Another one of these threads

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ICountFrom0

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I've wandered back to the forums, I must have smelled the delicious, delicious brains.

Now, instead of my normal habit of playing in a world a while, hitting my frustration level, and then leaving, to never post an update again ...

This time I'm on a server. Direwolf20 world. BoP active, but not in the surface world, so if we want to play in it, we need to find pages for it.

It was honestly the best compromise we could come up with to keep the overworld from being too dangerous for some of the players on our server.

Me, I dug into a wall near the ocean, set up a temporary base to get started in, and then proceded to get blown up by gangs of creepers in the over world, again, and again, each time just as I thought I'd collected enough things from the surface to get started mining.

This, this is a bad habit of mine. Truth is, you can, and could, and perhaps should? (Lets hear what you think) should, go into the caves as soon as you've got a stack of torch like substances and at a few hunger bars of food. Perhaps even as far as wood armor...

Once I'd actually gone down into the heart of the world, things where better for me. I even visited the nether to get firebat form... sadly my trip to the twilight forest latter to get tiny bird was not so useful, has anybody noticed that there is no flight form that would survive mining strait up... firebat, hit water, regular bat, hit lava.

It took me a few days, but I did find a place I wanted to build. There's three redwood trees, a slime island, and it's a rather tight cluster. If I put a chunkloader in the center tree, the entire range is circle 2 (or was it 2. 5 from top to bottom, honestly I'll spotloader the 5 chunks I use instead.

There's also some tainted chunks for when I feel cocky. Nothing makes you feel less egotistical then having a selective bit of your anatomy handed back to you.

I've both found the most resources, and lost the most resources into lava of anybody on the server. It's quite hilarious. I mention finding something good in a chest, and you can almost see the pool starting on how long it'll take me to lava death it.

So, I decided to do something that can't fall into lava... thaumcraft research.

Only, I forgot to build a research table, folks, can you see where this goes? How about if I mention that the redwood door has turtomen on it, and not just motus. I was up to taint and alianus before I'd finished the tier 1 aspects. In retrospect it was quite hilarious. With the resources of the overworld, the nether, the twilight, and ... it's amazing how many worlds you can wander through, scanning every object and block, and cussing.

It was a test of my patience, and my vocabulary.
 
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Staxed

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Needs more pictures :)

And I need to get into genetics after reading this, I keep meaning to but never do...
 
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ICountFrom0

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I fully, and honestly admit that thaumcraft gives me a headache. Part of this is just a lack of proper practice at anything that requires thought lately.

So it's no shock that I spent quite a bit of my time visiting friends on the server and giving away gifts. As "the traveler" was short on resources, I offered him a deal. Built the mk 3 hammer, and tossed my pick at him. I drilled, he collected the fine bits, and when we'd filled a few inventories (condensed cobblestone, coal into blocks, fill backpacks, rucksacks, golden bag and luggage) there was finally the need to return.

There was yet another spawner down there, a buildcraft water spring, and of course plenty of time letting out my inner pigman, makes me wish there was another form that was able to handle both fire and water, someday I'll have blaze rods enough to simply have fire resistance down there at all times.

The other day, in my random wanderings, I had gone under the tainted chunks, in a series of caves. It was a foolish choice, but eventually I did make it back out again. I'm tempted to head down and explore a bit better now. Speaking of foolish choices, well, everybody makes them occasionally. Still, I found silverleaf trees, no sign of silverleaf wood, and the edge of a tainted chunk, the implication was clear, the taint had made the tree magical, for a brief instant, before destroying it, as the only tree near the leaves was ordinary oak.

I've finally produced the enter theermic pump, and put it on the public white red red ender tank, with "unlimited" lava for my use I might expand my smeltery again.

So, I shall progress my research further, expand my trees, take down a few trees that I do not intend to live in, so that I can make my own trees larger, collect saplings, prepare a site or two more for additional trees on my base, and perhaps tinker with sand generation and other stone production machines. Must make nitor so that I can move the cauldron inside. Not many places large enough for infusion crafting, perhaps a vast silverwood branch, with shinning leaves far up in one of the trees.

I can see it now. Come into one of the trees, the only one with a door, and you see elivator blocks. Pick the destiantion and land in a tree, at the aproprate machines. Sure, there's a tunnel underground, under a trap door for emergancies, and for moving suplies that I can't tesseract (though, you can tesseract anything ... once I get the resources, so those will quickly depreciate).. I think it could work quite well.

As for more pictures, perhaps when I've something worth showing.
 
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ICountFrom0

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So, ran out of research points, and managed to loose an entire powersuit, twice.

I'm going to have to stop worrying about weight, and at least putting iron plate into it, to keep from having things like this happen.

I'm now pondering using a flux capasitor to power my power armor, course I've also got to start having a power grid that's more then just a survivalist generator... eh, eventually. One has to admit getting 10x the output from anything you put into it is a very tempting addiction. Makes you understand the old redstone generator rig.

Faced with buying, for a third time, the power suit, I'm going to look into building a little ic2 machinery, I'm thinking just a geothermal, and the metal former.

So, does anybody know the best way to get more basic aspects into the research table?
 

thestarlion

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Put down a deconstruction table and feed it items. It'll break them down into one of the primal aspects that is either available or makes up the aspects on that item. It's not automated though, since you have to open the GUI to claim the research point.

Just have a Flux Capacitor on your hotbar and sneak-right click it to get the enchanted item texture. That's when it shares its power with all other flux items and the Power armour. I think it works anywhere in your inventory after then, but I'm not certain.
 

ICountFrom0

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If what my good neighbor is saying is true, then I will mourn much the loss of the ability of the research table... there was a time that placing crystal clusters, or taking the effort to place it near vis infused stone would cause it to slowly gain base points. I remember when I could likewise get the deconstruction by placing the Thaumometer onto the research table, not that I'd been slowed by learning it much, I just remember... sadly I could not remember what was good for learning aspects with it. I had had to fall back on netherwart, doors, and crafting tables. I suppose that carpet might be slightly better then raw wool for this, if I was to set up a sheep farm. I suppose if I was bored enough, that I might extract some rubber and use that, it at least stacks well. Zombie flesh, if I can stop letting myself be tempted to make monster jerky of it is not as bad as some. The autocrafting of fence gates has temptation in it, and of course, though hard to stack, armor drops from zombies and such are always welcome... still it is sad to have to fall back on such things.

And indeed, I was rather glad to give up the spot on my hotbar, if need be, to hold the flux capacitor (or even a potato one), as such a space does not count as weight to the armor. Course it feels a little unfair to me, but if the mods align like this, perhaps I will, perhaps I will. I am surely not the first one ever such tempted. Suspect as long as I don't push myself to enderium I'll not feel strained by it.

On a plus note, this drive for resources finally has me replacing the wooden ladders in my tree-fort with ones made from stone, and they look rather nice too. On the downside, they break fast. It also has me clearing the leaves and looking to start a pine, or perhaps the twilight tree, to harvest the leaves, so that I can make my large upper platform. Anyway, at least I've come to realize that I'll never be short of the saplings I need for my trees. The job of making replacement trees, for the decorative leaves I want on the other hand, will not be so simple. Specially as the leaves I really wish I had, where silverwood. Instead though I will go with pine, the deep green is pleasing to the eye against the dark shade of the redwood bark.

Though I will still need to clean off the taint, and place at the edge of the tree the taint denying plants. If someday I can ring my tree in silverwood with live node, so much the better. Note to self, experiment with gravity gun to move or remove the blocks on top of sinister nodes. A hostile alianus aspect zone is better then a tainted one. If I move the node and the block together, I'll just made the totems part of the fence, perhaps obsidian wall.

I've also setup a steel drum in order to drain off the creasote from my coke production.

Course, now I find myself unable to remember the right level to get copper, so perhaps it's time for another break, or to go do my research in secret and pretend I didn't need to do any... (too late now)
 

KingTriaxx

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Copper is high.

As for mining, I honestly really enjoy using a Steve's Cart miner. You just need to set it for the level you want to find stuff at, then use the mine as a starting point. Be sure it's got a bridger, and it'll cross ravines without problem.
 

ICountFrom0

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I judge just how much I seem to be dreading a project by what other things I find to do instead.

Polled the server, and as I'm ahead on thaumcraft, I'll be glad to share down my research, in exchange for books when they get ahead of me. In order to convince people that thaumcraft is worth it, I'm going to give out gifts, repair grafters and scoops to make forestry, and anything else that's properly compatible, easier. This will also, slowly, increase the number of exotic saplings. So doing my first bit of TC4 work up on my slime island, then building a proper thaumcraft platform up there is on the schedule, followed by a stack of thaumium.

Also included tasks is making my suit of power armor (4th time), this has a subtask of doing some basic IC2 setup to get access to both sets of recipies without making too many hammers. Been invited to use the server admin's base, MV solars feeding into upgraded metal formers, should give me a nice start. Some internal debate about should I use purely geothermal and the lava pump, or should I set aside space for a bank of electric engines and rig them with chokes for efficency, latter I'll have to look into what's the most efficient network crossover between these two power nets. I may be the person who put the nether pump in place, but I don't want to live off of it forever.

The barrel of creasote is almost full, so the sheep farm, carpenter, automatic torch production is back on the list, even if my power armor will have illuminators, torches on the right click from TiCo are just so nice. Of course once the sheep farm is in place, there's upgrades on that possible.

Speaking of cheep, there's 3 tainted squares near my tree that the tainted sheep produced. I'll have to overwrite the changed biome. I'm a little afraid to do it with silverwood, just in case the node in the tree does not spawn pure, things could get much worse, very fast. So there's a project. Could even make a buildcraft quarry, just to remove the taint zones to bedrock, they are getting VERY large. I'd say a full third of the chunks in my region are tainted. Evac of nodes needs to happen soon.

I've removed the slime from my slime island. This was my primary food supply. I've either got to setup a new slime farm, using the liquid slime, conveyor belts (be it open blocks or MFR) and most likely a combination of punji sticks and iron spikes. Then vacuum hoppers to pick up the derbies. Blue slime has many uses, but it does not seem to substitute everywhere for slime or rubber. I'll investigate using it as rubber, this might shift it's priority point. Also to be checked, what exp collection method to use and how to change the two kinds of liquid exp between eachother. Possibly monitor tanks with gates?

If I don't return to slime production, my blue slime drops and dried slime will eventually run out. I should setup farms in preperation of this. Sugar pulverizes into 2 sugar, but is doubling the return on sugar worth the power consumption even if I process it down into sugar coke and then compress it into coal coke blocks? Is it still worth it once I ween myself from using survival generators with the multiplier? Barley can't be used on cows, so wheat is still required, but how much? If I automate some AM2 mana potions, how much more? Can cotton be automated easily, is it more easy then the tricks I'd need to drag a swarm spider spawner into the overworld? Would the poison spider spawners I found be an acceptable replacement. Many things to test. Potatoes and carrots are a sure thing. If I use "crops" they will instead want to be in the elevated tree platforms, and not on the ground. Should think about a grid of liquid glowstone, and try stone torches on the stone fence, for the look of things. Or the blue ars magica torches on basalt wall. I could easily get a chest of abysal stone too, ocean is close. Until I put the two side by side I won't really be able to tell the difference, but I suspect it's not a large enough on for ME to see.

TE needs to upgrade to the third and final stage of growth, the tier 2 power net gutted, pulverized and replaced in one pass with the tier 3. This also means it will need space to exist in. I'd like a chunk that does not have any machines in it to have my spawn point, and portals to other bases. Found a stack of 4 portal spawners in a chest the other day, that was luck. I doubt I'm going to do as dire does and setup a complicated 'only open when I need it' based system. So that means one more chunk loaded forever, best to make sure no machines that could go wrong in it.

Been meaning to try the nether looking style of TiCo blocks...

... Anyway, that's a short list of the upcoming projects. What I did instead? Well, I sketched out where I want my 5 trees, found 2 of the 3 that I found in the first place do not fit quite right, and had to be removed. That took a new axe. Rather impressive watching the top third of a tree just explode. The volcano is untidy, and I removed it. 2 diamond chests full of basalt cobble, cost me a manny hammer, even with mossy 2 this is going to take days to recover. I walled in 49 chunks with cobblestone wall, but that's just a temporary wall and will be replaced. I lit the region to a creeper proof standard. I marked off the three tainted blocks, and am watching the tainted chunk against one wall... and a few purely decorative moves.

One thing I don't need to do is make a tree farm. I have more redwood then I have basalt cobble. I can make stacks and stacks of workbenches to fuel my research now without a cringe. Just load up a stack of hoppers with stacks of wood and keep the coke oven running. Smelt down entire walls of furnaces at once, and power any generator as wantonly as I want without worry.

Still going to build to efficient standards though. Should take some pictures though, now that I've defined my region, these can be... well, not "before" but close to it. There's a visceral thrill in burning an entire natura redwood....

So, when your too do list involves flattening and rebuilding 49 chunks of land, it's no wonder that I start a debate on what leaf to replace the redwood leaf blocks with... Blue is still my favorite, fusewood, silverwood, a few others, but it's just not that practical.
 

KingTriaxx

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If a Silverwood spawns a node, I don't think it can be anything other than pure. Alternately, dig through your Thaumonomicon and find the Ethereal Bloom research. Those things mow down taint like no ones business.
 

ICountFrom0

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I'm far too impulsive.

I was too far into clearing the land before the idea of the picture came to me again. I'm just going to have to show the square plot of land and the fence once it's level.

It's been days of play sessions, and it's still not level, and yet I refuse to take the easy way out, no level setting on a builder. I'm just using chests and chests of dirt and grass, silk touch excavator, and putting it back in place with a builder's wand from a dungon chest. I've taken to digging trenches around the tainted chunks, to reduce the ease of mobs and passives wandering into them, getting tainted, and spreading it further. What if the sheep (I've found 5 tainted squares now) had grazed near one of the 2 nodes in my 49 chunks? With how fast taint crusts, I'm actually starting to think that a quarry would need to be pretty fast before it could keep up, so my backup plan of using a quarry to take each tainted chunk to bedrock, and then breaking the tainted node, might not even work. Not sure if I can cure a tainted node either, might try one bottled up inside a silverwood grove. I am getting some nice dirt making the protective trenches, and that WAS the idea.

Anyway, this is somehow more frustrating then diggy diggy hole, because I'm not even going anywhere. I've gone and made some larger redwood barrels, and stored the 2 diamond chests of basalt into them. I have to remember that if there's only 1 item in that chest, to make a barrel instead. Also have barrels of redwood bark and redwood heart. All of the root is now charcoal. If the few that I saved are not enough for some future plans, not that it looks any different, I can always grow more.


Root and branch, heart and bark, I've at least completed the tree removal. 4 trees to place and I've started to plan where the paths go, perhaps a fibinachi spiral.
 

ICountFrom0

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Right, got those pictures. Today was another day of just, cleaning up. Last of the volcano that's above ground. Smelt basalt cobble into basalt, and then into basalt wall to ring the region. I've got to sort out lights though... It depends on what will fit on the wall, and what will float. Or if I can get some of these to link nicely. I'm thinking abyssal stone or infernal stone as lamps. Inverted Lanterns, I've got enough gold. The paths I will surely use road and road light, though perhaps I will discover other similiar blocks. Surely I'll decorate the trees, in key places with fireflies, (for a sense of serenity), and as always anything that provides glowstone light, without using all 4 dust is good, (large) glowstone brick, glowstone glass, Vibrent quartz glass if I can get over the quartz cost. Lets face it, if your going to spend the entire block, you might just as well make a glowstone illuminator, or pour the glowstone around and let it ooze out of the ground.

For future decorative plans, I'll mention the ghostwood Obelisk.

Why does it seem like every post just makes my list of things to remember, longer, and my list of things to do, more completed?

Nvyd6cI.png


So, this is the start of it, looking out my front door, just as soon as I had 6 bark I could spare to make the front door. Job this size, I didn't want to use up too much of the iron, that I had so little of, so I was using stone when I could, and lots of it. Wasn't like I was going to run out of wood. Truth is, I more often was low on stone, what with also using it in the smeltery to make seared brick.


4yxbtx5.png


Next image here is with the inital wall in place, the other redwoods cut down, and the slime island drained. Thank to the liquid holding barrels that take so little resources to make, and liquid handling from TE, even if I did power it off my power suit battery half the time. Yes. that's thornvine on the tree itself to keep spiders and other nasties away. This had been the shortest tree when I started, and the smallest, all the easier to transform it. I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to build new leaves for it, or blow it up and plant a new one ...

aKK3VtM.png


In this picture, the last remains of the volcano, a shinning pillar of fire. Left of it, the root hole of one of the redwoods. Below and right where it didn't load is more basalt field that, honestly, I won't be cleaning. You might notice just how lucky I got with ars magica liquid. Not a bad haul of it to be honest. I might even get enough power into a neutral nexus to get the mana regen buff from it.
 
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ICountFrom0

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Curiously I'm not able to use upload a file any more, perhaps those pictures where the limit already.

Maybe it's interval based.

Of all the things I said I needed to do, I've done almost none of them again.

Though I did figure out what will be in my treetops. Ars magica 2 gets a treetop, with some cursed earth to keep the dark node "happy". Thaumcraft gets a treetop, on two levels, with the nodes above. A massive factorization mirror system gets a third treetop I will call it the "sunflower". A fourth treetop will simply be an IC2 crop garden. High enough to keep it happy, I might even get something useful out of it. The final tree might be a personal nexus, once I get enough mystcraft sorted.

I visited the volcano shrine and used the IC2 machines there. Made a metal former and a geothermal. Once those are setup next to an enderthermic pump fueled ender tank, it's not hard to get started for real. Though, honestly I've done little with it, save setting up a scrap collection. Extractor and rubber tree farm are ready for when I turn serious. Figure myself able to make the jump to 128 packet network, with the lower requirement machines safely transformered up and upgraded until they are hungry enough to aprecaite it. Strange to me that TE itemducts didn't want to connect to the recycler, the extruder was able to feed cobble into it just fine from the top, isn't it the right hand side to extract scrap?

Figure for a mostly decorative lab setup of all the machines, powered but idle, with the real automation going on in the basement, quietly, when I am ready. IC2 wires, think I can either microblock them over or fascade them, or failing that sprayfoam them and paint my cielings.

Gardens are in place, I can now stop subsisting on gelatenous blue slimedrops. 32 of each overworld berry, 24 of each nether berry. 90 of wheat, barly, carrot, potato and cotton. Cactus and sequoia, pumpkin and mellon, sugar cane as well. Leaves 5 kinds of mushroom to rig farms of, somehow suspect that if nothing else MFR will handle that, though it always strikes me as the easy solution.

Sorted out the crucible handling, I've got easy thaumium with netherwart, some hyperenegetic nitor to save me on torches when grid mining at bedrock, and etheral blooms have removed the few bits of taint that the sheep managed to spread before I walled the place in. I'm going to admit something, when I saw how close a sheep taint block had gotten to one of the nodes ... less then 20 blocks, I had a bit of a fright. Now though I can bring the fight against the taint, any time it bothers me enough to start that project. Meantime I'll play santa, try to get repair enchants on thaumium scoops and grafters. Possibly rig a disenchanter in order to work on it on the sneaky edge. Also tempted to make a gold capped greatwood staff, to have enough aspect to trap nodes and move them, without resorting to infusion crafting. Though, I could do it with the crystal wand core, maybe? Now that I think of it, it's 70 order, not 70 everything... or was that to make the infusion altar?

I've collected 2 of every animal that I've use for, I might move the imps from the nether if the glowshroom farm works at all. This happens to include some mooshrooms, as the volcano happened to have a book that went horribly wrong (checkerboard small biome controller with volcano and mushroom shore) it seems to only spawn AM2 foes and mooshrooms. Likewise if I get bored I might capture a few of the twilight forest versions, single use nets are pretty cheep. I've got nothing against running a zoo/slaughterhouse.

Still don't have the place lit up proper, even the farm is just some glowstone at the edges to keep things working properly. On the other hand nothing placed is permement yet, even the trees might be burned to the ground with lava and moved. I've done it twice before, and I'm just mad enough to do it again. This is why I've warned others on the server to think twice about linking books to my place, they might not be safe. To make up for this I've dungon hunted enough and collected some portal spawners. Linked a safe edge of my base to the volcano shrine. That will always be a mostly safe linkpoint.
 

ICountFrom0

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I took a bit of a break, worked a while on agrarian skies, I find it a good way to experiment with a few things when I'd not otherwise have those resources.

Course, I've got an easier time getting the materials for thaumcraft on the server so I've returned a while. Interestingly though, I didn't actually get around to the thaumcraft. I built a two level platform that the bridges to the other trees will hang from, I've completed a spheroid of witchwood leaves around the top of the tree, filled in the edges of it with glowstone glass, sliced into covers. Multiple full invintories of leaves, and yes I'll get pictures up.

Inside of it I'm going to build platforms out of thickened glass, or perhaps tinkers construct glass, as well as silverwood logs, planks, and ghostwood. Perhaps even some obelisks and obcidian totems. I've got an idea for theme.

The space will also hold my AM2, the infusion altar, and the nodes.

Speaking of nodes, I had quite a bit of good luck with the silverwood saplings, thaumium grafter and a run of luck for the repair enchant, I started to clear out the tainted chunks that had gathered around my base. My badluck was an odd balance to this good luck, yes, badluck, though I'd gotten 30 tainted chunks down to about 3 and was starting to seek out single isolated blocks of taint outside of those chunks, that I was going to wall in to prevent expansion, I started having chunks spontaneously reset. I'd go far enough away that it would unload, and the I'd come back, find it tainted again, AND the trees that I'd chopped down in it back in place. I even found pressurecraft seeds, in chunks that had originally been generated long before the mod was added to the pack. Curiously sometimes the silverwood's I'd planted, and stripped the leaves off of, where still standing in those chunks, and when I moved close enough for them to load again, the taint would start to be replaced again with magical forest biome.

Things are oddly unstable of late. Server changed worldtype to try to get the BoP biomes to spawn in the edges of the map, since we had to explore out there anyway for the pnumaticraft seeds... well, no BoP yet, but seeds enough to start with. So folks, anybody think the AE mini TNT would do the job of making compressed iron? How about the one made with TNT and slimeballs? iTNT? You know, things that destroy less blocks, but still have some boom.
 

KingTriaxx

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If you're looking for BoP biomes, Mystcraft is the way to go.

I don't know about the other TNT's, but Industrial TNT and SDX (slimeballs), are both supposed to drop all blocks, so they might cause the same destruction, but you'll be able to fully repair it. Or, you could just build a blast bunker. Cast some obsidian and let fly. Or an MFFS pad.
 

ICountFrom0

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I shall text to see if tinytnt, iTNT or SDX return more of the compressed iron then regular TNT when I get to it.

Oddly I keep finding other things, instead of getting to it.

Speaking of, I uploaded the early pics to a better source, and am providing the link here:

http://s778.photobucket.com/user/Nightwind90/library/DW20 minecraft server

I'll edit to include links in earlier posts, and sketch out just a bit more info. I've cleared the inside out of a third tree, killed my first wither, made a third suit of power armor, and went exploring.

The ic2 recipes may include more steps, but for the force field emitters they are just so much easier to make. It's not that I won't make enderium ingots, my power supply is an ender grade flux capacitor, 10m RF to power my armor and all is good. For all that I've made some very nice arrows with TiCo, I'm thinking of putting a long range option on my power glove. For now it's just shears, hoe, and lux capacitor. I will admit that I have no end of frustration in having to find the Z key to go down, when creativemode flight has it on sneak, but I can see the logic in not wanting people to fall out of the sky while adjusting the glove feature. Though I know how to hold shift and space at the same time so as to hover in creative while using sneak. Still, that could be viewed as too much to ask, maybe I'll have to beg muse for a toggle "sneak / descend merge" as a person by person option somewhere.

This has caused me to start to remake all my tools, this time with flux on them instead of, on the previous versions, up to 3 levels of self repair. This as well as the notch apple option has opened up more options on my tools. My primary melee is a jagged, writable, thaumic, manny scythe. I worked it down until minecraft reported 1 durability on it, locked it at a 1.11 heart bonus worth of jagged. This slowed the scythe by 2.6, but that's still faster then mobs can take damage. As it's my utility weapon I've given it lucky and beheading. Minecraft reports both fortune and looting on it, fortune must kick in on plants and seeds or something. It reports as +11 damage and serves me well enough. If this was AG skies I might make it a vacuum tool as well, instead my magnet does it for me. My pick is fluxed manny, thaumic and writable, all the rest filled with redstone. Then one upgrade for lucky, that I've maxed out to fortune 3. So far it's instant on cobble, skystone and netherrack. The excavator, logging ax, and mattock will be remade for speed too, excavator or mattock will get silk touch, one or the other. I'm looking at a bowline after server update, or possibly precision shears if they work at higher then fist level, if they can get me redstone ore block, I'll be happy.



Tools upgrading past this point are either thaumcraft (infused or ichorium) or the fluxed electrum tools. I should look into them and do a little research.


So, I went to use these things in a few places. KiIlled wither skeletons a while, and I got enough bones... for what? Well.... I did kill the wither too, energy armor really helps to take the damage down. This was just so much time in a nether fortress, nothing to really report on... except, anybody watching me would have gotten a GOOD laugh at seeing how badly I handled the speed boost.

Visited friends with a water guardian killing arena and traded 5 completed red heart capsules for some yellow hearts. Hit the twilight, killed some bosses. Litch did shocking amounts of damage even with the power armor but I was able to reflect shots well enough, even with lag on a server. The ur-ghast cried on me and took out my helmet. Might be because there wasn't a battery in it, no hint, just gone. Shocking. Made the new one with solar generator AND advanced solar generator, and might even put in autofeeding to clear a little more task bar space, I'll find out if I need it.

I should note that I leave the jetboots on at all times, with my flight key toggling on the flight control and main jetpack. I've got liquid nitrogen cooling and I'm prepared to go morph to a zombie pigman if that's not enough to keep me safe. I've plans to do apiarists armor when I go bees, and when the server updates enough I'll add radiation shielding. Armor is VERY light.

So, full set of red hearts, 5 more yellow capsules, and 5 more red in capsule waiting on my getting enough gold.

That felt like enough progression for me, so next I got decorative. The north tree I cleared out, I chopped into bits, separated it, and tossed in elevators.... only to discover this is the one version of openblocks where this substitute for LADDERS costs exp when you use it, on a default setting (and that's what servers USE folks).

Anyway, I've gone ahead and invited others on the server to build a little in the tree, likely it won't be a nexus, but an easy way to get to my friends, why not?
 

KingTriaxx

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Swords are the only place I use Manny. Cobalt beats it for sheer speed in all other applications, and to my knowledge, nothing actually requires manny mining level. Not even manny blocks.

Curiously, if you turn into a blaze, not only are you immune to fire, but you can also fly. The only downside is the smoke particles, but that's a bit of a small price to pay.
 

ICountFrom0

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Well, I owe a roundup post now that the pictures are nicely in place...

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The regrown trees, with a good crop of thornvine on the main tree in order to keep the amount of spiders trying to climb up to me at a minimum. The sewage pool is on the left but that chunk didn't load in this image. On the right you can see a pool of mana essence from AM2. There was a rather strange bug that occurred with NEI sorting and barrels that I eventually filled with this. When I put it into a chest with barrels that I'd already filled from the pool of slime up on the slime island, the 5 barrels of slime, and the 8 barrels of AM2 Mana essence stacked together and became a stack of 13 barrels of blue slime. This wasn't the only time, oddly enough. It routinely happens with stacks of mushroom soup and the nether glowing mushroom soup, though I've not been able to isolate any pattern as to what one remains when they combine. The most amazing one is one time I'd made mushroom in regular wood, and the glowing mushroom was in blue wood from the nether, and the combined stack was all blue wood bowls, even after consumption.

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This is the start of my TE system. I'll get pictures of how large it grew, though not by much. The survivalist generator is a wonderful thing. This picture has two mid tier energy cells. For all that I know there's a setting that will export and import power on that side, I can't get the two of them to balance the load, the one on the right will always be full. I used a flux capacitor to move power around as needed and it was a boost to store it up in there and keep a system maxed in power for a speed boost. The two chests on the left are TiCo bits mostly.


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Now, as I'd mentioned, I did visit the base of my friend in the volcano shrine and a day there with a few stacks of materials was enough, a metal former, a thermal generator, an extractor, the recycler a batbox for power, and a TE extruder. You don't even really need the recycler, but with it you can theoretically get enough bits to make all of it without mining.

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So this was the next step. I could have setup gates in order to shut it down when the chest was full, but I harvest the scrap boxes rarely enough that I didn't run it much anyway. My last world I played "scared" of portals, in this world they just crash me when I go through, go figure, either way I only need to go into them rarely, mine what I need, and then return. So I don't need a sorting system that runs scrapboxes constantly to try to get the so rare netherrack or glowstone. Not pictured in any of these shots is the spot where the glowstone machine was, right up until the patch that fixed it. This picture does not even have the autocrafting machine to make the scrap into boxes.



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Slime island, with the slime bucketed up. This is where I did most of my alchemy work. This photo after the nitor. Quite a bit of aspect went up into the sky. Never did collect enough on the ground to spawn anything, not quite sure that's possible. I'm rather fond of hyperenergetic nitor, makes a good gift for friends. Anything that works without needing a wand is a good present from the person who likes thaumcraft.

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Wide view of the farms. Berries, nether berries, cactus, saguaro, melon, pumpkin, reed, and the basics of barley, wheat, cotton, potato, carrots. In one corner you can even spot the mooshrooms. Another person's accidental age production had them, and single use safari nets moved them safely enough. I've a bit of the zookeeper in me, and eventually I'm going to collect the rest too, including imps even if breeding them is tricky (not to mention pointless).


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Now, if you don't know the tricks, this room will impress you a touch or two. Even if you do know the tricks I hope it at least seems useful to you. Yes that's a solar panel up there, and yes there's a powered tree tap in there. For as rarely as I need IC2 Rubber I can just nip out for it when I need some. The raw rubber on the ground prevents mobs from standing in the square under the solar panel for the shade.

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Same building, outside view. Can't use the corners for anything much, so why not jungle wood? Why not cocoa while your at it. It's not like anybody uses it to make cookies, but this is a server and somebody might.

This post is pretty big, I'll dice it here...
 
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ICountFrom0

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Continuing on...

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Here we have the one blemish in the nice bit of land I'd taken for myself.

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As you can see, it really wasn't anything troublesome to get rid of, and I'm sort of glad it wasn't sludge. This world generated with quite a few lakes where sludge and sewage had substituted in for water, and not all of them small. Course the mana essence did it too, so I'll take the bad and the good and take it on the balance as even.

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North tree, and yes the thing grew through the fence. I've got a single portal that I found in a dungeon chest linking up to a safe spot in the volcano shrine. There's another set that links from the shrine to the castle of the Traveler, if you'd care to take the travelers side, as some folks say.

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These turned out rather nice though. I've just got one problem, the design in my head had a nice set of stairs in it, linking the low floor to the high floor. In truth I just couldn't find a place to link them that fits the look. Bridges on the top level will have to rise slightly to reach the other side, but I can handle that. Honestly, half the trouble is what I picked for a light source, the fireflies are nice, they stick well, but they need those pillars. To get more blocks lit I'd need another ring of them, and to make that spacing work, it's an increase of at least 50%. Okay, that might be acceptable, but then the platforms are within JUMPING distance, no point in the bridges.

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So, I did mention a delay, one so bad it had me doing agrarian skies instead of being on the server, because I'd picked a task for myself that was just so evil. That's what you are looking at here. Did you know that witchwood leaves, even player placed ones tick over and dissolve? I think it has to do with the falling leaf particle myself, but as I'm not going to pay somebody to look into the code, I don't expect to be informed. So what I'd expected to be a simple job of placing leaves where the building guide indicated, turned into quite a mess. Sure, I could have shrunk every dimension by 1, built a core of wood, and then covered it in leaves, and it would (ha ha) have worked, but as a clunky and inept thing. Lets face it, I build mostly symmetrical structures. I can't design things that aren't a regular shape. The advanced and natural look is beyond me, but I must not settle for less then I can do. When it's just a slice, the regularity of the curves really shows.

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Same fragment, inside view. I didn't take any pictures until it was this far in as I was rather afraid that even if it held together it wouldn't look very good. It was at this point that I knew it could work, and that I might just pull it off. Though I was still thinking that I might try to randomize the shape a little by placing the guide back down and picking another shape and expanding it until it stuck out somewhere, a few times. I'm glad I didn't. Yes, I went with witchwood on the inside, as I was planting them anyway. Folks, if you've never tried to farm witchwood, you are very lucky. Saplings are rare, 2 per tree is common, getting a 3rd one is rather unlikely. If you shear as often as you break you don't come away with as many leaves as you'd like even though the trees are very large, and there's the small factor of them needing to be planted near magic essence to even grow. I was foolish to fall in love with it, and lucky to get away with it. You'll notice the log faces make a rather pretty pattern.

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This is the dome completed with another of the troubles pictured. That's glowstone glass. Yes, an entire block of glowstone needed for each pane. Cobble into sand, sand into glass, glass into sandy glass from more sand from more cobble, and that into thickened glass, then add the glowstone dust. I was rather glad to discover that when sliced into covers it still produced light. The rest of the light in the dome at this time is glowstone nooks, tucked away and producing just enough light. Speaking of light, take a little look at those logs, do you see them?

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Completed view on the inside, you can see those lights, those nodes quite clearly. Silverwood nodes. Bit of a trick to get them up there. Do not try it yourself though, moving them was the reason I had chunks resetting everywhere. I'm lucky that it didn't reset my entire base, I was a bit daft. By the time I'd gone a bit further, figured it out and smashed them. I'll move the other ones properly with the node in a jar technique. Plant a few silverwood's around the base to finish the conversion. Makes it very important to keep things lit though.

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Here you've got the nether portal in place. Fireproof wood, fireproof blocks, so of course I lit some of the netherrack on fire... and the outside of the tree burned down around it. I had to rebuild. Rather embarrassing. I know there's ways to prevent fireblocks from forming, keeping air blocks from touching wood, but I'm not very good at it. I've already come back and added overgrown netherrack, soul sand, gravel, nether berries and thorn vines. I'll let it get very much overgrown and then trim it back, place string to lock things in place, and get pictures.

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Portal to the twilight forest. There's darkwood behind me, and canopy tree wood on the other out of sight portal. One of them is going to get changed over to look like the sanctuary once I get some underbrick. While I know that flowers there are not from twilight, the glowshrooms do and it looks rather nice, so I think I've got it right. The aura blocks up top really do help.

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This /was/ the portal room, and the place I grew my ender lilies. Used TiCo to turn obsidian into endstone with the very first harvested ender pearls. Boy was I upset when I found that the ender blocks from ender pearls in TiCo could not at all be converted into the liquid needed to make enderium ingots. Shame really, I'd converted them every time I had more then a few stacks. Still, live moves on. I'll upgrade those to the 'secret block' when I setup another garden somewhere.
This is the reason I had to have the ender lilies away from the other gardens. The old sprinkler and Accumulator trick. I'll have to sort out a planter and harvester eventually. Toss it into a barrel, let the excess fall into a trash can or something, and let the barrel be pulled into... some system or another.

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Netherwart, very good for research deconstruction. Two floors of it above the magic floor. This will come down and be remade somewhere else with a touch of automation in due time.

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With the rule of thumb of, document it before destroying it, here's my magic room. Behind the ladder is the required items from bibliocraft for replicating books. I actually completed the research of thaumcraft. That's a steal anvil back there too. I think that might have been a mistake. A regular anvil can be melted down a few ways, can't seem to find a way to repair the steel one.

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Look down...

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Look up...

Notice any changes? Those logs exist for vanilla wood, for twilight wood, and AM2 witchwood, but not forestry logs or BoP logs. There's ones like it on the bloodwood trees naturally generated, but I didn't see a recipe for it. I'm honestly not sure what mod adds it, but it gives a rather nicely finished touch to it.

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So, the dome is going to be used for magical purposes. I wanted something that felt magical. I've a tendency towards black, grey, and white, marble and basalt in Redpower 2 where instant favorites. Now, as I went and used a large chest of witchwood leaves to get started I didn't feel bad about the silverwood. I harvested it while clearing taint out of nearby chunks on the map. Put it through a sawmill and you get more then enough. Glass was the hard part. I'd have loved to use hardened glass, it even accepts crystal clusters on it. Sadly it has no connected textures, in as large a space I wanted it for, it really does not look good at all.

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The middle layer here and the largest of the three. I ended up with obsidian glass and at this height the little marks are quite hard to see. The side of me that can't resist a good joke has not warned everybody about the ghostwood obelisks, and how they give you a spawn point.

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Top layer, you can see the glowstone illuminators changed to the final shades that I'm using. Silver at the inside, and green at the outside. It blends rather nicely.

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Here we have the entire reason for this mad operation. It's still short 32 candles and 24 mixed crystal clusters. I can space some more clusters above if the dangerous ones get to be TOO dangerous. I'm rather fond of the way that the abyssal pavers and the pillars blend into eachother. The little bevel at the edge of the block and the slight inset from the edge of the pillar, it just looks good.

I'll get the cauldron in place and start to work up the candles, put together some crafting altars and nexii on one level down, and the basics of escentia collections in my next session. I doubt I'll use AM2's structures for much what with the bug that makes it so hard to get them to connect.
 
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ThomazM

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This is definitely the biggest amount of text I have ever seen in a thread ever.

Don't get me wrong, I read all of it - it was surprisingly entretaning.
 

KingTriaxx

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Yeah, there's something wrong with those Forestry Fluid Barrels. If you put one full of something into your inventory, and then shift click one from the table, it turns into whatever you had in the inventory.