The journal of a compulsive speedrunner..

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Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Synopsis.
I got some people who liked my base in a previous post (and likewise people who where scared by the look of it lol) and i recently very enjoyed other posts like this. So why not making my own ? Enjoy (or despise :D)

Episode 1. The mere necessity
Day 1:
Dear journal, punch 3 wood, make a stone pickaxe, dig 21 cobblestones. Axe, furnace, charcoal, food... It's the first day routine. Sadly I could find the magical forest I was looking for. Those tends to be rare in direwolf20 1.7.10 pack. However I found a nice flat plain for my farm to set up my platform base. Again.. standard opening. A bed a chest a few crafting tables and furnace.

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Day 2:
Dear journal, I found a spawner beneath a greatwood tree on the other side of the hill, got myself a pair of dark boots and some nether wart.. not bad. I set the base of my storage "floor". Got an early farm and dug half on my mandatory mine staircase. It's been a lovely day. Better go up before the sun set ! I wonder if i'm not taking this a bit too easily ?

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Day 3:
Oh boy... After hitting the bottom of my mine. I wasted my day running around, gathering wood and looking for clay in the river. I got my smeltery installed.
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Day 4:

Dear journal, who would have toughs it could take 1 full day just to automate that smeltery ? I'm late now and I need a bit of silver still... Gonna have to use that makeshift stone hammer and do some overtime tonight. I knew I was getting lazy somehow...
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Day 5:

Made my electrum hammer today. Finaly i'll be able to start mining at a decent rate.
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Day 6:
I setup my little mining setup at level 6, found the diamonds I need for now.
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Day 7:
Dear journal. It's been a week already, I feel like it was a couple of hours ago... It's been another busy day. Lot of crafting. Finaly got my quarry ! A bit of power generation and the start of my machinery room. All in all I think it was a good week but there is so much more to do still ! I must keep up that progress...
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End of Episode 1

Is that journal interesting someone ? Do you guys want to know what happen to me on week 2 or is it just a waste of time ?

I'm also interested to know if anyone would have suggestions to make this progress faster ? A quarry in 90 minutes seems good to me. But maybe someone have a better tactic ?

Thank you for reading this.
 

QuantumCookies

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Jul 29, 2019
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I find your bases both awesome and terrifying, and I would love to see more. I like how efficient and precise you are with your worlds.
 

Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Episode 2 : A bit of automation
Day 8:
My faithful journal, it is rudimentary, but I made a system to stack my item in chests. Not a real sorting system, but it will try to stack the items together to save space. I can send the result of the quarry into that chest. Much needed. I also made a diamond pipe to eject cobbles, dirt and gravel out of my main storage area.

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Day 9-10 :
Dear journal, so much time wasted collecting wood, farming and manualy feeding the machines. I can barely do anything else since I added 2 more generator to my power generation. I'm glad, this "emergency" automisation gave me at least enough time to find the base ferrous, tin and lead ore I still needed in my mine.

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Day 11:
Dear journal, all the material being gathered, I was finaly able to make my harvester. The stone lumberaxe was fine and all but I'm glad I'm done with that. I have a steady amount of wood now :) .
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Day 12:
A furnace, an induction furnace and the begining of a real automated ore processing. I still have some configuration to do, but I'm slowly taking back the control of my time. I can also start my production of steel.
2015-04-01_22.14.58.png

Day 13:
I was about to skip it. But you know what ? I gonna need a lot of coal for another good while. So I'm better taking this day and install that planter.
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Day 14:
Dear journal, already 2 weeks have gone by. Hard to believe since it went so fast. Today I automated the making of charcoal and sent it directly into my 6 furnace generator. 480 RF/T. I still have a lot of tuning to do, but for the most part everything here is automated. I get my ingots directly into my storage "floor". Infinite basic ressources \o/. Beside moving the landmarks soon, it will all go automaticaly, I can finaly focus on the next project. My platform is getting big isn't it ?
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End of episode 2

These episodes are getting a bit too short. I will still count the days for fun, but It wil be longer then a week. Also, I will slow down and breath a little. An automated quarry in 14 minecraft days while still sleeping trough most of the night... proof of concept done... I will slow down a little before I get and heart attack lol. I'm still very interested in any suggestions that could make me go faster. I'm crazy about speed :D .
 

Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Episode 3. A tour to the neither

Day 15.
I went down my mine shaft and used my electrum plated stone hammer to dig obsidian. Back on the surface I made an enchanting table and made some basic armor.
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Day 16.
I've been preparing for the neither all day. I managed to make that sprinkler, it will make some seeds for me hopefully.
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Day 17.
I landed in a large pit of soulsand... the progress was so slow. But hopefully a ghast came by. I took his form and soon enough I was able to fly around and find a neither fortress. I killed a blaze, I can now fly at full health and be immune to fire. So good in the neither, I took the blaze spawner back home with a jabba diamond dolly.
Day 18-19-20 TRAPPED !.
I tought it was a good idea to enter my new mob spawner design to go gather the few blaze rod lying there manually. Oh... dodging the blazes was easy, but I fell on the conveyor belt and got grinded by the autonomous activator there... I was now stuck with a black room filled to the brim with blazes defending all my good armor, weapon and tools designed to deal with that. I finaly made it but it cost me a day or two of hard work.

The sewer gather the mob essence. It produce more then a grinder. And later I'll be able to fit the autonomous activator with a fortune weapon.
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Edit : Yes of course, pressing F1 I can do that in the futur. But the episode 4 is already recorded. Don't get mad at me they last 1 hour each...
 
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Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Episode 4. Too much good luck kill the luck.

Day 21:
Ok so this is the plan, I need 2 emerald for my autospawner. Since there is no extreme hill visible, I gonna have to find a village. But travelling around could be long and useless. I'm a speedrunner.. those are 2 things I can't accept. So here's my idea : For the "long" part, I'm gonna rush a sojourner sash from botania. This bad boy will make me go twice as fast and grant me step assist and 2 blocks jumps for the remaining of the game which can be useful even for building the base. For the "useless" part, I gonna make sure I have a thaumometer a good pair of goggles of revealing and a want to find and gather the nodes around my base while I wander around.

Day 22:
Thaumcraft research time. Here is the path : terra+aqua => victus + perditio => mortus + perditio => spiritus + fire => cognitio, aer + ordo => motus + victus => bestia + cognitio => humanum + ordo => instrumentum.

you also need :
aer + ignis => lux
aer + perditio => vacuoos + victus => fames + humanum => lucrum
ordo + perditio => transmutatio
ordo + terra => vitreus
spiritus + aer => sensu
victus + terra => herba
fire + ordo => potentia + vaccuos => preacantio + aer => auram

You don't need to use your thaumometer until then, if you know what you are doing you can get all this in one go from the research table. From there, you can pretty much scan your entire base, including all your fancy TE machines in one step.

The pages :
http://ftbwiki.org/List_of_Aspects_(Thaumcraft_4.2)
http://ftbwiki.org/Research_by_Aspect

Are very useful to help with the research. But really the only real way around is to learn the aspects and learn how to make the research mini game efficiently by yourself. You need to figure a common element and link all the aspect to that element by the middle. You don't need to be perfect, you just need to be efficient and avoid using the last primal aspects of one sort.

Day 23:
I reached the endoflames. With that I'll be able to really produce the mana needed.
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Day 24:
Dear journal, I'm not complaining much, but this base drain so much time from me still. Lots of rough corners I need to deal with, lots of little tunings. I increased my storage floor again and to speak the truth that poor sorting system force me to search longer and longer to find the material I need for my craftings. It start to hurt.

Look at what I found here... apparently the sprinkler now generated pneumatic craft plants and my mfr harvester do not chop them properly :(. I guess I wont be able to produce seeds that way unless I mannualy chop all this.
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Day 25:
I made good use of my botania runic altar today. finaly found all the materials. Got my sojourner sash ready to use.

Day 26:
Bummer ! I was using my sojourner sash to find the last nodes needed to craft the goggles of revealing and I simply stumbled one of the biggest village I ever found in minecraft*. Just a Few step out of my base. It's awesome but at the same time what a waste of time... What have I done this past 5 days ? The expedition is canceled.

Look at what I found there. Isnt it the sweetest deal you never found on a villager ? :D An emerald for a few processed cobblestone. lol

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Day 27:
Goggles of revealing...

Day 28:
I flew up on a slime island nearby I noticed on day 1. I need to make magma cream and that tree will just be find. I collected the liquid slime there, maybe I could use it ?

Day 29:
I'm a bit short on tin, I dont have enough plastics. Where are those blazing rods ? I need more power conduits. What that blaze do free in my basement (hint : I'll find a hole over my door at day 35). In other words, I spent the day just to craft a single item again...

Day 30:
I dug a hole in my basement for the autospawner. Also spent the night hunting enderman in order to make a safari net and capture another of them in it.

Day 31:
Got the spawner in place at the beginning of the day. If you are copying me, make sure your hole is 5x5x5. You want to make ghast spawn in it so you can produce more safari net, but the grinder range is quite low so you dont want to make it any bigger.

I spent the remaining of the day crafting a few ender chests to link my sorting system to the spawners and clean a bit my stuff.

The first minecraftian month is over...
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Edit:
*You might have noticed already that I don't rely at all on any bit uncommon luck. Like quickly finding a village, a chest, a desert or a magic forest. You could start in an entirely different seed, follow my steps and end up in the same month with the same kind of progress. It's crucial for me that my system need to be reproductible. I'm dealling with a lot of small randomness in my seed behind the scene, but you don't get that big that fast by trying to improvise too much.
 
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Iluvalar

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Episode 5. The next step of automation.

Day 32.

Haters gonna hate, because today I gonna start this episode by cheating. To be specific, I went in creative mode and got myself the 4 AE press and a stack of skystone blocks. I've done that already. I think it's an awful design in applied energistic. If finding 1 meteorite and digging it would be enough, I'd be ok with it, but last time I did it, it took me 7 meteorites and 3 hours of play to manage to find all the press. As a reminder, I'm around 6 hours of play total now. The remaining of the mod seem well balanced, I gonna be quickly limited by gold, diamonds and certus quartz. But the entry cost of applied energistic just seem to me crazy. It seem like if it was only designed for server play, where people could jump start all their friends by printing them the initial components. In a single player game, it's just nuts to make a single player fly around his world for 3 hours... Let's just pretend that's what happened here; One of my former self came and gave me the 4 press as a gift.

Today, I also used my ender pearls to make a new safari net, and quickly jumped to the neither to capture a ghast. Now I can spawn more of them and get all the safari net i want.
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Day 33.
I had no charged certus yet. So I had to go down to my mine pretty deep. I also tried my first legit experiment of this game, a blue slime pool inside my mob spawner.

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Day 34.

Dear journal, I used my enderpearl to make an elevator. It link B2,B1,ground floor, F1, F2 and my brand new F3. It's CRUCIAL that you install such elevator on the block you stand when you wake up in the morning. I wouldn't be a respectable speedrunner otherwise huh ? I was then able to make and install charger on my new 3rd floor.
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Day 35-36.
I have redesigned my infinte water pool and made my inscriber.
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Day 37.
Driver, storage and terminals... it's today the day. I installed them on my storage flood, the terminal hang just by my bed right inside the elevator range.
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Day 38.
I got myself a molecular assembler, an interface and a crafting cpu. For now, they just produce blank patterns lol, but I'll save a ton of time crafting common material from now on.

Day 39.
Vacation ! No really, I count the days but I have no notes about anything of value I have done today. No progress. All I can say is that this day was dayishly thirdy ninesque.
 

InUniverse

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yeah, the meteors are awful, horrible things to do to a player for any reason. i have no problem with you cheating those presses in.
 

Iluvalar

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Episode 6 power experimentation.

Day 39
Dear journal, look at that... I have pneumatic craft seeds in my chests. My mfr farm must be farming them ? That's new, let's try to use them for something...
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Day 40
I will never learn. It's the second time my mob farm kill me. This time I tried to drop a cave spider spawner inside my blaze spawner. I spent the day trying to recover my things back. Oh well, at least it worked, I now have the spider eyes I was looking for.

Day 41
Dear journal, Look at this new toy I made a bioreactor today.
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Day 42
The biogenerators to go with it...
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Day 44
This is the first useful export bus.
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Day 45
magmacrucible, igneous extruder, endertank to a centralised aqueous accumulator. I know it cost a lot of energy to produce obsidian this way, but it's the only sustainable and reliable way that won't require me more work to do. Let's burn some netherhack in it :D.
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Day 46
I managed to build my Quantified Electronic Dynamo.
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Day 47
Dear journal, I produced an awesome amount of lag today. It was a great day for lag production \o/. My game eventualy crashed.

Day 48
I'm scared something could cause this lag, I spent my day double checking everything that could have caused that lag. I don't want to crash every 5 minutes. But nope, no sign of anything laggy anymore. great !

Day 49
I used my QED to build a retreival node. All my chests will slowly be drained into my AE system. Soon I'll be able to craft with all my inventory. No more searching for materials everywhere around.
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Day 50
Turns out, after proper investigation, the mfr harvester doesn't cut the pneumatic craft flowers like the grass from my sprinkler, to be exact it's harvesting is like a plant and my planter can replant it so... more seeds that way I guess...
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------
Gonna try those wings, but I am 15 days ahead in my world. So it won't make an apperance in this playtrough for a while...
 

Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Episode 7
Day 53

I automated the pure certus quartz today. I also made one of my favorite AE2 secret trick : an interface with crafting card linked to a storage bus. This will keep a stock of pure certus quartz to be used at any time.
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Day 56:
I expended the concept to other pure crystals while i'm working on another project...
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Day 59 :
Automated inscribers. Took me a few days, but it's there now.
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Day 62.
I totally upgraded my pulverizer and furnace. Had a bit of work to do, but now I have 3 of each and they are upgraded. I had a backlog of ore. since I build more biogenerator.
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Day 63:
Made a botania hopperhock. This allows you to gather the ressource around your base. Most importantly, the drop from the automated apothecary and rune altar.

Day 64:
Here is a little trick for you guys. When you are programming complex autocrafting recipes and you don't have the result yet, you can use a dummy item instead, order it, and correct your recipes afterward.

Yes, I'm not sure I need to mass product botania runes. But if I have to i'll have the infrastructure now. It's an autonomous activator with a botania wand aiming at the altar.
Day 65:
These air runes lead me to the jaded amaranthus. Coupled with a horn in another autonomous activator and the hopper hock, I'll have an industrial supply of mystical flowers in no time.
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Day 66:
Travelers wings ... I got them :D. Jumping on the platform from the ground is a nice thing. Also it's easier to navigate in the the different level of the base now. Thanks for the tip.

Any suggestions ? Questions ? I'll be glad to answer your comments guys :)
 

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Lumaceon

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Jul 23, 2014
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Not Kansas
My gosh...you had a quarry in 90 minutes. I almost never have a quarry until something like 10-20 hours have passed. Cool journal, I'll be watching this. Speedruns have always been kinda fun to watch in my opinion. They get right to the point. Also, if you do find yourself needing to explore the world for a silverwood tree or something, the sprint assist on the modular powersuit pants stacks with the sojourners sash (or at least it seemed to). If you turn the sprint assist all the way up and add uphill step-assist, the biggest thing slowing you down will be how fast the world can generate around you. And trees. Watch out for those.
 

Iluvalar

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Every minecraft day last 10 minutes. I spent the night of Day 4 mining underground, and 2 nights in the episode 4 trying to get my first bit of enderpearl. Once in a while I also happen to go to bed a tad late. So give 11 minutes per day and you have a pretty good metric.

@lumeceon I play direwolf20 pack so I can morph and fly already. And my computer is not the faster to generate new chunks. The powersuit tend to cost too much ressources for me. I need to go mine or wait for my quarry to do more job first.

I'd suggest the EIO staff of traveler if you want to get more speed. Also, I'm looking at thaumcraft boots... I'm just not there yet in the research tree.
 

Iluvalar

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Episode 8: A long trip into uncertainty.
Day 67 :

I can only run 6 bio generator from my farm. I'm not even sure it's better then charcoal. I think I have a plan, but it's a very long one...

I built some enderpouch and a full steel tico pick axe today. I need to go yet another time in the nether for quartz, so I figured I could start gathering the cobalt and ardite I find in my way.

Day 68 :
I automated the endoflame production completely, this is the first step to botania mass production of power. But I am still so far from my goal...
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Day 73:

I've been researching into thaumcraft. And started a thaumcraft room on my B2 level. I'm also still flying around the base to find the needed nodes. Maybe I should dive deeper into thaumcraft right now and move the nodes in my base. But it gonna be for another time...
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Day 76:
Still searching for nodes... I need a lot of ordo and aqua...

Day 77:
Automated alchemy. Let's make some nitor and balanced shards...
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Day 78:
using a wand of equal trade in a autonomous activator, I automated the production of living wood and living rock. I can now mass produce them.
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Day 81:
I got a power shortage at home in real life. I lost my sojourner sash that i'll need to recraft. At least, my autorune crafting became handy for that. I will also notice later that my bioreactor got turned off for some reason... Struggling to debug the issue with the AE2 system offline due to lack of power (in game this time)...

Day 83:
Now that I have automated the crafting of spreader I can lay down the base of my botania powerfarm. I'm still limited by fuel. I have quite a lot of coal in my AE system, but it's not infinite and I need to burn a fuel inside the farm in order to produce the mana petal to make it even bigger.

Here it is at a early stage.. let me explain. The endoflames have a range of 4x4x4 to grab their fuel. This mean that by dropping the fuel at the center, I'll be able to have a 7x7x3 wall as full as possible with endoflammes. 4 layer of endoflams, 3 layers of dirt. Burning an enormous amount of fuel in no time.

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Day 87:
Take a deep breath this one is tricky. The furnace burn chiseled sandstone which contain preacantio. The first centrifuge break it down into potentia and vaccuos. Some of the potentia go into the alchemical construct and the remaining is centrifuged again to be turned into ordo and ignis. The ignis also go into the alchemy.

Having ignis, potentia and perditio (from cobblestones) I can turn each coal into alumentum which worth 4x as much energy. I plan to make a industrial sized build of this. But for now I don't have the nodes so this will do for an experiment. I'm multiplying my power (even if that require pulverizing quite a bit of cobblestone in sand)
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-------
As you might already figured, I am not gonna use bigreactor because it's OP. I also made a few speedruns with dupe bugs. I feel both are the same thing. Something too good kill the fun of everything else.

I plan to use another source of power nobody heard about yet. (This is why at this point everyone should be wonder where the hell I'm heading in this episode) And if it's not working as expected. I'll just have to delete this world and start a new one.
 
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Iluvalar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Episode 9 : Changing plans quickly.
Day 93:

This is not gonna work. Because the centrifuge only have 50% chance to produce what I want, I'll need 72 sand to produce 1 alumentum. I was expecting to pulverize some sand.. but that many for 1 alumentum is too much. Did anyone ever managed to do something relevant with alumentum ? I could produce 2 alumentum with 5.1 coal and then conjure 6 coal out of it in botania. But at this point it's not enough for the size of the system. Unless someone know a better source of potentia or preacantio ?

Day 96:
I made manasteel today. I have a new plan for the power source. It gonna be similar to the one in my other post but not quite.
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Day 98:
Opened the portal to alfheim. Traded a bit with the elves. Quite nice people...
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Day 99:
The conjuration catalyst. providing I have a fuel, I can now produce neitherhack, redstone, glow stone and quartz.
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Day 103:
After thinking about building a massive lava generator on the 3rd floor, I decided it would be safer on B2 lol. I convert the nearly free netherhack into lava, convert tin into empty cell and make lava cells via cyclic assemblers with it.

Since lava cells are a furnace fuel. I can send it into the botania flowers and produce yet more neitherhack or another product with it. The biggest choke point seem to be the magmacrucibles right now. I burn about 50% of the lava just to maintain it. So each crucible produce roughly 200RF/t. I think it's not bad and I'll be able to scale up the whole project. Only problem is that it consume a bit of tin. But each lava cell seem able to make 64 neitherhack or so. So I produce 96 bucket worth of lava for each tin ingot I throw in this. And I'm just starting.

I've been conjuring a lot of quartz I don't need to travel to the nether anymore. I can make a lot more pattern for autocrafting.
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Day 109:
I took a little pause on my main build in order to set up an enderquarry. My first quarry was about to end his 64x64 bit of terrain. I made an auto enchanter to make the magical wood. I'm still very low on power. Only 500RF/t to invest in the quarry from the biogenerators.
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Day 110:
I made 2 more magmacrucible. Sending all the energy to botania, I'm creating redstones with surplus.
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Day 110:
I made 1 dominant augment spark and 1 recessive augment spark. The spreaders where just not fast enough to keep up with the mana i'm passively generating. My tin is going down quickly, but I have plans for this don't worry.
 
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