Extra Utilities is hilariously OP and I love it

[malicious_bloke]

Making unstable ingots is soooo hard.

I mean I have to click NINE WHOLE TIMES to put that many unstable nuggets in the crafting grid EACH TIME!

 

[jordsta95]

Making unstable ingots is soooo hard.

I mean I have to click NINE WHOLE TIMES to put that many unstable nuggets in the crafting grid EACH TIME!

Inventory tweaks
Also, nuggets, they stack, so you click+hold and drag your mouse over all the crafting grid

 

[Ieldra]

I will agree with this, however, my one gripe with configs, is that I cannot disable item OR liquid transfer nodes. You either disable them both, or neither.

Why would you want to disable one but not the other? They both do the same thing: high-speed intake of a locally unlimited resource.

 

[jordsta95]

Why would you want to disable one but not the other? They both do the same thing: high-speed intake of a locally unlimited resource.

Well in ingenuity you have a way to transport items, but not a way to do water (effectively) and seeing as Hydraulicraft needs a fair amount of water, it'd be nice to have one and not the other

 

[Jackcat136]

So, messing with Infinity 1.7.10 on a server lately after having been away from FTB for a long time, and man. Extra Utilities is so awesome, and so deliciously OP. How much of this is the combination of ExUt with other FTB mods, and how much is basically innate?

First off, survivalist generators are crazy awesome. They cost basically nothing and are significantly more efficient than anything you care to spin up until genuine mid-stage power like non-scarce refined fuel or Big Reactors or something. This time through I didn't bother switching away from using survivalist generator farms for everything until I had ender tanks for running remote oil wells. Hand in hand with that, of course, is that drums are crazy awesome as well for dense liquid storage.

Oh yeah, drums. Extra Utilities gives us both the fastest cobblestone generator in the game [by a ton] and the bedrockium drum. That's why at this moment my strategic fuel reserve is at 30,000 buckets and climbing steadily, in a handy one-block space. Transfer pipes are the best thing ever.

...well, except for maybe the ender quarry, which is admittedly quite expensive, but not once you've found an ender-lily seed or five. Lucking into a chest with those is utterly game-changing, and they're frankly not all that rare. I've found twenty so far. Is it Extra Utilities that provides the recipe for making end stone out of sandstone + resonant ender, or is that a TE/TF thing? Because ender-lilies propagate when grown on end stone, so having a recipe for it without actually having to go to The End is, um, yeah.

And once you have an ender quarry and a modest amount of power, you've got uranium/yellorium, and with the ender quarry and a Big Reactor you're basically done. About all that EU isn't going to do for you is provide a way to explore widely for cheap -- OpenBlocks hang glider is my vehicle of choice, YMMV -- and you're set for life on the mineral-resources front.

About the only thing ExUt doesn't actually address for me is blaze rods and similar non-mineral Nether resources. I love Extra Utilities.

Extra Utilities doesn't help with your blaze rods hey? Have you tried placing cursed earth in a nether fortress?

 

[ctate]

You mention how ExU is OP, yet you forget to talk about the wings? SHAME!!!

I... uh. Um.

Y'see, I haven't yet killed a wither. Ever. EVER. So the wings aren't exactly in my available inventory yet....

 

[ctate]

Extra Utilities doesn't help with your blaze rods hey? Have you tried placing cursed earth in a nether fortress?

Hard to make cursed earth when you haven't found any division sigils.

 

[Jackcat136]

Hard to make cursed earth when you haven't found any division sigils.

Just craft up some diamond armour from your quarry and a nice sword with maybe some extra trinkets, and go the the nether with a cleaver

 

[ctate]

Just craft up some diamond armour from your quarry and a nice sword with maybe some extra trinkets, and go the the nether with a cleaver

I don't think I follow you. Division sigils are chest loot only, aren't they? How do beheadings help?

 

[Jackcat136]

I don't think I follow you. Division sigils are chest loot only, aren't they? How do beheadings help?

Withers drop Division Sigils :I

 

[ctate]

Withers drop Division Sigils :I

Oh! Well, that's directly contradicted by the in-game documentatation. Good to know.

Now we're back to that whole "I've never actually killed a wither" thing....

 

[Jackcat136]

Oh! Well, that's directly contradicted by the in-game documentatation. Good to know.

Now we're back to that whole "I've never actually killed a wither" thing....

I figured as much, I've only fought 2 without godly gear, to be honest, just go down to bedrock in a 3x3 tunnel area, spawn him in there

As for equiptment, a few potions, diamond armour (preferably enchanted) and a decent tinker's weapon should do the job fine

 

[SpitefulFox]

New dimension?!?

It's a Chrono Trigger reference: http://imgur.com/a/MTpaq

It's also a nice collective void-age for packs that don't use Mystcraft. I kinda like it more, because each player getting their own infinite void to themselves seemed stupidly wasteful.

Having said that, I really hate the unstable ingots mechanic, as I hate anything too dependent on my hand-eye coordination. I've been consistently unable to craft anything with more than three of the darned things, and something like the Angel Wings, which needs something in all 9 slots of the crafting table is a challenge even with only one. Or was it two. At least the Builder's Want is easy.

If you craft Unstable Nuggets instead and use them to craft an Unstable Ingot, you get a "Stable Unstable Ingot" that won't explode and can be safely stored for later. Considerably more expensive, but a lot less stressful. I usually just brute force the stable unstable ingots with lots and lots and lots of diamonds instead of trying my luck with the explosions.

I'm not usually short of diamonds except in the early game. It's the hassle, rather than the expense, of repeated attempts I mind: Take off all your important equipment, store your XP somewhere, head to your blast-resistant room, attempt to craft stuff until you survive the attempt. As long as you don't, move to your emergency chest at the annoyingly standard pace, pick up a pick, make a new one just in case. go to your gravestone to get your stuff back, repeat the whole procedure.

Unless it's changed recently, unstable ingots don't do terrain damage when they explode.

 

[Inaeo]

This thread has given me a good chuckle today. Basically, people are claiming XU is grossly overpowered (and depending on the other mods around it, it could be), while at the same time complaining about the one challenging dynamic used to balance out all the powerful toys.

Killing the Wither can be a challenge. Outside of finding the Division Sigil as dungeon loot, you have to kill him (thus also have a nether star) to proceed. Then you have to activate the sigil and deal with the consequence of that (as a bonus, the prepared get cursed earth). Then, and only then, are you able to begin playing with the most unforgiving crafting mechanics in all of modded Minecraft. How is that not balance? Risk vs reward.

Sure, if you find a Division Sigil in a chest, you can rush your way into some powerful toys. You still need to put in some work, and likely build a little bit of infrastructure to get where you're going. Its not like the recipe for angel wings is eight dirt around some gravel or something. For the most part, I find the recipes are just the right amounts or resources, time, and risk. With the upgradable ender quarry, I think the power vs output is pretty well balanced as well. Don't get me started on the CPU friendliness of the mod in general, as that's where I believe the true power in the mod lies.

Then comes the real question: what is the definition of OP? Everyone has their own, and it changes depending on the landscape of the mods in a given pack. There are a thousand ways to do anything these days, and everyone has their own "best" way to do any of them. Let's just agree that XU is a beautiful collection of incredibly useful things that happen to be generally easier of processing power than the average and be done with it.

 

[ctate]

I started the thread so I get to define "OP" here.

When I say that, I typically mean that the mod's contributions significantly undermine the progress ramp of other mods (or of the core vanilla content). In the case of ExUt, I'd say that the survivalist generator alone subverts pretty much every other mod's bootstrap-to-midgame power supply progression: they're insanely resource-efficient for how cheap they are, and on top of that use the generator model rather than the engine model [i.e. they autostart/stop], which doubles down on their efficiency. Like I said, I ran everything on stacks of survivalist generators until I got all the way to essentially-infinite refined fuel availability -- I had no reason to bother with anything else.

The one other really substantial balance-shifter is ender-lily seeds. Easy free ender pearls, even slowly, really is game-changing. Almost everything else in Minecraft and its modscape expects them to be scarce.

All that said, did I really sound like I was complaining here...?




(Oh, and this is without even going into the marriage-made-in-heaven that is ExUt + EnderIO...!)

 

[Psychicash]

I love extra utilities. I do feel however that I'm being trolled about this new dimension. I looked all over and couldn't find a recipe or even what the block/item is called...


edit : typo

 

[Jackcat136]

I love extra utilities. I do feel however that I'm being tried about this new dimension. I looked all over and couldn't find a recipe or even what the block/item is called...

The dimension is "The Last Milenium" It may not be in your pack as it is quite new

 

[Ieldra]

I started the thread so I get to define "OP" here.

When I say that, I typically mean that the mod's contributions significantly undermine the progress ramp of other mods (or of the core vanilla content). In the case of ExUt, I'd say that the survivalist generator alone subverts pretty much every other mod's bootstrap-to-midgame power supply progression: they're insanely resource-efficient for how cheap they are, and on top of that use the generator model rather than the engine model [i.e. they autostart/stop], which doubles down on their efficiency. Like I said, I ran everything on stacks of survivalist generators until I got all the way to essentially-infinite refined fuel availability -- I had no reason to bother with anything else.

The one other really substantial balance-shifter is ender-lily seeds. Easy free ender pearls, even slowly, really is game-changing. Almost everything else in Minecraft and its modscape expects them to be scarce.

All that said, did I really sound like I was complaining here...?

(Oh, and this is without even going into the marriage-made-in-heaven that is ExUt + EnderIO...!)

It depends on your playstyle I guess. I moved on from survivalist generators to lava pumped from the Nether plus oil as soon as I could, and I never ran more than four survivalist generators.

As for ender lilies, they're very hard to come by. As a rule, at the time you get them, you easily have the resources to keep a mob farm or even an Enderman spawner running. What they do is reduce the need for a mob farm from that point onward, which is really a relief for those who dislike dealing with mobs. The lilies may result in "easy free ender pearls", but they're not "early free ender pearls", so they don't affect balance much in the time when ender pearls are scarcest. In my current game, my first Ender pearls did come from lilies, but that's because of Botania's Loonium, which is in itself a mid-level item that needs significant investments in time and mana to make and run. In the end, the lilies did not shorten the time period until the pearls became less scarce, but they let me do things I like (build cool stuff) rather than things I don't like (dealing with mobs) in the meantime.

 

[Inaeo]

The survivalist generator is far and away the most efficient source of RF per fuel I've played with - if you're willing to wait a while for it to charge. At a 5rf/t output, using it to directly power anything consistently is unsustainable without spamming them. If you were going to spend the time and resources to spam survivalist generators, you could just as well make something with a bit less efficiency and better output. Unless trees are somehow a limited resource in your pack, fuel for generators is easy, reliable, and 100% renewable. Other than to kickstart you when fuel is harder to come by, there is no point in using these in most applications once charcoal (or even just wood) is readily available. Sure, you can spam the countryside with them (or do a 64x generator and save some CPU power) and pump them full of coal coke for the max bang for your buck, but that is a decision made by the player, not the developer.

Ender Lily are a little different as they are dungeon loot. A fair amount of dungeon loot has the possibility of skewing early game, as even something as mediocre as a Thaumium sword in your first chest can become a prized possession for a good while. I got a piece of Runic Dungeons chalk in my first chest in a new SSP world last week, and that may be the fastest start to a game I've ever had (due to all the other loot within the dungeon). The seeds themselves do produce a steady, reliable source of a sought after resource with little hassle or risk, but getting your hands on them is pure RNGoodness. Even once you have a few, its still a waiting game until you have the stock to build endercore for them to live on, or a method of creating end stone (there are a few). We found a few seeds early in our server, but it was still more efficient to use a mob farm for pearls for a good long while. The seeds are simply less hassle for a slow, steady (assuming you harvest regularly) trickle of pearls. They are also much less CPU intensive than a mob farm if you're playing on a weaker computer.

So far as OP being that which "...significantly undermines the progress ramp of other mods...", I would say most mods that were not specifically designed to work in conjunction (and a few that were) will tread on each other's progression curve. Most mods are built on a premise of " build x so that process y is easier" or "build A so resource B is easier to obtain". If I build A before I start a mod with a heavy reliance on resource B, that mod's progression has been undermined from the start. This is not the fault of the mod nor the developer, as (unless purposely designed to do such things) most mods are conceived and programmed in a vacuum. This is simply the danger of playing multiple mods together, and is the job of a modpack creator to understand and mitigate (or exploit in some instances, dependimg on the pack).

I know you weren't complaining, but there were some gripes about the unstable process, and I felt it should be justified. I sometimes forget how many things from XU I love. Overall, its a brilliantly programmed collection of incredibly useful utilities. Thanks @RWTema for your strong work.