Steel Dust, what is it good for?

[Bloodfrost]

If configured correctly, GregTech makes the steel dust only smeltae in an industrial blast furnace.
This should always be so, steel was balanced for this point in the tech tree, and changing that breaks progression.
The rail craft blast furnace requires nether fortress access, so often I skip it entirely.
It's also ungodly slow.

I'd love to agree with you... but sadly in the newest version of stuff, you require steel to make a flint and steel.. and as im sure we know, you need that to open a portal to the nether... and the nether gives you progression items for Thaumcraft and jetpack and such... and its rediculous to have to wait until you're making "steel" to get into the nether with the gregtech configs...

However, i suppose it is generally accepted that you'll find at least 1 bar of steel in a chest or something early in... i was just surprised...<thats what i did at least>

 

[DoctorOr]

The rail craft blast furnace requires nether fortress access, so often I skip it entirely.
It's also ungodly slow.

Not since the first FTB pack was released. It just requires you to make a portal and jump across long enough to mine some netherrack.

Thanks to Thaumcraft, you find a desert (or similiar EBXL biome) and you have enough blaze powder. Both an induction smelter and a compressor can convert netherrack to netherbrick. In 1.5.1, it's a vanilla conversion.

Finally, nothing is "slow" when you can slap a hopper on the top full of iron, and a chest/pipe/redstone engine combo piping charcoal into the box, along with another pulling steel out. Then afk on top of the furnace while you watch tv.

 

[natnif36]

Yeah, I am familiar with the flint and steel change, the IBF can easily be built in a day if a group of even 3-4 work together, powering it is mostly the problem. That's where a dedicated MFE comes in. Also, fire can be made with
Fire charges, using blaze powder from cinder pearls. Or one can place lava near something flammable and hope it touches the portal frame.

Any ways to get netherack without nether access however? Blaze powder can be gather from Thaumcraft, and MFr sludge boilers can output soul sand, and glow stone can beade from gold and red stone. So basically the only thing that NEEDs nether acces to obtain is netherack. Unless... Someone could feasibly obtain and power a matter fabricator and use uu for itC but that's a pretty long work-around. Any other solutions for this?


Edit
DoctorOr, didn't I include that I am aware of not needing a fortress exactly, just nether access at the end of tha last post on the previous page? And slow is when you have half an hour till your brother needs to do homework and you need to spend the time AFKing :/

Also is ther any advantage to using the induction smelter for nether brick instead of the compressor?

 

[KirinDave]

Yeah, I am familiar...

So given all this, why did you suggest there was a progression that was being broken?

 

[YX33A]

Also is ther any advantage to using the induction smelter for nether brick instead of the compressor?

You get 4 nether brick BLOCKS for 4 netherrack. I suppose that could be considered an advantage.

 

[Bluehorazon]

Well the nether isn't that important anymore. IC2 already hat methods of getting glowstone via Dusts (which was the reason why IC2 did not use much gold) and since TC3 added the mutatio aspect to slimeballs you don't have to go to the nether for netherward that early.

So getting to the nether can wait after you did your Blastfurnace, which actually requires no glowstone and can be easily powered with 4 Batboxes (if you operate it with pulses via Redpower or AE you can even automate the process by simply making the batboxes connected via AND and send out a signal if all of them are full). And the blastfurnace isn't that expensive either, Iron is a very abundant ressource and you only ever need to make 12 reinforced casings (since you can't reach enough heat for tungsten without chrome anyway and with 12 reinforced casings + lava you reach enough for chrome and aluminum, if you only want to make steel, titanium and silicon standard casings are enough).

The only reason we travel the nether so early is because the nether isn't very dangerous. Pigmen are passiv, TC3s bats are annoying but not that dangerous and ghasts fire slow enough with not very dangerous projectiles. The only thing that is dangerous is a fortress and even there you need to be unlucky to actually have mobs spawn, to not reach netherward without fighting. There are some mods like Natura that make the Nether a bit more dangerous, which might make the steel in the flint and steel useless and even with the steel requirement, you could use other means of making fire or be lucky and find steel in dungeons... well since it is so common you would be unlucky if you can't find any.

 

[343N]

Absolutely nothin!

 

[DoctorOr]

You get 4 nether brick BLOCKS for 4 netherrack. I suppose that could be considered an advantage.

You are in error. The most recent 1.4.7 TE version is Soulsand + 4 Netherrack = 2 Netherbrick.

 

[hotblack desiato]

you don't need the nether for netherrack.

those surface dungeons from twilight forest contain netherrack (the fireplace next to the spawner), there is one block inside.

and glowstone is even accessible in the overworld (these towers in villages contain glowstone).

EDIT:

on the other hand, going to the nether is still fairly easy. one piece of wood or wool inside the obsidian frame and a bucket of lava... and the fun starts.

 

[Zjarek_S]

I'd love to agree with you... but sadly in the newest version of stuff, you require steel to make a flint and steel.. and as im sure we know, you need that to open a portal to the nether... and the nether gives you progression items for Thaumcraft and jetpack and such... and its rediculous to have to wait until you're making "steel" to get into the nether with the gregtech configs...

However, i suppose it is generally accepted that you'll find at least 1 bar of steel in a chest or something early in... i was just surprised...<thats what i did at least>

GT adds a lot of steel to pretty much every chest (blacksmith, dungeon and mineshaft), so if you don't just strip mine, but cave and explore, you should find it without problem. With TC3 dungeons it is even easier and it also adds blaze powder to overworld, so you can just make fire charges.

 

[Lohengrin]

Are you using Mindcrack? Mindcrack still has Traincraft in it and you can go with the train workbench method still, even with Greg's installed (which Mindcrack also has). The steel dusts have different IDs, which might be why it seems Greg nerfed it. It's more a case of you do your thing, we will do ours. If you do the TrainCraft process start to finish though, should work fine even in Greg's shadow. It is rather clicky click intensive though, but otherwise simpler to make. If you have the blast furnance for all the other items it is required for, might as well just go with that. But if you are playing Mindcrack and need a quick chunk of steel, do as follows:

Build TrainWorkbench and smash up some coal dust via whatever you like to crush things with. Use trainbench for the following recipes;
Make Graphite (8 coal dust surrounding clay (8 graphite) or 8 coal dust around obsidian (12 graphite))
Make steel dust (3 iron ingots across, one graphite under center iron=steel dust)
Do this till you have enough or you can't stand it anymore.
Take steel dust to furnace of you choice and fire it into 2 Steel Ingots for each dust.
Repeat.
The clicky clicky part comes from the fact you can not stack items for multiple output. Before you scratch you head wondering why it won't work, I repeat, only one item in each slot on the bench. IE, you can't drop 3 stacks of 32 iron and a stack of 32 graphite to get 32 steel dust. Each steel dust must be made indiviually (unless you contrive some automated way to do it, but I just clicky clicky and then toss all the steel dust in the furnace once I have had enough).

Of course, if you don't have TrainCraft installed or not playing Mindcrack, this is all moot.