Gregtech Survival Guide

[Pyure]

I only have one complaint about ore distribution now... why doesn't Gold Ore have it's own vein?

In the Guide, there is a chart (from the wiki I believe) showing the various Ores, grouped by Primary/Secondary/In-Between/Around.

Here's the line for Gold: Magnetite/Magnetite/Vanadium Magnetite/Gold

So that means Gold is the Quaternary, or "Around", Ore. And that means there isn't very much of it to be found.

Gold is a popular material. Too popular for its rarity. And since most mods didn't account for gold being so rare in a world, they use gold as a construction material too much (Ender IO for example uses a lot of gold).

How do some of you handle the gold deficiency? Do you go right to bees and get them started ASAP? Do you build an immense Obsidian Portal matrix in the sky for a Zombie Pigman farm? Do you have a method I didn't think of yet?

By restricting gold to a 4th-tier ore, you make it a "precious metal" as opposed to a "common metal". Yeah, everyone wants more of it, but that increases its value.

In gregtech, this provides some interesting resource management decisions. In particular, you can look into processing your magnetite through a chemical bath with mercury, which gives a great deal of gold. You can also ensure you process copper the "proper" way so as to get gold as a byproduct (I believe you can still do this anyway.)

If you're like me, you'll probably work around the problem a bit by creating a mob spawner (of whatever kind you like) and simply getting gold through that. ( A cursed-earth mob-spawner in the overworld will create a great deal of gold via armor. A nether spawner works even better)

 

[Queue]

By restricting gold to a 4th-tier ore, you make it a "precious metal" as opposed to a "common metal". Yeah, everyone wants more of it, but that increases its value.

In gregtech, this provides some interesting resource management decisions. In particular, you can look into processing your magnetite through a chemical bath with mercury, which gives a great deal of gold. You can also ensure you process copper the "proper" way so as to get gold as a byproduct (I believe you can still do this anyway.)

If you're like me, you'll probably work around the problem a bit by creating a mob spawner (of whatever kind you like) and simply getting gold through that. ( A cursed-earth mob-spawner in the overworld will create a great deal of gold via armor. A nether spawner works even better)

Quaternary ore
Also when in doubt in GT, and you can't get enough of something, you need a processing chain with byproducts. Look in NEI and find something abundant you can automate to get gold as a byproduct. Automate it, then let it build up a store.

 

[asb3pe]

By restricting gold to a 4th-tier ore, you make it a "precious metal" as opposed to a "common metal". Yeah, everyone wants more of it, but that increases its value.

In gregtech, this provides some interesting resource management decisions. In particular, you can look into processing your magnetite through a chemical bath with mercury, which gives a great deal of gold. You can also ensure you process copper the "proper" way so as to get gold as a byproduct (I believe you can still do this anyway.)

If you're like me, you'll probably work around the problem a bit by creating a mob spawner (of whatever kind you like) and simply getting gold through that. ( A cursed-earth mob-spawner in the overworld will create a great deal of gold via armor. A nether spawner works even better)

Thanks Pyure, I guess I never looked at the Magnetite recipe in NEI to see that there's a way to get gold from it. That's a huge tip indeed. I haven't seen any need for Magnetite itself, so I literally have ignored every vein of it (and as you know, there are usually many). Doh!

I'd like to do it a GregTech way if I can. And this is exactly what I love about GT - I just learned something important, Magnetite can provide a source of gold... but it requires Mercury (probably in liquid form)... so now I have to go figure out how to make a steady source of Mercury (don't tell me - but I think I already know which ore it will be)... and it just keeps cascading like that. I think that's what attracts me to GT, and it's probably exactly what turns some people off from it too. To each, our own.

Quaternary ore
Also when in doubt in GT, and you can't get enough of something, you need a processing chain with byproducts. Look in NEI and find something abundant you can automate to get gold as a byproduct. Automate it, then let it build up a store.

Yeah, sometimes it almost feels like I'm cheating by coming here and asking questions. But I do have trouble going thru NEI to find stuff. I find it very tedious and I often misclick and have to start browsing thru 100's of pages of recipes from page 1 again... etc. etc. NEI is an awesome tool, no doubt, but so are forums with helpful folks like you guys.

Up until now, I've only built one machine of each variety. I've got my "Materials Lab", and I love it. But yeah, like you said, I think I'm probably reaching the point now where I'll have to make multiple machines and group them together into little "processing units", with different machine combinations for all the different materials I'll be needing to produce. Truth be told... I really hate to break up my nice easy simple lineup of machines and go to more of a "production plant" with machines everywhere and power/item/fluid lines criss-crossing and making a total mess. But... if I don't do it, I'm never gonna get out of early game I guess. I've gotta stop processing everything in series and start doing it in parallel.

 

[Pyure]

{snip}

Don't feel like there's any "tradition" that you need to figure stuff out on your own. Not only is GT pretty damn big on its own, but its in regular flux, so what works today might not work tomorrow. The community is an important part of navigating that stuff sanely.

Regarding Mercury, there's the "normal" ways of getting it (and I'll respect your wish not to be told), but other ways may exist in the pack you're playing. For instance in InfiTech2 I'm pretty sure you can (or could) get it via Minechem.

 

[asb3pe]

Very early on I started to process ALL my ores with the goal being: If the ore has a valuable byproduct, then I do it, even if that means running the dusts thru a thermal centrifuge at very slow speed (i'm still at LV machines). I've been using NEI on every ore block I bring back to base. However, while that did give me a bit of gold, all it really did was slow down my progress immensely. I've spent afternoons doing nothing but running back and forth between my macerator, forge hammer and thermal centrifuge, in-between AFK'ing. It's a good thing Minecraft doesn't have an audience watching us play, I'd put them all to sleep. LOL Maybe someday I'll be thankful I've spent so much time making a small amount of Rare Earth? I bet there's a good reason they call it "Rare"!

 

[KingTriaxx]

Is the Industrial Grinder still a thing? I remember 1.4.7 I found myself throwing just about everything in there. I even had it set up to automatically provide the correct cell for the maximum output. Except for water, which was automatically pumped into the primary processor.

 

[Queue]

Is the Industrial Grinder still a thing? I remember 1.4.7 I found myself throwing just about everything in there. I even had it set up to automatically provide the correct cell for the maximum output. Except for water, which was automatically pumped into the primary processor.

Ore processing has changed a lot, the Industrial Grinder is no longer.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Boo.

Seriously though, I really liked that. Can't stand the thermal centrifuge. No idea who thought THAT was a good idea.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Boo.

Seriously though, I really liked that. Can't stand the thermal centrifuge. No idea who thought THAT was a good idea.

From what I've seen in poking around in NEI, at least for the few ores that I've researched, the Thermal Centrifuge typically just gets you a single tiny pile of dust for each crushed or purified ore (of which maceration usually yields two, although Cassiterite is an exception and gives four) you throw in. So I can understand your frustration, but you're not losing much if you just don't use it. I'd recommend it for emerald ore though, if you ever plan on using neutron reflectors in your IC2 nuclear reactors. An extra tiny pile of beryllium dust is significantly more than you would get otherwise.

The electrolyzer and GT centrifuge get you a lot more byproducts. I'm fairly sure those machines don't care whether you've washed or thermal-centrifuged your ores at all, and they can give several piles of metal dust from one dirty, normal, or purified ore dust.

 

[PhoenixSmith]

How do I create fluxed electrum in GT? I can not seem to use TE methods anymore...

 

[KingTriaxx]

That seems better. Though I still have nightmares about trying to get the Electrolyzer to work properly. I blew up three of them.

 

[asb3pe]

Deleted my post. Not worth complaining about GT problems and asking all kinds of questions. I should just stop playing when it happens because I get so aggravated. Over a stupid video game. Creative mode fixes everything, and makes me just as good as Tom Brady. sigh

 

[Queue]

How do I create fluxed electrum in GT? I can not seem to use TE methods anymore...

Is it not in NEI?

What is the deal with GT mob spawners? Why is Greg such a doofus sometimes? I need to break them and get rid of them but I can't because he made them one tick short of bedrock strength. I even was able to make a Level 4 GT pickaxe (using Entropy Shards, wasted my last Thaumium ingot to do so), but it seems to take just as long as a Level 3 does. I'm aggravated. I need these stupid things removed so my BC Quarry can go to work. They're in the way. How can a diamond-level quarry not break them? Well that's because in Greg's world, diamond is only medium strength.

Greg did that for two reasons:

Initially he wanted to add it as a feature, so people wouldn't accidentally break valuable spawners. Simply torch up the area and slay the monsters.
Now it's more of a hardcore feature too, making it harder to just wreck a dungeon.

Mining laser is the best way to remove them- 1 click. This said, unless you have a mod which harvests spawners (at which point, just turn off harderMobSpawners in the config anyway if you want the game THAT easy ) I suggest lighting up the area around the spawner and saving it for later.

 

[asb3pe]

Yeah, Greg really got to me today. Usually I love a good challenge, but I after 3 weeks it seems I'm right back to where I always end up in a GregTech modpack - either quitting completely and starting over, or cheating items in left and right. That normally satisfies me for a while but then I get disgusted and ask myself "well if you're just gonna cheat things in, why not just go all the way and do a permanent /gamemode 1?" It's like Pandora's Box, once it's open you can't ever hope to close it and feel good. I'm always gonna know I cheated and the world isn't "legit".

This is why I deleted my post and said I should just quit when I get aggravated by a video game. Damn you Greg! LOL

More than anything, I just get sad that I can't seem to ever get past LV machines legitimately. I COULD do it, but I just don't want to invest that much time into it. This is like the fourth time I've gotten to this point in a GT pack, and it always ends up the same way. I'm lazy and I hate doing everything manually, by hand (like mining). But I don't have the necessary resources to automate mining because I didn't put the time and effort into mining. I probably just need to take another break from Minecraft. Eventually, the "fire" (desire) always returns.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Try not going straight at it. The reason I got through GT in Ultimate was because I had TE to make it possible to get resources until I could put together the GT machines.

Railcraft's Tunnelbore is a good method of mining without getting boned by GT, so is Steve's Carts. Turtles were my preference over a quarry because of the annoyance of using a diamond drill at the time.

That's the fun of a mod pack, because you've got options.

 

[asb3pe]

That's the fun of a mod pack, because you've got options.

Thanks bud. Yeah, I realize this is one of my problems - I have my preferred way of doing things, which is basically just another way of saying I have "tunnel vision". I rarely try out new methods or even new mods to do "the same old thing" a new way. I'm not very flexible like that, I prefer to remain in my comfort zone I guess.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Believe me, I know all about that. Which is why I stopped using teleportation for most stuff, and started using trains.

 

[asb3pe]

I'm trying to build the Tier 2 GT Steel Steam Boiler and I still don't understand hatches. The "Input Bus", for example - there are 7 or 8 different versions - ULV, LV, MV, HV, etc. Well, the Steam Boiler isn't an electric machine - so why does the block require using LV or MV Machine Hulls? That doesn't make sense to me, which leads to confusion. Does it make a difference which version I use? Can I use a ULV Machine Hull for the Tier 2 Steel Boiler (Tier 1 being Bronze or LV, and Tier 2 being Steel or MV) or do I have to match the Hatches to the Tier I'm building and use MV Machine Hulls for all my Steel Boiler Hatches and Muffler?

Helpful discovery: Electrolyzing obsidian (requires MV Electrolyzer) yields 8 "buckets" of oxygen gas which really boosted my steel production. It also provides some Magnesium dust which I think will come in handy soon, I didn't have a source of that until just now. Other methods of Oxygen generation were insufficient to keep up with my GT Electric Blast Furnace when it is making steel. Electrolyzing some centrifuged Ruby dust was working (3 buckets of oxygen per 6 Ruby dusts, plus all-important Chrome dust) however my Ruby Ore quantity is rather limited despite using a quarry to capture every last block of it in the Redstone deposit I discovered. Obsidian solved the Oxygen problem for me.

 

[asb3pe]

So I have my GT Steel Steam Boiler working (I used MV hatches since I still don't know which ones to use).

I have the Output hatch connected to my Railcraft Steel Tank Valve via one section of Huge Stainless Steel Fluid Pipe, because the Steel Boiler outputs 24,000 L/s of steam and that pipe can handle 28,800 L/s. I put a Shutter on each side of the pipe to prevent any backflow.

The Railcraft Steel Tank is indeed filling, but not very quickly. Am I doing anything wrong with my setup? How much steam can a Railcraft Valve block accept per second (or per tick)? Do I need multiple Output Hatches on my GT Steel Boiler with multiple outlet pipes into multiple Railcraft Tank Valves in order to maximize my steam transfer into the tank? Do I need to use a pump of some sort to "push" the steam into the Railcraft tank? Or are the GT Shutters sufficient?

I had this same problem with my Bronze Boiler, and I solved it by using Ender IO conduits to put the steam into the Railcraft Tank instead of GregTech Fluid Pipe. But I need to figure this out once and for all. What am I doing wrong? Why is my steam transfer so slow? I just replaced the Stainless Steel Fluid Pipe with Ender IO conduit and my Railcraft Tank is filling much, much faster. I don't understand this - the Ender IO tooltip says the top tier fluid conduit can extract of 200 mB/t, but the Steel Boiler puts out 1200 mB/t (six times the max amount) and the Ender IO conduit is handling all of it because the Boiler Output Hatch shows a quantity of zero every tick (meaning all the steam it is producing is going out thru the Ender IO conduit into the Railcraft Tank every tick). This doesn't make sense to me given the 200 mB/t figure given for the condiut. Is the Ender IO fluid conduit actually an unlimited transfer amount?

Finally, I put the GT Steam Boiler outside, next to my Railcraft Tank. Do I need to cover the Boiler blocks? Will the Boiler blow up if it begins to rain just like other GT machines do?

 

[KingTriaxx]

Last I knew, that was only for electric machines. Though it's entirely possible. Better safe than sorry.