My thoughts on FTB thus far.

[NashuLee]

Well, I have been running FTB for a few weeks now and I am enjoying it very much so far. I guess I am a pretty simple player , in that in my original world, the one I was playing prior to FTB I did not have tons of fancy red stone contraptions or such. I did have a solid farm system in place with all animals and plants growing. I had a very large orchard that was well lit and I had a nice log cabin built on the top of a cliff over looking the farm. I had tons of time into organizing all my stuff, a very extensive storage room. But thats about it. Most of my time was spent just pitter puttering around there. So when I switched to FTB, i started a new world. I had explored so much on my reg MC that no new biomes or ores were spawning. The world I started has me close to two villages and some neat biomes.

I have spent the majority of my time just collecting resources. and living in one of the NPC villages and I have enjoyed all the new stuff. I have been itching to start building some machines and such I just dont know where to start.

So this weekend I built a number of things. First I built a centrifuge and a carpenter. I was really not able to get them to work right. So then I made a miner, but what I really meant to make was a quarry. Soooooo I mad a quarry. The bummer in all this is I just don't know how to power these things and use them n such. I could not get the quarry to work at all, but I think its because I am way under powering it. But even then, when I had the redstone pumps hooked to it, I couldnt get them to start running. I got frustrated and went back to the centrifuge and was finally able to get it to work. using three redstone pumps to power it, I was able to get honey comb and turn it into other things. That was fun!!

I was finally able to find a video where a quarry was run on redtsone pumps, but it had what looked like 50 pumps on it. So I am guessing I just was not powering it correctly.

I guess at this point I am overwhelmed and just don't know where to start or go from here. I dont know if I should work on refining or mining or what!! That said, I am enjoying the learning process and I am loving FTB and it launcher and such.

When I started playing MC, I watched Paulsoarsjr and his Survive and Thrive series. It was so helpful in getting me started and taking from beginner to experienced player. His style of video and the fact that he is family friendly has made him a staple in my household. I have also spent a bit of time watching Direwolf20 videos, and have enjoyed them allot. He has been a great source of just weeing what stiff is and what it does. I like that he doesn't cuss and such and have shared time watching videos with my son. I would love to see a combo video of these two guys style. A survive and thrive video series that uses the feed the beast mod pack. To have an idea of where to start and what to build first, what compliments each other so on and so forth. Anyways, just my thoughts on the whole deal.

Thanks to you guys here at FTB for this pack and all the work that goes into it.

 

[FunshineX]

glad that you're enjoying the mods. Yes the shear amount of new items can be overwhelming. That's good you were able to find some good youtube channels to help you out. It's fun to try and learn how it all works, but when you do get stuck, the wiki will *soon* be a great source of information for you.

 

[Wizaerd]

I was in the same boat, and come from the same background. Tinkered and puttered around with Vanilla. Never even went to the Nether, but I was still having fun. I was interested in a few minor mods such as a minimap and recipe book, which in turn brought me here. I started using FTB over this weekend, and I've been having way more fun than I did in Vanilla (however, truth be told I was having a blast in Vanilla, just a bigger blast in FTB). What eventually convinced me to try it was the quarry. I saw a video (direwolf's maybe, don;t remember...) and I was absolutely amazed by it.

This weekend, I built two quarries. I too tried red stone engines initially, and couldn't get them to work. So I built Stirling Engines, three of them, and ran them on lava. During my time branch mining I had oodles of iron, and found several close by sources of lava, so I built a whole bunch of buckets and an iron chest, then filled all the buckets with lava and kept in the chest next to the engines. So ok, I had to manually refill the lava, but it wasn't really that big of a deal.

I was able to collect enough resources in a small enough amount of time that I actually built my first Nether Portal this weekend. Way cool. And now I'm getting ready to try out some of the MystCraft books as well as the Twilight Forest. I know I could continue working on a self sufficient energy system, like perhaps a lava pump and batbox, but I just know there's way more in FTB that's as cool as the quarry. It's enhanced my experience with MC that I'm absolutely addicted to it now.

 

[egor66]

google helps with all this when & as need, now to the matters at hand, quarry is part of BC so requires bc to power, the easy option to to make a couple of coal engine, "stirling" & feed thme coal or charcoal, or build a peat farm & use that to keep the Stirling engines going, or you could make a a fermenter & use excess plant matter like sapling to make biomass & feed it to biomass engines, in truth there are a hell of a lot of ways to power this one item (quarry) & if you google for the related wiki's or vid you will find that making one machine leads to another then another etc & this is where the fun starts.

ps one way is to google Direwolf20, he makes some of if not the best spotlights for mods & has a number or series going back months or the current one on forgecraft with a lot of the modders really a must see.

in short, plan what you want to do next, google for info then armed with this new knowledge venture forth to build your world, most important part have fun bro, when you feel you have the basics of some mods down find a nice friendly server.

 

[b0bst3r]

You have to remember all the mods are updated and if you used to play an older mod pack a lot of the same items do not work the same. Redstone engines were seriously given the nerf bat and as such they are only any good for wooden pipes and powering a pump. You will find it difficult to power anything else of them, have a look at Thermal Expansions engines (Steam/Magmatic), they are the least volatile as they do not blow up.

 

[joseff amador]

I suggest watching the latest (single player) Direwolf20 Let's Play series. I think it's season 4? I learned alot about the various mods there.

 

[NashuLee]

I have watched many of Direwolfs video's What I am finding is this.... in order to build a "a" you need to have "x,y,z" To make 'X" you need to have "b,c and d" To make 'b" you need to have "x,y and Q" then to make Q, you need to have "A" so I just keep chasing my tail.

The way I work, I know that its just my lack of knowledge is all that's frustrating me. I finally got my quarry going. I set it up with three combustion engines, it was running great. I set it up next to an oil geyser, that tapped into a reserve that flowed under the quarry. so as it dug down, the oil just followed, it created this huge oil crater. So I built a water cooling system and then I built a refinery and was in the process of piping the fuel into the engines. All with resources I was going out and mining. It was great!!!!

Then... my dogs were hurt and I needed some zombie meat to deed them, so I waited til it was dark and instead of sleeping through the night, I went out and killed zombies. While I was out I noticed an issue with the combustion pumps overheating, I had the wrong pipes transferring water into the pumps. So I went to trun them of... and .......sssssssssssssssssss BOOM!
When the smoke cleared, it was gone..... all of it..... gone. The explosion took out my quarry machine, all the combustion engines, most the pipe, all the contents in the two chests in the were spread out and some gone.
All that remained after I pulled my self out of the HUGE hole in the ground (I got knocked into the hole the quarry had made) was a big mess. ARGH!!! so I cleaned up my mess, went home and started over. So back at square one!!! But its cool, whatchya gonna do right!!!

 

[Phatcat]

Here are my thoughts on FTB from I would say an indeterminate user.

I have played minecraft with friends for years, and we have created several worlds together. We got our feet wet in modded servers with Tekkit. I was able to create most of the machines and recipes, and we even turned up the difficulty by adding monster apocalypse. After months we were not happy with the progression of Tekkit and were introuced to FTB by our friend who introduced us to Tekkit. The setup was easy, and while we miss RED POWER, its made us rethink alot of what we do in minecraft. We did have some bad issues when an update was pushed and neither the server nor the clients could get up and working, but luckily the FTB "top men" got it working the following day.

After a month of playing we only have issue and that's GregTech. I know its everyone's target, but I want to say I like the difficulty. You have something to achieve; however the lack of bioms other than forest and plains for Bauxite and the horrible time needed to process the ore has killed my players, and my will to continue. I have 7 pieces of Iridium ore after a month of strip mining. and you need 16 to make a matter fabricator, since the mass fabricator is disabled. I understand the issue with wanting high goals for items. but you need UU-matter for many of the gateway recipes to high end Greg Tech, but you can't even get there without lucking upon 16 Iridium. This won't be so bad when GregTech with Industrial Electrolyzers are added, but as of right now all my players and myself are disappointed with that aspect of progression.

Oh, and SHIFT-CLICKing ender chests has been the great. Over skype it will be "yeah I'll send that item over to you.. CRAP!... I shift-clicked"

 

[WTFFFS]

The newer versions of Gregtech will address a few of your issues so just sit tight and wait a while.
Though the Iridium problem, all I can say is silktouch (and for more ease with some danger ....... dense ores) currently that is, after an update there are other ores for iridium\platinum that are in The End.

 

[jatie1]

I went to Twilight Forest and found 49 diamonds encrusted in the cave-structure. Unfortunately, there's a hydra nearby.