Two Major Investments

The tunnel bore doing its work.

Ok, this round gave me great progress thanks to the two biggest investments I made: The tunnel bore machine and the lumber axe. Both of these required a massive amount of resources. It was totally worth it however.

The tunnel bore sucked up a lot of iron to make the machine itself and the railroad tracks it needed to operate on. It turned out to be a highly productive investment as it delivered a ton of stone, iron, coal, and even diamonds in return.

The lumber axe is a completely different story. I wanted this tool because it cuts down entire trees by simply chopping one block of the tree compared to my old axe—which needed to cut each individual block one at a time.

First I needed the compressor to make a special kind of steel plates, and that machine needed a microchip that is made in an assembly table powered by lasers. Making that table and laser took all ten diamonds I got from my mining efforts. After I had the compressor, I could make the forge with the plates. This forge allowed me to make the expensive lumber axe. All of this took all my diamonds and a large amount of steel to accomplish. Despite that, I can now level forests in no time.

I personally feel both were good investments because now I I’m seeing a massive increase in stone and wood stocks. This will speed up all construction in my settlement and the mines below.

My next goal is to move into the industrial age. I need a reliable supply of energy and a ton of iron to make the enormous machines that will forever reshape the landscape.

The first step will be the windmill. I’ll need a metal former for that.

Seed Research

The crops in the greenhouse I did my crossbreeding with.

I improved a lot of the unfinished buildings I had around here and started work on the blast furnace. It seemed that getting gunpowder and pearls are a difficult task, but I’m managing.

Most of my time was done in agricultural research and getting to the Nether.

The reason why I did extensive agricultural research is because I wanted the presser to make cooking oil badly. My life would have been easier if I could just use a juicer, but there were no olives or sunflowers at my disposal.

It was mainly crossbreeding different flowers and crops. There were a lot of bonemeal on hand, so it wasn’t long before I got the seeds I needed to make the presser. Still hard though. The seeds for the flowers were the most tedious. I had to venture out into the world to a flower field I discovered in my last adventure.

It wasn’t there. Disappointing! However, I stopped by at a village on my way back and found they had the seeds in their greenhouse there. I was so glad to see that! Once I had the blue orchid seeds, everything else fell in place.

I made a flowchart of all the seeds I had to crossbreed. Perhaps I’ll hold this here for future reference. The orange boxes mean I already had those seeds at the start of the game from foraging the forest grasses while the blue boxes are the seeds I needed to make the presser.

Anyway, I finally made that portal to the Nether too. I housed it in a general research building—I intend to use this building to research various things I’m unfamiliar with before putting it to widespread use.

It turns out that the Nether doesn’t really supply me with enough iron I had hoped for. To add to that, it’s more dangerous than it was compared to Tekkit! There’s flaming bats, spiders, wood that doesn’t burn, skeletons that spawn from graves, and so on.

I think I’m going to resort back to my mines in the overworld. I might consider an investment in the tunnel bore machine. I really need iron.

Blast Furnace

I’m cutting down trees like crazy.

I finally got railroad tracks and put them to use. A mineshaft with an elevator track down was partially built too. It feels great to have some good transportation now. I’m getting all sorts of ideas for future constructions involving those tracks such as subways between facilities.

Aside from that, the only other things I did was chop down trees for wood, mined, built a greenhouse for agricultural research, and improved my house.

In the meantime, I found out that I can get steel before the Nether after all! I just need one of the three: glue, enderpearl, or TNT with sand and clay—I can’t get to the Nether without flint and steel anyway, that’s how I found out the blast furnace can be made without the Nether stuff.

The next time I play, I hope to expand my smeltery, build a blast furnace, finish the mineshaft, and make a way to the Nether for its plentiful ores.

Clearer Idea

My workshop near the smeltery. This place will someday contain the machines.

After much running around and trial and error, I think I finally got a good idea of what to do. It seems that many of the technology I want require late game ingredients such as diamonds and items from the Nether. My best bet is the immersive engineering mod and most basic agricultural tech. This could change again, but this is my goal for now.

I’ll still need to find a way to the Nether since I need stuff to make the blast furnace—the lack of steel is a major roadblock right now.

In the meantime, immersive engineering uses a generator that runs off of biodiesel. There are two options: An industrial squeezer and a fermenter. The latter uses apples, cane, and melons to create fuel while the former uses wheat seeds, pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, and hemp seeds. I have three of latter requirements but only one of the former, so I’m going for the squeezer. It does not require steel to make, so that’s good.

My agricultural areas are becoming more refined. For example, I separated my first garden into different specialized fields for pumpkins, candleberries, wheat, and hemp. I might build a small garden for random food such as carrots, potatoes, berries, and so on. I still have a single cow ranch I haven’t done much to.

And now there’s that mine. I tend to mine in an unconventional manner than what most Minecraft players do. I won’t do any mining efforts unless I have a lot of wood to develop and build a mine with. So another goal is to build a good tree farm. The picture in the previous entry is a fine example of what I like to do with the wood in the mines.

On a side note, I built a good workshop that has a powered carpenter and a project table that records recipes (similar to the cyclic assembler). I still need one more tool for the railroad tracks however: the rolling machine. I just need to get around putting it together.

I also took some time exploring this world. I ventured pretty far out. If I had known how beautiful this world is, I would have done it a lot earlier. I think I found a place where I might build a vacation house someday too. Found cane too.

Roadblocks

The ravine I ran into during my mining efforts.

For the past few days I got to play Minecraft, I ran back and forth trying to figure out how to progress. So far I got my mine set up, expanded some agricultural land for wax and cattle, built a smeltery for tools, and have a functioning coke oven. 
The mine turned out to be successful as I found a good amount of iron and coal. There was even a ravine that I eventually ran into; this helps a lot. I found a little bit of redstone, lead, and silver.

But to be honest, I’m lost. It turns out that many of the technology are difficult to get and I’m not even sure where to begin.

Vaguely holding a grip on what I need to do, I’ll make a list of goals:
 - Get access to railroads—I have a carpenter machine that is necessary to construct what I need, but it needs power.
 - Build a windmill or generator to power the carpenter.
 - Find gold and silver.
 - Make a presser to make cooking oil for food.
 - Build a cotton farm.
 - And so on.

The more I go, the more I’ll get a better idea of what to do. For now, this will do.

FTB Frontier

This world had reefs and really tall trees.

Once FTB started up and a new world of Epsilon was created, as usual, the game placed me in a sandy area next to a vast ocean. It always left me with the impression I was a man lost at sea from civilization. Perhaps if Minecraft had a backstory, it would involve a person who is a victim of a horrible boating accident.

Anyway, my first impression of this world was this new un-vanilla-like scenery. In the ocean, there was a reef. Looking to the vast land in front of me, there were many hills and colorful trees. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy settling in. Exploring this foreign world is going to be quite a feat.

I wanted to set the difficulty on peaceful so I can just focus on the resources, but doing so removes the need for food to fill my hunger. I don’t want that, so I’ll have to face monsters in my quest for the grand vision.

There is an overwhelming amount of options and information to soak in. Once I found out how steep the climb is to gain technology, I ultimately decided to focus on the basics first: Build up the agricultural and mineral industries. No modern society can exist without those simple foundations.

On top of that, in the beginning of the game, I had a couple books in my inventory that seemed to contain useful information I might use later—unfortunately, it lost them in my early exploration efforts to a strange wind vortex that killed me and ate the books. I later found out it was called a hungry node and proceeded to destroy it because I didn’t like how it was destroying the surrounding terrain.

Nonetheless, after much research on the wiki, I decided on the tools and machines from the mod, Immersive Engineering, is a good start to go with once the foundations are set.

Right now, I’m just hunting down a good cavern to establish a mine. This land is surprisingly scarce with surface cavern entrances. The two I discovered were short and led to dead ends. I might have to drill down.

Wood is obviously not a problem. Livestock isn’t either; since there are several kinds nearby. Sand and rubber might be. Iron will be.

I set up my first shelter and farm in the same manner as I did on Delta. I also set up a grind stone to double my ore quantity. Furthermore, I was able to obtain many seeds from the wild grasses on the forest floor. One interesting crop was the industrial hemp. That’s how I discovered Immersive Engineering—though researching the uses for that hemp.

The climb so far is very slow, but I’m seeing visible progress. With a farm and a suitable house built I’m looking to build a ranch for cattle and a location to erect a mine. Above all, nothing else matters until I have that mine!