I have seen many people's FTB bases and wonder how they got so many supplies. I have been playing for about 2 weeks and i constantly run out of coal. I only have 3 hobbyist steam engines and about 4 thermal expansion machines. So how do you guys get so many materials?
Just wondering...
- Thread starter Ganoly3
- Start date
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Save 11 diamonds, make a quarry. That's how I always start the mass resource gathering part. a 64x64 quarry will dig up a ton of coal. But by then you should be able to switch from coal to something better.
How long do you think my steam engines should last before another upgrade? i plan to have many(if not all) thermal expansion machines.
hmm, trying to remember how i started out... I think i went the same route as DW20, mass hobbyist steam engine's hooked to redstone energy cells, they lasted me a while, about one quarrie's worth. then I went into tree farm's and bio gas/fuel.
thanks for the reply. any tips on going the steam engine route? i plan on having a big industrial steam engine setup, but dont know what steps to take in order to do this.
Peat farm is always a good start, water, sand and dirt, if you don't get alot of them from mining you can save up minium shards and mass transmute into them from cobblestone using a craft table/project table. Once you have the peat farm up, build a tree farm, using peat fired engines, keep the ash from the engines as you can make more fertiliser from that. Oh, also replace the peat bog engines with peat fired once it's going, that thing can power 10 engines easily.
If you want a solid fuel boiler, go with blaze rods, farm a up tier 4/5 blaze soul shard, it's amazing.
Once you have that going, you'll want a rolling machine for making the boiler itself and a fermenter/still if you went the tree farm route. Best to store the biofuel you make in a railcraft tank you'll need alot to start up.
For water use aqueous accumulators, that is for the fermenter and boiler, i dunno how many you need for a boiler so I shoved three under it, better safe than sorry right?
And this is optional, but i hooked the industrial steam engines to a redstone energy conduite/cell system, this seems to prevent the engines from ever overheating or exploding, so you never have to turn them off.
If you want a solid fuel boiler, go with blaze rods, farm a up tier 4/5 blaze soul shard, it's amazing.
Once you have that going, you'll want a rolling machine for making the boiler itself and a fermenter/still if you went the tree farm route. Best to store the biofuel you make in a railcraft tank you'll need alot to start up.
For water use aqueous accumulators, that is for the fermenter and boiler, i dunno how many you need for a boiler so I shoved three under it, better safe than sorry right?
And this is optional, but i hooked the industrial steam engines to a redstone energy conduite/cell system, this seems to prevent the engines from ever overheating or exploding, so you never have to turn them off.
thanks alot! very informative reply. the peat farm should be easy to start with so i guess ill do that first.
Well, that's assuming you are not playing the default Mindcrack...
I usually take my first 3 RP gems and make a mining turtle, because I have a program that is reasonably efficient, and the basic cost doesn't even include a single diamond.
The only downside is that without diamond pick, it will destroy obsidian instead of collecting it, but yo can always make a second turtle with diamond pick afterward.
Later down the line, I usually go for a massive Frame quarry, just because it just rip through the earth at an insane speed.
I tried a frame quarry, 9x9 
but I found it needed too much time to keep unclogging it, and with no portal gun, a pain to run up the tunnel to get to it. In the end I found a steve's cart mining system sat at the bottom of a quarry was smarter and easier to maintain. With liquid sensors it isn't likely to gum itself up running into a lava water cross flow and forever be stuck mining cobblestone ¬.¬
but I found it needed too much time to keep unclogging it, and with no portal gun, a pain to run up the tunnel to get to it. In the end I found a steve's cart mining system sat at the bottom of a quarry was smarter and easier to maintain. With liquid sensors it isn't likely to gum itself up running into a lava water cross flow and forever be stuck mining cobblestone ¬.¬Are you sure you didn't do a tunnel bore instead?I tried a frame quarry, 9x9
Quarry is from the surface to bedrock.
Tunnel bore is horizontal digging. Usually around diamond level, but now that some ores can't be found there...
Ah yeh, tunnel bore. I had to switch to the 1024 barrels for most materials, but I was having diamond troubles what with wanting my Graviton chest plate. As for copper and tin, I have a nuke setup running my mass fabricator and now I have nothing left to do with that... problem solved for the lower metals I guess.
Tree farm == charcoal.
In fact, I've never once burned coal for fuel in this game. Turning coal into diamonds means you will never run out.
Coal is also used for Railscraft (creosote oil), so I usually also use charcoal and planks when I need fuel or torches.
In the same boat at the moment, but my main difficulty is diamonds. I have a total of 12. So, do I spend them all on a quarry and another energy cell to power it, or do I spend a diamond getting a tree farm up and running for constant fuel supply, but be unable to power a quarry.
But, ideally I want ender chests for my quarry straight away, unfortunately my local nether fortress has no blaze spawns.
I'm thinking now instead of a quarry powered by solar power and some cheap engine(s) dumping into a load of chests, just to get the initial influx of resources, and also the tree farm, then hopefully I'll get enough diamonds for energy storage. Had enough of mining underground myself now. Been doing to far too long in my world, having real bad luck with ore gen.
But, ideally I want ender chests for my quarry straight away, unfortunately my local nether fortress has no blaze spawns.
I'm thinking now instead of a quarry powered by solar power and some cheap engine(s) dumping into a load of chests, just to get the initial influx of resources, and also the tree farm, then hopefully I'll get enough diamonds for energy storage. Had enough of mining underground myself now. Been doing to far too long in my world, having real bad luck with ore gen.
Personally, I dislike the giant holes quarries make. Since mindcrack doesn't have mystcraft for mining ages, you end up just ruining your backyard. Ic2 miners can get your resources and only net you a fraction of the dirt and cobble. Make a tree farm, either forestry or manual and you should have plenty of charcoal for fuel and saplings for biofuel cells. Save your coal for carbon plates and diamonds.
Well I usually use the holes for things, flatten out the bottom by filling in abit then use the space to build things like mob grinders, since you dont want the sound of 100s of blazes getting killed next your house. And also, slime spawning... easier to farm them in a quarry bottom.
Also, minium stones are your friend. iron > gold > diamonds. Expensive yes, but it should be enough to get the quarry built if you're desperate, and you'll make back the iron easily enough with a quarry.
Also, minium stones are your friend. iron > gold > diamonds. Expensive yes, but it should be enough to get the quarry built if you're desperate, and you'll make back the iron easily enough with a quarry.
use a filler to replace the top layer of the quarried land with dirt. Get a turtle to bonemeal the entire place up once you have grass. Run around randomly planting saplings.
64x64 meadow ready for your frolicking
also, for how to get so many resources.
Save your xp from mining and try to get an enchantment table as soon as possible. Research making thaumium in thaumcraft - should be after getting nitor, alumentum, and the gold transmutation.
30 levels in a thaumium pickaxe will probably net fortune 3, as well as either efficiency or unbreaking (and maybe both). Use fortune 3 pickaxe to get coal, redstone, nikolite and diamonds. Then use diamonds to get a quarry (ye may have to hold off until steel/titanium if you've got GT installed with the hard recipes)
A good and cheap automated mining system before diamonds is just a gem pickaxe mining turtle and the "excavate X" program, where X is the side length of the square in which to dig to bedrock. When the turtle fills up, it returns to the point at which you ran the program and drops off its items in an adjacent chest. The only problem with this turtle is that it will eat coal it finds in order to fuel itself.
another early mining technique is to abuse the hell out of the sulphur -> saltpeter ->coal ->gunpowder cycle to get nigh infinite throwable industrial tnt sticks. They explode and cause all blocks in radius to drop instead of be destroyed. for an entertaining pseudo-quarry make a deployer and fill it with that stuff, then point it at the ground
put a timer on it and let the timer run for around a minute at 10 second intervals. then descend and pick up the loot
Save your xp from mining and try to get an enchantment table as soon as possible. Research making thaumium in thaumcraft - should be after getting nitor, alumentum, and the gold transmutation.
30 levels in a thaumium pickaxe will probably net fortune 3, as well as either efficiency or unbreaking (and maybe both). Use fortune 3 pickaxe to get coal, redstone, nikolite and diamonds. Then use diamonds to get a quarry (ye may have to hold off until steel/titanium if you've got GT installed with the hard recipes)
A good and cheap automated mining system before diamonds is just a gem pickaxe mining turtle and the "excavate X" program, where X is the side length of the square in which to dig to bedrock. When the turtle fills up, it returns to the point at which you ran the program and drops off its items in an adjacent chest. The only problem with this turtle is that it will eat coal it finds in order to fuel itself.
another early mining technique is to abuse the hell out of the sulphur -> saltpeter ->coal ->gunpowder cycle to get nigh infinite throwable industrial tnt sticks. They explode and cause all blocks in radius to drop instead of be destroyed. for an entertaining pseudo-quarry make a deployer and fill it with that stuff, then point it at the ground
put a timer on it and let the timer run for around a minute at 10 second intervals. then descend and pick up the loot
Me I used a number of things.
Started with some simple branch mining. Moved on to Turtle assisted branch mining. Then use a simple filler to mass mine before I moved to my first big HQ. Then it was caving lots and lots of caving while trying to get stuff for my shards... did I forget to say there was a lot of caving? Yeah caving so much caving.
Don't get me wrong quarries are awesome. But to be honest I like the IC2 Miner more as it does not leave huge holes all over the place and you don't get a crap tone of cobble. AND if you want to improve mob spawn in the area when you pull the drill up just don't fill the hole and instead dump some lava and cap it.
But I do enjoy caving. There is just something fun about it. I run around with some back packs and a enderpouch the pouch is linked back to a enderchest back at base. The way I have it set up is a system that makes the chest always have 1 pickax, 1 shovel, and 1 ax in it at all times. Everything else gets flushed out of the enderchest and into my sorting system. So I basically never run out of tools while caving. I just bring a crap ton of torches with me when I go.
Started with some simple branch mining. Moved on to Turtle assisted branch mining. Then use a simple filler to mass mine before I moved to my first big HQ. Then it was caving lots and lots of caving while trying to get stuff for my shards... did I forget to say there was a lot of caving? Yeah caving so much caving.
Don't get me wrong quarries are awesome. But to be honest I like the IC2 Miner more as it does not leave huge holes all over the place and you don't get a crap tone of cobble. AND if you want to improve mob spawn in the area when you pull the drill up just don't fill the hole and instead dump some lava and cap it.
But I do enjoy caving. There is just something fun about it. I run around with some back packs and a enderpouch the pouch is linked back to a enderchest back at base. The way I have it set up is a system that makes the chest always have 1 pickax, 1 shovel, and 1 ax in it at all times. Everything else gets flushed out of the enderchest and into my sorting system. So I basically never run out of tools while caving. I just bring a crap ton of torches with me when I go.
Invest a diamond in going to the Twilight Forest and find a hollow hill. It might take 5-10 minutes to clear the enemies and light up the place but after that you will have a lot of stuff to dig and no creature will bother you. If you concentrate on one ore (ie redstone) you'll come back with about 800 of them. There is also a a very large quantity of coal, iron, silver, gold and a lot of rubies, and that kind of precious stones and the rest of the ores. There is also usually about 5-6 diamonds per hill. I suggest bringing bags as you will fill your inventory in about 10 minutes as well as brining a rock cutter for the redstone, coal and glowstone and if you can find one, a moonworm queen so you can light up the place from one spot which is really fast. After seeing a hollow hill you won't want to dig in the overworld ever again...