single Cassiterite in all that Tin.
=== Bronze Age Steam Machines ===
I also made some minor changes (improvements) to the bronze steam machine setup.
- Had enough silver (thanks to @Pyure
) to make 2nd Solar Boiler, which brings total boilers to 3 (2x solar, 1x coal)
- 2nd Macerator
- Alloy Smelter
- Added more capacity to steam buffer
Bottleneck on processing right now is Macerator, so I built a 2nd one of those. Also built an Alloy Smelter. I tried using 2x Macerator + Alloy Smelter, but Smelter wasn't getting enough steam. Bottleneck is the golden waterproof pipe. Will need to upgrade to bronze pipes, but bronze should not be a problem now. Plenty of Tin and Copper to *hopefully* last well into the Steel and Stainless Steel eras.
Steam buffer is now 10x of the BC tanks for a total of 160 buckets. This *should* be enough to buffer the solar boilers through the night. But, it's easy to add more. Just dig down and add to the bottom.
Automation right now is very crude, but effective : a line of hoppers below, aimed in the same direction and ending in a chest at the end of the line. The hoppers pull from the machine above them, and push into the next hopper in the line. Also, hoppers on top of each machine. Can load up several hours' worth of 'work' for each machine and then do other stuff.
I have the steam coming into the back of each machine, the 'face' pointed to the side, and steam exhaust vent wrench to come out the front. I wish the steam did damage to the player to make it real (i.e. pay a cost for the setup I chose to do), but I haven't noticed any damage when I'm standing in front and there's a burst of steam exhaust.
=== Thaumcraft ===
While waiting for processing, I got a start on Thaumcraft. Made iron wand, Thauminomicon (book), and made the hand-held hexagon Thaumy-magnifying-glass thingy. Also made the research table and put a few shards around it. Did a little research, but not much. Mainly wanted to 'discover' the aspects so scans are successful. Also wanted to start gathering aspects from the nodes. Next up are gold-capped, greatwood wands.
The good and the bad thing about Thaumcraft is the beginning stage is almost entirely about investing into Thaumcraft itself. I can't think of any noticable external contributions until about Thaumium, monster-blocking blocks (with the red center), and some of the wand foci that don't require Infusion. The really good stuff is gated behind Infusion crafting, which requires a lot if investment into Thaumcraft.
We'll see if we get TC4.2 flight first or IC2 jetpack flight first
Edit : Wood golems are great early-game automation. I'll see what I can do with those.
=== Bees ===
@
Pyure found a village with a bee expert in it. He 'borrowed' some queens, Apiaries, and frames
Should have enough Pristines and enough diamonds to get a good start on an automated line of Apiaries. Will need to make a Carpenter and some starter MJ power to power it. Shoudn't be a problem since we have plenty of iron and bronze now. Not sure if creosote will work to make apiaries. If not, I'll make a big wheat/seed farm and will squeeze those.
I'm aiming for a 20 Apiaries total. That's enough to fairly quickly (re-)purify bee species and eventually make enough royal jelly and pollen for Alvearies when we get there.
