Advice for Monster at end of beginning-game-stage?

[asb3pe]

So I have 20 magmatic dynamos running off nether lava to power my TE3 ore processing, I have resonant energy cells, tesseracts and got my first quarry almost to bedrock. Got all my Tinkers' Construct tools made.

What now? Looking for advice. So far this mirrors my approach to almost every FTB beginning game. Usually now I would start Thaumcraft because I know it and can speed thru it pretty fast, however I'm more of a tech-loving "UItimate" player than a "Magic World" one.

I'd normally also get MFR up and running - mostly for the auto-spawner which gives me infinite quantities of a lot of different type of mob drops once I safari-net them all. However I see Monster has the "hard" MFR recipes turned on by default (thankfully, I prefer hard over easy) so I'm not quite ready for MFR yet.

What mods would you recommend I give a try and focus on when entering mid-game? Thanks for advice.

Oh, I should add - I did do Advanced Genetics already and gave myself flight. Awesome. Now I don't have to focus on MFR powersuit quite so urgently.

 

[Zarkov]

Maybe try making a QuarryPlus? At max size it's equivalent to 16 regular max sized quarries. With Fortune III and Efficiency V enchants on it, the output is about 20 blocks per second and a single quarry nets 3k diamonds or so (as an example).

Not sure if it has been fixed in later Monster versions, but you might want to void pipe with itemducts instead of BC diamond pipes since they blow up when you hit flourite. Even the slow item ducts can handle two quarries at full throttle.

 

[Wagon153]

Maybe try making a QuarryPlus? At max size it's equivalent to 16 regular max sized quarries. With Fortune III and Efficiency V enchants on it, the output is about 20 blocks per second and a single quarry nets 3k diamonds or so (as an example).

Not sure if it has been fixed in later Monster versions, but you might want to void pipe with itemducts instead of BC diamond pipes since they blow up when you hit flourite. Even the slow item ducts can handle two quarries at full throttle.

Silk touch, not fortune. You go fortune, and your frame rate/TPS is gonna hate you because lol experience.

 

[Zarkov]

Silk touch, not fortune. You go fortune, and your frame rate/TPS is gonna hate you because lol experience.

Ah, I was hoping that was fixed in 1.1.1. Oh well, fortune with a block smasher or something will work I guess. I heard it was only mimichite that caused it, not sure if that is correct. Too bad in that case, it's one of the last mods I'd want to remove. :/

 

[AlanEsh]

I'd normally also get MFR up and running - mostly for the auto-spawner which gives me infinite quantities of a lot of different type of mob drops once I safari-net them all. However I see Monster has the "hard" MFR recipes turned on by default (thankfully, I prefer hard over easy) so I'm not quite ready for MFR yet.

Why wouldn't you get started on MFR? Lots to do there, and it's not that expensive. I didn't see anything "hard" about the recipes on Monster.

(/edit -- ok, getting pink slimes is hard, and some of the emerald requirements are hard, but otherwise, no)

 

[asb3pe]

Maybe try making a QuarryPlus? At max size it's equivalent to 16 regular max sized quarries. With Fortune III and Efficiency V enchants on it, the output is about 20 blocks per second and a single quarry nets 3k diamonds or so (as an example).

Not sure if it has been fixed in later Monster versions, but you might want to void pipe with itemducts instead of BC diamond pipes since they blow up when you hit flourite. Even the slow item ducts can handle two quarries at full throttle.

I'm glad you brought up fluorite, because those rainbow blocks are the only ones being missed by the basic Buildcraft quarry. Why is that? I'm a neat freak so I just spent time clearing every one of them out of the hole because it was bothering me. LOL

I debated not using this thing that leaves great big holes in the ground, but neat-freak me finally said "ah the heck with it", it's a big world, right? If the holes bother me I'll just move, I plan on moving anyways once I find the right place to build. I spawned in a flat, treeless biome so that's where I plopped right down of course. But the surrounds are pretty boring, and I like a room with a view. I have never used an EnderQuarry, letalone a QuarryPlus (new to me, never played Monster before). But this is why I posted, so I get the sort of tips I need to get me going in a new direction.

Another fun little oddity, I was flying out of my front door yesterday, enjoying my new AdvancedGenetics cheat-mode (opps, how dare I? haha) creative flying, and what happens? A chunk-loading error (which I will never understand on SSP) gives me a straight on look at an underground... yeah its big... Stronghold. I mean I see the 12-ender-eye-block warpgate thing staring right at me. Well, so much for the difficulty of finding The End. LOL One of the sad parts to me about SMP is that they almost always give you an immediate portal to the End, and you never have to hunt for it, which means enderpearls aren't very difficult to acquire, and that changes the entire flow of the game... etc. etc. Well even in SSP, with chunk-loading x-ray glitches, that hunt is now spoiled too. Oh well. It's all about the mods with FTB anyway, right?

 

[malicious_bloke]

I debated not using this thing that leaves great big holes in the ground, but neat-freak me finally said "ah the heck with it", it's a big world, right

I just dig down a bit and make it so the top of the frame doesn't poke above the surface. It's even easier when you do it in an extreme hills biome (lots of lovely emeralds <3).

I also make 64x64 my standard quarry plot, leave the one directly below my base pristine and dig out the others, that way I can use the basement level when I set up my AE autocrafting system and have a nice view of the devastated landscape around me at the same time. It's all nice and industrial looking

 

[YX33A]

I'm glad you brought up fluorite, because those rainbow blocks are the only ones being missed by the basic Buildcraft quarry. Why is that? I'm a neat freak so I just spent time clearing every one of them out of the hole because it was bothering me. LOL

Aren't we all neat freaks here?

I debated not using this thing that leaves great big holes in the ground, but neat-freak me finally said "ah the heck with it", it's a big world, right? If the holes bother me I'll just move, I plan on moving anyways once I find the right place to build. I spawned in a flat, treeless biome so that's where I plopped right down of course. But the surrounds are pretty boring, and I like a room with a view. I have never used an EnderQuarry, letalone a QuarryPlus (new to me, never played Monster before). But this is why I posted, so I get the sort of tips I need to get me going in a new direction.

Well, for one, the ender quarry doesn't leave some sort of scar in the world as it replaces anything it mines with dirt, cutting down on lighting updates(apparently bypassing block updates too), and IIRC is the silkiest of autominers.

Another fun little oddity, I was flying out of my front door yesterday, enjoying my new AdvancedGenetics cheat-mode (opps, how dare I? haha) creative flying, and what happens? A chunk-loading error (which I will never understand on SSP) gives me a straight on look at an underground... yeah its big... Stronghold. I mean I see the 12-ender-eye-block warpgate thing staring right at me. Well, so much for the difficulty of finding The End. LOL One of the sad parts to me about SMP is that they almost always give you an immediate portal to the End, and you never have to hunt for it, which means enderpearls aren't very difficult to acquire, and that changes the entire flow of the game... etc. etc. Well even in SSP, with chunk-loading x-ray glitches, that hunt is now spoiled too. Oh well. It's all about the mods with FTB anyway, right?

I've had that happen in SSP once or twice, including before the SSP server split.
To understand why this shit can happen in SSP, you have to understand that the game runs very different now then it used to. Now you are always connecting to a server when you want to play, even in SSP, since the server and the client have been separated. It had some downsides for modding(eg every mod had to be pretty much rewritten to allow for a SMP game since technically SSP is no more), but it had some upsides too(eg any mod now that uses forge is all but guarantied to so SMP compatible).

 

[Middleclaw]

Finding End portals quickly is nothing new. Finding one seconds after spawning in a new world is another matter entirely. Vanilla game, spawned, took 2 steps back, fell down a hole and... right into the lava that hides below such portals.

The Ender Quarry sounds promising. I must try it out soon. Too bad I'm addicted to skyblock type maps.

 

[asb3pe]

Here's a complication: The Stronghold is smack dab in the middle of one of those very weird "taint" areas, with all the purple. Ugh. I haven't ventured in there yet, not until I understand what taint is and what I can do about it. Sure is ugly looking and ugly sounding. I got the heck out of there once I marked a waypoint on my map.

And now my quarry is done, I didn't do full size, just 3x3 chunks. I ended up with two shale gas blocks down on the bottom... so I think that will prompt me to investigate what to do with em...

 

[YX33A]

Here's a complication: The Stronghold is smack dab in the middle of one of those very weird "taint" areas, with all the purple. Ugh. I haven't ventured in there yet, not until I understand what taint is and what I can do about it. Sure is ugly looking and ugly sounding. I got the heck out of there once I marked a waypoint on my map.

And now my quarry is done, I didn't do full size, just 3x3 chunks. I ended up with two shale gas blocks down on the bottom... so I think that will prompt me to investigate what to do with em...

Taint is... a sickness of the land, caused by bad magic. It is also a disease, I guess. It spreads, and can infect living things(players aren't able to be infected beyond the normal taint damage AFAIK), and these tainted creatures usually end up spreading the taint.

What you can do about it depends on what Thaumcraft addons you have. If you have Technomancy there is a way to clean it on a massive scale(or cause it). Not sure what other addons have, but it's a better solution then just throwing those shimer bloom things all over.

Another trick that isn't commonly discussed is using Rainbow Trees from Rainbow Forest by Reika to clean it. See, they slowly can purify the land, and even Mystcraft ages benefit from them too.
EDIT: Oh right, shale blocks. They're from Emmasher's GasCraft, and unless you know how to use a modular socket I would ignore them for now.
I'd also suggest ignoring them until you have slickwater production going strong, since you waste half of the natural gas in those things unless you use slickwater.

 

[asb3pe]

I watched a very good youtube mod spotlight from Danilus on GasCraft. I hear ya on slickwater, that was my thought too but it is def helpful to know these things now so I can plan ahead for what I will need to be mass-producing in the future. Doesn't seem to be the most versatile mod, but I definitely enjoyed seeing the effect corrosive gas has on endermen with a guaranteed 2-pearl drop (Danilus says in his video it seems to always be 2 pearls). That can be beneficial, although here's my overall problem with FTB and minecraft - at the beginning, a single enderpearl may seem like a fortune. But a week later, after progressing a bit, I suddenly have over 1000 pearls and not a huge need for em anymore. LOL

Ah well. Yeah the taint cleanup is the kind of project I can put my efforts into and feel proud of when I get it done. I didn't know if there even WAS a way, so thanks for the tips. I really like those rainbow trees but I never knew what they could be used for... so that one's a no-brainer for me, there's no rush, plenty to do while the trees do their thing. I'm curious how deep they will penetrate, the taint goes way down to the bottom of a chasm that cuts thru the land. One way to find out! That's all the urging I needed to make a portal and get to the Twilight Forest. I didn't want to go there until I could fly around, so spoiled. LOL

Oh one other thing about the quarry - I forgot, the major reason I decided to dig the big hole in the ground (in a mountain biome obv for the emeralds) was so that I can get a good look at the ore distribution. I had a bit of trouble finding iron, ferrous and diamonds, some reddit posts helped me but the quarry really lets me see it visually.

 

[asb3pe]

What can/should I do with all this geostrata rock that has piled up? The opal looks pretty cool. I think I read you can smelt them so I'll try that and see how they look.[DOUBLEPOST=1397596453][/DOUBLEPOST]

Why wouldn't you get started on MFR? Lots to do there, and it's not that expensive. I didn't see anything "hard" about the recipes on Monster.

(/edit -- ok, getting pink slimes is hard, and some of the emerald requirements are hard, but otherwise, no)

It was the Deep Storage Units - I saw a tesseract frame and four reinforced strongboxes and went "Whoa!". One day later, and I'm like "Big deal!" LOL

 

[namiasdf]

This is where you have infinite possibilities. Since you have a good energy set, delving into any mod is now possible. With a good energy set, means you can sustain resource production through quarries, laser drill, etc.

So now it's really a matter of what you want to do.

Right now I'm fucking around with trying to get to imperial/industrial bees (for alvearies) and TC3, building up aura nodes in my underground base via silverwood trees + hoe of growth, then letting the aura settle again.

In the background, I fight an occasional wither and will be preparing to go to TF once my automated potion making/ender pouch refill system is complete.

Otherwise, I have 10x36HP steam boilers running off of 400ish MFR tree farm spots (dirt spots...), which supply me 1440 MJ/t. I have a mob system for whenever I need stuff with respects to that. This gets dumped into 4 laser drills, or whatever I need the energy for in my storage stack.

IMO early game is about how you get to mid-game, antics of resource acquisition and energy production, notwithstanding security. Mid-game is about achieving scalable sustainability, such that you can scale up your processes to finally sustain late game stuff. What you choose to do in your lategame depends on who you are. Conquering all bosses, fusion, etc.

 

[YX33A]

What can/should I do with all this geostrata rock that has piled up? The opal looks pretty cool. I think I read you can smelt them so I'll try that and see how they look.[DOUBLEPOST=1397596453][/DOUBLEPOST]

Make fancy looking structures... and not much else. It's oreDictionary stone/cobble normally, so they work for things that aren't foolishly checking only for minecraft stone/cobble in their recipes.

It was the Deep Storage Units - I saw a tesseract frame and four reinforced strongboxes and went "Whoa!". One day later, and I'm like "Big deal!" LOL

Yeah, well, DSU's have always been too cheap for what they do, so the cost increase doesn't phase me so much as some people.

 

[asb3pe]

IMO early game is about how you get to mid-game, antics of resource acquisition and energy production, notwithstanding security. Mid-game is about achieving scalable sustainability, such that you can scale up your processes to finally sustain late game stuff. What you choose to do in your lategame depends on who you are. Conquering all bosses, fusion, etc.

I'm already wishing for something like Galacticraft, even tho I really don't even know what it does exactly - I just want some goal to work towards, something huge and seemingly unattainable until late game... like building spaceships and going to the planets. But I'm the type of person nowadays that if it isn't in a modpack (i.e. press-button-and-play) then I'm lost. I didn't used to be like this when I was young, but welcome to life's late game. LOL

Speaking of modpacks and customizing... when I start up FTB first time each day, I get messages when I load my world up about mod updates being available. How do I update all of them? Is there an easy way to do them all thru the FTB launcher or do I have to do them individually and all that not-so-easy stuff? My approach is, I let the messages sit there until some FTB staff decides to update the entire Monster pack, and I play it as-is.

 

[Padfoote]

@asb3pe You'll have to either manually update everything or wait for a pack update. And if you want a large, endgame goal, make a Reactorcraft fusion reactor.

 

[asb3pe]

@asb3pe You'll have to either manually update everything or wait for a pack update. And if you want a large, endgame goal, make a Reactorcraft fusion reactor.

Thanks for clearing that up, I'll gladly just wait then. And yes... that does seem to already be my endgame goal, and I am quite sure it will be a difficult mountain for me to climb, but not insurmountable.

 

[namiasdf]

I'm already wishing for something like Galacticraft, even tho I really don't even know what it does exactly - I just want some goal to work towards, something huge and seemingly unattainable until late game... like building spaceships and going to the planets. But I'm the type of person nowadays that if it isn't in a modpack (i.e. press-button-and-play) then I'm lost. I didn't used to be like this when I was young, but welcome to life's late game. LOL

Speaking of modpacks and customizing... when I start up FTB first time each day, I get messages when I load my world up about mod updates being available. How do I update all of them? Is there an easy way to do them all thru the FTB launcher or do I have to do them individually and all that not-so-easy stuff? My approach is, I let the messages sit there until some FTB staff decides to update the entire Monster pack, and I play it as-is.

Well, there are a few things.

You could make your own, but that would involve doing all your IDs. Otherwise, finding a modpack that BEST fits your interest is your best bet.

Adding mods into modpacks can be an already well established thing. Universal configs as implemented by the FTB team, or how GT is integrated into Unleashed, despite not being into the pack, are examples that you can find readily.

If it isn't established, then it might be up to you to make the precedent. You load the mod in, load the game, see what IDs conflict, change until fixed. Then you can submit those changes to the community, for the specific integration of a mod into a modpack. That could be your contribution.

 

[null123]

Finding End portals quickly is nothing new. Finding one seconds after spawning in a new world is another matter entirely. Vanilla game, spawned, took 2 steps back, fell down a hole and... right into the lava that hides below such portals.

The Ender Quarry sounds promising. I must try it out soon. Too bad I'm addicted to skyblock type maps.

Do I detect an Agrarian Skies player?