What Items Do You Think Players Under-Use?

[Yusunoha]

scaffolding from IC2. they are great for really early game when you don't have any flying tools or armor yet. they are really cheap to make, give you a bunch of them, you can easily stack them and also take them down with just 1 hit.
also they are a good early fuel source if you're really set on saving coal.

 

[Katrinya]

For me, after watching lots of Let's Plays and an unhealthy amount of Yogscast, it's Factorization's Pocket Crafting Table. I don't understand why no one else seems to use it. It makes the Minium Stone (and, by extension, the current incarnation of EE3) almost entirely superfluous; it doesn't need a spot in your hotbar; and it's so easy to build you can skip the Crafting Table and have one while you're still punching trees.

I would argue that the crafting table attachment from Modular Powersuits outdoes both the minium stone and the pocket crafting table. Now I have a pickaxe, shovel, axe and crafting table all in one tool! *sings an ode to MPS*

Of course, MPS' crafting attachment isn't available as early as the PCT, but it's not absurdly expensive or anything. You should be able to snag one fairly early in the game.

 

[jumpfight5]

Can anyone say "Steam Engine"?
Nope, not from RC, from TE. This engine, when supplied with water, will output 2 mj/t, and it's a great first/second engine! It'll use normal burn-stuff, and it's so cheap to make. This was the second engine I made and it set me up all the way to my first 36 HP boiler by making the coal I'd have to stock up before I start the boiler (with a Stirling engine).

 

[Lambert2191]

Can anyone say "Steam Engine"?
Nope, not from RC, from TE. This engine, when supplied with water, will output 2 mj/t, and it's a great first/second engine! It'll use normal burn-stuff, and it's so cheap to make. This was the second engine I made and it set me up all the way to my first 36 HP boiler by making the coal I'd have to stock up before I start the boiler (with a Stirling engine).

Thats the first engine I make. A reduced output is soooo worth the "non explodeeness" of it

 

[jumpfight5]

You only need 4 of them to run a Quarry at the "accepted" 8 mj/t, and you can automate the fueling with the coal you get and a Coal Coke oven (which seems like it'd be underused, but it's used quite often in earlygame).

 

[Lambert2191]

I had a setup whereby I had 3 of them adjacent to the quarry, and an aqueous accumulator beneath feeding water, it would keep itself running almost indefinitely as the quarry would output coal straight into them.

 

[jumpfight5]

It could do coal and only coal?

 

[Lambert2191]

well if the inventory of coal goes empty, then it will input cobble or whatever, but that rarely happens.

 

[Eunomiac]

Wow, this is the best thread ever (as OP, am I allowed to say that? )

Thank you, everybody: I've already learned a ton of things, like how much better the Pocket Crafting Table is with the keyboard shortcuts---I only ever used 'x' (to clear the crafting area) and 'b' key (to distribute items evenly---absurdly useful). Didn't even know there was a distribution/rotate function, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm excited.

I really must upgrade from DW20 to Ultimate so I can enjoy Minefactory Reloaded --- in my old Tekkit world, I used it to set up a brilliant automated enchanter cow farm that also stored XP in Brains-In-A-Jar. And then there's Applied Energistics, whose wiki I'm still unable to visit without experiencing multiple nerdgasms and lost time. I'm just afraid my beautiful floating-glass-torus-train-station base that I just finished will implode with the transition

Scaffolds were mentioned, and yeah -- they're fantastic. They permanently occupy the rightmost slot on my hotbar.

One thing I only caught onto recently was how useful MystCraft is, almost immediately, as a fast-travel solution: multiple Overworld Linking Books created at different places can be taken into the Nether to form a Nether transport hub (full disclosure, I haven't actually tried this, but I'm 99% sure it does work this way). It's a great way to get to those distant Mystcraft villages, or to vanilla biomes that can be hard to find with ExtraBiomes in play. (I have played MystCraft, both before and after the v10 overhaul, and have never once found a single Crystal or Crystal Page, so I know nothing about portals.)

ThaumCraft's Wand of Equal Trade is my favorite utility wand---great for aesthetically-focused people who hate those annoying bits of dirt or stone interrupting an otherwise smooth wall, or who want to convert a building to another material, or who want to quickly bring down a wall by converting it to Sand, or a hundred other uses.

The absolute best weapon for my money I've found in the DW20 pack is TC's Wand of Lightning. It's cheap to make; has great range and pinpoint accuracy (great from a jetpack, awesome as a Wisp-killer); does decent damage (and, with limited enchantment options on wands, it's easy to get Potency upgrades); has knockback; infinite ammo (durability aside); splash damage... and, let's not forget, you're raining lightning bolts from a friggin' JETPACK. I know there are more powerful weapons out there, but give this a go if you haven't already---it's the combination of these characteristics that makes it so very good.

I had a setup whereby I had 3 of them adjacent to the quarry, and an aqueous accumulator beneath feeding water, it would keep itself running almost indefinitely as the quarry would output coal straight into them.

For my Quarries, as with virtually any other MJ-using device, it's all about the Redstone Energy Cells. 600,000 MJ stored losslessly (equals a bucket of Fuel in a Combustion Engine), outputing at---this totally blows my mind---100 MJ/tick. I believe that's the fastest possible MJ output speed by far. (You should see what one of these things can do when attached to a Filler! Your framerate will drop, and when it comes back there'll be a house in front of you.) Not only that, they're controllable with a redstone current, relatively cheap to mass-produce (1 diamond, plus stuff you won't care about if you're using Quarries), and---the best part (well, second best, after output speed)---they're completely portable. As in, plop one down, use 60,000 MJ, pick it up with a wrench, take it elsewhere and plop it down again, and it still has 540,000 MJ ready to go. Finally, they can be simultaneously charged by your bank of engines, so that when they do deplete, your Quarries continue to run as if they were being powered by the engines alone.

 

[OmegaJasam]

I'd have to say golems in general. Most of the benifits of a router/turtle/gate system in one quickly deployable pipe free package.

To the inverse the nano-saber seems oddly over-used. when you have the mutlple hitting zepher sword, wand of lightning and hunters handgun it seems strange to use a sword which only use is against IC2 armour.

Also worth noting thats not necessarily 600MJ lossless if you used conduits to store ore move it's output.
I think you can also get the full output per face? But yeah, they're scary good.

 

[KirinDave]

I'd have to say golems in general. Most of the benifits of a router/turtle/gate system in one quickly deployable pipe free package.

To the inverse the nano-saber seems oddly over-used. when you have the mutlple hitting zepher sword, wand of lightning and hunters handgun it seems strange to use a sword which only use is against IC2 armour.

It drops the wither really fast. It's one of the best tools for that.

 

[YX33A]

Let see, under used gems... Well, there is(in ultimate, anyway) pretty much anything from MineFactory Reloaded, but I can not advocate usage of the Harvester enough for tree farms. I mean, no offense, guys, but Steve's Carts are over-priced for a tree farm in my opinion. Easier to scale up, I suppose, just add more tracks and maybe storage for your cart, but it's not for me, and I believe people should look into MFR for easy to set up, and very efficient tree farms. Using the Fertilizer means you can get a lot of wood very fast, and if you have any of MFR's animal farming stuff set up, you can set up sewage collectors and then turn the sewage into Industrial Fertilizer. If you use a Harvester, you get Sludge, which can produce many useful things.(dirt for getting clay, quicksand for mob farms, soul sand for oil, cracked sand for saltpeter and a good can of fuel)

Steve's Carts is good, yes, but MFR has more benefits for using it, and lets face it, is a lot cheaper, requiring zero diamonds. A bit of gold yes, and rubber/stone, and the odd iron part for machines, but it's worth using.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Nukes!

 

[glepet1962]

Finally, RedPower's new Kinetic Generator plus a Wind Turbine solves all your Blulectric needs, while being so gorgeous to look at you'll feel like a monkey meeting the Monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's so absurdly pretty I don't even care that I'm only using mine to power a pair of Sorting Machines

I'm with you there. I had 5 or 6 up on the hill next to my tower and they were powering a sorting machine and furnace.

Omniwrench - I never leave home without it.

 

[Lambert2191]

For my Quarries, as with virtually any other MJ-using device, it's all about the Redstone Energy Cells. 600,000 MJ stored losslessly (equals a bucket of Fuel in a Combustion Engine), outputing at---this totally blows my mind---100 MJ/tick.

I use a battery of 10-12 Magmatic Engines (40-48MJ). 48MJT is the MAXIMUM speed a quarry can run. Giving it 100mjt does sweet FA.

 

[mrkite]

"Underused" simply because it's new to the ultimate pack, the Universal Charger from Power Converters is amazing. It works as both a charge pad (stand on it and recharge your armor and tools), and a remote recharging system. Put an ender chest next to it, and it will automatically recharge all items in the chest.

 

[jumpfight5]

For my Quarries, as with virtually any other MJ-using device, it's all about the Redstone Energy Cells. 600,000 MJ stored losslessly (equals a bucket of Fuel in a Combustion Engine), outputing at---this totally blows my mind---100 MJ/tick.

Yes, everybody loves REC's, but they're not underused at all. I'd consider them overused, the only way to store any MJ.
What I don't see used very much is Refined Stone. Cook Cobblestone twice in a furnace, and out comes a nice looking material that's easy to break, build with, and can be used to make Stone Wafers, a key component in many RP2 Logic devices. I know a lot of people like the Stone Slab, and this is just it. Except it costs energy instead of more stone slabs, and you only need to place one instead of two.

 

[Lambert2191]

Yes, everybody loves REC's, but they're not underused at all. I'd consider them overused, the only way to store any MJ.
What I don't see used very much is Refined Stone. Cook Cobblestone twice in a furnace, and out comes a nice looking material that's easy to break, build with, and can be used to make Stone Wafers, a key component in many RP2 Logic devices. I know a lot of people like the Stone Slab, and this is just it. Except it costs energy instead of more stone slabs, and you only need to place one instead of two.

you can place those...?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?

 

[brujon]

It drops the wither really fast. It's one of the best tools for that.

Not a chance in hell, vanilla Diamond Sword with Smite V blows the nanosaber out of the water against the wither. it will deal between 10 and 20 hearts per hit against the Wither, while the Nanosword will only ever deal 10 hearts per hit. On average, you're killing the Wither 50% faster. On the same vein, a Sharpness V sword will always deal more damage than a Nanosaber against every mob, so for utility sword fighting, you're better off with a Diamond Sword with good enchants than you are with the Nanosaber. Repairing it is trivial with the Uncrafting Table/Anvil, and if it's Unbreaking III, not like you're going to have to repair it often. Sword of the Zephyr deals equivalent damage to Diamond, and Repair is applicable to it without the use of exploits, so if you go with that, you'll never need another sword ever again for utility (except maybe fighting in the Nether, so as to not aggro every pigmen).

With that, i don't see any reason for using a Nanosaber over enchanted weapons. Getting a good enchant is not that hard, and if you are looking for a dedicated Wither slaying blade, you can't get better than Smite V. 50% faster kills on average against a Nanosaber is pretty awesome. Since the Wither has 150 hearts, it's 10 hits on average to kill one on Normal difficulty, if you manage to avoid the Wither effect and not let him heal. I'd use a Wand over a bow for the first half of the fight, if you're not fighting him in a contained MFFS space, since the knockback is constant. I still have to try if the right click function can reflect the Wither Skulls, if it can, then it really is the perfect wither killing tool.


I second Lambert's WTF: You can place Stone Wafers in the world? Because that's what you get by cooking smooth stone in a furnace if you have RP2 installed.

 

[whythisname]

btw, guys MFR farms have a pretty small harvesting area right now, but in the future there will be upgrades that will allow them to maintain larger areas. So in the future they'll probably measure up to Steve's Carts and other farms quite easily (assuming you can provide enough resources to run such a farm).

Also, I don't know how many people use the MFR Sludge Furnace, but I quite like it. It basically burns sludge to create quicksand, soul sand, dirt, sand, clay, cracked sand and maybe some other stuff. So it's quite useful for those blocks/materials common in specific biomes which might be hard to get if you can't find those biomes (or they're very far away with no easy way to get there quickly). Obviously it also makes some stuff renewable which normally isn't renewable (like soul sand and quicksand).