How do I learn?

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Purgedmoon

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Jul 29, 2019
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So I was playing vanilla minecraft for a bit, and my fiancee decided that she wanted to play too. We decided on Direwolf20 1.6.4 and found a perfect seed and having tons of fun. But I have no idea where to even begin learning about all these different mod packs. I've taken a look at the wiki but It's hard to get data when you don't know what you're looking for.

What are some useful things you can build, what should I focus on. I like making functional things.
 
Purgedmoon said:
So I was playing vanilla minecraft for a bit, and my fiancee decided that she wanted to play too. We decided on Direwolf20 1.6.4 and found a perfect seed and having tons of fun. But I have no idea where to even begin learning about all these different mod packs. I've taken a look at the wiki but It's hard to get data when you don't know what you're looking for.

What are some useful things you can build, what should I focus on. I like making functional things.
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Each person learns differently. Since you're playing the DW20 pack, you could do worse than watching his youtube LP series. He does a fairly decent job of explaining what he's doing as if he was speaking with someone who knows little to nothing about the mods in question.

Coming into mods for the first time can be daunting, so following along with someone else's progression isn't a bad way to get going. Once you see what each machine can do, and is intended to do, you can start looking into ways to use or break those paradigms.

If watching youtube isn't your thing, then I recommend that you start to assemble the parts needed to make a Pulverizer, Redstone Furnace, and Steam Dynamo, as well as Leadstone Energy Conduits. Those will get you started with the basics of an ore processing system, power generation, and power transmission, and should whet your whistle for finding ways to not have to manually keep adding water to the dynamo :)
 
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I suggest watching some of dire's newest single player LP, as he goes in depth on the starting mechanics for several mods such as Thermal Expansion, Tinker's Construct, and Thaumcraft. I think he also started IC2 Exp. in his last single player episode.

Since you said you like building functional things, I recommend building some sort of sorting system, whether it be with TE3, Buildcraft, or Logistics Pipes. Try setting up a dump chest that will automatically send your ores off to be processed, and then take those to storage along with any other items you put in the chest.

If you're someone like me who really likes the concept of genetics, Forestry and Magic Bees will keep you entertained for a while. It can be frustrating, but very rewarding.

If you're looking into some of the more expensive recipes, setting up an Applied Energistics Grind Stone will go a very long way. It will take most ores you put in it and turn them into dusts, at a rate of one ore to two dust. It is manual, but there are several different machines from various mods to make it automatic with some work. As zilvarwolf said, the Pulverizer is one such machine.

I'll go look up some basic guides for an intro to some of these mods, so check my post every once and a while for a new link. Hope this helps!

Here's a link to dire's latest season in case you wanted it.
Tinkers Construct actually has three books in game that help guide you along with the mod, completely forgot about those.
Forestry: Intro to bees
Railcraft is a great mod for building complex and useful systems. This isn't much, but here's a basic starting guide for it.
Here's part one of dire's spotlight on Logistics Pipes.
 
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Wow those are some really helpful posts. Having just started minecraft in general a lot of these concepts blow my mind, Still getting used to physics, water works, ect ect. I have a Mob trap, Automated Sugar cane farmer, Tree farm, and a few other things I've set up on my little survival Island so far. I also Learned magic but haven't built anything else than the arcane compendium due to mass confusion.

On the topic of bee's. What do they do? I see hives all over the place but I've never touched them.
 
zilvarwolf said:
Bees basically give a means to generate unlimited amounts of every resource with a -significant- time and labor investment. They're .. a lot to go into in a single post. :)
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Sounds like my kind of time investment. Any good guides or videos explaining them?
 
Purgedmoon said:
So I was playing vanilla minecraft for a bit, and my fiancee decided that she wanted to play too. We decided on Direwolf20 1.6.4 and found a perfect seed and having tons of fun. But I have no idea where to even begin learning about all these different mod packs. I've taken a look at the wiki but It's hard to get data when you don't know what you're looking for.

What are some useful things you can build, what should I focus on. I like making functional things.
Click to expand...

You learn by doing. Pick a problem, try and solve it. No points lost for doing it inefficiently or looking at how someone else did it. Many of us have been playing modded minecraft for over a year, and so we sound like we know everything but really we've just spent many hours around the mods. That's how we learned.

Watching YT videos of didactic players like Direwolf20, BevoLJ, Ako the Builder (and me, maybe? ;)) should help kickstart you.
 
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@Padfoote has a link in his post as an intro to bees.

You will need to make one or more scoops and walk around whacking the beehives you find. Collect the bees. Make some bee houses. Breed the bees a few times to get extras and some honeycombs.

Your next step will be apiaries (and right now I cannot remember if you have to have a forestry infrastructure in place...assume that you will need at least a carpenter and a centrifuge...if not now, then soon). Your next step will be to make a beealyzer. This device, when provided with honey and a bee, will tell you everything you want to know about the bee, from what it is, to what it can do, to what it's first cousin had for breakfast 3 weeks ago.

well, maybe not that.

Now you're set to start breeding and cross breeding, and that's a massive, massive undertaking that I am completely horrible at so you wouldn't want to ask me for advice :)
 
DW20 LPs are a great introduction as many mention. He and others also do some good spotlights on various mods. Just pick a mod out of the list when you got a bit of time and watch the spotlight. You don't need to understand it all, but they give you a great overview of what the mod does. Then when you decide you want do build something and you remember that gadget from from that mod you might not remember, Wikis are simply the best information source, but as of yet it might be hard to find updated wikis for 100% of all the 1.6.4 stuff.

When it comes to bees, they are great fun but require a lot of infrastructure, some automation skills and large investments of time. Due to the latter I would probably recommend against starting it as a first time user before the DW20 pack is out of beta. Investing a lot of time in learning the robes of bees and then loosing it all due to "world breaking" updates could put a person completely off bees for good. Also a very important part of bee keeping is IMO Binnies Extra bees which is not in DW20 or any of the other FTB packs just yet. So better wait a bit.
 
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@zilvarwolf has some excellent points on starting with bees, and is correct with it all.

My advice from personal experience is to bring some sort of bag with you, whether it be an EnderPouch or a backbag from another mod, such as Forestry (however I don't know what's needed there, it might actually require bees). Running around getting hives will completely fill your inventory in a short amount of time. Having a bag will allow you to extend your time hunting for hives, which will in turn ensure you have plenty of bees for breeding later.

On the topic of crossbreeding and traits, @rhn has a good point with Extra Bees. It introduces several machines that make it much easier to get the traits you want on certain bees, and they will save quite a bit of frustration. These machines also take a large amount of power, so take some time setting up some nice power generation before hand.
 
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Padfoote said:
@zilvarwolf has some excellent points on starting with bees, and is correct with it all.

My advice from personal experience is to bring some sort of bag with you, whether it be an EnderPouch or a backbag from another mod, such as Forestry (however I don't know what's needed there, it might actually require bees). Running around getting hives will completely fill your inventory in a short amount of time. Having a bag will allow you to extend your time hunting for hives, which will in turn ensure you have plenty of bees for breeding later.
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Forestry apiarists backpack holds 125 bees(drones stack). But yeah does require a few combs which you can get from scooping wild hives.
On the note of scoops, I prefer just bringing a Mining laser and just shooting the hives. Works like a charm and doesn't have ridiculous low durability :P
 
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Alright, Well problem one. My island is infected with taint and will apparently infect everything eventually. What do I do to get rid of it or redirect it XD
 
Purgedmoon said:
Alright, Well problem one. My island is infected with taint and will apparently infect everything eventually. What do I do to get rid of it or redirect it XD
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Move, quickly and with post haste.

Your chances of being able to detaint the island are pretty slim at this point.
 
Purgedmoon said:
Alright, Well problem one. My island is infected with taint and will apparently infect everything eventually. What do I do to get rid of it or redirect it XD
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That would require a large amount of Thaumcraft research to get to the Ethereal Bloom. The bloom will push back taint around it by a certain amount, although I don't remember how much.

Also, Silverwood Trees. If those grow with a pure node in them, they should help prevent the spread of taint.
 
zilvarwolf said:
Move, quickly and with post haste.

Your chances of being able to detaint the island are pretty slim at this point.
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Make sure you move more than 15ish chunks away so you dont keep the taint loaded. Else it will continue to spread to where ever you move to.
 
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If I destroy all of it, will it slow its progress? or does it reinfect everything that's already been infected[DOUBLEPOST=1389897591][/DOUBLEPOST]
rhn said:
Make sure you move more than 15ish chunks away so you dont keep the taint loaded. Else it will continue to spread to where ever you move to.
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I'm on a survival Island with 3000 blocks of water around me. =( not really an option unfortunately.
 
Purgedmoon said:
If I destroy all of it, will it slow its progress? or does it reinfect everything that's already been infected
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It has changed the areas biome, so its a persistent change to the area, not the specific blocks.
 
Purgedmoon said:
If I dig a Giant hole around it, Will it jump the gap or travel down?
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Not sure of the specific mechanic used, but I assume it just spreads horizontally changing the biome of each block outwards to taint biomes.
Heard some people recommending walling it off to prevent tainted animals walking off and spawning new taint biomes.
 
Not sure. Last I heard, taint was like a terminator. It doesn't know pain or pity or remorse. It will just keep coming until it ruins everything. ;)
 
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