Started a new unleashed game the other day, I always start the same way: Cave, Generator, batbox, jetpack, Geo-generator....etc. How do you guys force yourself to play different? (with out disbaling the mod)
Starting new
- Thread starter Ryan Mesure
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I don't disable a mod unless its really dumb or there is nothing I can do to keep it from interfering with my game.. (hats are dumb. I will never get into bees and it gets in the way of TC3, but I don't call the bees stuff dumb). I just decide not to use it. Mostly my filter includes just the mods I want to learn. This past one I focused on MFR, TC3, and the crafting side of AE. Pretty enlightening. But now, I just have writers block that can only be cured by either DW20 1.6 or more cowbell.
Yea hats I disabled and bees i cant get into. Never made a AE systems, and to push for that here in a few weeks.
AE is the most important mod for me, for merely the wireless interface of my entire inventory alone. The crafting gets a little too ridiculous because you take for granted the vast number of steps you take at a bench to create stuff. In a few areas of things you are always crafting it helps... in most other areas it sucks. Once you get a handle on it, using the import/export/storage/interfaces become gamebreaking as well. Automated smelting/pulverizing/compressing/organizing any incoming items is huge when in conjunction with the wireless interface.
I usually start off with Tinkerer's Construct and my first machine/construct of non-trivial complexity is a Smeltery, but it's completely variable from there.
One time, I started off with IC2. Another time, I started off with Forestry (Peat Engine, Multifarm, etc.,.). Another time, it was Thermal Expansion (TE2). This time, it was Thaumcraft and TE3.
In a more general sense, I try to have different self-imposed rules each time. This time, my rules were:
1. Use Thaumcraft whenever possible
2. No quarries, MFR laser, mass fab, or otherwise automated early or mid-game resource gatherer. Will use Bees once I get them there.
3. No factory farms. This means no MFR farms, Forestry Multifarm, or SC2 farms. Farming was by hand and then with TC4 golems.
4. Master build plan with strict building codes. No machines in the open. No exposed wires/pipes at or above ground level. All buildings have a purpose. Proper paved pathways between buildings. When possible, buildings should fit into natural surroundings. My TiCo Smeltery, for instance, is in a large building built half-way into the side of a mountain/hill with flowing lava providing interior lighting. My mine stairway goes down from there. Very Dwarvish.
I also have a wizard's tower with my Thaumcraft Infusion Altar on top. Very HIgh Elvish / Wizardly.
There is a high-tech building for TE3 and EnderIO.
I also plan on having a "Forestry"-themed facility for tree breeding and ethanol production and a wooden Bee facility for bee breeding.
5. Whenever possible, try to do something in a different way than last time. For energy, for instance, I started off with charcoal, then hand-gathered lava for a little more power, then Factorization solar boiler for more power, now RC 36HP boiler from my golem tree farm for more power, and eventually golems tending a bred tree farm for "end-game" power. Nothing crazy, mind you, it's just different than previous worlds.
I have 103 mods installed, most of them high-tech. I'm not using most of them, but I do plan on eventually using them, as they fit into my master build plan. The reason for this is to intentionally avoid "racing to the end" where resources and energy are near-infinite. I'm enjoying my world, my building and crafting, and exploring mods and their interaction.
For me, it's about the journey and not necessarily the destination. Once I eventually do reach my destination, I become bored and want to start over on a different journey.
One time, I started off with IC2. Another time, I started off with Forestry (Peat Engine, Multifarm, etc.,.). Another time, it was Thermal Expansion (TE2). This time, it was Thaumcraft and TE3.
In a more general sense, I try to have different self-imposed rules each time. This time, my rules were:
1. Use Thaumcraft whenever possible
2. No quarries, MFR laser, mass fab, or otherwise automated early or mid-game resource gatherer. Will use Bees once I get them there.
3. No factory farms. This means no MFR farms, Forestry Multifarm, or SC2 farms. Farming was by hand and then with TC4 golems.
4. Master build plan with strict building codes. No machines in the open. No exposed wires/pipes at or above ground level. All buildings have a purpose. Proper paved pathways between buildings. When possible, buildings should fit into natural surroundings. My TiCo Smeltery, for instance, is in a large building built half-way into the side of a mountain/hill with flowing lava providing interior lighting. My mine stairway goes down from there. Very Dwarvish.
I also have a wizard's tower with my Thaumcraft Infusion Altar on top. Very HIgh Elvish / Wizardly.
There is a high-tech building for TE3 and EnderIO.
I also plan on having a "Forestry"-themed facility for tree breeding and ethanol production and a wooden Bee facility for bee breeding.
5. Whenever possible, try to do something in a different way than last time. For energy, for instance, I started off with charcoal, then hand-gathered lava for a little more power, then Factorization solar boiler for more power, now RC 36HP boiler from my golem tree farm for more power, and eventually golems tending a bred tree farm for "end-game" power. Nothing crazy, mind you, it's just different than previous worlds.
I have 103 mods installed, most of them high-tech. I'm not using most of them, but I do plan on eventually using them, as they fit into my master build plan. The reason for this is to intentionally avoid "racing to the end" where resources and energy are near-infinite. I'm enjoying my world, my building and crafting, and exploring mods and their interaction.
For me, it's about the journey and not necessarily the destination. Once I eventually do reach my destination, I become bored and want to start over on a different journey.
Are you referring to the unintended research topics you don't want to waste time/resources on ? I'm with you in general on that topic. I don't use Biomes Of Plenty (BoP) or ExtraBiomes for a similar reason - they interfere with MystCraft and Thaumcraft, among others.
However, I love, love, love bees. They are a game in and of themselves. I have to admit I like the "gambling" aspect of it. I may get the Princess and Drone I'm looking for, I might not. I try to increase the odds in my favor, for sure. And, when I finally get the species I'm looking for, it's a good day ;-)
Automatic resource collection via bees seems balanced, but that's completely my opinion. My playstyle would bore most people to tears.
I have no understanding of bee stuff. What is a good wiki or youtube for someone who has absolutely no concept of bee mechanics from start to finish? I've always considered it interesting, but not so much for the time it requires along with the babysitting that is requires during that long time.
Yeah, bees aren't easy to get into. Once you "get it", it's easy, but they are not intuitive. Lots of YouTube vidoes out there, but to save you a lot of tiem and hassle, I recommend the following:
Start yourself off one world with an Imperial Princess + Drone, an Industrious Princess + Drone, and a couple of Apiarists pipes. Cheat them in, seriously. It's better to dive right into bee production and Alvearies than get lost in low-level bee breeding when you're first getting into bees. Even for me, early-game bee breeding cane be tedious and boring.
Then:
1. Build 2 Apiaries. You can use Creosote Oil.
2. Dig a hole 3 deep. Put a lever at the bottom. Flip it on. Put a Redstone Engine on top of that, facing up. Put a wooden pipe on top of that (just below ground level). It may help to face the Redstone engine if you put the wooden pipe first and then snake the Engine below that.
3. Put the Apiary on top of the wooden pipe.
4. Dig a hole "behind" the apiary. Put a plain (cobblestone, smoothstone, golden) pipe behind in it.
5. Put the Apiarist Pipe on top of that, feeding into the Apiary
6. Take note of the color facing into the Apiary and one direction facing away from the Apiary.
7. Right-click on the Apiarist Pipe with a bare hand
8. For the color row facing the Apiary, left-click 3 times on the far left column until it says something like "All Bees"
9. For another color row facing away from the Apiary, left-click 1 time until it says "anything"
10. Put a chest on the "anything" directino
You now have a fully automated Apiary, ready to accept a pure species and output products and eventually extra drones into the chest ! Then:
1. Setup the Imperial Princess + Drone in one such setup and the Industrious in the other.
2. Let run for a (real-life) day or so.
3. The next day, you should have plenty of drones in each Apiary.
4. Repeat the Apiariy-building process for 2 more Apiaries.
Take a Pristine Princess of any species that is applicable for your biome (Rocky, Meadow, Forest, Unusual, etc.,. are usually good), and put that Princess in with the full stack of Imperial drone in one of your new Apiaries. Repeat for Industrious.
5. Wait another day.
6. The next day, you should have a total of 2x Imperial Queens + Drone and 2x Industrious Queens + Drones. Double your production again, i.e. build 4 more Apiaries.
7. Wait another day.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have around 8 each (16 Apiaries total). You should now have a steady supply of:
10. Squeezer the honey drop into honey and once you have saved/stocked enough honey, setup a Carpenter to build Scented Panels. You will need 216 of them to make 27 Alveary blocks to make an Alveary. You may need more honey since Industrious and Imperial don't make much honey. If so, go ahead and cheat yourself in some Cultivated and have roughly 6 or so automated Apiaries churning out honeycombs from those Cultivated. The reason I picked Cultivated is they have the highest honey production of any bee you will make *while on your way to Industrious and Imperial* in your next playthroughs.
If you did/can do all the above, you will have learned a lot and should be well on your towards Alveary-based bee production.The Alveary is where it's at in terms of bee production, IMHO. Also, please build a Beealyzer and use that to study your bees. You don't need it for the above, but you will need it when breeding new species.
Now that you have Alvearies, you can start playing with Mutators, Lighting blocks, and Rain Shields, among others. Mutators + Soul Frames or, better yet, Metabolic Frames, are good, renewable bee breeding tools. Use NEI to figure out how to combine species to get new species. For instance, try working towards Diamond Bees and the various Magic Bees like the Aer Bee (the one that makes yellow shards). That bees has the "Fastest Productivity" trait.
Also, try playing around with ExtraBees machines. They are a great MJ power sink. You can easily bring several 36HP boilers to their knees with a modest ExtraBees setup, seriously.
The next world, don't cheat in the bees and try staring from scratch and breed found bees in the world, ex. Forest and Meadows, up to Industrious and Imperial.
Start yourself off one world with an Imperial Princess + Drone, an Industrious Princess + Drone, and a couple of Apiarists pipes. Cheat them in, seriously. It's better to dive right into bee production and Alvearies than get lost in low-level bee breeding when you're first getting into bees. Even for me, early-game bee breeding cane be tedious and boring.
Then:
1. Build 2 Apiaries. You can use Creosote Oil.
2. Dig a hole 3 deep. Put a lever at the bottom. Flip it on. Put a Redstone Engine on top of that, facing up. Put a wooden pipe on top of that (just below ground level). It may help to face the Redstone engine if you put the wooden pipe first and then snake the Engine below that.
3. Put the Apiary on top of the wooden pipe.
4. Dig a hole "behind" the apiary. Put a plain (cobblestone, smoothstone, golden) pipe behind in it.
5. Put the Apiarist Pipe on top of that, feeding into the Apiary
6. Take note of the color facing into the Apiary and one direction facing away from the Apiary.
7. Right-click on the Apiarist Pipe with a bare hand
8. For the color row facing the Apiary, left-click 3 times on the far left column until it says something like "All Bees"
9. For another color row facing away from the Apiary, left-click 1 time until it says "anything"
10. Put a chest on the "anything" directino
You now have a fully automated Apiary, ready to accept a pure species and output products and eventually extra drones into the chest ! Then:
1. Setup the Imperial Princess + Drone in one such setup and the Industrious in the other.
2. Let run for a (real-life) day or so.
3. The next day, you should have plenty of drones in each Apiary.
4. Repeat the Apiariy-building process for 2 more Apiaries.
Take a Pristine Princess of any species that is applicable for your biome (Rocky, Meadow, Forest, Unusual, etc.,. are usually good), and put that Princess in with the full stack of Imperial drone in one of your new Apiaries. Repeat for Industrious.
5. Wait another day.
6. The next day, you should have a total of 2x Imperial Queens + Drone and 2x Industrious Queens + Drones. Double your production again, i.e. build 4 more Apiaries.
7. Wait another day.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have around 8 each (16 Apiaries total). You should now have a steady supply of:
- combs
- royal jelly
- pollen
10. Squeezer the honey drop into honey and once you have saved/stocked enough honey, setup a Carpenter to build Scented Panels. You will need 216 of them to make 27 Alveary blocks to make an Alveary. You may need more honey since Industrious and Imperial don't make much honey. If so, go ahead and cheat yourself in some Cultivated and have roughly 6 or so automated Apiaries churning out honeycombs from those Cultivated. The reason I picked Cultivated is they have the highest honey production of any bee you will make *while on your way to Industrious and Imperial* in your next playthroughs.
If you did/can do all the above, you will have learned a lot and should be well on your towards Alveary-based bee production.The Alveary is where it's at in terms of bee production, IMHO. Also, please build a Beealyzer and use that to study your bees. You don't need it for the above, but you will need it when breeding new species.
Now that you have Alvearies, you can start playing with Mutators, Lighting blocks, and Rain Shields, among others. Mutators + Soul Frames or, better yet, Metabolic Frames, are good, renewable bee breeding tools. Use NEI to figure out how to combine species to get new species. For instance, try working towards Diamond Bees and the various Magic Bees like the Aer Bee (the one that makes yellow shards). That bees has the "Fastest Productivity" trait.
Also, try playing around with ExtraBees machines. They are a great MJ power sink. You can easily bring several 36HP boilers to their knees with a modest ExtraBees setup, seriously.
The next world, don't cheat in the bees and try staring from scratch and breed found bees in the world, ex. Forest and Meadows, up to Industrious and Imperial.
MAN, I will have to give it a try. A few lets plays I watch never really touched them so never had. Thought it was collection bees and stuff
I have to say that I don't agree with Miguk's idea of cheating in an Industrious and Imperial line. Yes, it can work and give you some idea of how to work with higher level bees and their machines, but I think that if you really want to understand how bee breeding mechanics works then the startup is the greatest learning potential. Just reaching the stage of pure Industrious and Imperial lines is a big stepping stone into bees, and by the time you get them you should have a pretty solid understanding of how to get certain species. Personally I think cheating in those lines is on par with cheating in a high level machine from say gregtech, like giving yourself an industrial grinder. Very helpful, but you miss some very important steps along the way.
I disagree on the Industrious and Imperial lines. They are not difficult at all, just tedious. Yes, I have done Industrious and Imperial many times and did it this playthrough as well - just got them a couple of days ago (for the 4th or 5th time in the past year). But, it's a tedium I'd prefer people new to Bees avoid, simply to avoid the risk of giving up before they can appreciate what bees can do : resources and effects.
But, I agree with everything else. That's why I strongly encourage multiple playthroughs and doing it the right/hard way the next playthrough. Take the training wheels off, if you will.[DOUBLEPOST=1386100175][/DOUBLEPOST]
Someone's signature says "There's a bee for that..."
...and they're right ! There is a bee for almost any resource or effect. Bees can make the resources that your quarries and MFR lasers can't, and in quantities that often rival or greatly surpass them. They also have some very cool effects, especially in Unleashed with TC3. The Pure and Aura bees are incredible. The crop-aiding and tree-breeding helpers are also nice.
You can also do some whacky stuff like build a ring of Apiaries around your base, underground, and put bees in them that have some monster-damaging or monster-killing effects. Heroic Bees are great for this. Nothing like seeing creepers get stung to death ;-)
Bees are very practical, fun, and breeding them and building the infrastructure to breed them is a good challenge and a worthy goal.
I watch some spotlights on the mod and get excited about it. And I never pick a wimpy mod to focus on. I like to have each map have a different emphasis so I make sure that the mod I do the most with is robust enough to keep me entertained without feeling like I'm lacking.
If a mod is lacking something I use other mods I consider to be complimentary ones to fill in the gaps.
Ryan I was the same way I never played with bees, until I start to play Unleashed. The main reason was I didn't know how or what to do. After I watched a few YouTube videos I found fun and addicted. I now almost have every different type of bee.
My last few worlds have started with me pottering about, having a look at the magic sections (TC4 and AM2), and poking around the rest of it, and, eventually, getting started on the tech side (I was machine-less for a good few days last time).
One of the reasons that I enjoy modded MC is simply because the mods change, and I can wander through the tech trees, amiably enjoying myself. I rarely see it as a focussed drive to a single goal.
Also, WRT bees, I've found them tricky to do in SSP. They just take so long to do anything. On a server, I'll put them in a chunkloaded area, set a recycling apiary with two potential mutators (say forest and meadows), and leave it running, and see what it's got when I come back. Sometimes it gets to the end of a line, and sometimes it doesn't. That's the fun of it!
One of the reasons that I enjoy modded MC is simply because the mods change, and I can wander through the tech trees, amiably enjoying myself. I rarely see it as a focussed drive to a single goal.
Also, WRT bees, I've found them tricky to do in SSP. They just take so long to do anything. On a server, I'll put them in a chunkloaded area, set a recycling apiary with two potential mutators (say forest and meadows), and leave it running, and see what it's got when I come back. Sometimes it gets to the end of a line, and sometimes it doesn't. That's the fun of it!
Yeah, bees don't work so well on SSP due to taking so long to produce a decent quantity of combs and secondary products. I also sometimes like tossing a potential breeding species set in a recirculating Apiary, walking away, and seeing if they have produced the new species when I come the next day. Some amount of randomness in gaming is desirable, i.e. fun ;-)