By the time I run a quarry I have a full automated processing setup that will handle the quarry flat out and more than enough power to run it flat out so I only ever really use tesseracts, I run it late since I find mining almost a meditative exercise..soothing.
If you have the diamonds to craft a quarry then you should be able to at least craft a diamond pick and mine the 4 pieces of obsidian needed for a pair of ender tanks. With TE you can craft an igneous extruder and make 4 obsidian using overworld surface lava. With Tinker's Construct you can get obsidian with a steel tool. The options for getting obsidian are very, very simple and available to you if you can afford a quarry.When I build a quarry I often use a mfr tree farm to power it. I often make a quarry asap and since endertanks need obsidian they are at that point not an option.
If you have the diamonds to craft a quarry then you should be able to at least craft a diamond pick and mine the 4 pieces of obsidian needed for a pair of ender tanks. With TE you can craft an igneous extruder and make 4 obsidian using overworld surface lava. With Tinker's Construct you can get obsidian with a steel tool. The options for getting obsidian are very, very simple and available to you if you can afford a quarry.
BYDHTTMWFI
When I build a quarry I often use a mfr tree farm to power it. I often make a quarry asap and since endertanks need obsidian they are at that point not an option.
It takes diamonds to make a quarry. If you have diamonds you have obsidian. That is just vanilla minecraft. If you spend every diamond on your quarry then you extend your current branch mine for the 5-15m it takes to find 3 more diamonds to make a diamond pick.
if you have computercraft you can make a mining turtle. can turtles still use ruby tools to mine obsidian?
if you have Thermal Expansion you can make an igneous extruder or the new block breaker.
if you have AE you can make a transition plane.
if you have TiC you can make a pick that will mine obsidian without needing any diamonds.
Heck, there is even a shapeless crafting recipe that uses a tin can of lava and a tin can of water to make a block of obsidian. I can't remember which pack I saw that in or which mod added it.
Unless somebody gave you the quarry I find it inconceivable that you can have a quarry and not have the ability to get the obsidian for an ender tank.
While I agree about using DSUs, before the DeepDark, was there really a reason to have 1Mil+ cobble? I also used to just void all my cobble after a few expanded barrels worth (dirt was useful for old forestry farms, etc). Edit: Oh, cobblegens.. right. nmI'm kind of surprised that others do not use DSUs as well with their quarry, in many of the vids I watch people just void their dirt & cobble which kind of bugs me. As those are useful for a variety of things. It really annoys me when people turn around and setup up cobble gen systems, while voiding cobble... That, just baffles me.