Small as a puddle, Deep as an OCEANBLOCK

[ICountFrom0]

As I'd wrapped up my previous pack and was looking for something fun to do, I saw this and had to give it a try. Admittedly part of the thought was "if HE can do it, I can do it" then I slacked off and he got ahead. I'll try to design things my way and not be overly influenced by what I've watched others do in lets plays. Asked myself, how hard could it be, I love doing skyblocks and this gives me an entire ocean of resources to explore and salvage above and beyond my few blocks to start. And so, Oceanblock!

If you enjoy this, drop in and look at other stories of mine and maybe slap down some likes?

Spoiler: past stories

Stories of SevTech

I've been seeing the idea of segmented packs, with progression walled off behind one bit or another for a while. Ages of Engineering that I was toying with before is very much tiered. Using the machines of one level, to make the next level item. Ages went further where the crafting chains got...

forum.feed-the-beast.com

https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/testing-myself-with-ultimate-alchemy.299679/
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/stories-of-sevtech.283469/
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/nether-going-to-give-you-up.271084/
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/exile-to-the-dark-grid.267317/
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/empire-of-one.244199/ (rebuild pending)
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/skyblock-time-again-ag-skies-2.147320/ (rebuild pending)
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/1-7-10-worlds-beyond-custom-pack.76116/ (rebuild pending)
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/mechworld-techworld2-narration.48594/
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/another-one-of-these-threads.44456/
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/world-diary-ftb-light.9583/
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/world-diary.2676/

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yea, there's a lot of things you can do that DW20 didn't do that can significantly speed up your early game. For example, there are Krate upgrades that auto-compact. Furthermore, iron and higher tier sluices auto-eject out the other end to an adjacent inventory, so a vacuum hopper is not needed. So you can get an iron sluice with a clockwork (hand-crank) pump on it (because you need diamond tier sluice to automate input of fluids) which feeds into a medium or big sized Krate, and your first couple diamonds can go to a Krate Compacting Upgrade. From there, you can then pull everything out into either processing or storage as needed. MUCH more efficient than what DW20 did.

Furthermore, he never bothered with Mekanism ore tripling, which is easy to set up and also can feed a gas generator (oxygen from the electrolytic separator goes to the ore tripling, hydrogen goes into Ethylene production) to solve early game energy generation problems without needing to spam solar and spamming Time In A Bottle on them.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: Water water everywhere

Guess I should have expected this. Didn't finish the last project so I end up right back in the middle of nothing. This time it's not a skyblock, but my world is just a drop in an ocean it seems.

Looks like there are other islands, but I know the rules of such things, if they'd wanted me to reach them there'd be a bridge, or perhaps a boat on hand already. For now I'm going to depend on the materials that make up this building, my one tree, and the neglected garden half gone to seed in the yard.

Moved the barrels up from under the house into the little cabin, it'll be secure enough. Though there's enough light that I'm not likely to have to defend myself on this little island of mine.

Can't move the campfire, but why not cook right by the garden. The grass of the island had a few seeds that I was able to plant though I'll not be able to do much more with what I've got on hand.

A quick check under the island, wouldn't be the first place I'd been with a last piece of loot hidden away in an unlikely location. I'll have to surface and have a further look around.

Just the few closest rafts as swimming does not agree with me. A few scattered rewards, a bit of charcoal from the dead fires, I'm going to leave the rafts themselves until I've tools to better harvest them as well.

The bed might be the most valuable item that I collected from my salvage trip in the long run. I've got enough storage in here with the chest and barrels for a few more trips this long, but before then I've got things I want to take care of here at home.

Tossing together a set of tinker's tables I was able to make a set of tools. Sure I could have used all wood, but I was given some stone to work with so I might as well use the best materials I have. Though my supply of stone isn't unlimited there isn't much I have to do with it so I suspect it will last.

I've spent enough time tinkering about that the garden has had time to grow, I'm slowly replacing more and more of the wheat with other seeds. The most interesting of these are these frosty melons that make such a cool patch of snow for themselves. Remembering a time that I used snow as a primary building material I harvested this and tried to make a golem. Sadly there was no snow from him. I'll look elsewhere for materials.

Sluice, sift, smelt, then build and rebuild. I was soon able to get some basic automation in place, a pump that has to be cranked at intervals is far better than having to use a bowl to move water a little at a time.

Edges of the island are close enough to water to be able to grow crops, so I don't really need to keep the garden where it was when I landed. Clearing away the cabin and storing it into chests gives me a bit more space to work with as well.

Rows of furnaces and rows of chests but nowhere near enough metal to spare, that has to wait on the sifting. Dinner already coking in the pot over a new campfire, bonemeal can be spared instead to see if there's more kinds of seeds yet to be found.

A scant bit of metal spared to make a knife and I was quite glad to be able to use it to get a bit more out of the few flowers that sprouted as well as the fish and anything else I'm brave enough to try to catch.

Having the sieves working isn't of much use when the best you can do is smelting them. On the other hand a bit of hammer work gets you sand and gravel, then you just have to bake the grout into bricks. Melter, heater, and a bin to pour it into. Metal by the block. Now THIS is a proper start to things.

Campfire with iron lets me temper it into a slightly better material to work with. I've plans with this. Tempered glass has it's uses too for this project. So I'll cook enough for my project then harvest this campfire so that I don't cook myself on it... again.

Placing the campfire one block down into the ground so that I don't burn myself, the tempered glass jar goes on top and... that's a LOT of options. First bit of work is to make some lava.

Then while that cooks, just a quick bit of work to make some basic automation, jar to hold the lava produced, chest to toss some cobble into, and then I just need to click it now and then to keep the lava being produced.

The jar can also make clay, and with that I was able to make more than enough grout to improve the melter into a smelter. Lava will keep it powered and now metal is quite a bit more efficient.

I got lucky with one of the random rewards, an absorption hopper, probably the best item so far. Though I did find some of the tool parts to be useful, I sort of doubt I'd want to use this silver axe head forever.

Seared brick poured over the first level of cobblegen lets me make the tier 2, this is fast enough for all the uses I have for stone. To repair my tools, to make hammers to convert more cobble down into gravel, sand, and dirt to sift, and to be melted into lava to power the smeltery. Rather pleased with this for a day's work.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: Quick Dip

Given the strongest possible pick as a quest reward, I could use it as a pick for a little while, but that wouldn't let me repair it. As a mattock with a wooden head, the trees I chop will let me repair it. Latter once I have steady stone supply I'll swap the axe head over.

Hard to find the hand held crafting grid in JEI, but it can be made. Taking this with me out on exploring trips lets me compress the campfire charcoal into blocks, as well as compacting a number other rewards into more portable forms. I took the time as well to craft a few other things, including a little stove for the cook pot that was on the island when I arrived.

I've got the garden, but I've want for a bit of meat for the cookpot. Mix it with the veg and there's a few foods I can put together. Better than just living on melon. Course the cutting board lets me stretch what I get a little bit further. Give it a chop, then into the pot.

I'm glad I didn't have to swim down to get kelp in order to make my diving suit, the local rafts had enough pieces to put together a basic set for myself. Meanwhile some wooden spikes with the blessed earth makes harvesting my fill easier without them escaping to scatter all over the island. Much better in there, the rabbits are QUITE bothersome to chase.

Taking the stone from the top and what I was given as rewards, I've got enough to extend the island downward. With the dive suit I can actually do this effectively beyond the depth of a puddle.

While I'm working I can load the sluices and let it process. One upgrade at a time, one step at a time, each time making the next step of progress a little bit easier.

There's chunks in the dust, and some of them are able to be made into redstone. Requires being crushed in a press, so I had to use up more resources in order to reach this one. Feels a bit silly jumping up and down to make the press work, then I just step off onto the pressure plate, and jump some more. Least nobody's watching, nobody has to know.

Cobble in the chest, into the autohammer I made, and once it's processed into gravel I pick up the hammer again. Turn it around and work the gravel into dirt. Dirt into sand, into dust, with only one hammer it's a chest load at a time, but once it's all done, into the hoppers and more resources.

Course no matter how much stone there is in rewards, an island only stretches so far. Eventually the walls can come no lower. Now the so hard task of handling all this water that is now inside the walls of my home.

Warped planks from taking apart one of the islands, was a strange blue cabin in this wide blue world, and now there are a few less. Still this is my place to harvest as needed. Drive downward with the wood, break the pool into section, and then dive down with sponges to make each one dry. Once each part is empty, break the walls and rejoin the sections. The wood used one last time to make a floor here, under the surface, under the sea.

One of the trips back to the surface, I found I had enough resources to upgrade the dive suit. I don't need the upgrade much here near the surface but the deeper you dive the harsher the pressures on you, so it's best to be prepared.

A flooded tomb sleeps under this endless sea. Zomebies and skeletons seeking for me the moment I come close. With torches ahead of me I light the way. Place and retreat, place and retreat. Trying to pick them off when I can, but the longer I take on the first floor, the more that stream upward to try to claim revenge.

A bit of lost machinery below the waves. Sealed tight until I arrived. Platforms to navigate while archers try to riddle me with arrows and knock me to the ground. Then it would be too late to escape. Have to make this approach carefully if I want the rewards, being that I've only got a wetsuit with almost no armor value.

The collection of useful machines grows. Each batch of resources brought back, or gleaned from the dusts lets me make that much more. Likewise the collection of chests and random storage it takes to hold it all expands as well. For all that is useful there is so much more in the rewards that have no use for me yet. Though I cannot make myself throw it away.

Quite a bit of clay, and more made with the help of the jar, went into making these pots. An army worth of iron went into making the hoppers. And thus do I have this small happy garden growing here in my home. This frees up more space upstairs, as I've carefully picked the plants most needed for anything I want to make.

With a chute and a hopper I can prepare this little smeltery to do large batches, be it of metals to progress further, or grout in order to make itself larger. It's a cycle of growth. Get some resources, upgrade everything, let it gather together again so I can do another sprint onward.

Alloy Kiln, this lets me explore another set of metals, the basic alloys, from invar to electrum. Always handy to have one of these sitting around. I've also got quite a bit of mystical essence stored up, as well as bits from all the rafts I broke, and if I upgrade the furnace just like this I can rig it to handle a large batch, just like the smeltery. Not quite as fast as an entire wall of furnaces but the efficiency helps.

Having found a use for the inferium it makes sense that I might as well farm a bit of it too. There's a space for a bit more as I find more that I might need to grow as my grasp catches up to my reach.

This might be the most important of the rewards I've found, though charging it is quite the cost. I've got to grow quite a few trees to make the charcoal to keep the charger fed, so I've got to use this sparingly. Though I am tempted to explore the world farther and wider than before.

The deepest dives got me down to a structure swarming with guardians, and deep within it was a single bit of soul sand. With that I was finally able to make enough heat to process the few diamonds I'd been able to draw from the gravel. In the end it's just barely a block worth. I hesitate to use it for anything, so I must find the most important uses of it. Used wisely I'm sure I will be swimming in these things, eventually.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: botanical

Okay, so I did a bit of work. Exchanger and a charging station make replacing that glass so much easier. It's a lovely view, quite worth the work, but there's quite a bit more work to go.

Few more of the diamonds into upgrading the sluices, accumulators working with just a bit of pipez keeps them filled with water. Two's a start, but always there's plans to expand.

Why use only one autohammer when you can just line them up and sift the results. This didn't QUITE work right but I'm confident of being able to refine this into a better setup. Meanwhile it'll work well enough to let me process out a few chests of resources for the next big push.

Rose gold. Given the options to make the anvil from to upgrade my tinker's setup and how much gold I've taken from the structures under the waves this one seemed like the best option. This opens the door on all kinds of options for augments and upgrades.

Cobblegen means enough stone, but I can always push things a little further. Stacking resistance means I can go longer between rebuilds of the mattock. Toss on a diamond, cobalt from one of my rewards for the handle, and I've got quite the lethal little toy to work with.

I've gone the other way with the pick, the slime will keep me from wearing it down as long as I don't use it too much. Thus being able to afford some exotic materials in the construction. Slimesteel for now, but there's always the next step.

For the next step, up here to the surface, and a VERY small smeltery, only has to be 3 tall on the inside. Botania has so many solutions for these little troubles that nobody quite expected. Slap down two iron bars, and a fell pumpkin, then close the top off so that it can't escape and cause me trouble.

Melting down a blaze, collecting the blaze powder that drops. Fel pumpkin blazes have no rods on them being little more then magic, but the smeltery renders them down and blazing blood cools quite nicely into rods with the cast.

Pour the extra out, pull this down, rebuild the smeltery larger and now I've got the heat of the nether itself at my call for melting and alloys. It isn't much but I've got enough for now.

Feels like ages ago that I made that floral fertilizer, projects ago. Just kept getting distracted. Always something that seemed a bit more important. To get started properly with botania I really only need one of each flower, good thing I had enough of the fertilizer made.

Living rock, living wood, blocks enchanted by these flowers into more magical forms. Such is the basis of so many things in Botania. I won't be spending long with it though, really I'm only here for one thing.

I had plenty of snowballs from growing the frozen melons, and so I could just place the snow by the flower. Cover it over with dirt so that light did not get in and the magic of the pure dairy froze it, colder and colder. Into ice. Into packed ice. Into the deep blue ice of a deepest glacier. Silky smooth a tinker's kama lets me harvest this new prize, a bit of utter cold to work with.

Back within the base, between the fel pumpkin blazes supplying me with powder and a bit more that I was able to squeeze out of magma cubes, I was able to make a blast furnace. Steel. Better than the cold iron I'd been tempering with stoves and camp fires.

There's glowstone in some of the structures, enough that I could spend some of it to make some end stone early, but just a handful. Luckily the fates smiled and I got what I needed rather rapidly. Also a few things I didn't, but I might as well put them to use.

Endlilly from sifting on one of the few remaining endstones, let that sit up there in a pot for a while. So many things growing now in my little garden in the shade.

The first from the pot naturally becomes a block of ender pearls and right back into the pot so I can grow the seemingly endless ender pearls that I need for my projects.

While I'm at it, I'd gotten a chorus flower, so I might as well grow that as well. Never know when I could use some purpur as an accent block. Save myself a trip to the ends of the universe to get it this way.

I made more rose gold than I needed when I made the anvil, bit of it into a barrel, the previous stage of the cobble generator, and a rather strange bit of slime from a sapling that I had to grow in a pot as it refused anything else I tried to grow it on. Only one further stage to these cobble generators and I honestly can't picture needing one, already this makes stone faster than any sane use I could picture.

First block of steel produced by the blast furnace was used to make the plates to rebuild the furnace into a less crude form. No point in preheaters as I'm not actually making any power to use to heat them mind you, but being able to automate the production is always better than not. Who wants to wait for stacks to pass through, right?

My lumpy little island, still has the outline it had when I landed, if nothing else, but it lacks... I need to do a bit more work, round out the rough edges maybe. I've got an outline and an idea, and that's enough to start with, if nothing else. Yes. A proper start.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: First Refinements

Widened my reach to form a more perfect form. Then spent a day going through and rebuilding what I'd built before to fit the better form. This isn't even a third of what I could be growing in the pots. Still it's enough of a start that I don't really feel like anything is missing and I've plans for most of these.

Tucked into a corner I've got my jars. Water, Lava, Souls, the three basic requirements. That respawn anchor is dangerous, but I want the boost in speed, and so it sits, just waiting to detonate, like a creeper unseen.

Clear down to the seabed now, course one can always dig deeper given time and motive. With time and effort I can dig deeper though what would I use all this space for, when I've barely used any of what I have already constructed?

Pulsating crates are rare, and the rewards are not always worth the effort to find it, but I found this one and after much thought I made use of it. So much easier to place and replace items again and again as I keep shifting the limits of this construction. I've used up so many of the lesser wands, it just seemed to be time.

Back to botania for a bit, a chest full of each of the flowers might be useful to have around for projects latter, if nothing else these represent dyes that I don't have to go hunt for elsewhere.

A bit of decorating, this magical grass will spread over time as well so I don't need to make sure I've got it everywhere. With the placing wand and vein miner this lets me get my living rock and stone that much easier.

Sure I can feed the flames myself, just toss down some stacks of things that burn. I could setup a box with a hole in it and a pressure plate, but that sometimes lets the charcoal decay. Given that I've got higher technology to play with, I figured I might as well get fancy with it. Let the charcoal take a trip around a belt, what they want, they keep.

Still the most efficient way to bespell my equipment, with the magic of flowers. Hungry though, takes quite a bit of charcoal to enchant even one item. Though in exchange I can use the enchanted books without fear, without spending the rarest resource I have, time.

Mana, time, and resources spent, but not mine. I fetched this terrasteel from the rafts of the lost, those that never washed up on shore. I made the portal, reached out, and got word from the other side. A new world of resources open to me, for a certain cost.

Thus I was able to take what I had collected, and what they offered and a pendant red as blood is now mine. It's time soon for the nether, and why should I fear fire when I have this?

Should have thought of this earlier, but I can have a little company. Terry here hates bad weather and is even willing to make sure the sun will come out, without waiting for tomorrow. Because they have an affinity for sunflowers I've placed one just there for the times that I'm not around to keep it company.

The strongest catalyst, give me even a scrap of material and with enough mana I've got enough to last me for days and days. Such is the power lent to the pool with it. Why make netherack one at a time with redstone and lava when I can duplicate it by the stack. Then take my time and break it down while my mana recovers.

You can't see it, but I've got food cooking in that pot, I've been making meal after meal, feast after glorious feast and saving it up, storing it up, while my other projects are being worked on. Logs smelt into charcoal, a jetpack charing from that charcoal, all the small slow steps of progress.

Each of these foods are the most potent possible nutrients. Feast upon feast, placed between two pieces of bread. It overflows the bread and spills out over and over so that I get 8 sandwiches from a single portion. Delicious overkill, thy name is omegasandwich. May we all be full.

I've also rebuilt the sluice to fix that little mistake I had in it before, it's quite content to work through thousands of stone, when I return I'll have resources enough to do my next project.

First I went out and collected all the spawners I'd found, now that I've got a moving wand that'll let me bring them home with minimum fuss. The dome next door is a grand arena for fighting when I've need of experience. Seems there's always just one more interesting trinket, one more piece of flair to wear.

One more trip into the world, to see what's out there. Could I have been stranded here, on this island? I'd have at least had sheep for company. Maybe I'd have built with wool. Wool and wood isn't the harshest start that I've faced.

Here there's an island of sandstone, weighted down with lodestones. Pulled below the waves but not yet drawn all the way to the sea floor. These lodestones are an oddly valuable resource to use in such a weighty way. Though it will take more than a little blaze blood to salvage them.

Whomever designed this structure either did it so long ago that it's crumbled halfway into the sea, or they were trying to hide the treasure here so that only they could reach it. Hop, skip, and quite a jump to the top, but when the reward is one of these, tis worth it.

Around the world and home again. Such is the traveler's way. Only a short visit though as the next trip is already in my head and I'll want to go farther this time. To take that trip I've been preparing for.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: fiery dive

Hoppers full of cobble and as quickly as I can pull the seared cobble out it nicely makes a bit more. Only takes melted clay, so saves me the effort in hammering down to gravel and sand. Could even use the jars to make more clay easily if I wanted, but I think I've got enough to make this as large as I want it this time.

Love when a pack gives me a neat and tidy automatic lava production to use. So many packs, sure, you can go to the nether and pass it around with an ender tank. Chute to take the seared cobble in, and out it goes into blocks. I don't have to put in the extra work, but I do appreciate how well it works, visually with the effort.

Easy enough to put together the small smelter to cook some fell pumpkin blazes. Don't make much blaze blood at all, but it's enough for now as I'm not using much of that tier of alloy. Still it's nice to have a little bit of it, lets me melt down some of that diamond dust I made by accident.

The next bit of building from tinker's calls for me to mix together some harder to melt bits from the nether and make a hard melting nether grout. Then reinforcing an existing controller with this more heat tolerant substance.

Found a little trick, obvious in hindsight, using water on the casting tables to help the ingots cool faster. A tricky business but a fun trick to know and use. Another neat little upgrade to my system.

On the other side of the room now is the foundry. Burns hotter, refines side products out of ore but doesn't give quiet as much out of each ore as a smeltery. On the other hand it won't keep accidently making rose gold every time I mess up.

If I want to make it larger though, I'll need more materials from the nether. So I made myself a portal and a place to put it. The bifrost seems a proper way to bridge these worlds.

Hesitation right on the edge. Should just dive into the painting and see what's there. Sure it's mismatched armor but I've put together the best I can to protect me from that firey realm.

Landed on a slab of obsidian inside darkened glass. It's like looking out through sunglasses. At first glance there's nothing outside of this island in the endless sea of flame. A glance at the map though says there's things out there.

First though, secure yourself an exit. Maybe I should have made the roof just a touch lower to be sure to prevent a ghast from showing up in here, but most of what can spawn is harmless enough. I can always bring back a mega torch, maybe even plant a tree or something to help echo the island home a bit better.

Inside this structure is more of the blue wood that I've been using to make my island home. Some of the crimson too, and apparently the fungus that are act as the saplings for these logs. I'll just need some of the warped mycelium in order to actually grow some for myself.

Another structure, this one having blaze, a treasure I want to take home, as well as wither skeletons, a treasure I hunger for but is slightly too dangerous to use at home right now. Also the largest concentration of these drums I've yet seen anywhere, quite a treasure indeed.

Another JACKPOT. Diamond, Gold. So much iron. The small island is well protected but quite worth the effort to find it and take this small pile of treasure. This siren song will call me back time and time again, rewarding my exploration in these dangerous places.

Nether Fortresses and Bastions litter this sea as well, each with the chests and dangers they've always had, and yet them being exposed brings certain unique dangers. Sure the blazes won't harm me much, but if I spend too much time on the ground I can get ambushed by the wither skeletons, or in the bastions swarmed by the pigmen. So I try to get what I can as quickly as I can.

Neat solution for my hunger for fuel, I don't have to keep chopping up those lost rafts. Wither roses save me from going after squids to get the black dye that I use to make the dark prismarine. Both useful bits of loot from the nether, as useful as anything else.

I brought that blaze spawner out from the nether, glass on top to keep one from getting stuck there and since they don't see a way to reach me through the glass they'll just eventually drift down and melt themselves. While using the fell pumpkins worked, it wasn't nearly enough if I wanted to really use these to the best of my ability.

Picked up enough resources in the nether in order to finish this off as well. The magmaslimes in the bastions were just what I needed to make these bricks. Not that I will ever get even close to filling this with anything, but I don't do half measures, not anywhere, not ever.

Quick trip back into the nether to do one more little project. I went all the way down in the overworld, I'm going to do the same here. Botania has a bucket that seems to be custom made to do just this chore. Sure, in the overworld running water would convert it, but you can't do that here. Bottle what you can, jar what you can, and then clear out the rest.

Looks like I found a way to get just a little more company here on my island. Turns out that I've been close to doing it right the entire time, just needed the flowers closer to the trees I was growing, and a lot of luck. Course I couldn't move them safely without silk touch.

Each of these has a campfire under them to keep them content, and while I had only intended to gather a bit for my sweet tooth, I ended up putting together an entire chest worth of honey and comb before I put the bees away again.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Spoiler: Outer Wilds

Nether had only a few secrets to find, and while I might farm a bit more from it, what I need requires me to go further. Just a bit of a platform with the painting that stands as a portal.

Queen of The End, high above the dragon nest, and to progress I'll have to end her reign. Regicide. But I'm well prepared. Don't even really need a bow, just fly up, hit a crystal, let the cloak take the hit and move to the next. I'm barely even stopping here before I'm through a portal and into the outer lands.

There's much new out here in the outer islands, a ruined temple caught my eye in particular. A shaded wood encroached on it and was slowly swallowing this structure.

Other places are far more grand. Massive mushrooms, large enough to house an entire city stretching over the flooded expanse, massive gransfather trees standing sentinel in these outer wilds.

Taking some of what I collected from the wilds of the end to build up the pet end island of my own. Some crystal from formations in the peeks, a bit of the moss from under the giant mushrooms lightens up the purpur that tends to be a bit one note.

There was some deposits of raw ender, not as refined as proper pearls, and it cracked rather easily on an anvil. There wasn't enough though, so I made myself a better hammer and set to work making piles of ender dust on anvils made from a material not unlike iron that was also in the endstone.

That dust when blended with iron formed Terminite ingots, a stronger material though limited in uses. I've made a bit of armor for it to join the other pieces on display.

Step by step I solved each small riddle, infusing the materials from the end together, the final refinement I had to work it with netherite as well. An entire block of the Aeterium was needed to plate a lesser anvil so I could work with it.

With tools on the anvil I worked more raw aeternium until I had myself a mighty hammer. With this smithing hammer I can easily do any part of this process, from breaking down the pearls into dust, to making more tools if I find I need them latter.

The other thing brought to me by this expanded end is a ritual to infuse and enchant. Some of the parts like the amber crystals are a little rare, though I was able to get enough to put together a suit of armor that glitters like a gemstone.

I'd done the basics of botania, but some of the materials were not easy to get without going to the nether and the end. Now I've been there, so it's time to rebuild my botania and not just the basics.

Pots of the flowers, drawers of the petals, the petal apothecary and some pure daisies setup to easily convert with a flick of a wand. Just a small little structure for little more then the most basic things of the mod, but it looks good to me.

On the top level goes the belts again, this time though I've produced a lot more endoflames and the stash of gaia spirits lets me move all that power easily.

A quick build in the center, the enchanting rig fitting nicely there, close enough to the mana pool to draw from it with sparks. I'll have to move all the enchanted books up here soon.

Catalysts go under two of the three mana pools, and each of the sets of endoflames can be pointed at each of them as needed. If you don't want to swap out the catalysts three is the minimum number of pools to keep around. It also gives a nice amount of stored mana for making terrasteel.

If not for the loot barrels I'd not have any gaia spirits or terrasteel, so I had a bit of advantage when remaking botania, but I am going to have to fight my own fights.

Victory is inevitable. Just a matter of enough tries and enough resources even for the harder mode. So I shall take the rewards she's given me and grow stronger.

Distributed sparks with weak and strong augments to spread the mana around, I might wander back here to add just a bit more ways to generate mana latter if I find I have need of more from this domain, but for now I am once again done with botania.

A turn through the worlds, a bit of work to rebuild what I'd taken down, and then a pause to look down on what I've made. From above.

And below. Layer by layer I've done my work, refining just how I want things to look. I've very nearly gone all the way to the core of this, but the next steps will be unlike anything I've done here before.

 

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Spoiler: P-p-p-p-ower!

Let there be POWER. Okay, not an awful LOT of power mind you. But I did get this from a reward for tuning in a quest, so I figured I might as well use it for something. Pink generator only cares that the fuel is pink, so I might as well use a pink flower from botania and let it be.

Power needs somewhere to go, and since I made all these to complete the quest and the other quests gave me a bit more to work with, might as well put together a wireless flux network. So that'll just draw up all the power I make and store it until I need it. Nice to not have to lay networks of wires to make use of power.

Works across dimensions too. Not that the heat generators from Mek make that much power, it's still a steady flow that can keep things filling and ticking over at all times. Might get around to making more of these. See there's a reason to my madness, I didn't just empty out an entire tower of glass under lava for no reason at all. It also looks neat.

If I want to skip all the complicated prepwork I can. I can just go right to the end of the mod. Just means I have to grind these ender pearls by hand. Quite a few of them, because what's the point in making only a few enderium?

And because making ingots into dust requires making machines, I'm skipping that too by using fire charges. Finally a use for those diamonds I accidently crushed into dust with the squeezer.

First machines to get upgraded are these Dynamos. I've had stacks and stacks of rubies and sapphires that don't seem to do anything. Easy to sift up more, and if I run short there's quite a few other things these will burn to make power. I'll have that storage filled in no time.

Another generator from turning in quest rewards. This one wants ice, and if this was a colder biome ice would make itself. Sadly this flooded world does not seem to have any spot that's cold enough to make the ice naturally. Still just a matter of a tank full of water and a jar to make it into the ice. Oddly while packed ice does give more power to the generator, it doesn't give enough to be worth making it, thus there's no need to compress this before passing it in.

From what I've seen of man's desire, I stand with those who stand with fire. Lava's actually simpler to make then the ice, what with being able to automate the cobble gen and just toss the lava into a tank. Trick is to use the right kind of tank so overflow won't stop the system.

I've got enough from quest rewards to make one of these, but to make any more I'll have to actually work some with the mod and make more of the exotic materials that it requires. A simple enough generator to automate, just add water and it'll consume it, and a heat source goes below.

Two more generators just as simple to automate as the pink generator, one consuming carrots, the other happily consumes anything that is made by the pot with the sapling.

Back upstairs, and the first usage of power, I've snuck in the mechanical squeezer and the mechanically boosted drying basins and given them power from below where it won't be seen. Sure, that's meant to be a wall of all the mechanical and primitive machines, but the manual squeezer is just such a pain to automate or use, and now that I've hidden the power source it fits in even better.

And yes, that trick did work with signalium and lumium, so I was able to just sit down and make all of the machines in the thermal foundation. Using a single point to power them with a network of connected energy crystals to spread the power out saves me time. Sure, I could plug them all in, but I don't really have flux automated, and I do have enough draconium now that I've been to the end and back.

Said I'd have to be back to POWAH eventually. Been given a lot of odds and ends in the mod, keeping me from having to actually do anything with it when I've wanted a piece or two here or there. But I ought so sit down and do a bit of work on it. Put up the energized rod they gave me, upgrade some of the basic ones.

Having that blaze spawner means that it's easy enough to get the blaze, to keep the upgrades going. Not that iron or gold are hard to get either, everything here is just a matter of time, or being willing to go out to harvest them from the buildings in the world.

Diamonds, those are a bit rare, and the amount of power it takes for this last (for now) upgrade step is a bit much for the power generation that I setup. So I'll be stopping with these. Shiny blue rocks, those be the limit, for now.

Having gone as far as that collection of tools will let me, it's time to turn towards the next. I've gotten some of these as rewards to, but any serious work with mek requires me to start with the enriching machine, and as I have the resources I might as well make it right into a factory, might as well make stacks at a time and all that.

Everything fancy in this mod requires me to turn iron into an alloy and work with that instead. You can burn through stacks and stacks of this without even noticing, and only be halfway through the project. So might as well make it and stockpile it. Pay in iron and redstone and that's just the start of this hill.

On the other hand, if I throw torches at the sawing factory, no matter what I made them with, it'll happily make coal for me. Charcoal into coal, one of the trickier alchemic tricks in other packs, here it'll do it for just the sticks, as you can light them in the campfire. Course there's other ways to get coal, but I do love when I can find interesting things like this to show off.

Once I've got all the machines and used up the material's I got from quests to do what upgrades I can, the next is to tier up a bit at a time. More of the stash of diamonds to make the next tier and then one more push.

Another batch of diamonds combined over a few more steps and then it gives me this last upgrade for mek, ultimate tier installer. This is as large a batch as the machines will accept, to upgrade past this it's either more work for less power, or to make it faster and cost more power. Or I just make more of these and automate them all.

{/spoiler]

 

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Spoiler: refinement

I've got the stacks on the other side for storage, but I wanted something a little prettier over here. So I put in the work and narrowed down what I had growing to pick the most beautiful and most useful. This includes most of the kinds of wood, the coral fans and useful things like the mushrooms, slimeballs, and rice.

I've got enough started with the energized materials that I'm able to get dry ice, the crying obcidian gave me an anchor, and a beacon gives me the most possible speed on the neutral temprature. So I've got everything covered. This little setup produces ice, lava, liquid souls and anything else I might be tinkering with at the moment. I'd tried things other then barrels, but the automatic discard of overflow is just so useful even if it is wasteful.

Netherite might be rare but better autocrafting is always worth it. Eventually I'll have an entire floor of these, but for now I'll just tuck this neatly into the corner.

I should have done this ages ago, with an ender bag attached to an import I don't ever have to stop my explorations. Just a matter of sending it back when I start to get full. I mean, I GUESS I could fill the entire storage system, but how often does that happen .... *cough*... yha .... almost never.

The Quantum Quarry is a useful method for turning stupid amounts of power into a few rare and random bits of ore. Given that the sieves work so well, I really shouldn't need this, but on the other hand it's just easier to get the diamond ore itself this way, if only I could remember what I wanted it for.

There's better ways to set up the latex production, once the log starts to break the amount is drastically reduced so here at the start, the version 1, I can let it be. Gives me enough to get started on the next step.

Version two, this time I've set it up with the import and export world interaction nodes from refined storage. The logs are placed, and the stripped logs removed. I've changed over plank requests to try to use those and I think I've got the priority setup to prefer it. Maybe I'll end up making and using so many that I'll wish I'd placed a storage drawer for the stripped logs instead of a space in the drive. I'll just keep an eye on free space. Nobody ever messes up and fills up a drive like this....

With liquid latex being produced, and a world of water everywhere, sure I could just pump it in from outside, but how about waterlogged stairs and aquius accumulators accelerated to the max. Four should be enough for now, pump that into the blue set on the tank and I'll worry about the details latter.

Right into the processing unit. The latex goes through the grey tank and I've got a bit of pipe under to feed it in and extract the finished product. Industrial Forgoing isn't too bad, it is designed to be automated after all, so they don't make it hard, just a puzzle that has to be solved as you progress.

Course, some things are easier if you sidestep over here to fire up the press and make gears this way. Sure, not every gear lets itself be pressed, but I can use this to make most of the ones that go into the upgrades without too much trouble. Then a quick round of upgrades and all the machines are running that much better.

I've got the wall of machines upstairs, but as this is about automation, I can't just keep using them, not when I want to be able to move on to bigger and more insane projects. These first two are easy enough, in goes the items, out comes the results, and power in the top. Upgrade to max, run as factory with auto spread, and consume crazy amounts of power.

These though, a little more picky about what goes into what side. Sure the logistics pipes would work fine, just program them, filter them, tell them what goes where and I wouldn't really need the chest. That's a lot of work though, not when I can just make a few filters, place a few chests and tell the pipes that the refined materals go though one pipe, and the materials to be refined go out the other. One for each type of infusion. Faster this way, and keeps me from having to think to use the logistics settings.

Just like the infusing, I've got to worry about the two items that I want to combine going into the right slots. Same idea, toss in the filters, toss on the pipes, and watch the items fly, and my power drain.

The dye mixer is not really needed, not when I've got any colour I want from the botania. Lets face it though, it's possible to make it, I might as well make it. Though I'm not going to setup automation for it. If I somehow end up needing 10,000 lime dye, I'll use botania.

This is one of my proudest little projects. So many things tried to prevent this from working, but in the end I found just the right combination of tools to move the logs without them ever understanding that they'd been moved. The amount of menril I require is so low that I probably didn't need to do this, but since when have I let that stop me from a cool trick?

I've been making due with a very limited amount of livestock using a single blessed earth that I've been careful to not let expand and get out of hand. Slaughering like this though lets me automate, though the results arn't quite as friendly. Pink slime and liquid meat, both with uses, though it's the slime that I need for the next set of upgrades.

A few others removed before powering the system on rest here, a bit of a petting zoo, but enough that I can get a supply of... well, lets just say when you raise pigs, you use every part of the pig. When you automate animals, you try to use everything you can automate.

The number of things that use the fertilizer are low, but it's not zero, so I use the RS fluid storage, not even important enough for me to make an ender tank for it. Just a few stacks in the drawer and that's good enough.

Power on the other hand, has been touch and go at times. If everything was running full out I'd have just a little problem keeping up, time for the next upgrade. Ethalyne gas is able to be made from just water and melons if your willing to pull some silly tricks. Fastest way to split the melons into slices is to use a storage drawer. Turns out though I need more then one pot of melons to make this work over a long period of time because you can roll badly on the odds. Good thing I had a lot of other power sources to get things going again.

The bottom layer has been needing work. Sure I could have left it bedrock. I could have tried to split this evenly into a few floors, but I needed something green and beautiful and, honestly, not the ocean. What's the point of having all these flowers if I don't plant some?

 

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These high tier sluices take power in addition to everything else. But with the proper mesh and lava I can access resources that were out of reach. The lava from the jars makes this an easy enough process, so I've got as much of everything as I could really ever want, as long as I'm willing to wait for it. I'm not, but I'll just have to fix that latter. Better than trying to find things in the occasional ultra rare barrel or crate though.

With pink slime on tap downstairs I can replace entire complicated assemblies of hammers with a single material stonework factory, though the dust requires the extra step still. This makes the footprint of the sifters quite a bit neater. Tuck the power down below and you've got a system that's almost respectable to look at. Long way from sifting things on a dirty rock in the middle of an ocean while hiding from phantoms.

I've had the inferium plant in a jar just making stockpiles, waiting for the time I could properly put things to use. Not just the infernium but the seeds themselves are of use, just have to break them down into more of the inferium. Then just a matter of building back up as I combine. Course while I wait on that I've got other things to do.

Sure, I could have one workbench, put a few ingredients in, and take what I need. Or I could set up one for each, fill it completely full of resources, and then pull them out a stack at a time and get to work. Nothing leads to success like excess. When the world gives you unlimited resources, you don't limit yourself.

Sneaky little compact build here. I request treated planks, it feeds in logs and planks into storage drawer controller. Logs are pulled down into the pyrolytic converter, the charcoal is ejected into the system, the creosote goes into the crafter that pulls planks out and then gives the treated wood into the system. Neat and tidy.

With the components I need taken care of, just drop down chests, filters, belts, configure each one so it's slowly letting the items out with a long enough delay that the items won't get discarded before the press picks them up, and there we go, automated press. I won't use most of these, but it's hard to resist when it just fits this well.

While I'm building, figure I'll do ALL the parts. Sawmill gives the most planks per log of anything in the entire pack. Not that I need this level of efficiency when I have my trees in pots, but it's always nice to know I can. Also, it's just fun to watch this cutting the logs. Sometimes it's the small things.

Also, gives me an excuse to play with power tools. The built in silk touch on the diamond saw blade means that I can have as much coral block as I want now. The amount I want is near zero, but it's nice to know I could put this into another pot and make more if I did. I think coral might be the only block type that I've never used as a theme in my construction.

Got to make a crusher if you've got immersive engineering. Not just because you can't make the electrodes without one, but because it's almost always the best way to get blaze from blaze rods and other force multipliers of that type. Once again I've picked to sink it down into the ground a little, I really don't know why, but I really like it like this, a monster sunken into the floor with it's own weight.

Speaking of monsters, the arc furnace. Power hungry as ever, my hodge podge of easily fed generators that make the slow and steady flow of power that keeps my base running as long as I don't demand too much from it just can't keep up. It's just too much. I don't need much from it, so there's that at least. Still, I'll have to think about power, and soon.

Squeezer, it's got many uses, but lets face it, 99.9% of the time this is being used to make seed oil. The rest is when you want a new set of electrodes. Most of the time you don't even make a second one for that, you just interrupt this one for a little while.

Left side, pumpkins and autocrafting them into seeds for seed oil. Right side, sugar cane into ethanol. Combine into biofuel and send it upstairs. Upstairs, that I've not shown you in a bit, have I?

Big ole Bertha, ready to make big power to keep my system up and running. This is enough to keep the arc furnace happy. Enough to fill up even the largest batteries, if I give it time. Sure, I could set up the tubes and check the power levels in the power cells and only run it when there's enough demand to use up an entire bucket, but when you have rapidly produced unlimited biofuel, you don't really need to be that careful.

Powah! Not unlimited power yet, just getting a proper start on it. I like my easy to use generation systems and Powah has it's own form of thermo generator based on the block that you put under it. If I wanted to be silly I could put them on top of the hot side of the IE thermal and make everything count twice. Works better though if I use even hotter blocks.

Though in this case being able to combine ices to get even colder blocks helps with the IE thermopile setups. The dry ice also lets me get the last upgrade for the cold side of the jars while I'm at it.

The first few withers I spawned behind glass they couldn't break of escape from and cheesed them through the gap. Sure, I had a few stars from the ultra rare loot crates, but it was inevitable that I'd need more.

Given that the nitro tier takes a nether star per block, I'm going to need more then the few I've been able to source in my explorations. It's going to take QUITE a bit of nitro to bring all of my POWAH system up to top rank.

While I'm building withers, figure it's time to put one on ice so that I can syphon off ether. Top tier blocks in IF require quite a bit of this stuff and as I've said before, there's no kill like overkill.

Automated construction for all three tiers of machine core now in the Dissolution chambers. From simple plastics, to pink slime, to exotic gasses, I can now just request the cores. Anything else I still manually craft in these machines, just have to remember to put the recipe back, don't want to mess things up too much.

A nice simple ocean vacation. Not quite what I was hoping, but it's hard to argue with the view. I'm quite proud of what I've done so far, and even if I am getting close to my end here, I think I've quite well earned it.

 

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Sure, I had unlimited lava up in the manual section, but it was slow. Cobble goes in to the drawer, jars take the cobble, lava goes out. Barrel is so large that it warps reality. With this many it'll be hard, maybe impossible to use up the lava fast enough to burn through it, no matter what I try to do.

Jars of captured mob essence refined from monster drops fused into the seeds with essence. I'd gathered almost everything I was going to need in advance for this project. Just a matter of setting everything up and making the seeds.

The ultimate solution for the nether stars and the wither automation, seeds to grow my own. Just takes a massive investment, maybe an INSANIUM investment of resources. Crux of things is that it's worth it, in the long run.

Specially worth it when you can put together nitro seeds. Not having to automate the Energizer is the best part of this entire seedy process. Okay, there's no seed for dry ice, but I can chill, no problem.

I put together full sets of armor while I was down there, tossed together some tools too while I was at it. Botania always makes me happy. Being able to toss together any tools and enchants I want any time I want is such a treat. I have to admit I'm a bit spoiled. I tend to collect every enchant in the system any time I get this option. Wouldn't you?

Key to getting some of the enchants was this setup. All the normal mob drops into drawers, anything unusual into the last locked drawer and then pulled out into the chest. Sure, I did some of the enchants myself with the exp on tap, but between the two I did get myself everything.

Small turbo garden with the hydroponic beds, testing just how powerful the ether gas is while letting the system multiply some of the basic seeds that I am going to want multiple of but didn't bother to make yet.

Sneaky trick I forgot to mention. Watering can accelerates the monster spawning on the cursed earth. Well, BLURSED earth in this case. Not just a little bit of things, but a lot of everything. When I was a bit short on essence this was a good way to get just a little more. Not instead of other ways, but in addition to all the others.

A bit of math showed that once I went all out I'd need quite a bit more ether gas to keep all of the hydroponic beds going. So that means adding more laser chargers to the existing system.

The biofuel gives more power if I feed it into a compression Dynamo. Turns out that I was producing enough that I could just make an entire row of them. Tucked them back behind the generator and left big bertha up and in place for the look of it.

Hydroponics setup. Multiple chunks, multiple stacks. If I ran this full out on a single product the amount of output is simply beyond simple comprehension. Insane and wonderful.

Draconic power relays instead of wires, because I want this as dense and compact as possible. Sure, I could pass the seeds from machine to machine and take them out at one end, and put power on everything but that would be a bottleneck that I just want to avoid.

As a test crop it's inferium on every single one of them. All of it feeding into one place and crafted into insanium. It's giving it to me by the stacks of blocks. Once there's enough for everything it's a simple matter to change over the seeds. Drawers and drawers of essences that'll be crafted on demand by the rest of the system.

That, sadly, was the last project I completed. I love the mycelium generators and had ideas about how to automate each one. I am confident that completed rainbows would be enough to power everything for the rest of the pack. I've confidence that Terrasteel would hold up to the chaotic damage as it had in the past and I could go around the requirements of the mek suit. I didn't get that far before I was drawn away into other projects.