How do I produce Nature Essence automatically?

[Questing_FTB_Player]

tl;dr, How do I make Magical Crops' Nature Essence automatically (ie, with zero player intervention)?

I want to make a "Lilypad of Fertility" factory, but I came across a problem that vanilla Lilypads can't be made without Magical Crops' Nature Essence:

The only NEI crafting recipe for Lilpads

However, I know that I can't farm Nature Essence with MineFactory: Reloaded Harvesters (unlike almost every other Magical Crops' produce). How would I make Nature Essence using a different mod? I don't mind any bi-products, I just want to be able to get the Nature Essence without player-intervention.

Also, on another note, I'd love to be able to control the production. So if I could turn on / off the farming using Redstone, that would be great, but not totally necessary.

 

[SaintLucifer]

RotaryCraft Fan farms would work fine in this case.

 

[Questing_FTB_Player]

Hmm, it seems a little excessive to make an entire RotaryCraft system for one aspect of my factory (which would be entirely made using MFR Harvesters / TE3 Machines).

Could Autonomous Activators be used to get Nature Essence?

 

[MajPayne21]

There is a small server-side mod that will make MFR farms recognize Magical Crops. I can't remember the name right now, but I'm sure someone else will know.

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[Questing_FTB_Player]

I think that Magical Crops has purposely coded the plants so that MFR farms do not acquire the Nature Essence, as to prompt players to manually farming their crops. And, I don't really plan to add an entire Mod to my modpack just to change a single aspect of a farm / factory.

 

[Feniks]

So you don't really need nature essence but lily pads? If that a case you can relay on bees. Bees have trait called Pollination if you get yourself a bee with flower lily pad and high pollination new lilipads will appear around bee houses quickly.

 

[Pyure]

I've had crap luck harvesting magical crops with Rotary craft fans in any case. The latest version of Rotary still ignores a lot of crops. That said, if it happens to work on that particular crop, and you already have it in your pack, it wouldn't require much of "an entire system" to set up. In fact you could get by with some steam engines (which require no fuel or attention).

Failing that, you would wanna look at block breakers to harvest, activators of some sort to plant, and suctioning pipes if your pack has them to store your essence (failing that, good old fashioned running-water-to-hopper works fine too)

 

[Questing_FTB_Player]

So you don't really need nature essence but lily pads? If that a case you can relay on bees. Bees have trait called Pollination if you get yourself a bee with flower lily pad and high pollination new lilipads will appear around bee houses quickly.

I have literally zero knowledge on bees, and I don't really want to get into that quite now, but maybe that is something I can use if I want to change aspects of my factory.

I've had crap luck harvesting magical crops with Rotary craft fans in any case. The latest version of Rotary still ignores a lot of crops. That said, if it happens to work on that particular crop, and you already have it in your pack, it wouldn't require much of "an entire system" to set up. In fact you could get by with some steam engines (which require no fuel or attention).

Failing that, you would wanna look at block breakers to harvest, activators of some sort to plant, and suctioning pipes if your pack has them to store your essence (failing that, good old fashioned running-water-to-hopper works fine too)

I completely forgot about block breakers. I'm going to set that up now, see if I can get a favourable result. I understand that I'd have to set a redstone timer, which could cut down on time efficiency.

I'll also have a look at the RotaryCraft fans, seeing as you are suggesting they are fairly simple to use.

I'll post pictures of my results.

 

[Pyure]

I completely forgot about block breakers. I'm going to set that up now, see if I can get a favourable result. I understand that I'd have to set a redstone timer, which could cut down on time efficiency.

I'll also have a look at the RotaryCraft fans, seeing as you are suggesting they are fairly simple to use.

I'll post pictures of my results.

Looking forward to it. I've been meaning to automate something very similar and I keep getting sidetracked.

I "cheated" and added Reika's Expanded Redstone mod. It has a breaker which does two useful things:
a) It breaks up to 12 blocks in a row
b) It processes out everything it breaks into an adjacent inventory (instead of just leaving it on the ground)

 

[GreenZombie]

Magical Crops also don't drop magical essence when harvested via golems. It seems that magical essence is intended to be a bonus exclusive to magical crops being manually harvested. With crop automation I guess the intention is that additional magical essence must be harvested from the world.

Which seems, in a fashion, fair enough as it does not inhibit the automation of the magical crops *you have* - merely the automation of the creation of more magical crops which would result in exponential multiplication of resources. Which is pretty bad for balance.

Requiring magical essence to be manually harvested keeps resource growth linear and hence in line with all other automate(able) systems.

 

[Questing_FTB_Player]

I've tried using OpenBlocks' Block Breakers, but for some reason, the plants don't like having a block directly above them, and they refuse to grow (even with loads of Lilypads of Fertility). I'm going to try using RotaryCraft fans.

 

[Questing_FTB_Player]

Magical Crops also don't drop magical essence when harvested via golems. It seems that magical essence is intended to be a bonus exclusive to magical crops being manually harvested. With crop automation I guess the intention is that additional magical essence must be harvested from the world.

Which seems, in a fashion, fair enough as it does not inhibit the automation of the magical crops *you have* - merely the automation of the creation of more magical crops which would result in exponential multiplication of resources. Which is pretty bad for balance.

Requiring magical essence to be manually harvested keeps resource growth linear and hence in line with all other automate(able) systems.

I'm talking about Nature Essence, not Magical Essence.

 

[Taiine]

Nature Essence has a rare shot at droping when you break any grown magical crops plant that is not food. Well more like uncommon drop.
Just craft a bunch of the first tier of plants, like earth if you want more dirt, and just go wild. I have about three stacks of Nature Essence on my skyblock map from it

 

[Pyure]

fwiw, in my limited testing I put block breakers to the side, rather than on top. It does unfortunately impede the width of your farm (2 columns max of plants with a column of breakers on each side.)

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

I think that Magical Crops has purposely coded the plants so that MFR farms do not acquire the Nature Essence, as to prompt players to manually farming their crops. And, I don't really plan to add an entire Mod to my modpack just to change a single aspect of a farm / factory.

IIIRC every Magical Crop has a 10% chance to drop Nature Essence if broken by a player. If it is broken by something else, like a golem or MFR farm, it drops seeds with a metadata value that will never drop it.

 

[Pyure]

IIIRC every Magical Crop has a 10% chance to drop Nature Essence if broken by a player. If it is broken by something else, like a golem or MFR farm, it drops seeds with a metadata value that will never drop it.

That's unfortunate. I hate manual farming with a passion.

Perhaps I could manually harvest with one of them wide-swathe tools, and then auto-plant the resulting seeds via activators of some sort.

 

[steve g]

guys...go oldschool with this. Oldschool as in...dispensers with water buckets. layout your crop so you have a dispenser at the end, and lay down 8 crop tiles, then a hopper. make channels on the sides so the crop tiles stay moist, put blocks above those channels so the incoming flood from the dispenser doesnt flood your base, send output of hopper to whatever. you get all the drops from the plants. all you need is a redstone signal to the dispensers. only bad part is the replanting...but im sure someone out there can rig it up

 

[Hambeau]

If you're talking about "Magical Crops" like Essence and Glowstone plants:

 

[Pyure]

If you're talking about "Magical Crops" like Essence and Glowstone plants:

tl;dw, but looks like they used MFR harvesters, and someone mentioned above that MFR harvesters don't acquire the essences correctly.

 

[MajPayne21]

MFR harvesters will get the primary essence (e.g. glowstone for glowstone seeds) and the secondary Nature essence. They do not get the magical essence tertiary rare drop, as doing so would result in infinite seed crafting at an exponential scale.

I have used the magical crops addon which makes MFR harvesters recognize Magical crops. It is server side only if you are playing SMP.

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