Hiatus

I haven't been feeling very creative with Minecraft lately...it could be boredom or just simply not my days. For now, my progress here on Minecraft FTB will be on a hiatus. I don't know when I'll be back. In the meantime, I'm enjoying games such as Transistor and World of Warcraft (go Worgens!).

FTB Expert Mode Guide

I’ve been occupied by work a lot lately and then there were errands I had to do, but anyways, I’m going to write what I discovered at work last week: An expert mode guide! It was so helpful and I was especially glad to see that my own trial and error process was following this guide exactly.

Guide Link

There are eight ages of progression I’ve identified that are related to the path I want to take—that is the technology path—they are as follows:

• Stone
• Smeltery
• Steel
• Nuclear
• Automation
• AE2
• Dimlet
• Creative

That is in the order of advancement. The last age, creative, is where I gain the technology that basically matches the creative mode I suppose. I’ve identified myself to be in the steel age right now.

At any rate, I’m very excited to actually have some sense of direction in what I’m doing. I'm eager to get to work now!

According to this guide, it seems that nuclear generation and the production of iridium is the next step; however, I need to first focus on the list of machines it suggested and making a lot more watermills for power generation in the meantime.

Update from the Last Few Days

The three story laboratory in its completed state.

I finally finished the laboratory. I think this was one of my biggest projects I’ve had yet so far. There’s a lot of space inside for testing apparatus. The microchip facility is in the basement and is pretty much constructed. I imagine the lab will be good for a long while hopefully—meaning, I won’t need to expand it for some time.

The electronics factory is now called the electronic components factory as it is used to make wires, circuits, batteries, and such. It’s fully operational too. It was a bit difficult in the beginning as I had trouble figuring out the machinery layout. The problem was where the buildcraft pipes wasn’t inserting the items into the autocrafters. Moments later and some internet research, it turned out that I needed hook up hoppers to the autocrafters in order to transfer the items from pipes. In the meantime, I built another factory for electric engines; I suspect I’ll be using them a lot later.

Some agricultural areas were expanded. A chicken coop producing, eggs, meat, and feathers has been built. I think I’ll make an apiary or two soon.

The rock crusher has been constructed and fully operational.

The rail factory is operational as well. In there, explosives, tracks, and carts are made. I also hooked it up to the power grid.

My main concerns involve energy and rubber.

The water power plant is starting to strain. I’ve had three crises where I nearly ran out of power. This is dangerous because some areas of my town are only lit by a powered lantern—once the power goes out, monsters will plague my streets. All of my power generation options seem so far out of there and expensive. Nonetheless, I think the steam boiler is my best option.

Rubber, well, as my electrical systems develop, more and more wires and circuits are used. I only have a small reserve of raw rubber. I might need to figure out a good place to start rubber farms soon.

Progression

The new metalworks and construction shop. A couple automatic miners can be seen sitting in the yard off the side of the metalworks too.

I spent most of my time today making a metalworks, construction shop, stone smelter, and an electronics factory. I can really feel myself advancing. These new buildings will help my progression by a lot.

The electronics factory isn’t really operational yet, but the basic layout is already placed. What stopped me was the fact I needed redstone engines.

This leads me to the next thing I plan to for the next time I play: Expanding the laboratory and moving the workshop there while also developing and microchip facility. The reasons for this is because the workshop is usually a place I go to for creating newer tech. Then as they become common, specialized buildings such as factories are erected—like the electronics factory. I believe it’ll fit best in the lab.

The windmill and smeltery is slowly becoming abandoned as I move to the bigger, better buildings.

The watermill power plant is sustaining my new development well.

I’ve also been getting a ton of iron and a few diamonds from those automatic miners. They have made a great investment to me.

My main goal now is the pave the path to the Immersive Engineering’s excavator. The rock crusher makes that possible. I just need to construct a facility for the industrial squeezer, refinery, and diesel generator. But first, the lab will have my attention.

Greener Pastures

I could not believe my eyes when I saw this. If I recall correctly, I got a total of 8 diamonds from that ore vein hanging over the pool of lava.

In preparation for the upcoming goals, I decided to made a bunch of improvements and complete a rock crusher to progress to higher tier machinery.

The automatic miners in reality are very slow. The rock crusher needed diamonds to be crafted and miners only yielded some. I decided to invest another trip down with the tunnel bore in hopes of finding more iron and diamonds—that turned out to be a lucky success as I found a motherlode of diamonds in a lava cavern not far off the newly drilled tunnel.

I needed the rock crusher to make light engineering blocks for the industrial squeezer and diesel generator.

In the meantime, my settlement is in chaos. Buildings are cluttered close to each other because when I started out, this was to combat threatening monsters lurking around at night. But the place is much more secure now, so that’s the least of my worries. On top of that, I designed most of the buildings to accommodate the current technology I built them for, but the newer technology makes everything look messier or out of place.

I’ve tried a few strategies to organize them, but they all suck. It just seems that I need to move on from my original starting area and to the outer area—where everything is untouched and waiting to be utilized.

I’ll probably do this by slowly abandoning the old area and build newer, more modern facilities outward. The first buildings in the old area will be most likely be combined with the greenhouse to make the Agricultural Research Center (ARC) I’ve been wanting for a while. The workshop will be moved to the lab. An electronics factory and metalworks is definitely on my list as well.

Improvements

My settlement so far.

In preparation for the upcoming goals, I decided to made a bunch of improvements and complete the constructions of the unfinished buildings.

I also wanted to test those powered lanterns—which guaranteed to repel enemies in a 35 block radius around it—by building them in the cattle and sheep pastures. It worked really well! A couple nights passed and no enemies spawned on the grounds.

One thing got me thinking however, was how I need to start pushing now. I feel like I’m hitting a plateau. Maybe I’m afraid of expending resources on expensive projects that might not work out. Nonetheless, I should focus on a simple miner machines to speed up the ore collection or stick to the tunnel bore.

Furthermore, during my wiki research, I discovered the steam boiler. I can power it with coal and it definitely looked promising. It might be a good idea to build one if the water mill plant isn’t enough for those miners.

Automation Out of Reach

The tunnels I picked off along the sides of the main tunnel. The tunnel bore is hard at work at the end of the tunnel where it’s darker (too dark to be seen here).

I made the railroad factory and a small workshop for making industrial TNT. A few more tunnels were drilled for ores. I found it effective to also pickaxe several short tunnels off the main tunnel to check for ores as shown in the picture above. From what I see, a typical drilling delivers about 40 to 60 iron ores per trip.

Once I started research on the harvester and planter required to automate my farms, it got very complicated. I attempted a flowchart to help clarify what I needed, but it got so extensive that I decided against it. There was a certain machine, however, that proved—and I just knew—that these automation machines are far, far out of my reach at this current time: The magma crucible. Again, I need the nether bricks to complete it; which I have not found yet.

Besides, from the looks of it, I will need a network of ore processing, crafting, smelting, compressing, transporting—heck, an entire industry of factories to obtain just one automated machine.

Modern conveniences make our lives so easy but I seriously had no idea they are theoretically difficult to get. It makes me appreciate them more in real life.

So anyway, I’m going to focus on enabling myself to develop ore processing and mining machinery. However, I’ll first need a way to power them. The windmill won’t be enough. I already started work on the watermill power plant, but I know that won’t be enough too. Solar panels are impossible to gain obviously. So I have two energy options I’m aware of: Coal and oil.

Thankfully in the world of Minecraft, no skies will get polluted.

At any rate, I’ll need microchips…a lot of them; so that watermill will power mainly the research facility for them. I’ll need a ton of iron too, for making that oil/biodiesel generator and the systems that will go with it.

Windmill

The windmill now under construction!

I haven’t been doing a good job keeping up at these entries. Despite that, I’ve made a lot of progress in the past few days. I expanded the workshop, constructed the metal former, and the windmill is finally built.

The power it produces is very small, but it’s a renewable and constant source of energy. I think it’s sufficient for now.

My settlement is growing, crammed, and disorganized. I believe the need to specialize the industries is becoming an important need.

I envision that railroads will prove to be in wide use in the future, so a rail factory would be nice. I’m already in the process of building a barn to manage a wheat farm, cattle ranch, and someday, a sheep ranch. The research facility for general tech will be expanded to house microchip assembly manufacturing. And finally, I’m going to make a goal to build a watermill power plant to power various machines I will be using.

Besides all this, once I move the railroad machines out of the workshop and into that factory, I plan to use it for the next big thing: Modern machinery.

This is my plan: To get automation for the basic industries so I can focus with ease on the upper tier industries. This means I will first automate the wheat, then timber, then ores.

Immersive engineering has a good low tech ore excavator, but it expensive in terms of iron required to build and the energy needed to run it—I might explore my options a bit before committing to it.

Getting an automated hemp farm is something I’m considering as well.

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!