Gregtech End Ores useless?

[Scum]

Right now, the End ores that gregtech adds are mostly useless. Here is a list of them, in order of most useful to most useless:

Sheldonite: Yellow texture, hard to spot in the similarly coloured endstone. Macerating it gives you platinum dust, which can be centrifuged for iridium. The most useful ore there, also the rarest/hardest to get at.

Tungstate: Very common, looks like coal. Gives you tungsten, which doesn't have much of a use right now (no ubertools and such, but when redpower gives a use to tungsten, it might be good to go there)
EDIT: it actually has a use in some very high end gregtech stuff, but nothing you would need it for in bulk, like it generates in the end.

Olivine: Green texture like emerald ore. It gives you 1 olivine. It can be used to get magnesium I believe. Processing it in an industrial grinder will give you 2 tiny piles of emerald dust. Needs to be a bit higher for me to bother getting it.
Sodalite: Blue texture like lapis. Definitely the most useless ore there. You'd think it might be a good source of lapis, but it's basically just a replacement for blue dye.

Right now the, the only real reason to go to the end is for the dragon and the sheldonite. All the other ores are just decoration. If greg could add a balanced way to use sodalite for lapis and olivine for emerald, things might change.

 

[Hrulgin]

Olivine dust can also be used in place of scrap in a mass/matterfab, as well as being the best source for magnesium dust, which is necessary if you want windmills.

Sodalite isn't the primary option for anything but chlorite (which doesn't have any purpose yet according to NEI), but it's a nice way to get more aluminum, as well as silicon and sodium cells, both of which have a ton of uses if you're really exploring the full extent of GregTech.

Personally, I'm so-so on GT as a whole, as it's made the process of getting further up the tech tree a labor, but the ores the he has there are useful, with hints of further uses.

 

[Scum]

Olivine dust in a matterfab would probably not be all that efficient, since it requires dangerous trips to the end to acquire, unless of course it provided an extremely good dust-to-uu ratio. It's also not necessary for windmills, windmills are 3 carbon plates and a generator, or 4 aluminum ingots and a generator.

Aluminum is much easier to obtain through bauxite rather than sodalite. Silicon cells can be made from sand, which is much easier than going to the end. Sodalite is a good source for sodium, but so is clay dust.

If I'm going to go to the end I want to see some high end ores, sheldonite is one. But I'm not going to go to the End for a few extra sodium cells.

Most of these are simply slightly better sources of things that are already easily obtainable in the overworld. Having sodalite and olivine be sources of lapis and emeralds would make them be more useful and give people more reason to go to the end.

 

[Hrulgin]

I'm not sure why danger is a consideration here. By the time that most of this stuff becomes useful, you're more likely to be quarrying the end for endstone dust to make helium/H-3 cells than mining by hand.

Re. wind mills, I think I have different configs / a newer version of GT than you. Wind Mills can be made with 4 carbon plates or two magnalium plates (functionally 4 aluminum and 2 magnesium powder.) Given the multiple other uses of coal, the prevalence of aluminum and the few uses of magnesium, the magnalium seems a better choice.

It's true sand is an easier choice for silicon cells, but for an additional 17 seconds of processing time, you get 2 more silicon cells, as well as 4 sodium cells, 3 aluminum dust and a chlorite cell.

For sodium, I don't think that clay is actually a better choice than sodalite. Given that unless you're using EE3 the only likely way to get lots of clay is to quarry redstone and run it through a carpenter, sodalite's prevalence (that you decried above) actually makes it the easiest way to generate sodium cells.

You're right that these are simply better sources of things that are available elsewhere. That's the point. for the resources available here, the End is the ideal place to harvest them.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

I agree with the OP in one regard, the amount of Tungstate in the End is absolutely massive, and unless Eloraam really does involve Tungsten in Block Breakers, unnecessarily so (unless Manganese which can be gained from it has some real use later on). Other than that, I think you're forgetting about EU costs with Aluminum, Bauxite takes 100 seconds to give 8 aluminum (plus other stuff like titanium) for 256,000 EUs, Sodalite dust is not really useful by itself, but assuming an industrial Grinder is used you get more aluminum with 4 Sodalite ores in 20 seconds than with 3 Bauxite ores in 115 seconds, and with a cost of only 38,400 EUs. Olivine itself, once again, is not too useful for anything other than windmills yet, but when 2 are used in an Industrial Grinder, you can get an emerald's worth of dust from that which, I believe, makes it at least somewhat useful. And then of course the uses for Sheldonite are so blindingly obvious that I'm not even going to go into why this ore alone would make the End worth it.

 

[Scum]

Danger is a big consideration. Once you have exhausted the ores on the end platform, you must either painstakingly make a bridge to the asteroids (with the added risk of falling into the void), or make dangerous flight with your jetpack. Also, I don't believe that sheldonite spawns on the main platform. I've only seen it in small clusters near asteroids (with nothing underneath, making it even more dangerous than other ores)

An additional 17 seconds of processing time, and the time spent getting 12+ enderpearls, going to the nether, getting some blaze rods, finding the stronghold, killing the enderdragon, and THEN mining sodalite and processing it.

What I'm trying to get across is that I want the end to be a source of valuable resources. Not just a slightly better source for mediocre and easily obtainable items.

Right now, the End's only major advantage over normal methods is the fact that it has sheldonite, which is a MUCH easier way to obtain iridium. It's worth the time spent doing the things I mentioned above, as it takes less time and is more enjoyable than mining like hell for iridium ore in the overworld. I just think that this principle should be applied to the other ores.

 

[Hrulgin]

So each individual ore should be worth more? How much more? Should the olivine ore give a full emerald apiece instead of the half-emerald and the multi-purpose dust it now gives? Should the sodalite ore give lapis instead of three aluminum and a multi-purpose dust (that can be used as lapis in some places, and compressed to be lapis block equivalents in others)?

How much more valuable should the End be?

Clearly you have been cheated. You would not have been killing endermen or blazes, exploring fortresses or strongholds or mining without the inspiration of the End to drag you along. You have been cheated of your ultimate prize of infinite riches, without which the game is meaningless. You only have pockets of material that can provide iridium as well as a selection of other reasonably valuable materials.

Since the ~200,000 eu/block value of the basic endstone isn't enough (processed and used in a fusion reactor) and you need more emeralds and lapis, might I suggest hooking up a mass/matterfab and making what you need?

 

[Scum]

Relax. I simply wanted the other ores to be slightly more valuable. Sheldonite is very useful, but the others not so much.

Sodalite being electrolyzed would give you lapis as well as the other biproducts. Olivine dust being centrifuged would give you 2 tiny piles of emerald dust.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Olivine is also a good source of Iron Dust in the Electrolyzer.

Tungsten Dust in an Electrolyzer makes Wolfranium Cells, which is used in the Fusion Reactor to make Iridium and platinum.

 

[Bluehorazon]

Also note that you should be able to Rock-Cut the ores, which gives you an even higher yield in the grinder. I also think that tungsten will have more uses in the future, since normally the worldgen comes before uses are avaible, so he might have added in some ores just to have the option to use them later.

But all of these ores gives a rather high yield on very different things, they are no uber-ores but quite usefull and all of them besides Sheldonite are pretty easy to gather from the large island instead of the asteroids, so it should be expected that they are not that special.

 

[Carrington]

Tungsten's already useful/necessary in some of the really end-game GT stuff (energy flow circuits, superconductors). It and titanium are also used in the most efficient advanced alloy recipes. It's also necessary for the iridium/plat breeding fusion reactor builds.

Olivine's not great, but it does produce magnesium (as noted, in the harder configurations it's necessary for windmills) and iron, which is never bad. Sodalite is useable out of the box as a lapis replacement in dyes, and it can be electrolyzed to produce both sodium cells (useful in increasing some IGrinder yields), aluminium (profitable replacement for refined iron in many recipes), and silicon.

It should also be noted that all of these ores in an IGrinder provide some nice extras. Olivine, for instance, provides emerald dust. So going to the end personally can be more beneficial rather than quarrying, with the obvious attendant issues. I don't entirely understand how the end is dangerous given the (probable) presence of jetpacks, gravsuit, linking books, etc.

Since GT is updated pretty rapidly and is responsive to user feedback I'd anticipate a fair number of additional uses are in the pipe.

 

[Carrington]

Oh, one more thing GT adds is the ability to syphon EU from the Ender Crystals and Egg; not strictly an ore, but pretty cool.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh, one more thing GT adds is the ability to syphon EU from the Ender Crystals and Egg; not strictly an ore, but pretty cool.

I believe that one is still a bit... unstable. I wouldn't use it until it gets fixed.

 

[Carrington]

I believe that one is still a bit... unstable. I wouldn't use it until it gets fixed.

Yea I've noticed people having weird issues with it, but the general idea is amazing. Now you have a reason to fight the Ender Dragon in a way that makes him much harder (e.g. preserve the crystals for more power gen), or you can choose to sacrifice more crystals if you're not interested in that power option. In servers that do dragon raids it'll provide an interesting point of contention/debate.

 

[Daemonblue]

Either it will cause contention or everyone will just decide to come in with mining lasers and gravisuits and say "FU dragon!"

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yea I've noticed people having weird issues with it, but the general idea is amazing. Now you have a reason to fight the Ender Dragon in a way that makes him much harder (e.g. preserve the crystals for more power gen), or you can choose to sacrifice more crystals if you're not interested in that power option. In servers that do dragon raids it'll provide an interesting point of contention/debate.

I can't hear "Dragon Raid" without hearing one of two things:

1) MINUS 50 DKP!
2) LEEEEEEEROOYYYYYY Jenkens...

Sorry, the EnderDragon is easy enough to take down on your own, vanilla. There's no real need to raid it. Just wear a pumpkin for a helmet so you don't aggro endermen swarms and you're good to go.

 

[WTFFFS]

I can't hear Dragon raid without thinking about having to have the bloody Imp out parked next to the tank lol

Or logging in multiple low level chars to check for the world dragons.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Or logging in multiple low level chars to check for the world dragons.

What, one parked in Perma and one in SolB?

Heh, I wonder who'll actually catch this reference.

 

[rahk]

Ah those were the good old days. Back before MMO's lost the social part of it, and being a part of a team meant something. And mmo's were more than "I can do it all myself, with lots of people around me that are doing the same things by themselves".

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ah those were the good old days. Back before MMO's lost the social part of it, and being a part of a team meant something. And mmo's were more than "I can do it all myself, with lots of people around me that are doing the same things by themselves".

Yea, I hear FD splitting is all but a lost art these days, along with all the variants... wall split, hill split, learning all the ins and outs of mob pathing and how screwed up they were in Kunark raid zones, knowing about warping and how it will affect adds, assist and proxy aggro and how it differs, how to pull a summoning mob... fun times.