How much materials to start up on AE?

[unspunreality]

I think my world is broken. I have materials out the wazoo. Found diamonds like woah, have steel without needing to craft it. I could make an iron fortress without using a minium stone.

But I have 40 dust and 55 crystals. D= And I need a storage system cause having 35 different chests(Iron, gold and diamond) isn't cutting it anymore. About how much materials should I look for before getting started? Or does it spawn more at a certain level and its just a matter of more spelunking?

 

[gattsuru]

ME Quartz is relatively rare, although silk-touch + pulverizer/macerator/grinder helps. I've found it tends to be more common in shallow places, and it is rare enough to be worth using Fortune on if you can get that enchant. As for how much storage... it depends, very heavily, on your interests and current capabilities. You've got enough nearly enough Cirius Quartz and Dust to make an ME Controller, ME Drive, and ME Access Terminal, while still having a good number of dust and crystals to make a handful of 1K Storage Cells. Do note that you need at least a handful of Nether Quartz in order to make the ME Controller and Access Terminal, however.

The Molecular Assembler Chamber, or long runs of cable and import/export buses, will take significantly more materials, although they're not bad ideas to work toward if you want serious automation.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

For a bare-bones no-frills setup, you only need about a half stack of quartz crystal and dust. That'll get you the controller, the disk drive, a 4k disk, a monitor, and some cable and maybe a couple of buses.

For a Molecular Assembler Chamber, you'll need 2-3 stacks of iron, gold, quartz, and about a dozen or so diamonds.

 

[unspunreality]

I cant get rid of nether quartz fast enough. I actually dont even know what good its for. But atleast I have enough for some sorta start then. Im working on my medium solars already @.@ I need storage stupidly bad. Is it worth silk touching and making an industrial grinder for? Or fortune it?

 

[gattsuru]

I cant get rid of nether quartz fast enough. I actually dont even know what good its for. But atleast I have enough for some sorta start then. Im working on my medium solars already @.@ I need storage stupidly bad. Is it worth silk touching and making an industrial grinder for? Or fortune it?

Nether Quartz is mainly used for ME conversion devices, although it's also a cheap way to get Ars Magica's Light Nexuses. But it is much, much less in-demand than normal Quartz.

The investment requirements for an Industrial Grinder are pretty heavy if you're not running far into the IC2 side already, but any sort of ore doubling is very worthwhile with these gems. Unfortunately, they're coded to resist automatic mining, so Quarrying for them is not terribly good. Fortune is very helpful /if/ you have the experience to spare, since does work and gives the highest yield to my knowledge.

 

[unspunreality]

Nether Quartz is mainly used for ME conversion devices, although it's also a cheap way to get Ars Magica's Light Nexuses. But it is much, much less in-demand than normal Quartz.

The investment requirements for an Industrial Grinder are pretty heavy if you're not running far into the IC2 side already, but any sort of ore doubling is very worthwhile with these gems. Unfortunately, they're coded to resist automatic mining, so Quarrying for them is not terribly good. Fortune is very helpful /if/ you have the experience to spare, since does work and gives the highest yield to my knowledge.

Well like I said, I have mats to use up the wazoo, just no where to store it all. I could make an industrial grinder and blast furnace right now, Im just undecided where to go.

http://i.imgur.com/QimKn6Y.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/AyDznwp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Zu05hWz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pnCyyR4.jpg

Most of those chests are ores and stuff. Like 5 are saplings and seeds. 1 is logs. And other crap. Hell I couldnt make a big a tank as I wanted cause of the limited space. But my new home is mostly ready to start moving over, hence the want for a computer storage and what not. And if an industrial pulv is best way to go, then so be it. Is it better then smacking stuff with fortune? I found some nodes and I silk touched them so Im under decided what to do.

 

[gattsuru]

Most of those chests are ores and stuff. Like 5 are saplings and seeds. 1 is logs. And other crap. Hell I couldnt make a big a tank as I wanted cause of the limited space. But my new home is mostly ready to start moving over, hence the want for a computer storage and what not. And if an industrial pulv is best way to go, then so be it. Is it better then smacking stuff with fortune? I found some nodes and I silk touched them so Im under decided what to do.

Using a Rock Crusher gives the most for silk-touched ores, at 5.1 (5 dust, 10% chance at crystal), while Industrial Grinder gives 5 (3 Crystal, 2 Dust), and the Macerator gives 5 dust. Since you can Macerate/Compress dust into crystal and back, they're pretty close, with the Rock Crusher the 'best'. I don't know the exact numbers for Fortune III -- I /think/ it's better if you have access, since I've gotten a good 6 or 7 from a single block, but that may not be the typical result. And if you don't have Fortune, it's better to use Silk Touch and an ore machine. But which machine is probably best determined by what infrastructure you have.

 

[Harvest88]

Nether Quartz is mainly used for ME conversion devices, although it's also a cheap way to get Ars Magica's Light Nexuses. But it is much, much less in-demand than normal Quartz.

The investment requirements for an Industrial Grinder are pretty heavy if you're not running far into the IC2 side already, but any sort of ore doubling is very worthwhile with these gems. Unfortunately, they're coded to resist automatic mining, so Quarrying for them is not terribly good. Fortune is very helpful /if/ you have the experience to spare, since does work and gives the highest yield to my knowledge.

Will the quartz ores even resists turtles or do they work as good as using a normal pick yourself?

 

[13552]

The investment requirements for an Industrial Grinder are pretty heavy if you're not running far into the IC2 side already, but any sort of ore doubling is very worthwhile with these gems. Unfortunately, they're coded to resist automatic mining, so Quarrying for them is not terribly good. Fortune is very helpful /if/ you have the experience to spare, since does work and gives the highest yield to my knowledge.

What do you mean? Do you mean that you won't get as much quartz if you automatically mine it?

 

[gattsuru]

Mining turtles, along with Quarries and most other forms of automatic mining, can not apply any Fortune levels. You'll get a normal harvest rate from them, of 1 crystal + (random % 2) dust. With a Fortune III pickaxe, the calculation is (1 + random % 4) crystal + (random % 5) crystals, a maximum of 8 total drops. I think that technically means that Fortune III gives the best results on average -- although it's not as reliable as Silk Touch -- Rock Crushing directly after that, although that's with the caveat that I don't know Java's random calculator very well.

 

[natnif36]

What about Thaumcraft arcane bores using fortune/silk touch?

Does the anti-auto mine prevent that as well?

 

[13552]

Thanks for your reply Gattsuru.

But, couldn't one say it's faster to use mass mining rather than a manual pick? While it's true a fortune III pick will give you more drops per block, an automatic mining solution (I'm partial to RP2 TBMs myself) mines many more blocks per minute, which could (theoretically) give you more resources overall.

Right now, I'm still relatively early in my world, so I have a TBM and walk behind it to mine things left in the walls. I use a rock cutter (for the silk touch) on the AE quartz, and get a reasonable amount of crystals and some dust from the TBM. I'd use a fortune III pick if I had one, but that's coming.

 

[tindin]

I think my world is broken. I have materials out the wazoo. Found diamonds like woah, have steel without needing to craft it. I could make an iron fortress without using a minium stone.

But I have 40 dust and 55 crystals. D= And I need a storage system cause having 35 different chests(Iron, gold and diamond) isn't cutting it anymore. About how much materials should I look for before getting started? Or does it spawn more at a certain level and its just a matter of more spelunking?

a barebones system of just a me controler drive and acess terminal takes around a stack of quazt.
start by making that and a few 4k drives and just upgrade/add to as things go on

 

[gattsuru]

What about Thaumcraft arcane bores using fortune/silk touch?

I don't have any experience with that particular tool. If it applies Fortune properly to other blocks, it /probably/ works on the AE Quartz block; there's no real rational way to do that sort of complex interaction.

But, couldn't one say it's faster to use mass mining rather than a manual pick? While it's true a fortune III pick will give you more drops per block, an automatic mining solution (I'm partial to RP2 TBMs myself) mines many more blocks per minute, which could (theoretically) give you more resources overall.

It depends on resource availability and how much automatic mining you can do. The Fortune- or Silk Touch-PickAxes are more than five times more efficient, which means you need to mine five times the number of Quartz blocks to get the same output. That probably beats quarrying by hand, but I'm not sure it beats examining ravines with a jetpack or thaumostatic harness. Doubly so if you lack the infrastructure for a big quarry to start with.

((On the other hand, you can always do both at the same time.))

 

[arentol]

I found a fairly optimal way to get a lot of quartz by mixing manual and auto mining. I generated a stable Mystcraft age then I set up a 6-wide Mining well frame machine and kicked it off. This got me a fair number of quartz, but more importantly it left a bunch of quartz visible on the two side walls. So I just flew down the canyon and mined it all up with my Fortune Pick. I would estimate that for every stack of quartz my auto-mining system finds I get another stack using my fortune pick.