A multidimensional adventure - started from scratch

[Ieldra]

While exploring alternate dimensions in my last world, I came upon this beautiful scene:

The place - a hauntingly beautiful "amplified" world, with tree-overgrown natural rock pillars almost groping skyward as if embodying the desire of all life to grow beyond itself, set in eternal twilight with two large moons and a large sun permanently hanging at opposite ends of the horizon. I was...enchanted, and I decided to make the exploration of dimensions the focus of my next life in modded Minecraft, and eventually make my next home in connected places like that.

I also decided to build in a style that suits the beauty of these places, rather than a more functional style I usually adopt because around the start of the game the resources are too limited to place much focus on aesthetics. If that decision will hold, we will see. Starting from scratch, with a new world, means that I'm not weighted down the ballast of old things I did in a different style.

So here I am, in a new world, all alone as I've always preferred, set to develop the methods, both ultra-tech and magical - of cross-dimensional travel from scratch. This place looks suitable:

I will eventually grow beyond the need to take clay, sand and gravel from the land, but for now the abundance of those in this lake contributes as much to the attraction as its beauty. Nonetheless, for some time my facilities here will be underground, since I do not have the resources to build much aboveground in the style I would like. Note the conveniently placed lava pool near the castle (not mine), also the walls of the fortified village at the lake's other end in the second picture. Maybe I'll have to flatten that, eventually, but then, maybe I'll move my focus to another world before I need that space.

A little later I have....just an inconspicuous door in the rock...

However, after a surprisingly short mining exploration, the inside of my new home looks almost cozy:

True to my new priorities, I used my first diamond to make....a diamond chisel and made my new home look reasonably comfortable. Still a bit empty, but that will soon change. Next order of business: I need power. That will not be hard since I brought with me the knowledge to create certain resources almost ex nihilo. The machinery eventually required to efficiently utilize that knowledge will be significantly more intricate than a simple quarry, but I do want to preserve the beauty of this world. I will not make more holes in it than necessary.
Notable event: I temporarily ran out of....cobblestone. The reason being I'm finding a lot of diorite, andesite, granite and marble around the place I build, and I fill the holes with cobblestone to prevent monsters from spawning in the new caves. I want my monsters to spawn where *I* want. Eventually.

(to be continued)

Technical Notes:
I am playing this with one of the infinite variations of the Resonant Rise modpack, since it has most of the mods I want to use integrated, and those that aren't in the ftb packs are of a kind that need more integration than "just add it". My world has the seed 832897652, but unless you know which mods I have that affect biome distribution (ask, if you want to know), all you will be able to replicate are the coastlines. This is a Biomes O'Plenty world, and I also lowered the weight of the Thaumcraft Taint biome from 2 to 1 and increased the magical forest weight from 5 to 6. The reason is that when I first entered this world, I played for several hours before I noticed that my lake was almost embraced by a giant Taint biome - which I hadn't noticed becaust at worldgen all there is are a few clusters of crusted taint. I liked the lake and a Taint biome is almost impossible to get rid of, even with terraforming devices, since you need to get rid of it completely or it will simply reappear. So I lowered the biome weight, and increasing the Magical Forest weight made sure the weight total remained constant and my Jade Cliffs biome would reappear when I regenerated the world. Should I never need some Tainted stuff, I'll go to another dimension and create a Taint biome using Technomancy's terraforming device.

 

[McJty]

Nice! And apparently using rftools too

Especially that first shot looks amazing.

 

[Ieldra]

Nice! And apparently using rftools too

Especially that first shot looks amazing.

I have several mods that have interdimensional aspects, and I plan to use them all. RFTools has some features I value though: it makes it possible for your dimensional pathways to retain a sense of direction - as in "that archway goes there, this one goes here", without encumbering its portals with bulky frames. I also don't need to interact with it once the destination is set. I can just walk into another dimension. And lastly, you can automate dimlet collection - in two different ways I know of. Collecting my "startup collection" of pages was what put me off Mystcraft, and I ended up cheating them in. I haven't done that with RFTools yet, though it would be nice if you implemented craftable biome controllers before I succumb to the temptation Fortunately, the first few new worlds will use the default, which I can already make.

It will be some time before I get there though. There are the usual resource shortages to overcome. Ender Pearls are particularly annoying. Also, for my aesthetics-focused building style I need a wand focus of equal trade - ripping out and replacing walls is ultra-tedious - and I need aura nodes to refill it often. Which means I need a teleposer, for which I'll need a tier 4 blood altar. And of course, Ender Pearls, which apparently you need for anything that's really interesting, as well as - most annoyingly - for some perfectly mundane stuff like item conduits.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Oo interesting stuff!

*adds to "Watched Threads" list*

 

[Ieldra]

Courtesy of Minecraft and Ex Nihilo, I now have a perpetual motion machine in my basement.....

....but first things first. Here another lakeside vista. The fortified village actually looks rather nice, I think I will renege on the plan of abduct its inhabitants to another dimension in order to sacrifice them on my blood altar.

Plans for today: address the various resource shortages, phase 1. My first machine setup (the barrel is from after my Nether expedition, see below) looks rather basic:

From left to right: Energized Smelter, Crusher, Basic Energy Cube between four survivalist generators, Metallurgic Infuser, Enrichment Chamber. I never did the early game with Mekanism before, so I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, this setup ate up all my redstone, which wasn't that much to start with, even considering the nice accessible mineshaft I found that extended to y-level 11. So I made an Igneous Extruder to make some obsidian, using some lava from that surface lake in one of the first screenshots, made a silk-touched alumite pick from that (that cost one of my two emeralds, but it's totally worth it) and set out on my first interdimensional exploration tour....

Uh...you can imagine that getting down from here wasn't exactly easy. The other side is somewhat more accessible, but it still cost me some cobblestone and a medium-serious injury. Anyway, coming out in the open is way less annoying than coming out in a cave with no exits. I explored around....no nether redstone to be found? I was about to give up when I thought of going.....here (note the y-coordinate):

I am under the Nether's lava ocean, and there - a few blocks down in fact - I hit a veritable diamond mine - an interconnected cave system with lakes of blood instead of lakes of lava, where diamond ore and redstone ore grew in great abundance. I was so excited that I forgot to make screenshots until I had mined it all out, but if you don't believe me, someone filed this apparent overabundance of nether diamond ore at y<16 as a bug for this modpack. Anyway, I came back with four stacks (!) of nether diamond ore, every one of them worth 256 diamands, as well as six stacks of Nether Redstone Ore, each worth 1536 redstone. So not only were my redstone shortages gone for a while, I could also treat myself to the indescribable luxury of a full set of diamond armor. I never had that in any world before, since by the time diamonds got that abundant, I usually had armor that added more functionality than simple protection. I could now build my first power plant:

The cables are Mekanism basic universal cable (soon tobe upgraded) and the liquid pipes Mekanism't mechanical pipes. The EnderIO conduits for the items don't look so good, but I don't have an alternative for the time being, since connecting Mekanism's logistical sorters to an Ex Nihilo crucible results in a world-corrupting crash, and I lost about an hour of progress to that. TE ducts don't have an option to not send stuff when there's no space (at least in this version they don't, though I saw DW20 using it) and TE's retrievers (which are a really neat addition to Thermal Dynamics) need Ender pearls to make.

The power system: transfer node-cobblegen feeds 16 Ex Nihilo Crucibles, making lava. That lava powered sixteen magmatic dynamos. Actually, the lava generated is not enough for all of them, but I don't wan't to fiddle with this build again for a while as I upgrade the lava under the crucibles to pyrotheum, tripling their efficiency. I can't make pyrotheum yet: no sulfur (oddly enough, apparently there is none of that in the Nether), no blaze powder. When fully upgraded,this facility will generate 2.56 KRF/t, but for now it's just a quarter of that. I could power some cheap dimensions from that, but I'm lacking a good collection of dimlets for RFtools and mod progress in some other mods that feature alternate dimensions. And I don't do random dimensions. Imagine you had employed a dimensional engineer and had this conversation:

I: So this machine can teleport me to another dimension? Well, that's the best news since the infinite world-hypothesis was proven.
E: Well....yes, but there's a problem.
I: Making sure that my atoms don't disintegrate into their constituent parts because the physical constants are different?
E: No, we can check that. It's more about the less immediate prospects for survival, like making sure there's some solid ground and the atmosphere isn't poisonous. Such stuff.
I: I guess you need some more of these circuit-like implants you removed from that enderman?
E: Yes, and quite a few. I have no idea how to influence those parameters yet.
I: That's unpleasant. Do we now have to dissect endermen by the score?
E: Perhaps not. You remember that crazy flower-power guy we met at the last conference...Vaz-something? He says he can make a flower that can punch holes into the fabric of spacetime? Yeah, I know how that sounds, but *you* have a perpetual motion machine in your basement!
I: OK then, get to it. And if you meet that guy again, ask him why nobody can visit the dimension where he gets his special resources. It sounds like a nicer place than some I've heard of.

Now in this case I'm the engineer as well as the one being teleported, so naturally I'm going to be more careful and accept less randomness than if it was just my employer So I'm going to get more interdimensional resources, and for that I need - an Enderman spawner, a Loonium, and a tree farm to power it. I went out hunting and it took forever to find enough Endermen for five pearls, then I put some soul sand through an Ex Astris auto-sieve to get a ghast tear, and made a safari net. The EnderIO enderman spawner starts out at 1.5 KRF/t and takes in 15 KRF/t fully upgraded. Not worth it. I'm going to make a zombie spawner for the mob essence and use an MFR spawner for the Endermen. That will also give me the zombie heads I need for various applications. I hunted one last Enderman - hopefully the last I will need to find ever, and caught him, and as a nice bonus, I caught a Crimson Knight and a Crimson Cleric in a soul vial - they don't take to safari nets. I died immediately after, but could retrieve my stuff. For now, my machine setup looks fairly standard and unimpressive:

The machine in the far corner is the Ex Astris automatic sieve, which I will say more about shortly. I needed some EnderIO machines to make the soul vials and the pulsating iron for the conduits, as well as the painting machine to hide some of them with conduit facades. More fancy aesthetics - particularly Carpenter's stuff - will have to wait until my AE system is up. For that I need lot of Certus quartz and some inscribers. Which means I'll have to make either an automated quarry or - as a matter of preference - an Ex Nihilo primary resource extractor. As usual at this stage, there's so much to do that I don't know where to start...

 

[Ieldra]

I think I can lower the priority of my Enderman spawner. About 120 blocks from my base, on a hill, there was this....

And.....tadaa!

Meanwhile, at my base I have been building something I'm quite satisfied with. Other people build quarres, I build...this:

"This" is the MkV Primary Resource Extractor. I built its first, comparably primitive incarnation in Agrarian Skies, and I've been refining through several worlds. Using Ex Nihilo in a non-skyblock world may appear somewhat cheaty, but I like building this better than to build quarries, and it also gives me stuff I'd otherwise build a mobtrap for. Since I like neither quarries nor mobtraps, this is the perfect alternative.

Now, why the many words? Well, extracting resources from cobble using Ex Nihilo may seem like a pretty straightforward process, but the devil lies in the details. This little machine integrates six processing steps, two of which can be passed repeatedly, routing all intermediate products and all processing byproducts to their correct destinations and wastes nothing. There is one input line of power and cobblestone at the back of the machine, one exit where you can extract the resources, and there are no waste products in the process. Since there are more than 30 intermediate products in the process and the machine generates about 25 different resources, I'd say it's pretty complex. I've also set it on a socket - all of its processes are contained in the 3x3x4 block you can see. It's pretty much one machine with one input and one output port.

The only downside is that you must filter the output, since it's impossible to filter them through conduit filters - both the resources and the intermediate products have more than 20 variations, and since they can't be grouped by any of the known "fuzzy" mechanisms, the only filter mechanism that could deal with it is from Logistics Pipes - and those aren't multichannel-capable. This machine makes use of six of EnderIO's colored channels, as can be seen in the "wrench view":

Here's an example of the process: Cobble is crushed down to gravel with the Crusher. Sifting it with an Automatic Sieve (I have three of them for sand, gravel and dust) yields, among other useful things like coal or gems, broken ore pieces. These are packed by the Autopackager into gravel ore, which is then hammered down to broken ore sands by the Automatic Hammerers. These are sent back into the diamond chest to be repackaged into ore sand, and the whole process repeats yet again for ore dust, every cycle giving +25% bonus on the extracted resources. That ore dust is sent to the pulverizer yielding pulverized metal which again lands in the diamond chest to be sent into the Energized Smelter, giving me the ingot. The ingot is, yet again, sent back to the diamond chest to be packed into a metal block, which is sent back a final time to the diamond chest to be extracted by the pink exit channel. Meanwhile, if the pulverizing resulted in a byproduct, that is also sent back into the diamond chest, and if it's smeltable, it's sent from there to the Energized Smelter and the result lands back in the diamond chest.

The machine has quite a few mods collaborating to make it possible: EnderIO, Mekanism, Thermal Expansion, Ex Nihilo, Iron Chests (the exit chest can't be smaller than a gold chest), Autopackager. I have an idea how to integrate an MFR Unifier into to, so that I get exactly the metal variations I want out of it, but I'd have to replace the SAG Mills with a highly-sped up Crusher for that, and I don't have the power to run Mekanism's machines at *6 speed yet.

Anyway, this was another chapter in "creating the basic necessities to do interdimensional exploration." Next step is the ME network. I'd have preferred to do the Loonium next, but I need storage for the output of the resource extractor. I'm also out of Andesite for the floors of my base, which means I may have to build a Digital Miner earlier than anticipated. This will also requiring upgrading my power system.

 

[vitinhodimitroff]

Craftlandia owna chupa pnc

 

[Ieldra]

Craftlandia owna chupa pnc

???

 

[Ieldra]

Ahhh.....no more "where the heck did I put that" and "Oh, I left the iron in the furnace because there is no space for in in my chests". And the clutter in my main workroom is just gone, to be replaced by a single ME terminal and two ME drives:

Well, this looks unimpressive, right? It's just the tip of the iceberg, I can tell you. Getting there was an absolute pain this time. Searching and cutting holes in those skystones is painful at the best of times, but this time I fould my last inscriber press in the eightth one. Also, the meteoric compass has the bad habit of homing in on skystone blocks, not the chests, so that I have to mine out one stone completely before it decides to ignore the place and point to another actually useful one. That's painful at the best of times, too, but while the sunken meteorites are easily mineable due to being a well-defined cluster of blocks, meteorites on the surface clutter up the whole landscape of four chunks several blocks deep, and it's extremely time-consuming to find the last one. That's where Mekanism's Digital Miner comes in handy. Anyway, the whole process took the better part of a real-world day, but now I have the core of my resource and power production almost complete, only with some aesthetic touches (the lighting in particular needs work) and some automation still missing:

My Primary Resource Extractor looks somewhat more neat I'd say, and it now has a unifier and an ME network connection integrated. In addition to making resources, you can also make extremely fast imports of stuff made elsewhere by just placing the container - chest or barrel - in front of that import bus. It will import anything for which it has a Block Container and ignore the rest. Unfortunately, it turned out the machine is not 100% maintenance-free after all, since it produces lead dust as a byproduct in rare cases and I'm out of filter slots to send it to the smelter. So I guess once a month or so I must remove one of those panels and remove a stack of lead dust from the chest. Also, didn't I hear of a mod that makes it possible to remotely view the contents of chests? Which one was it....

Also, I upgraded my power facility. I had to line my crucibles with limestone (any block would do, but I found limestone particularly appropriate) because the pyrotheum would set fire to the andesite floor. I removed the redstone augments from the dynamos and added three efficiency upgrades and one power upgrade each, and my power generation block now produces its theoretical maximum for its size and the fuel it consumes: 2560 RF/t. In the back you can see my automated inscriber chain - just put the raw materials in the chest and it will automatically produce anything it can make from them and put the processors back in the chest. Later I'll put an ME interface there and I'll be able to auto-produce on demand from my terminals, and keep a set number of each processors in stock. As a bonus, the chain also makes charged certus quartz from normal certus quartz: put any number of certus quartz crystals into the chest and they'll be converted. All without Steve's Factory Manager. EnderIO's colored channels are extremely powerful... The crystal growth facility at the back is preliminary. I haven't gotten around to automating that one yet, and I'll have to bite the bullet and use SFM for it (I find the interface awkward for complex tasks - it's easier to write code).

One other notable thing: a fully upgraded Igneous Extruder may be able to make cobble at speeds comparable to that of an upgraded transfer node. I'm using one to make smoothstone - it made 40K in an hour or so , which is impressive given that it takes significantly longer to make smoothstone than to make cobble. The smoothstone will go into the Digital Miner to replace the ores I mine. Yep, I am determined to keep my worlds as naturally-looking as I can. Eventually I'll even mine out all the cobble I used to fill cavities before I had silk-touched picks and hammers and replace it with smooth stone.

Now here's the beginning of the iceberg I spoke of: the server room of my storage network in a very early WIP phase - I ran out of decorative blocks (I have since then mined some more but haven't gotten around to applying them to the room yet):

The storage cells in the drives are all ME Block Containers. Since I use single-item formatted cells in my storage network anyway, I can use this extremely cheap alternative to standard storage cells. Block Containers can store only one type, but they can store 512K items of that type for the price of a single 1k storage cell and a chest. Here's where the output of my Primary Resource Extractor goes - 35 different resource types. Production is slow and it will never be enough for any kind of permanent consumption, but it's usually enough to give me the mineral resources I need for crafting. The filing cabinet contains the inscriber name presses I use to name my storage cells. I found that I don't really need it, since as opposed to standard storage cells, a block container lists the name of the item in it when I hover over it in the drive view, but it looks neater if you rename the cell.

The controller setup on the right can handle up to 512 channels, routed through a P2P transport network that can bring up to 16 bundles of 32 channels each to any place on a single dense cable connection. I'll use three or four of the 16 color networks in this base and leave the rest to connect to extradimensional bases through quantum links. I won't be able to maintain several quantum links for quite some time though. The terminal in my main workroom above is part of a separate network that connects to the storage network with a storage bus pointed at an interface. The storage bus has priority 100, so whatever can be stored in there, will be stored in there in preference. One thing to note is that certain rare resources should be kept out of the network. I've had my network happily use up silverwood logs to make planks and sticks in its autocrafting, and unlike the storage buses I use to void excess, autocrafting recipes can't be set to be precise in their usage of resources.

Next stage of my project: set up some autocrafting and the basics of the crafting and control network, and then at last I can get to make a tree farm, set up charcoal production and use it to power Botania flowers which will give me my starting collection of dimlets. If you want to see dimensional exploration, that will still take a while. I am the type of player who doesn't move on to the next stage of a project before the previous one is fully realized. I did say I am starting from scratch for exactly that reason.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Hello @Ieldra, just wanted to say I'm really enjoying this thread and loving all the pics and descriptions of what you've done!

 

[Ieldra]

Hello @Ieldra, just wanted to say I'm really enjoying this thread and loving all the pics and descriptions of what you've done!

Thank you I can't guarantee that I'll post every day - as hard as it may be to believe, I have a life besides Minecraft - but this is a long-term project. I just hope my modpack stays stable for long enough.

 

[Ieldra]

I have decided that my base in this overworld will be invisible. I had originally planned to break out in the open and build some real buildings, but I'm finding that what I'd need to build wouldn't integrate into the landscape as well as I'd like. So eventually I'll build a tower on that central island and make a teleporter to get me in, but the base proper will stay under the hill - so the tree farm. the Botania setup and some other stuff you usually put out into the open will be indoors this time. Not that I'm there yet, the ME network is taking quite some time and resources to build.

I should say this game is odd. I haven't got a tree farm yet - if I need wood, I go out and cut some trees down and replant them immediately. I haven't got a mob farm. In fact, I don't have much need for mob resources yet except for zombie heads and ender pearls, and I have ender lilies for my very basic needs. I don't have automated ore processing, even though I still need to mine since my resource generator can't keep up with my needs in everything. Gold in particular appears to be as common as diamonds. Which means I have diamonds enough to last me for this world, probably, but lacked the gold for a few stacks of logic processors until I took my Digital Miner to the Nether to get some more. However, in spite of not having all these standard facilities, I do have an ME network that's far from minimalistic in its design. Which brings me to the first picture: the center of my Control and Crafting network:

The big block on the right is another standard 512-channel controller setup, only partly encased in marble (I'll add casing to the other one, too - just like so many other things, I haven't gotten around to it yet). The block on the left is a molecular assembler setup with 20 assemblers and 32 interfaces, being able to craft 288 recipes. Unfortunately, AE2's redesign meant that the space requirements for autocrafting went up drastically. I don't think it's possible to make a setup for 288 recipes any more compact than this, and building it higher is not feasible because the 32 interfaces exhaust all the channels on one dense cable. Since you can't attach interfaces, buses or similar things to a dense cable within the same block, I had to use four standard cable lines, and they can only connect to 8 interfaces. Knowing myself, I'll need another of those assembler blocks somewhen down the line... Apart from that, this room will fill up more in time with auto-processing setups. Anything from smelting, making alloys and making other stuff on demand will be placed along the walls.

You may have noticed that I don't vary my building blocks that much. As yet, anyway. The thing is, I'm operating under a set of constraints which turned out to be rather more restrictive than anticipated. First thing: my texture pack's only available Chisel patch is for Chisel 1, not 2, which means most or all of the new things in Chisel 2 aren't covered. That includes. among other things, most variations of factory blocks, all holystone and grimstone, all but two variations of andesite, granite and diorite, and many others. Thus I'm limited to using the raw block or the polished tile of my preferred materials. Second, I'd like to use more marble. However, almost all non-small-tile marble blocks (those are good for floors but not walls) have connected textures, and AE2 cable facades - as opposed to EnderIO facades - don't do connected textures, which would break the textures of walls and floors up depending on whether I've run cables under them. As you can see in the screenshot above, that dented marble looks rather good with connected textures (at the top of the left block) but rather overdone as a single-block panel. Meanwhile, Soartex' carved marble looks ugly... I'll need to experiment with copying single textures over from another pack - I already did that to remove Soartex' extra-ugly water - but that will take time. I really like the general style of this resource pack, but I am reminded of why I used to use Sphax in spite of being not all that excited about its somewhat whimsical style. It doesn't help that Soartex doesn't take advantage of a feature that makes it possible to just stack patches on top of a style's vanilla pack without needing to patch the archive, and getting the topmost texture in the stack for any block. That was really nice when I experimented with Sphax.

Anway, not much more to show this time. The server room of my storage network is still unfinished, but looks somewhat neat now:

And the only addition to my power and resource extraction room is the pillar with the crafting terminal that connects to my control and crafting network.

Next order of business: automate the crystal growth chamber, then make the tree farm. I already collected quite a few Botania flowers when I got fed up with having to make yet another ME network component and needed to to something else. I also made and placed two Magnum Torches. I didn't have any problems with mobs personally - in fact, the occasional Enderminies served as an added source of pearls - but apparently there are others but me who Creepers don't like. There wasn't any damage to my base, but there was the occasional explosion outside and I noticed quite a few additional craters. Now I really hate Creepers cratering up the beautiful landscape which was the reason I settled here, and that can't continue. Also, I really need to do something about the lighting. Torches won't do. Chisel 2 has some really nice alternatives, but.....you guessed it - they aren't covered by my texture pack. I guess I'll have to resort to painted glowstone and the occasional inverted lamp until I get an idea for something more interesting.

 

[Ieldra]

I...got quite a bit done since the last update. You don't quite realize just how much depends on a good source of ender pearls until you finally put an end to the scarcity and realize how many possibilities have opened up. Anyway, the way there featured a tree farm and a Loonium:

This may seem like a waste of space, but I didn't want the tree farm to devolve into a solid block of wood if I shut it down. This way you can walk between the trees as if this was an underground park, to some extent. It's too bad that there aren't any trees midway in-between oak and pine in height. This was first designed for pine, but they grew too tall and I didn't like how their tops would appear cut off, and I couldn't make the room any higher because there's a lake one block above the ceiling. In fact, the granite on the ceiling consists of covers only to prevent dripping. This tree farm doesn't make wood btw.. I don*t nee that much wood. If I need some more, I shut the harvester off for a few minutes and cut the trees down with an axe. This farm makes charcoal. Should the time time when I don't need it any more, I can switch it to wood with a lever.

Here my Botania setup, immediately after I got my first elven resources. I have 16 Endoflames fed with one charcoal block apiece every seven minutes, and four Thermaliies - well, those were disappointing, Vazkii may have overdone it with her nerf. I can shut the supply off with a lever - no idea if I ever implement auto-shutoff. What I will do, however, is to make the contents of those hoppers visible on an RFtools screen so that I have an idea how much potential mana is still in there.

Perhaps you've asked yourself why I put so much effort into the Loonium. Well, here's why:

Not only did I get about 200 dimlets - now there's only one hurdle to overdome to get really started with dimensional exploration - but also some division sigils and more than a stack of ender lilies (I had already taken some out for my farm when I made this shot). This is a concentration of the more useful stuff - I pumped out much the useless stuff (armor pieces, bits of almost useless Thaumcraft jewelry, name tags, floppy disks, all that crap you usually find in dungeon chests) as the Loonium did its work, keeping only one item of every type for later scanning. Someone on the RR development team apparently decided to remove records from the dungeon loot tables - or maybe Vazkii did it for the Loonium. That's a relief, they cluttered up my chests most annoyingly in an earlier world. Whoever it was, thanks for that!

BTW, if you want to copy this setup, take care to place the trashcan into which you pump the crap far away from the Hopperhock that picks up the drops from the Loonium. It will happily put them into the trashcan if it's near enough. Heh, I guess that'll make a funny story for the "derp" thread. Meanwhile - I mean while the Loonium was doing its job - I set up my autocrafting. I must've put around 150 recipes in the assembler interfaces, and the machines for auto-processing followed:

Here's how things look behind the scenes:

It's odd how different the machines from different mods are to automate. EnderIO's are easiest - they can input and output into the same side and you can input the different components of a recipe into the same side. Very useful for automation. Mekanism comes next. Here it's best if you point the ME interface at a chest and use conduits to route them to their destination. You can then auto-eject the output into the ME interface and save the channel you might otherwise have used for an import bus. You don't need any filters in the conduits since Mekanism's machine slots are well-defined and don't accept what they can't process. Unlike some of TE's machines, where I had to use filters. What I haven't managed to do yet is to autocraft a fluid from a solid - such as blazing pyrotheum from pyrotheum dust. I have no way to put the target fluid into the recipe pattern unless I use a bucket as an intermediate storage, and I don't want to do that. If I craft *with* fluids ExtraCells' fluid assembler takes care of things, but that doesn't work if the fluid is the output from a machine.

Here's another view of my Botania area.

I cleaned up a bit. Also you don't see the hoppers anymore. Which of course also means I can't check them. That's why I'm going to use RFTools' screens with inventory modules - I think they should be able to show me what's left in the hoppers. In the background you can see the timer where I removed the cover. I also removed the Thermalilies since they appear to make less mana per time period than the Endoflames and didn't contribute significantly to the total output.

So much for today. Next item on the list is more power. I really wanted to do something else than Big Reactors for my intermediate power supply until I get to Mekanism's fusion reactor. I tested a *8 High-Temperature Furnace Generator. The problem is it uses furnace fuel, of which I didn't have a surplus while the Loonium was running, and also it used up about 1000 pieces of charcoal in fairly short order at 0.1s apiece with no apparent improvement in efficiency. I certainly won't have the surplus to even test how long it takes that thing to get better for a very long time. As an alternative, I realized I could run the core of my base with a single *64 survivalist generator, and generate around 12 KRF/t with four of them. That certainly sounds attractive, but apart from the fact that they also need furnace fuel, I'd also need a bedrock ingot apiece. I'd have to build a high-speed compressed cobble generator and let it run for a while. Meanwhile, the resources for a Big Reactor came almost automatically with setting up the autocrafting. Infusing snowballs, extracting niter from gunpowder, making cryotheum and steel, getting the Magical Crops seeds for the yellorium, all that took up just a fraction of the time I would've needed to put into the other stuff. So Big Reactors it is yet again.

So, next item in line is, in fact, a big reactor. I think I'll go with my standard 13x13x7 (exterior dimensions) passive design, that will last me long enough. BTW, I could actually run a reasonably normal dimension from the power I generate now. However, running the dimension is the last of what I need. Creating it and teleporting around takes up quite a bit more power, and my 2.5 KRF/t aren't enough for that, especially considering how much my ME network requires.

 

[Inaeo]

You have my attention. I like where this is going, but also that you're taking the time to show us how you're getting there. Some nice work thus far.

 

[LordSlyFox]

Really into this, definitely adding to my watched threads list.

 

[Ieldra]

YAY! I have finished the infrastructure for dimensional exploration and set out on my first interdimensional expedition (I'll put that in a separate post - too many pictures). But first things first...

Just for how nice it looks, here's a picture of the city across the lake from my base at night. I'd like to know which mod makes such things, it's really beautiful:

Meanwhile, construction works are under way at my base:

I wish I had Buildcraft's Floodgate when I had to do this in Agrarian Skies. Imagine filling that reactor with cryotheum using buckets.

Here's the reactor controls:

For a sophisticated machine like the Programmable Rednet Controller, the reactor's auto-control appears deceptively simple - just take in the signal for the power level in the reactor's power buffer and return it unchanged as the signal for control rod insertion - but I don't think any other machine could've done this. It's just too bad applications for the PRC's countless capabilities are comparably rare, but while there are some machines that output analog signals in modded MC, there aren't many that react to them. Anyway, what this does: it tells the reactor to only produce as much power as is taken out of it, with real-time control. I could also cap the output at a maximum level for efficiency at the same time, but I haven't done that. The times of high power requirement are rare enough for now. The reactor generates up to 50 KRF/t in passive mode, and I have no intention of making it active since I have other plans.

And here the control center of my ME network. The drives here aren't formatted and are not for mass storage - I have the other stuff in the 16 drives upstairs.

I also did something about the atrocious lighting situation. Torches in an ultra-tech environment? Can't be...

None of the lamps I could find fit my style, but I like how glowstone looks. It fits well with the white-stone-and-crystals aesthetic I want to achieve. I have found no way to make the lighting look more like crystals, and unfortunately I can't implement proximity control since the only machine I could find capable of that is from Gregtech, which I haven't got in this pack.

Now, what you can see in the distance in the previous shot is - finally - my dimension lab:

The "power cube" is really nothing more than a way to distribute power, but I'd like to imagine it's the machine that makes the whole dimensional magic work, since it looks so much more like a machine that could do that than the actual dimension builder. Anyway, this contraption can route power up to 64KRF/t to up to 12 different destinations, across dimensions if necessary. There's a tesseract at the center fed from the reactor. The screens will show the status of extradimensionl bases once I've actually built some.

Here's where I'll do the actual work:

All dimlets I put into the gold chest get auto-researched and put into the filing cabinet (conduits are under the floor, naturally). At the back you can see eight dimension builders - if I need to maintain several dimensions at the same time, I need several dimension builders.

And finally, here's where I come and go. You don't see the destination analyzer - I hadn't put it in yet when I made this shot, it'll be in the floor adjacent to the transmitter.

I had a small problem when I made this room. The reactor is one block under the main floor level (my levels are eight blocks high and the reactor is seven), so I couldn't lower the floor around the cube without using covers, and I also couldn't put the room one block higher since it would then be out of sync with the rest of this level of my base. Carpenter's blocks came to my rescues, since I could make the little "cheat" invisible. I'm showing the next two pictures just to demonstrate how OCD you can actually get about aesthetics...

Because a thing like this - naturally - can't be allowed to remain:

Now it looks as intended and my sanity is saved:

This was enough for one post, but the next update follows within the hour.

 

[Ieldra]

Now, for the first interdimensional expedition. Before anything else, here's the checklist of things you should bring with you:

(1) A matter transmitter. You do want to get back...
(2) A dialing device. You can pre-dial the transmitter at your base, but one tends to forget that, and any dialing can be somewhat confusing if there are many other transmitters nearby.
(3) A tesseract or dimensional transceiver to connect to your power plant back at home.
(4) A filled energy cell. Sometimes things get wonky with the tesseracts, or you forgot to keep the chunk with your power plant loaded, and having an energy cell is a good emergency measure.
(5) Some kind of automatic mining implement - if you don't want to mine all your dimensional shard ore by hand.
(6) A jetpack or some other method of flying. You will need to explore wide areas, and there are dimensions where being able to fly is essential.
(7) A chunk loader. If you want to maintain the new dimension, you'll need one placed near your point of arrival.
(8) An ender chest to send stuff back home. You'll find enough stuff to clutter up several inventories before you actually want to get back. If it's a nice dimension, that is.

So....finally the dimension magic is going to happen. My first instruction set for the inscriber looks like this:

I couldn't attempt the dimension I showed in the OP since I hadn't found an "amplified" terrain type dimlet and neither a "time: dawn" or "time: dusk" dimlet, and I didn't want to dissect dimlets until I had infused the workbench. "Nearlands" is near enough though - it will create a bowl-like valley (unfortunately with sharp edges) in an amplified environment, and I put my favorite biomes of the collection in with the "filtered" biome controller. This will select the closest match for the original worldgen biomes from the list. For easier exploration, it would've been better to choose open and flat terrain, but exploring that is not enjoyable, and I wanted a dimension where I can put my Thaumcraft base. Make sure to include one instruction for every feature of a dimension to make sure no features you don't like appear. It's especially important to pay attention to the "effect", since this can make a dimension either thoroughly unpleasant or very expensive to maintain (in case of beneficial effects). The "effects none" dimlet is craftable, btw.. Regarding the other stuff, the only "structure" dimlet I had was "fortress" (meaning nether fortress), and that's exactly what I did *not* want. Guess what the RNG selected for me this time...

Maintenance for relatively normal dimensions are rather low...

And off we go:

At the arrival point, I set up things like this:

If you don't want to maintain a dimension, you can take the tesseract back with you after it's powered the transmitter for one last jump. The only thing you permanently lose, by necessity, when entering a new dimension is the matter transmitter, since it needs to placed for you to get back.

You are looking for structures like this:

I call them "alien structures". You can also see this dimension looks rather nice. I have instances of the Firefly Forest biome from Twilight Forest, and I think that's where I'll eventually put my Thaumcraft base. These alien structures are unevenly distributed. You can fly for 15 minutes without seeing one, and at other places come across several in close proximity, mostly in the water

I'll show more impressions of this dimension later - I accidentally deactivated my Fraps and some shots I intended to show did not happen. What I did, beyond exploring the structures and flying around looking for a place to settle, is to mine down to level 35, find one block of Dimensional Shard Ore, mine it with a silk-touched pick and set my digital miner to mine the rest of it at various places. It is not too common - there's between 50 and 100 blocks of it within a radius of 32 blocks, but the digital miner doesn't care about that... I hate to imagine what this would take without Mekanism. I really, really hate the holes in the landscape created by quarries, and I am not in need of other ores atm anyway.

And here's the jaw-dropping haul from my first expedition:

This is the diamond chest into which I pump the contents of my "send stuff back home" ender chest in order to save space. Everything defined in my storage network gets sent there, but anything new remains. That's just from, well, maybe an hour or 90 minutes of exploration in the new dimension. Notable finds pre-research: a rarity 6 dimlet "Mob Dragon". Maintenance 10KRF/t - uh, I could actually do that now. Nice to have once I get into Draconic Evolution.

For now, however, I have stuff to do in my base. I need a mobtrap after all, not only for those enchanted books I mentioned (At this point, that's the easist way to get useful enchantments, and I need a good bow) but also because I need mob essence. MFR features a machine called the block smasher, which can break blocks with a "Fortune" effect. I'll use that on the dimensional ore, but it runs on mob essence. Forunately, I have a division sigil and can make a cursed earth mob grinder. Once that's done, I'll probably start my extradimensional Thaumcraft base. And btw, things will happen more slowly from now on I think. I had a few free days...

 

[Inaeo]

Those towns are created by Witchery, FYI.

An alternative to mob drops for enchanted gear is fishing. A reliable source of food and a TON of other goodies (enchanted books and gear being quite common in my experience). It can also be automated in a variety of ways, from MFR to Thaumcraft.

Keep up the good work. Its a fun read, and I can't wait to see your dimension pics.

 

[Calech]

If you don't want to maintain a dimension, you can take the tesseract back with you after it's powered the transmitter for one last jump. The only thing you permanently lose, by necessity, when entering a new dimension is the matter transmitter, since it needs to placed for you to get back.

You can actually retrieve all of your infrastructure by using RFTools' Charged Porter to return instead; it costs 150k out of its 200k RF charge to do it, but it'll allow you to teleport back to a single pre-set Matter Receiver. I did this a couple of times when I was experimenting with RFTools dimensions and made small but critical flaws in my dimension specification (specifically, paying RF for a costly liquid dimlet is a bad idea when using it in a setup that doesn't generate any liquid - oops). You even get a 'free' Matter Receiver out of the bargain this way.

(Technically you can also do the same with any other portable, configurable trans-dimensional teleporter, but the one from RFTools is the most sensible to suggest as it works with the same setup you'll use to get in and out of dimensions)

 

[Ieldra]

@lnaeo:
You can automate fishing with *Thaumcraft*? I have no words. Actually, what I'm after is the enchanted books dropped by some mobs since they have useful enchantments on them more often than the gear - which I usually trash without a closer look. I had the ones I wanted after just two hours of runnning my mob grinder.

@Calech:
Thanks for the hint. I didn't think of that.

Anyway, here a few impressions of my first dimension:

It appears someone didn't want me to enter that door:

Flying over the landscape - quite beautiful I think. Note the heights. I'll never understand some people's preference for flat terrain...

Here two of the alien structures in close proximity. With a little practice you can actually see the structures on the minimap.

I think I'll set up my Thaumcraft base here - a tall island with my favorite type of forest, and no Nether Fortress (what this dimension appears to have in abundance) in sight in any direction.