Empire of One

ICountFrom0

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Aug 21, 2012
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I'm taking a small break from trying to make my next modpack to play because, quite frankly, Age of Engineering is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of playing AFTER the tree challenge, but I was afraid I'd have to simply limit myself informally. Here it is as a pack, and it's everything I'd hoped and dreamed of, with mods I'd never even heard of before, and I'll have DW20 for a guide and inspiration.

For those that would like to read more, or those who'd like to encourage me with likes, I've put more of these little adventures into the spoiler block.

 
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ICountFrom0

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(http://s778.photobucket.com/user/Nightwind90/library/Empire of One?sort=9&page=1 for those who'd like to look directly until pb stops throwing a tantrum)


I was dreaming of trees.
I was dreaming of magic.

Being that the last places life had taken me was islands in the skies and worlds without nature, I don't think this is very unusual. However, where I landed... I can't taste more then the slightest traces of magic in the air here. More then in that other place long ago where I learned to be afraid of portals, but still nearly nothing. I've landed without a guidebook, and yet there's a feeling...



I shook my head to clear it and looked around. The land is green, and almost kind, if empty. There's a few nearby trees to get started. Punch wood, break stone, look for shelter. Isn't that how I always start? I wish it was always that easy, but this time it is. I even found some shelter early on, and some surface coal for torches. That's also where I found my shelter. Why was surface coal so good? Because when I built a furnace and tried to make charcoal from the logs, they wouldn't burn cleanly enough, I couldn't make charcoal. Thus my joy at finding some coal close to the surface. That half felt thought in the back of my mind seemed like laughter. No fleeting glimpse of a purple cat, seems my keeper this time isn't going to sign things quite so obviously as that one did.



A small hidden grove just underground, living from dim reflected surface light. Easy enough to wall it closed and to use it to shelter me from the rising darkness outside. I'll harvest all this as the night comes and poke through my resources, see what I can make.

While I seem to be able to harvest resources easily enough with the stone pick, the furnace seems curiously cold. Not hot enough to do the job I'd trusted to it so many times before. Iron ore refuses to melt. Even copper and tin refuse me. The stone around more important resources splinter badly when I try to break it with my pick, I'll need a stronger one to get those resources, so I'll just leave them in the walls and work around them as I make my base. A bit of garden, maybe a tree or two, and a mining device that will let me trigger a portal.



Such a portal worked to draw me into another world indeed. The sun did not set, the land was flat and populated by many animals ready for harvest and the ground was rich in minerals. Still much of these took a stronger pick then I had to harvest. Oddly even so soft gold refused to release. Oddly creepers seemed more eager to explode then I remembered, made it hard to use them to mine, so I discarded that idea too. So with a world to mine for resources, and another world for my base, a few stacks of materials, salt, tin, copper, iron, I returned from one world back into my home.

I took some time and toyed with it, making a section flat, building stairs, making another room for my garden and mostly just getting a feel for this place. Trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. Seems that if I can't use the furnace, then I'll have to make something else.



There was much water near me, a sandy beach, and a mountain of gravel. Inconvenient to try to bring up clay from the bottom of the ocean, but not impossible. These at least behaved when I tried to mix grout, and the furnace was able to bake it into proper bricks. A surface pool of lava that I found due to the fires it started provided a clay bucket worth of lava to get things started.

I'd known a smeltery was possible because I'd been able to make the tables I was well familiar with and make those so better tools, but without metal to make a bucket this was going to be a slow start. Attempting to make an ingot cast with clay, the results where too crude to be used. Still, was able to pour a block of copper and make a bucket, and then with that fill a smeltery tank with 4 more buckets. This being enough lava to start with, I paused to think about the resources I had, and what else was in the world.



The good news was, I had a lot of gravel.

The bad news was, I didn't have an easy way down.

Course I didn't really need one, not at first. I brought with me enough meat from the kind beasts of the world, repair kits to keep my tools in order and enough light that nothing would spawn to bother me. If it had come to it I could have fought slimes for food, or even let the zombies spawn and fought them for meager scraps, but that is a bit of a risky thing, these zombies have armor and weapons that I'd never seen before, making them so very dangerous to fight.

No, I'm safe up here, farming these slime trees, until it's time.



It's time.

Course, I've lost track of where the gravel stack I climbed to get up here was, the steel boots from the zombie I killed turned out to not work to make the slime boots after all, I'd need to repair them and I've no such ability.

This is though a slime island, and slime has special properties. Jump. Place. Bounce. Repeat. Eventually you'll land softly enough to survive, if you can keep doing it.




Then back to the base, iron, slime, and stone for hardness. A knightslime pick and a few kits to repair it. A longsword with a silver blade, and a lead guard. Limited resources, but with a bit of inventiveness it'll be enough.

Enough that I can feel safe in the dark caves with the ever so eager zombies and worse.



Time in the mines, come out with piles of gems with no worth or meaning. Stacks of copper, tin, lead, silver, gold, and iron. Mined until my tool was worn. Mined until I was out of torches. Until I was out of coal. Until I was out of places to store materials anymore. Still, none of these things seemed to open up even a single option more.

Except.

Except, I actually had everything I needed.

Oh, sure, the gold helped. The aluminium too. I could make proper casts, but I didn't really need them.

What I really needed was to make lavawood and reinforce it with more bricks. Eternally heated wood, and bricks for structure makes a coke oven. A strange coke oven, but a functional one. One that gets hot enough to make charcoal. To make coal coke. To make creosote to treat wood. Yes, this is the path. Thin as the eye of a needle, but HERE it is.

 
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ewsmith

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I'm sure that looks nice and all but all i can see is something about updating your account.
 

ICountFrom0

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And all I get is broken links. Apparently photobucket, a site with established limits on how much bandwidth you are allowed to use, that replaces images with thumbnails that let you know you've run through it, and has procedures to keep a limit on it.... That gives you the links formatted to embed.... now thinks that embeding the pictures is theft, and is trying to extort $500 in order to use it at all.

Also, apparently the email they sent about it is marked as spam by google, as it looks almost exactly like the fishing email.
 

ewsmith

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Jul 29, 2019
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well, thanks for showing me not to use the site. :p

i look forward to more of your story. reading it is just as enjoyable as seeing your progress.
 

JaRyCu

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Sep 29, 2015
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And all I get is broken links. Apparently photobucket, a site with established limits on how much bandwidth you are allowed to use, that replaces images with thumbnails that let you know you've run through it, and has procedures to keep a limit on it.... That gives you the links formatted to embed.... now thinks that embeding the pictures is theft, and is trying to extort $500 in order to use it at all.

Go back and look at the links in your post. You actually tried to post an image, but linked an HTML page. Wait...I just tried to delete the .html extension and that didn't help, either.

I rarely use Photobucket for anything. Imgur seems to be the best way to go for images on Reddit & this forum.
 

Golrith

Over-Achiever
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Nov 11, 2012
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AoE is also a pack that ticks all the boxes to me too.

You could try using dropbox to share the images. Due to recent changes, you can't do a direct share link, but you can if you adjust the share link it gives you.
 
M

MikW

Guest
Broken links, please don't use photobucket, use imgur or something, I can't view the images because I have to upgrade to P500 to look at it.
 

ICountFrom0

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(I'll look into other places to store the pictures eventually, I have to hope that the site I am using stops throwing a tantrum and returns to normal functioning, but if not I'll have to sign up at imgr and then put them there, and then change all the links here. For now, you could click through to the site and they should be there. I can't ask anybody to like my posts without pictures, but I can hope, eh?
http://s778.photobucket.com/user/Nightwind90/library/Empire of One?sort=9&page=1


)



The tools I'm able to access are primitive in some cases and strange in others, but there are a few familiar things, reassuring in the simplicity of use. Wooden machine, upgraded and encased in stone, some wooden planks for fuel and a diet of stone axes, but it will plant saplings and collect the wood for me. Simple but not inexpensive as each one can only handle one tree before the upgrades that I cannot reach.

I've also gotten started on bees, not much of a start when I'm only so very slowly collecting honey but I don't have it in me to crossbreed them blindly without being able to examine them properly. Still, even something as crate full of drones has a place and purpose in the world and can help further my plans latter.



An often forgotten property of redstone is the energy that's inside of it, this is important to remember when you are making a machine that can draw power from the raw redstone itself. Truth be told you can start with just the macerator, power it with a bit of redstone and use that to crush coal. That crushed coal, hydrated, becomes a nice little pile of single use batteries. The sacrifice of a little tin means that you can break down ore with twice as much returned from it so much earlier then you'd think.

New tech to break down my ores, and then the dust carried back to the furnaces to get the ingots I need to continue. Those ingots are still hammered and then cut into wire by hand, wasteful process but at least I'm only doing one wasteful step in each batch.



Sadly I can't do too much with a compreser before I've got solid power setup to use it, but I can still move these batteries around and make it do the work needed. All I need are two golden dense plates and likewise in iron for these small crates that are required for the tool boxes. Those things are a little crazy, a heart of diamond involved in there. I don't know who first had the idea of making storage chests out of diamond but I think them more then a little insane. Still using manual methods to make the components isn't fun, but it feels okay with the nice amount of ore I pulled from the mining age.



Thus was a huge pile of resources spent to start my adventure into Industrial Craft. At least now I'm making the parts for less. Still costing me redstone and batteries, but I'm making progress. The metal former is a power hungry monster, taking so much of my precious redstone and coal. Still, with fortune on my pick I feel happier paying in these resources instead of the metal I pulled from the earth. With this it's almost simple to make the generator, and now I've got proper power on these machines.




Here is Industrial Craft. Harder to get started then I remembered in the days long ago but quite useful. What it's mostly useful for is improving itself though. Thus this is what I started to do. Wires placed, more machines emplaced, and slowly more and more of the functions of my world are moved here into this room. It passes the time as I wait for the coke oven to process the logs into proper charcoal and for the next batch of logs to get harvested from the tree farm on the surface. Soon my slow and patient work in this workshop gives me another reason to wait, a blast furnace in place, patiently turning iron into the steel that I'll need to build ever further and progress.



While I wait on the steel and I wait on the coke and I wait on the charcoal and I wait on the logs, I've set up something else to wait for, but this is one of my favorites. A scrap system. When you gather enough scrap into one place you can look through it and find some resources that otherwise you'd not have expected. Often it's mostly broken tools. Sometimes though it's a few precious bits of metal and ore. If nothing else these scraps are flammable and can feed the generator. Such a device has always been one of my favorites, and it fills me with fond nostalgia to have one running again. Not as effortless and perpetual a machine as I'd made inside my pyramid but still beloved.



I'd like to think I've got a spot of neatness going here, with the hopper and the output from the batbox that sends the redstone signal when it's full to keep more materials from falling out of the hopper into the machine. This way it's only making power when it needs it, when the generator is empty, instead of every time the batbox is the least bit empty.

Yes, there seems to be a lot of waiting, but here at the start I've got lots of time to spend and many things to do with it. I can leave everything loaded and go mining, I can explore the caves in and around my little base. I can expand it a bit more and think about what I want it to someday be. On the other hand, I can simply stand here, safe, inside of my base and listen to the zombies while looking through the books provided to me and try to figure out what's changed, and what's expected of me.



A quick upgrade to the treefarm and that is exactly what I did. Sitting down with the guide and started to figure out what I'd need to do in order to progress further. The first thing I noticed was that I could indeed do better then I had before with my tree farm. A quick change of tools from the stone axes to the stone hatchets from tinkers and the iron machine frames. Neat, quick, efficient.



Also turned out that it was much faster to get the calculator then I thought it would be, at least with the full might of IC2 behind me. A simple wire to a power cell and the calculator itself didn't take much to craft either. I was lost for a happy hour just poking randomly at the buttons and looking at the new resources it could produce for me. Then a more frustrated hour as I discovered that key paths had been blocked, forcing me around a longer way. Still that longer way is a path I could take and there was something rather tempting down that path.




The unusual device pulled items out of the world and combined the properties of them. Gold and redstone produced an even more reactive and conductive material then I'd ever thought possible. The key to the next age seems to be empowered crystals, to crystallize it though seems to require the atomic reconstructor. This gold is the core to such a machine. But this machine refuses to use the same power that I'd been making with the generator, and while the simple handheld device of the calculator was willing to be powered in a power cell that could convert what it needed, these will not.




Thus a simple generator for power, running from the charcoal and the coal coke that I'd slowly been building up a stockpile of as I waited. With them though is more waiting as I'm not yet ready to push forward into another age and the more efficient fuels are going to take a while to build enough power to reconstruct these unusual elements into a refined and crystallized form that will be needed.





This has been enough of a distraction, enough time has passed, and with that time I've gotten steel. The first of this steel I've turned towards a tool for better experiences in the mines. I've also expanded and upgraded my storage, plates to reinforce the bags to it can hold more. With the first bit of steel spent I went back into the caves, gathering more resources while more was formed.




The next batch of steel was used to make my tool forge. Hammers are the least of the useful things that I could produce with the tool forge and it's wider range of possibilities. As more time passed and progress happened I used a hammer to rather quickly expand my base, making room for one more thing, one thing that perhaps I should have setup earlier.



A peat bog, soft earth exposed to water and time so that peat bricks could be extracted from it. It's a better fuel then the charcoal if a little slower to get the work done. It'll save me from using other fuel as my machines steadily become more and more greedy for things to burn.



Notice that there's a cesu under the furnace in there that has to go through a stepdown transformer before it is safe to expose the machines to these larger packets of power. It's also how I charge the jackhammer. Notice also that I've setup an ore washing plant, with a pump under it making sure to supply the needed water to keep it running happily. Now I can get that much more from anything I process.




The other room, with the garden, under the stairs, that too has changed a bit. Calculator let me craft scarecrows and they stand proud guard over my crops.

(and for the last image, a tribute to a certain friend, rest in peace)


 
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ICountFrom0

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(Until 'the site' starts to be not quite so insane and want to charge quite so much... you can view the pictures here http://s778.photobucket.com/user/Nightwind90/library/Empire of One?sort=9&page=1 The more I do this, the more I'm making up my mind to use IMGR or something)



Steel needs to be made, and that means time. Best use of that time was to work on my base, dig it out a little larger, make up some nicer walls. Though for now I'm just going to use a bit of cobble and reinforce things and add light and concentrate on just making sure that I'll have the space I want latter.

Though, truth be told, I did not need to wait in the overworld. I could have reached the nether without even the slightest nugget of the stuff, if I was willing to risk being trapped in there and unable to return alive.



Simple enough to tease fire into providing the spark to light the portal into the realm of flames, but as I said I am taking the flint and steel with me, I shall not risk being stranded there.

In furthering this view, I am also building a small structure around the portal to protect it. I might be returning in a hurry chased by the irate natives, if I am unlucky enough. Of all the realms I have been in, I've never been comfortable here in the nether and would say it is one of my least favorites. Still, it has resources that I've need of, even if they are jealously guarded and well protected.



Thus from this small foothold, with hammer and pick I strike the earth, and I draw out new resources. Not just aradite and cobalt, but strange gems and dusts that seem to have some sort of connection to the ruby and sapphire I'd dug from the earth below my home.

I must have been lucky, making my home where I did, for I did not have to explore far before I could see the edge of the fortress and a certain dangerous island in the lava. Getting there was a simple matter of driving a tunnel through the soft stone. This also let me get that much more resources, even piles of the normally rare quartz. Soon I shall be making new tools. Quartz enough to sharpen my blade beyond the point of madness, cobalt for speed in my swings, and the hunger of aradite, all are worthy candidates.



The fortress in the flaming dark rising from the sea of lava is one of the big things I was hoping to find. A short and dangerous bridge, and then a ladder built up inside one of the pillars so that I can explore the lost ruined base. Though it will never be safe exploration, the denizens of this place are what I'm hunting, and they are likewise hunting me. Blazing fire, disdainful of life, hunting it, burning it when they find it. The withered skeletons, touched with darkness, they roam this place and hunger. This is a small fort, well defended and little in it, but enough to be what I need. Both the bones of the withered, and the souls of flames.




The final bridge to this little island in the fires, swarming with slimes. Trees made of slime and blocks of it that have collected over the years, ready to be harvested. A quick trip and it is rapidly pillaged, rather then staying a long time and trying to defend this spot, I can always grow more of them at home. I shall make sure to leave enough here that it can regrow, so that perhaps latter I will return and collect from it again. With this the last of the rare and exotic resources I need from this place are mine. I will have to return someday, to collect more of this, but perhaps by then I will be able to do it better.




With the goal of doing things better, there was enough steel made that I was able to make not just the most primitive furnace, but the improved version of the blast furnace. This runs faster and can be easily automated, resources just pored into it and steel out of it, for as long as I have iron enough. It's not the end of doing things manually, but the start of things going better. Though the next thing I need to do is to make another machine and power it by my own hands.




To crank life into each of these crystals of quartz, the pure stuff from the overworld rather then the slightly twisted nether form. To charge it so that it will accept and transform itself within the impurities that must be added to make the fluix. Sure I've little need of such materials now, but one must think ahead, just as the bees I took from the land and villages are part of that, so too is this.

Charge the crystals, make the fluix, grind all into dust and make seeds.



I expect it to be days before the seeds have grown, it might be more days then that before I need them, but if I had waited, then it would be days I would have to wait while these held me back. I must remember to charge and make more though, these might not be enough, one never knows.

So while I've got the time to wait, the base gets a bit more work. The rooms decorated with proper stone, the walls built up with more bricks, a wall around the base to protect me, mostly, from the things in the night that slither and bite. This passes the time while my machines do more work for me.




I've also had a bit of time to experiment. To make and remake picks, hammers, swords, to emboss and embed, and to make a wonderful many things. This includes an unusual toy from the crystal, it holds a charge and shocks those I strike. Not as effective as a good sword but certainly a pretty backup for those dire moments of need.

Those I've had more of then I would like to admit, the walls are not entirely secure, there is sometimes light missing, and when storms come there are pale riders that plague the land. I once killed 20 of them in a single storming night.





One of the tasks I'd left going was the smelting of stone into more fireproof bricks, and with them a better smeltery. This also gives me a chance to show off that I used some of that steel for the tool forge, that was one of the many things I was experimenting with, and although some of it didn't turn out like I thought I've ideas that I can use for the future. That is why I'm working here, to make what preparations that I can, is it not? I've work to do to make this place ready for the next ages, and then when I am there, more work to make use of those tools. Around and around, a dragon to never catch it's own tail.



Thus I do leave myself with this machine, growing outside near the shore, looking after itself and making for me a garden. It's not entirely to my taste but it does work well and gives me what I need to continue with calculator in the future. Perhaps on the morrow. May you all be well, whoever might be reading this some distant day, if this book is ever found.