FTB Beyond Helpful guides

[Greboth 2,721]

I’m aware how complex a mod pack FTB Beyond is so I have been meaning to make this guide for a while.  I’m far from an expert at this pack so there is probably things I have missed but happy to add to this guide if/when people point out missing stuff.  This isn’t meant so much as tips and tricks of Beyond or a ‘Here is what I do’ guide (this is below).  So rather than specifically recommend use item x or item y, I’m going to try and just list things in groups so you can look up possibilities and then decide what you want to use.

 

To start with, lets get some basic information / terminology out the way
Tick (t) – The speed of a games engine, in Minecraft this is 20 times per second (or 0.05 seconds per tick)
RF – Redstone Flux – the most common unit of power in this pack
RF/t – The measure of how much power something produces or uses
GP – Grid Power – Used by Extra Utilities and is another unit of power but less commonly used than RF
EU – Energy Unit – Used by Industrial Craft and is another unit of power but again less common than RF
Multiblock / assembly – a machine made up of multiple blocks in a specific order / pattern to work.
Chunk - A chunk is Minecrafts world sectors that divide the world in to manageable pieces.  A chunk is 16x16 blocks and goes from bedrock to build limit (y255).  If you ever need to see the chunks, pressing F3+G will show chunk borders (F3+G will turn them off too)

 

Some other general tips for this mod pack
Crafting – When you open up your inventory or crafting menu, you have JEI/NEI on the side which is a searchable list of all items in all the mods.  Left clicking an item will tell you how to craft that item.  Most items can be crafted in a crafting bench like vanilla but others will require a special process or have multiple ways to craft / obtain them.  If the item requires a special process / machine, left clicking on the machine to the side of the crafting menu will tell you the recipe for that machine.  If you come across something and you don’t know what it is, right clicking on it in the JEI / NEI menu will tell you all the recipes that item is used in.  For example, left clicking red dye will show you that you need to craft it from a rose.  Right clicking the red dye will show you how to use it to make red glass, red clay, red wool etc.

 

Some mods you may want to make numerous items from or want to craft all the items for a multiblock.  If you search the JEI / NEI menu by typing @ followed by the mod name it will give you all the items for that mod.  For example; @EnderIO will give you all the blocks added by Ender IO, @Tinkers will give you all the items added by Tinkers Construct etc.

By default, press full stop will open up the map to show where you have been.  Double clicking on the map will allow you to set a waypoint wherever you click.  Alternatively if you want to place a waypoint where you currently are you can press comma to do so.  Once you set a waypoint you can teleport to it which allows you get around large distance easily.  Way points can be set in all dimensions (overworld, nether, mining world etc) but you can only teleport between waypoints in the dimension you’re currently in (there are ways to teleport between dimensions but more on that later).

 

I mentioned powered above, at some point during your play through of the Beyond mod pack you are going to need power.  How much power you want or need to generate will depend on what you’re doing and/or how often you’re doing it (generally the faster you want something done, the more power you’re going to need).  To give some indication or expectation, the first powered machines you’ll get in to don’t require much power at around 40 RF/t – 60 RF/t each.  If you aren’t producing enough power, most machines will still progress through their action but at much a much slower rate.  Depending on what mods you get in to by the end game, you may need a lot more power as certain machines can take millions of RF/t each.  It isn’t really something to worry about too much though as you get in to building more powerful machines you’ll also be in the position to generate more RF/t too.

 

There is a chunk loader in this mod pack which is very useful as it means you can keep your base powered, machines running etc. while you're away from your base or in a different dimension (especially useful if you have tools or armour powered by RF).  To chunk load an area, bring up your inventory and you will need to join a team (icon of 3 people).  Once you're in a team you can claim chunks and then chunk load them, open your inventory and on left hand side click claimed chunks (looks like a little map).  This opens up a map for you to claim chunks and/or chunk load them.  To claim them left click a chunk, to unclaim a chunk right click a claimed chunk.  To chunk load, shift left click a claimed chunk, to unchunk load shift right click a chunk.

 

So lets move on to some specifics;
Some of the below I have split in to early game and mid to late game.  To remove the opinion element from what is considered early, mid or late game I am basing early game on items obtainable by manual mining.  Mid to late game items are also obtainable by manual mining if you wanted but more reasonably these are achievable once you have some form of auto miners.

 

Rather than have a massive list in one thread, I've spoiler tagged everything both so you don't see thing you want to find out for yourself and to keep this a little shorter as you can open the sections you need.

 

Mining/tools

 

There is your standard wooden, stone, iron, gold and diamond tools as vanilla but you can also use a lot of the modded materials (sapphire, peridot, enori etc.) to make tools in the same way as vanilla.  You can also make other tools such as;

Tinkers Construct tools
Flux Infused tools
Actually Additions drill
Immersive Engineering drill
Draconic Evolution

 

Storage options

 

Standard chests are always an option but you’ll find you’ll quickly need more storage then they can provide.  The below offer various amounnts of storage and upgrade paths and some can be combined also.

Iron / Gold / Diamond upgraded chests
EnderIO's inventory panel
Extra Utilities Indexer
Barrels

Actually Additions Crates
Applied Energistics
Storage Drawers
Refined Storage
RFTools

 

Power Generation Early Game

 

Basically search for 'generator' or 'dynamo' and you should find most things, it just depends what fuel you want to run on but to name some;

Stirling generators
Furnace generators
Magmatic dynamo
Compression dynamo
Steam dynamo
Culinary generators
Solar Flux Reborn (lower tiers only)
Environmental tech solar panels (Lower tiers only)
Extreme Reactor (This is right on the border in my opinion of being in mid/late game but a small reactor is doable in the later part of the early game)

 

Power Generation Mid and Late game

 

Solar Flux Reborn (high tiers)

Environmental Tech solar panels (high tiers)
Extreme Reactor (Larger and more efficient reactors are possible mid/late game)
Nether Star generators
Draconic Evolution reactor

 

Ore Processing

 

This probably isn’t a comprehensive list and many can be used in combination to get 2, 3 or 4 ingots form each block of ore.

Standard vanilla furnace
Tinkers Smeltery
Arc Furnace
Alloy Smelter
Quartz Grindstone
Pulverizer
Redstone Furnace
Flux Anodizers
Blast Furnace

 

Auto mining / block generation

 

RFTools builder

 

RFTools dimensions
Environmental Tech void and resource miners
Quantum Quarry

 

 

Power Transfer

 

If you put machines in the block next to a generator most will power the machine directly which is great for early game.

Immersive Engineering wire connectors/wire
Ender IO conduits (3 tiers depending on how much RF/t you want to transfer)
Solar Flux reborn cables
Thermal Dynamics Flux ducts
Flux Networks (Transmits power wirelessly)
Actually Additions relays
RFTools linked powercells (transmits power wirelessly)
Dimensional transceiver (Transmits power wirelessly and can do items and power at the same time)

 

Item Transfer

 

Most machines have a configuration tab when you click on them (the cog / gear icon) which will allow you to set auto inputs / outputs.  This can be in to chests (or other storage) directly next to the machine or into conduits.

Ender IO conduits (can do fluids too depending which you craft)
Transfer Pipes
Embers pipes
Ender Storage Ender Chests (specifically Ender storage ones, not the vanilla ender chest) - this is for items
Ender Pouch - a backpack you keep your inventory that is linked to the ender storage ender chest
Ender Tank - Same as the ender chest but for liquids
Actually Additions relays
Dimensional transceiver (Transmits items wirelessly and can do items and power at the same time)
Refined Storage cables (though only really useful if you're using refined storage for your storage system)

 

Movement and teleporters

 

Gliders

Jet Packs
Slime boots
Wings of the bat
Actually Additions Rings
Draconic Evolution Armour (gives creative flight)
RFTools teleporters
Draconic Evolution Dislocator / Advanced dislocator

 

Mob farms / Mob killing

 

Powered spawners

Resturbed spawners
Drop of evil
Spikes
Mob grinding utilities / mob masher
Woot

 

[Greboth 2,721]

The above is more sign posting, pointing you in the direction of mods or items you can use to achieve specific things.  This post is more of a how to guide, specifically setting out ways to do thing.  I don't plan on covering everything in this mod pack, that would simply take too long but I do plan on covering early game things as this is where the mod pack is most confusing to new players.

 

Warning: These are specific how to guide, recommending what blocks / machines to use so if you want to find things out for yourself don't open these.

 

So that out the way, lets start with;

 

Early game power generation (specifically RF)

 

Option 1

 

Culinary generators - they produce RF from food items.  Each food item varies in how much total RF they produce as well as how much RF/t.  When you're in the menu of the culinary generator, hovering your mouse over food items in your inventory will tell you how much RF they will produce.

 

Using the below method you will be powering your culinary generators with bread which 1 bread in 1 culinary generator produces 24,000 RF at 40RF/t (this is from memory, I will check next time I'm in MC)

Pros
- Cheap to build
- Easy to power
- Easy to expand

- Relatively compact

- Easy to set up
- If you go through the whole process you'll probably get more food out of it than you put in

Cons
- Requires manual filling / changing (Certainly in the beginning)
- Manual farming required (again certainly in the beginning)

In the beginning, you can simply start with a culinary generator on top of a machine - I'd recomend a Redstone furnace in this first instance.  This works like a regular vanilla furnace except that it runs on RF rather than requiring fuel like charcoal or coal.  In the beginning, use whatever food items you want though following this guide it can quickly become self sustaining.



 This can be expanded to include chests (or other storage options) either side using the configuratoin menu of the redstone furnace to input from one side and output items to the other.



 You can also upgrade the Redstone furance by crafting an upgrade, the first upgrade is a 'Hardened upgrade' visible in the top left of my inventory.  Apply this to the furnace by holding it in your hand and right clicking the furnace.  A hardened furnace allows one augmentation, the next upgrades (reinforced, signalium and resonant) allow 2, 3 and 4 augments respectively.

For this process, I would recommend using the Trivection chamber augment - vissible in the top right of my inventory.  This basically doubles any and all food items cooked in the redstone furnace.  Put 1 potato in - get 2 baked potatoes out, put one raw steak in get 2 cooked steak out.



 This doubling also applies to flour, put 1 flour in get 2 bread out - but how to get flour.  The answer - put your wheat in to a Sag Mill.  This will use power too but will grind your 1 piece of wheat in to 2 flour, your redstone furnace with the trivection augment will cook each flour to 2 bread.  So from 1 wheat you will get 4 loaves of bread.  The bread can then go back in to the culinary generators to produce more RF.  I don't have the specific figures but you will get more RF out of the 4 loaves of bread than it took to make them - free power.

Like above, you can somewhat automate this using chests if you want.  In this picture, the sagmill auto inputs wheat from the left and outputs flour to the right.  The redstone furnace then auto inputs the wheat from the left and outputs the bread to the right.  You can also attach your power conduits of choice to carry RF off to any machine that requires it (left if Ender IO condiut, right is Lead flux conduit)

  

 

Option 2

 

Tree Resin - you can extract resin from trees, refine it and use it as fuel.

In the default set up, each dynamo produces up to 40Rf/t.

Pros
- Once built it is fully automatic
- Trees will continuously produce resin so you can't run out like you can with bread.
- It is upgradable and expandable to produce more power as you progress in the game
- You can manually top up with excess of other fuel sources (wood, coal etc.) if required

Cons
- It is slightly more complex than the culinary generators
- There are more machines so it takes a few more resources to set it up
- It takes up more space than the culinary generators
- It isn't so flexible as the culinary generators as you have to be near tree(s)

To prefix this -
- This only works by trees that produce resin which are; Birch, Spruce, Acacia and Jungle.  Birch and Acacia are probably the easiest to get hold of but Spruce produces 2x the amount of resin so if possible it is best to use spruce.  If you use oak or dark oak, you will get sap which while can be used for other thing doesn't work for this.
- The trees must also be naturally grown (you can bone meal then but this won't work on any logs you place in the world).
- The tree must have it's leaves
- The tree must have a dirt or grass block directly beneath it
- You will also need some fuel to start the process (1 piece of coal is enough) but then it is self sustaining (assuming you don't use too much power)

So on to actually building it - unfortunately there isn't really a build up to this, unlike to the culinary generator you can't build it piece by piece it is all or nothing.  To help with this, I've screenshot a set up - this isn't the most compact set up but it does show how everything goes.  I've also made a diagram with each piece labelled to make it easier.

The basic process is;
- An Arboreal Extractor placed on the ground and the base of a tree will draw resin out of the tree
- This resin gets put in to a Fractioning Still which seperates the resin in to Rosin and Tree oil
- The Rosin needs to be put in to a Steam dynamo to generate RF
- The Tree oil need to be put in a Compression dynamo to generate RF
- Both the Steam dynamo and Compression dynamo require water to run, this is collected by an Aqueous accumulator
- You run the power produced by both dynamo's back in to the Fractioning still

Similarly to the culinary generators, the RF required by the Fractitioning still to produce the Rosin and Tree oil is less than you get from the dynamo's burning the Rosin and tree oil.  As such you can take the excess RF to be used for whatever you need.

This is the basic set up



 
And from above


 
To make it a little easier to understand, here's a diagram with everything labelled


As above, you can build it more compact than this but once built, you will need to put your 1 piece of coal in the steam dynamo.  This will then produce enough RF to power the Fractioning still and then the process is self sustaining.

This is expandable also and you can place Arboral extractors on each side of a tree to extract resin faster.



This allows you then expand your power generation, I believe 4 Arboreal Extractors around 1 Spruce tree will produce enough Rosin for 4 Steam Dynamo's and 1 Compression dynamo.

 

This covers what I think is the easiest / best way to produce your first power in this modpack.

 

 

Generating more power

 

Extreme Reactors

This is not a thorough guide on how to build an extreme reactor.  I will show you how to build a reactor but due the different cooling options, the volume of cooling, number of rods, pattern of rods etc. all affecting the power output and efficiency then it would be nigh on impossible to cover it all.  There maybe a guide out there on how to get the most fuel efficiency or most power, I’ve not looked as it is so easy to experiment with yourself.

 

So, the basics…

At minimum you’ll need;
Reactor casing
Fuel rods
Rod controller
Fuel (Yellorium ingots)
1 x Access Port
1 x Controller
1 x Power Tap

 

The basic building;
Place a reactor casing on the floor
Place your fuel rods
Place a rod controller on top of each column of rods



 

The fuel rods can be one block tall or as tall you like, I'll be sticking to 2 high for the demonstration .

 

You can then expand this to include more rods and controllers on top.  I'm going for this layout for this demonstration but this is where the options come in - you could fill in the entire space with rods and controllers or have 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the same space.  The layout of these will be what effects your total power production and efficiency.



 

Place your controller, access port and power tap on one of the flat sides (they can’t be on the corners)



 

Then fill in all the remaining space with reactor casings.  You’ll know you have a valid reactor as, once all the blocks have been fillted in it should change texture to a multiblock assembly (top is incomplete, bottom is a complete reactor)



 



 

As the reactor can be expanded in any direction – longer, wider or taller than in my screenshots above.  The number of reactor casings, fuel roads and rod controllers you will need will obviously depend on how big you build your reactor.  Though there are a number of factors that will effect how much power the reactor puts out, it is generally the bigger the reactor the more power.

 

As with real life, reactors need to be cooled.  You can run without any coolant but it will produce more power with increased efficiency if cooled.  The simplest easiest way to cool the reactor in the first instance is usually just water as it is the easiest to get hold of in large enough quantities. Note - You don't have to fill the whole reactor with source blocks, you only need to fill the top most layer.



 

The absolute best cooling is gelid cryotheum (made with blizz powder) a close second best is resonant ender (made from ender pearls).  Other liquids can be used though so try what you’ve got but to give some indication of the efficiencies you can get, using the above reactor design;
With no cooling – 1,800 RF/t using 0.930 mb of fuel
Water cooling – 2,640 RF/t using 0.6865mb of fuel
Resonant ender cooling – 4,950 RF/t using 0.570 mb of fuel
Gelid Cryotherum cooling – 5,200 RF/t using 0.555 mb of fuel

 

So basically cool your reactor with whatever you have but it is worth working towards getting resonant ender or gelid cryotheum.

 

To use the reactor, click on the fuel port and fill it with yellorium – how much yellorium it takes depends on the size of number and size of the rods you built in your reactor.  The blue ingot is the spent fuel (cyanite) which you will need to empty out else the reactor will eventually stop. 



 

Click the controller to open the GUI, this will gives details of reactor – how much power it’s generating, how much fuel it’s using, how full the internal RF buffer is etc.  This is also where you can turn your reactor on and off using the buttons at the bottom.

 

Your power transfer then needs to be connected to the power tap – this can be directly with one of the many cables / conduits available or using wireless power transfer.  You can also click on one of the rod controllers to change the percentage of insertion of the fuel rods which means you can have some control over how much power the reactor produces.

 

However the best way is to...

 

Automate the reactor
As with so many things in this mod pack, it is possible to automate the reactor.  There are 2 parts to automating the reactor;

 

Fuel in and out
The easiest way to automate fuel in and spent fuel out is to add a second access port to your reactor.  By default the access port is set to input (yellow)  so you need to go in to the GUI and set it to output (blue)



 

[/url]2019-05-15_21.37.44 by Greboth, on Flickr

 

You can then attach your chosen item conduits / transfer cables / importers and exporters etc. to these ports.



 

Turning the reactor on/off
It is highly unlikely you will produce exactly the amount of power required to run your base and machines.  As such you’ll either be producing slightly more or slightly less RF than required.  This can also fluctuate depending on load (how many machines are you running concurrently) or other power generation such as solar panels only running during the day so your reactor doesn’t need to generate as much RF during the day but conversely more RF at night. 

 

You can do this manually – turn the reactor on or off accordingly, change the rod insertion percentage or you can leave the rod insertion at 100% and automate the reactor turning on and off as required.

 

The answer to how to do this is redstone ports – they have 2 abilities that we’re interested.  The first is that it will output a redstone signal when the internal RF buffer drops below a certain percentage.  The second is that the reactor can be turned on using a redstone signal.

To do this, you’ll need to craft 2 redstone ports and 2 redstone conduits.


Place the redstone ports next to each other on one of the faces of the reactor.  These can be on any of the sides but similar to the other parts the ports can’t be put in the corners



 

Click on one redstone port and set the options to output energy amount, click the button so it is 'active while below' then choose your chosen percentage (mine I’ve set to 80%) then click commit



 

Click on the other redstone port and set it to toggle reactor on off, change the button to set from signal and then click commit.



 

Connect the 2 redstone ports with the redstone conduit



 

Sit back and watch as your reactor automatically turns off when the buffer fills above your percentage and turns back on when it drops below.

 

A note to make here is that due to the resdiaul heat in the reactor, even after turning it off it will continue to generate RF - Therefore you don’t want to set the percentage to 100%.  Mine is set to 80% in my survival as, due to the size of the reactor, when it turns off the internal buffer continues to fill to about 95% full before it then starts draining.  As the percentage you use depends on the size of your reactor, you’ll need to play around a bit to get the correct figure for the size of the reactor you have built.

 

 

 

 

 

Mob Spawning / Mob Farms

 

 

While for other things I’ve said specifically use this or that, for mob farms I don’t think I can.  Instead I’m going to break it down in to 3 arears; Mob spawning, mob killing and then item collection.  The reason for this is that each can be combined with the others so it’s up to you what you want to build.

 Mob Spawning

Method 1 – Drop of Evil
Pros:
-It’s quite fast
-You can get all mob drops
-Cheap to make
-Requires no power
- Can easily be built in the Nether too if you want nether mob drops

Cons
-Not the best if you’re after specific drops
-Requires going to the nether before you can build it

Method:
When killing Wither Skeletons in Nether Fortresses there is a 10% chance to get a drop of evil.  If you place this drop of evil on grass, it will create cursed earth and spread and greatly increase mob spawning on the areas it has spread to.  Mob spawning rules are the same (light level lower than 7) so you’re best building a box to keep the mobs in and to stop the spread of the cursed earth.  This will also lower the light level inside the box to 0 so you will get lots of mobs spawning.

 Method 2: Resturbed Spawner
Pros:
-Only spawns the 1 type of mob that you want
-Can upgrade with speed upgrades
-Easy to get (dependant on the mob you want to spawn)

Cons
-Requires Grid power to run efficiently
-Requires going to the nether before you can make it
-Requires other machines (depending on what mob you want to spawn)

 Method:
If you find a spawner of any type you can break them however unlike vanilla, where the spawner just breaks, in this you will get a drop of a broken spawner.  It doesn’t matter what spawner it was as you can change it.  To change it, make an empty soul vial, find a mob you want to spawn and click on it with the soul vial which should capture the mob in the vial.  Put the vial and broken spawner in a soul binder, give it some xp and power, and the spawner will slowly change to that of the mob in the vial.  This is just a regular spawner at this point so to make a resturbed spawner, click on the spawner with a drop of evil.

Just give it some grid power and it doesn’t matter on light level either, mobs will spawn and you can then kill them?

Method 3: EnderIO Powered Spawners
Pros
-Guaranteed spawns
-Only Spawns 1 mob that you want
-Can be toggled on and off as you need it
-Can spawn any mob  (except bosses) in any dimension (i.e. Nether mobs in the overworld)

Cons
-Used RF Power to run
-Requires crafting using other machines

Method:
Similar to the resturbed spawner, if you find a spawner you can break it to get a broken spawner.  It doesn’t matter what the spawner is/was as you can change it.  To change it, make an empty soul vial, find a mob you want to spawn and click on it with the soul vial which should capture the mob in the vial.  Put the vial and broken spawner in a soul binder, give it some xp and power and the spawner will slowly change to that of the mob in the vial.  Then you need to combined this spawer with an empty powered spawner in an anvil.  Provide power to this spawner and it will spawn mobs irrespective of how close you are or light level.  You can change the spawner to require a redstone signal too so you can turn it on/off as you need.
 
Method 4: Woot farm
Pros
-You can spawn a lot of mobs very quickly
-You can even spawn boss mobs (Wither and Ender Dragon)
-Easy to change between mobs
-Easy to upgrade what you need (rates, beheading, xp, efficiency etc.)
-Doesn’t actually spawn the mobs so reduced lag

Cons
-Requires a lot of power and for boss mobs a lot of power
-Is a multiblock structure and require quite a lot of crafting especially for the higher tiers
-Requires some of the rarer and harder to obtain mob drops to build the higher tiers

Method:
Build the mob factory layout then you can right click on it to go through each tier to show you where you need to place each block.  Be aware though that, if you build a lower tier woot farm and upgrade it, there may be blocks you need to replace the capstones with.  You can also add the extender and multi port underneath the control block which will allow you to connect power and storage easily and underneath out of the way.  To actually use the woot farm, you need to catch a mob in a prism, similar to the soul vial, find a mob you want and click on it with an empty prism in hand.  Place an empty mob controller on the woot farm and then click on the controller with the prism.  This will use the prism but the mob will be added to the controller.  If you hold shift while looking at the mob factory grinder it will tell you information about the farm – how many mobs are being spawned, how often and for how much power.
 

 

 

Mob Killing

 

 

To kill the mobs that spawn you move them to something that kills them.  I’ll cover how to move mobs first then how to kill them.

 

Moving method 1: Vector plates
There are 3 levels of vector plates but to be honest the lowest Tier are good enough for most farms.  Simply, place on a block and the mob will be moved in the direction of the arrow.  You will be moved by them too but if you hold shift you can walk over them without being pushed.

Moving method 2: Mob fans
These are simply fans that push entities like mobs around.  The Fans are powered by a regular redstone signal so they can easily be toggled on/off if you need to get in the mob farm.  The fans can have upgrades applied too to change the width and height they push as well as how far they push.

Killing Method1: Spikes
There are iron spikes which being iron are too expensive to make.  Some drops require the player to kill the mob which iron spikes won’t give you.  This is where Diamond spikes come in as they give player only drops.

Killing Method 2: Mob grinder
The mob grinder is literally a grinder that kills mods so it’s aptly named.  It only runs on a redstone signal so you can power it by just placing a lever on it.  The grinder also has upgrades for looting, beheading etc.

Killing Method 3: A mechanical user with a sword in it
If you use a Tinkers Construct sword in it then you can apply modifiers to it as normal and/or make it unbreakable too.

Killing Method 4: RFTools Shield

Wither Cage – I’ll put this here too as it’s sort of a method for killing a mob
The Wither isn’t too hard to fight even in vanilla MC but it can be even easier in this mod pack.  If you have build the Environmental Tech ore miner, you should occasionally get Lonsdaleite shards.  These can be turned in to blocks which are unbreakable by anything except a player.  This means if you spawn a mob, even a wither inside of a Lonsdaleite cage they will never be able to escape.  Building a Wither cage makes it easy to spawn and kill Withers to get Wither Stars for whatever you need (like the highest tier Woot Farm).  The minimum number of Lonsdaleite blocks you need is 17 built in the structure below.

The Wither cage laid out, from left to right it is (counting air blocks too) layer 1, 3, 5 and 7


 So it looks like this when made properly.  The red wool around the bottom is where you will need to stand to kill the Wither.  You can replace the red wool with Lonsdaleite blocks too if you want as when the Wither explodes it will destroy them but I just replace them with cobblestone.




To spawn the Wither in, simply place the soul sand in the cage then place the skulls on top.  This will spawn the Wither in to the cage, you need to stand back until it explodes and it can shoot you from inside the cage.  After it has exploded though, stand underneath (as marked by the wool above) and the Wither shouldn’t be able to hit you but by looking up and swinging your sword you should be able to hit it.  The Wither has quite a lot of health so keep swinging and it should die.  Rinse and repeat until you have enough nether stars for what you need.

 As I said above, wen the Wither explodes it will damage the surrounding blocks but will be trapped so you can now point and laugh all you like at the poor trapped Wither


 

 

 

Mob drops collection

 

 

Method 1: Vacuum block
Simply what it says, a block that sucks drops towards it.  It will pull the blocks in to its own inventory so you’ll need to use some form of conduit to pull items out of it in to a chest / storage system.  The vacuum block will only pick up items and no XP.

Method 2: Ranged collector
Similar to the vacuum block, the ranged collector will collect drops within its range.  Again, like the Vacuum block it will only collect items and not XP.

Method 3: Absorption hopper
Again picks up drops within range but it also pick up xp orbs too.  XP will be converted to a liquid so you’ll need some form of liquid storage as well as item storage.

 There’s probably more that I don’t know about but this should be enough to get started with.
 

 

 

If you want a guide on anything specific, if I know how to do it I will make one

[Greboth 2,721]

Mining world

 

Aroma's mining world is flat world that has all the normal resources in that can mine without needing to destroy or strip mine your overworld.  Ore’s are distributed the same as the normal world so, for example, if you want diamond, you’ll still need to dig to the lower y levels.

To get to it you need to go through a portal similar to a nether portal.  To make this portal you need to make a mining multi tool and a minimum of 10 regular stone bricks.  Put the multitool and the stone bricks in a crafting table together and you get portal frame bricks.  With your portal bricks you can build a 2 wide 3 high portal (you don’t need to fill in the corners).  To light the portal, right click on it with the multitool.  To go through the portal, walk in to and crouch (shift).



A couple of public service announcements;
-By default the mining world has the same day/night cycle as the overworld.  However you can’t sleep in the mining world.
-Mobs spawn as normal in the mining world - so basically in dark caves or on the surface if it is night time.
-I’d therefore recommend the first time through the portal being during the day.  Then mob proof your portal - light up the area around your portal, place fences around it etc.

 

Auto Mining option 1

 

RFTools builder

 

The RFTools builder can do numerous things depending on what card you put in it - it can move blocks from one place to another, copy them from one to another or, for the purpose we want - It can also mine them.  To mine with a RFTools builder you will need;
- RFtools builder
- 1 lever
- 1 Shape card
- A lot of storage
- Power

Pros;
- Easy to get early game
- Relatively easy to power
- You can mine quite huge areas (I believe the limit is 512 x 512 blocks)

Cons;
- Early game you'll probably be manually transporting items back to the overworld which it can be a lot of items (still easier than minin them manually though)
- There's limits on what it can do when compared to more mid/end game miners with respect to choosing what type of blocks to mine and the speed that it can mine.

Shape card:
There are two options of shape card for mining in the beginning - the quarry and the clearing quarry.  The quarry will mine a block and replace it with dirt, the clearing quarry will mine a block leaving air.  The quarry is useful if you care about looks or you're auto mining the nether and want to stop flowing lava.  For the mining world, I use a clearing quarry as I don't care about the looks of having a massive hole and it makes it easier next time you want to do mining.

Storage:
You will need ALOT of storage once you start auto mining.  The miner will mine chunk by chunk, a chunk being 16 x 16 and the mining world being y74 so that is 16x16x74 = 18,944 blocks.  It is quite easy to set the builder to mine 20, 30, 100 chunks so you can quickly overflow most storage options.

There are a number of options to deal with storage, ultimately I like to have all the blocks automatically put in to my massive storage system of choice - I'll touch on how to do this at the end of this guide.  To begin with though, you probably won't be able to do this so your options are limited to numerous chests / crates or using storage drawers.

 

Personally I prefer storage drawers, they're easy enough to make a lot of and they give you the ability to deal with excess items which will overflow and eventually stop the builder from mining.  To use storage drawers for this purpose you will need to craft a drawer controller, this will go in the middle of the drawers and automatically fill them with the items mined.  The easiest method to using them is to place the storage drawer controller directly on top of the builder and build a wall of storage drawers around it.  You can then place drawers next to the controller and outwards - the controller can place items up to 12 drawers away.  If you use this method you need to ensure that you have enough drawers for every item that could be mined as any item that doesn't have somewhere to go will stop the builder.

 

 

The way round this is to use a set up similar to below - place a chest on top of the builder with an item conduit off the chest to a drawer controller.  The conduit will pull out any items that can go in the drawers but any items that can't will be left in the chest.  This is arguably a better solution but it requires an item conduit fast enough to keep up with the number of blocks being mined so you may need to also include some speed upgrades.



 So why use storage drawers - a standard drawer holds 2048 items which is less than a standard vanilla double chest but, with the drawer controller, it is far easier to to put all the items in drawers than the sorting required for vanilla chests.  Further to that, storage drawers can be upgraded and a fully upgraded drawer holds somewhere in the region of 130,000 items.  Lastly, Storage drawers are useful as you can put a void upgrade in to them - this basically means when the drawers get full of iteams any additional items for the drawer will simply be destroyed.  This isn't so useful for your rarer items (ores, diamonds, emeralds etc.) but for the more common blocks - cobblestone, andesite, diorite, granite, dirt etc. it can stop you having excess amounts of these blocks.

 To use the Storage drawers there are several clicks so a quick overview
- With an empty drawer and an item in hand, a single right click will put what you're holding in to the draw
- With an empty drawer and an item in hand, a double right click will put all of that item from your inventory in to the drawer
- On a draw with items in a left click will take 1 of the iteam
- On a draw with items in shift left click will take a stack of the item from the draw
- To apply an upgrade to a draw either right click the drawer while holding the upgrade or with an empty hand shift right click a drawer to see the 5 upgrade slots.

Power:
Early game this is most likely to be the limitation of how fast you can mine.  Every block has a RF number attached to it for much RF is required to mine it - stone is pretty low, ore's are higher and blocks such as obsidian are the highest.  I don't know the actual numbers but for example, if a stone block takes 400RF to mine it, a single generator or dynamo detailed in my early power produces 40RF/t so therefore it would take 10 game ticks to break the stone block.  Conversely, an obsidian block may be more like 4000RF, so it would take the single generator 100 ticks to break it.  If you have 2 generators so producing 80RF/t, that 400RF block of stone would get mined in 5 ticks - so half the time.  These aren't the real numbers but it works as an example to show more power = faster mining (up to a point).  To get reasonable mining speed you need around 700-1000 Rf/t - the simplest way I believe to do this is a Tier 1 Environmental Tech solar panel then run some energy conduit from the solar panel in to the back of the builder.  This solar panel produces ~650 RF/t so will get you pretty reasonable mining speed.  Alternatively you could run 3 or 4 of the dynamo set ups from my early game power above as that would produce enough power also though obviously this is more complicated to set up and would take more resources.  When possible I'd upgrade this further as even a Tier 2 solar array at 3,600 RF/t doesn't keep up with the power required though it is damn fast at this power.  While speed is nice though it isn't essential to begin with, simply chunk load the chunks the builder and any storage is in and go do something else - continue some manual mining in the mining world, go back to the overworld to some building, farming, exploring etc. and the builder will continue to mine.  Chunk loading is an important part of this so I will explain the more later.

How to use the RFTools builder;
Once you have everything required;
- Place the RFTools builder block down
- Set a waypoint at the builder (press comma on your keyboard to do this)
- Place the lever on the front of the builder (you'll need to shift click to do this)
- Input whatever power source you're using in to the back of the builder
- Connect whatever storage you're using to the top of it




- With the shape card in hand, shift right click the builder and you should see a message in chat saying "Now select the first corner"
- Right click a block on the surface of the mining world somewhere near the builder - the block will turn yellow and a message in chat will appear saying "Now select the second corner"
- The builder will mine all blocks between these two corners so you want to walk diagnolly away from the first corner you selected.  Once you've reached however many blocks you want to mine, dig down as deep as you want to mine.  If you want to mine all blocks, you'll need to dig down to bedrock but be careful of not falling in any lava doing this.  To select the second corner, with the shape card in hand right click a block and you should get the message "new settings copied to the shape card"

The corners you select need to be opposite corners.  if you select the red front, top, left then you want to select the other red: back botttom, right or visa versa with the blue.



- You'll need to place the shape card in the builder so you'll need to get out the hole.  If you set a waypoint, teleport to it is the easiest else you'll need to pillar out of the hole.
- With the shape card in hand, right click the builder and it will put the shape card in ready to begin mining.
- Flick the lever on the front and the white text above the builder should change to show the progress of the builder.  The builder mines top down so you should also see the evidence of it mining too.

A final tip on the builder, if you're using a clearing quarry in the mining world you will find that the hole dug will be full of water or occasionally lava due to the liquid physics of Minecraft.  If you have too many of these it will tank you frame rate so the easiest way to deal with them is, once the builder has finished mining all the blocks in an area.  Flick the lever off and back on again.  The builder will then progress through the same blocks as just mined - obviously there are no blocks to mine so it will be quicker but it will destory any water source blocks too.

The RFTools builder is a great early game method for gathering resources but there are other options once you have more power to play with and a storage systems to cope with it.

 

 

Auto mining Option 2

 

Environmental Tech's Void Resource and Ore miner

 

Pros
- Gets you blocks that can't get any other way
- Once the highest tier and fully upgraded they are quick
- The ore miner only mines ores so an easy way to avoid getting excessive amounts of the regular blocks (stone, cobblestone, diorite etc.)
- Tier 1's and 2's can be built late early / mid game as they don't require special or hard to get resources

 Cons
- They take up quite a bit of space especially the higher tiers
- They are quite expensive to make due to the number of blocks required by the higher tiers(though this is counteracted by the fact you get unlimited resources/ore out of them)

 When you first open the game you should have had the digitial guide to Environmental tech - this does a pretty good of explaining what each does, the power requirements of each and what blocks you need to make it.  So this is more a collection of information so you know what to expect and some tips;
- For both the Resource and Ore miner, the centre block (under the controller) needs to be dug down to bedrock
- Make the assembler - it makes life soooo much easier (this works on all Environmental tech multiblocks).  You simply place the controller where you want it then with the assembler in hand hold right click while looking at the controller.  It will take all the necessary blocks out your inventory and build the multiblock for you.
- You need Mica to progress to Tier 3 or Tier 4 which you only get from the resource miner.  This means a tier 2 is the highest you can build and you can't make any speed or accuracy modifiers until the resource miner has been running for a while.  If you want to speed up how fast you get Mica you can put a white lends in the resource miner.
- It is worth making the modifier cores as soon as possible, even it is just 1.  Add the modifier to the multiblock then add a second when you can, then a third etc.
- For the miners, both the power and any storage needs to be be connected to the core.
- If you want to make the basalt structure blocks, you can use a chisel to turn regular basalt in to Environmental Tech basalt.
- The void ore miner will also bring back Lonsdaleite shards which can be turned in to blocks.  The blocks cannot be destoryed by anything, only the player can break them.  This means they are brilliant for building wither cages for when you want to want to kill the wither (I'll touch on this more in the mob section)

 

 

Auto mining option 3

 

Quantum Quarries
The last option for resource production are Quantum quarries.

Pros
- They mine a seperate dimension that you can't get to so won't destroy your overworld
- Small
- Fast

- The simplest to set up
- It is possible to specify biomes (so if you want sand, specify a desert.  Emeralds? specificy extreme hills etc.)
- You can apply modifiers using enchanted books (silk touch, fortune etc.  I believe efficiency also works but I've not tried it)
- It isn't too difficult to applies filters so you don't get excessive blocks (stone, cobblestone, andesite, granite etc.)

Cons
- They're expensive - not in total resource count but it is harder to get / end game materials such as end rods, endstone, nether stars etc.
- It requires getting in to Extra Utilities and Grid Power (GP)

To actually build the quantum quarry is really easy, you'll need
1 Quantum Quarry
6 Quantum Actuators

You can only place the actuators on a quantum quarry, so first you need to place the quatum quarry down.

Then place the 6 quantum actuators on each side of the quantum quarry.
Once complete you'll get a particle effect of small green particles floating round it.



 Attach your power to it and storage and that's it to build the basic quantum quarry.

Once built, if you right click on the quarry it will open up its menu where you add an item filter, enchanted book or biome marker.

Item filters - These are pretty simple, just white list items you want to keep and all other items will be destoryed.  Or blacklist the ones you don't want and all other items will be kept.

Enchanted books - These do the same as vanilla, silk touch will mine with silk touch, fortune with fortune etc.  (the easiest way to get books is the Ender IO enchanter)

Biome marker - when you first make a biome marker it is blank.  To apply a biome, you need to be standing in the biome you want and with the marker in hand right click.  This will apply the biome that you're standing in to the marker, which can the be placed in to the quantum quarry.  The quantum quarry will then only mine that biome rather than the randomly changing biomes as standard.

 

Chunk Loading

 

I mentioned chunk loading above to keep the builder active in the mining world while you're doing other things or in a different dimension (overworld, nether etc.)

To chunk load, first you will need to create a team.  To do this, open you inventory (E) and click on the Team GUI (logo of 3 people)

In this menu you will then need to click add in the top right corner and add your team.  By default, it is simply your name but you can change it anything you want.



You can then need to go in to your inventory (E) and open the claimed chunk menu (it looks like a little map)


Doing so will open a map like below


 There are 4 controls for chunk loading
- Left mouse click to claim a chunk as belonging to your team (you can click and drag to highlight multiple chunks)
- Hold shift and left click to chunk load one of your claimed chunks

If you want to remove chunk loading or your claim, the controls are the same but right clicking so;
- Right mouse click will unclaim a chunk and it will return to wilderness
- Holding shift and right clicking will remove the chunk loading but the chunk will still claimed by you.

Transmiting items back to your base and stroage system
There is a number of ways to transmit items within a dimension but if you're moving one dimension to another (for example, mining world to overworld) then there are only 2 ways that I know of to do this.
 

 

Transmitting items option 1

 

Dimensional Transceivers

 

Pros
- An all in one solutions as it can transmits power and items wirelessly

Cons
- They are expensive to make as they require enderman souls, enderman heads and ender pearls

To use them, you need to make at least 2 dimensional transceivers as there is always a 1 transmitter and 1 receiver.  You'll need to put one on each power source you have as well as the places you want to transmit items.

A useful trick if you're using it on the RFTools builder with a power source like a solar panel in the mining world is to place the dimensional transceiver on top of the builder and run power in to the transceiver.  This means you will only need 1 rather than 2 transceivers in the mining world.



 To set the dimensional transceiver up
1. Right click on it to open the menu
2. Click in to the configure IO but clicking the cog/gear icon and setting it to pull in items from the bottom (left click rotates the view, right click will rotate through the pull / push options).  If it is attached to something that will generator items (the builder, ore miners etc.) it should be on pull.  If it is on a storage system, then it will need to push in to your storage system.



3. Go in the power tab (a red box).  If you don't have a network you will need to pick one.  Then choose if this transceiver is to send or receive power but using the <--> arrows to move your network name in to the relevant boxes.  If it's attached to a power source, it will be send, if it is on something that uses power it will be receive.

2019-05-05_13.35.43 by Greboth, on Flickr

 4. Go in to the items tab (a chest).  This is the same as the power menu but for items so you need to choose if this transceiver it to receive or send items.  If it's attached to something that will generate items (the builder, ore miners etc.) then it will be on send items.  If it's attached to your storage system it will be on receive items.



 So I've made a simple one here, the transceiver on top of the builder is powering the builder and transmitting items.  The transceiver next to the chest it receiving the items and putting them in to the chest.  In a 'real world' example, obviously the second transceiver would be attached to a proper storage system, potentially in another dimension, but it all works the same.  You just have to ensure that the both the the thing generating the items (rftools builder, ore miners etc.) and your storage system are chunk loaded.  This will stop the transceivers getting full of items and means your miners work wherever you are in the world or other dimesions.


 

 

 

Transmitting items option 2

 

Flux Points and Ender Chests
The second option for doing this is a combination one using flux points and ender chests.  Please note it is the Ender Storage ender chests NOT the vanilla Minecraft ender chests.

Pros
- It isn't cheap to craft but it is cheaper than the dimensional transcivers
- Flux network can transmit RF wirelessly to charge items in your inventory
- The Ender chest mod comes with a backpack that you can carry around to put items in your storage system wherever you are
- Not everything that needs power transmits items and not everything transmitting items needs power so you can seperate as required.

Cons
- It is using 2 mods in conjunction so it isn't such a simple or neat solution

First lets cover the Flux points; A flux plug (green) sends power and a flux point (red) receives power.  So simply place flux plugs on everything that generates power and flux points on everything that uses power.

2019-05-05_13.58.16 by Greboth, on Flickr

Similar to the Dimensional Transceiver, right clicking on either the flux plug or flux point will open its menu.  The first time you open it, you will need to create a network and then you can select that network for the plug or point to use.

Ender chests
Unlike normal chests, all ender chests are linked.  Fill an ender chest in the mining dimension then its inventory can be accessed by opening an ender chest in the overworld dimension or by opening the ender pouch.



 Therefore to transmit items, all you need to do it put an ender chest down near your chosen storage system and transfer the items out of the ender chest in to your storage system.  In the screenshot, I've got a refined storage importer pulling items out the chest and putting in to the refined storage but you do this with different storage systems too.



You can also do things like auto outputting furnaces, alloy smelters, pulverisers etc. in to ender chests to put the processed items back in to your storage system.



You will notice that the ender chest has, by default, 3 white strips on the top of it.  These can be colour coded using dyes to create different chest networks so a white/white/white chest will open the white/white/white inventory wherever you are and the same for red/red/red but the two will never mix.  You can just about see in the below that in my world I hav 3; a white/white/white, an orange/orange/orange and a red/red/red for different things but they all automatically have the items imported in to my storage system.


 

 

 

[Greboth 2,721]

Ore multiplication

 

 

 

There are numerous ways to multiply ores,  I’ll cover what I think are the easiest ways to get 2 ingots from every piece of ore in the early game where you’re potentially limited by resources and/or power.

Early game:

Method 1: Quartz grindstone

This is a simple block, you put in the ore, you manually turn the grindstone and you get powdered/dust out of it.  This isn’t a perfect doubling but will get you additional ore for very little input.  It isn’t ideal for large quantities of ore but works well enough right at the beginning of the game when you may only need a handful of some ores.  You can keep most ores back then until you have an easier/quicker/more reliable way to multiply ores.

Method 2: Tinkers Construct

To be honest, I think you should be building a Tinkers construct smeltery anyway as it makes some of the best tools in the mod pack.  It runs on lava but mining around diamond level you should find plenty of lava lakes to keep the smeltery fueld.  This will always give you 2 ingots for each ore you put in the smeltery.  Be aware though that you can create alloys in the smeltery too so be careful mixing your ores.

With a little additional work, a tinkers smeltery can be semi automated also using a redstone clock on the taps with an item conduit pulling the items from the casting tables.



 Method 3: Redstone furnace with Flux anodizer augment

Similar to the power generation, you will need to apply a hardened upgrade to the redstone furnace to unlock the augment slot.  Then putting the flux anodizing augment in it will give you 2 ingots per ore.  Obviously you can set up chest/storage either side for it to auto pull in and push out to.

Method 4: Pulverizer and Redstone Furnce

The Pulverizer will grind each piece of ore in to 2 pieces of pulverized ore which then can be smelted in a normal redstone furnace.  I'm including this in the early game as running 2 machines doesn't take too much power.  It also has a slight advantage over Method 3 as pulverizing some ore will give you a small percentage chance of additional ores.  For example, for each iron ore you pulverize you have a small chance of getting a pulverized nickel ore.

I was going to write further additional ways to further multiply ores but in looking up the ways I didn't know, the FTB wiki does a good job of explaining it so I'm just going to be lazy and link it

https://ftb.gamepedia.com/List_of_Ore_multiplying_methods
 

 

Refined Storage

 

Refined storage is great, It is the bulk storage option I use so it is the one I know the best but others are available.  Refined storagee allows you to store items or fluid on disks which can be accessed through a grid.  The grid can include a crafting table directly so you can craft items directly from your refined storage.  Refined storage also includes the ability to import items from chests and other storage, export items such are ore automatically in to furnces, interact with other types or storage, access your storage wirelessly and also includes the ability to set up auto crafting.

The basics of Refined storage is that everything needs to be linked to the controller.  They can be linked by simply placing them next to the controller, being place next to a several other refined storagee blocks or by being linked by a refined storage cable.  All the below are valid Refined storage layouts and you can expand further with more solderers, more disk storage etc.



So that out of the way, how to get in to refined storage, first you need to craft the controller and a solder.  I would recommend the first thing you then make is 4 speed upgrades for the solderer.  You will use the solderer A LOT to begin with so speed is always good.



Between regular crafting and the solderer, it allows you make all the other parts.  I'd suggest making a crafting grid and disk drive.  The disk drive is what holds the storage disks - a 1k storage disk holds 1,000 items, 4k 4,000, 16k 16,000 and the maximum 64k holding 64,000 (same for the fluid variants of the drive).  Each Disk drive holds 8 disks, so each disk drive can hold  up to 512k items if filled with 64k disks.

 

I'd recomend going for the biggest disks you can make straight away but if you want to upgrade later you can pull all the items off disks (see disk manipulator below).  Once you have items in your refined storage array, right click on your crafting grid to see all the items in your storage and, using JEI/NEI, you can select items to craft which will auto fill the crafting grid if you have the items.

You can also attach external storage to your refined storage too using an external storage adapter.  Here I have it linked to a diamond chest so anything I put in the diamond chest will also appear in my refined storage system as if it was on one of the disks.



Where this is exceptionally useful, especially if you don't have the resources to build a lot of 64k disks is you can use the external storage on a drawer controller linked to storage drawers.  I would recommend putting an item in each draw before connecting it to your refined storage - that way you can choose what goes in to your storage drawers.  Personally I like using the storage drawers for massive bulk storage of the most common items - cobblestone, stone, diorite, andesite, granite, dirt etc.  You can also use the drawer ugpgrades to increase their storage capacity and a void upgrade if you don't want to store excessive amounts of items.  It is worth noting here that if you right click on the external storage adapter, you can set the priority of the drawers.  A higher number means a higher priority so I'd set it at a relatively high number so any items that get imported in to your system i.e. from your miners will first go in to your storage drawers if possible.



There is the ability to add importers or exported on to the system too.  These can be anywhere but they need to be linked back to the controller through refined storage cables.  They both do what they're called, the importer will import items in to your refined storage system from whatever it is attached to in this case a diamond chest.  The exporter will export items in to whatever it is attached to, in this case a redstone furnace.  These are just examples but you can import or export in to or out of anything that has an inventory - chests, crates, barrells, furnaces, pulverizers, sag mills, alloy smelters, reactors etc.



If you right click on either an importer or exporter you will get the below.  The bar across the top is an item filter - the importer by default imports everything unless you put an item filter in.  The exporter will export nothing until you put an item filter in.  The 4 vertical boxes on the right are for upgrades - these can be speed or stack upgrades.  A speed upgrade does exactly what it says, a stack upgrade means rather than moving 1 item at a time, it will move items in stacks.  These upgrades aren't all that useful for exporters as it is rare you need them to go that fast but importers need them.



So say you have your RFTools builder in the mining world (or any other automatic miners) with an Ender storage ender chest on top.  The chest is the default white/white/white so if you put a second Ender storage ender chest next to your refined storage with an importer on - Any items your builder mines and puts in to the ender chest, your storage system will put out of the ender chest simple interdimensional item transfer!  When doing this, the automatic miners can fill the chest quickly so it is worth upgrading the importer with 1 stack upgrade and 3 speed upgrades.  Where this becomes really useful is you can have your automatic miner put items in to the chest but you can also have all your furnaces, all your pulverizers, your mob farms all linked putting items in seperate ender storage ender chests which, because they're all linked, your refined storage system will import everything for you in to one central location.



If you're finding you still aren't emptying your ender chest quick enough, you can add multiple importers to a single chest, each with a stack upgrade and 3 speed ugprades.



Refined storage can also be accessed wirelessly and you can autocraft with it too.  Autocrafting especially is a big bit to type so will add this another day

 

Auto Crafting with Refined Storage

 

Auto Crafting

Refined Storage has the ability to auto craft any items that you 'teach' it the recipe for.  To begin with you're going to need to make;
- A pattern grid
- A processing pattern encoder
- A crafter (as many as you need)
- Patterns (you need 1 for every recipe so you'll need lots of these)
- I'd also recommend making the refined storage wrench as it will cut down some frustration

As with the other Refined storage elements, you need to make sure these are linked to your Refined storage set up either by being in adjacent blocks or linked by a cable.



The two important pieces are the pattern grid and the processing pattern encoder.  They basically do the same thing but there is an important distinction between them so I'll cover one then the other.

The Pattern Grid

This is for everything that can be made in a regular 3x3 crafting grid.

To encode a pattern, click on the patten grid to open the menu.  The menu looks like a crafting grid but slightly different.  You can search your refined storage system and JEI as normal as well as add a recipe to the crafting grid as normal.



To encode the actual pattern, place your blank patterns in the top box above the arrow.  Then click to the 'Create Pattern' arrow which will then encode that crafting recipe.  A handy tip here is when you're in your inventory, holding shift will show what each pattern is making.  In the screenshot below, I've decided to make a Refined storage machine casing.

It is worth noting here that the autocrafting system is dumb - it doesn't know how to make anything so you have to encode every part of a recipe.  Therefore to make the machine casing, I also need to encode the pattern to make the quartz enriched iron.



Once you've encoded some patterns, you need to put them in a crafter.  For pattern grid patters, the crafter can be place anywhere and in any orientation just so long as it is somehow attached to your refined storage system. (If it's grey it isn't, you should get the blue lines on it)



You then just need to place the patterns inside the crafter, as you can see each crafter has the space for 10 patterns.  On the right hand side there are also 4 spaces for upgrades which really can only hold speed uggrades (the crafting upgrade is for something else.)



Once you've added the patterns, click on your pattern grid or regular crafting grid and you'll see that items you can now auto craft (if you don't, either search for them or click through your display options using the second button down on the left hand side)



 As I encoded the recipe for the quartz enriched iron and the machine casing, I can simply click on the machine casing to craft it.  You'll get a pop up box where you can choose how many you want to craft, I'll just leave it as 1 in this example.



Click Start and you'll get a crafting preview of the items it will need.  As I don't have any quartz enriched iron in my storage system and I encoded that recipe too, the system knows it needs to craft the quartz enriched iron first to then craft the machine casing.  If you don't have enough items for crafting the recipe, it will tell you here what is missing.



Then click Start again and it will get to crafting.

The Processing Pattern encoder

This is for everything you make in a machine (solderer, furnace, alloy smelter etc.)  You still encode the patterns the same way by adding the recipe to the grid, placing blank patterns and then creating the pattern.  Though with the pattern encoder it is more a case of the autocrafting being unable to actually make the item but knowing what to input and what the expected output will be.  For example, if a recipe requires a piece of glass, you can encode the pattern that one piece of sand can be smelted in to a piece of glass.  Or that putting redstone, gold and glowstone dust in an alloy smelter should give you an energetic alloy ingot.

Once you have encoded a pattern you then need to put it in a crafter.  However unlike with regular crafting, you need to make sure the crafter is facing the machine required for that recipe.  Using the sand to glass example, you need to have the crafters pointing at a furnace and you can have multiple crafter pointing at each machine(the lighter grey / silver part needs to be touching the required machine like below.)  You also need to link the output of any furnace, alloy smelther, solderer etc. back in to your storage system.  In the below I'm just having the items auto output by the furnace in to the ender chest.



If you find your crafters aren't facing the correct way then this is where the wrench comes in.  Shift right clicking with the wrench will rotate the crafter so you can get it in the correct orientation.

You can then go through the same process of clicking on the glass in your refined storage, choose how many you want crafted, click start, it tells you what resources are required, then click start again.  If you check your furnace, you'll see it is smelting the required sand for you.







Then it is up to you how much you expand this, you can have a wall of crafters, some pointing in to required machines the rest just wherever you want to put them.


On a side note, if you use the pattern encoder to encode items for the solderer, you will need to put an importer on the solderer on the bottom as there is no auto output on the solderer and any other side will suck out the item you're trying to solder.  Though as you can see in the screenshot above, the importer can just be linked to any part of your refined storage array.

You can also do things like this, with the sand to glass pattern in the crafter, point the crafter at a chest.  The crafter will simply fill the chest with sand which the furnaces will pull out and smelt meaning everything is smelted twice as fast.  Or if you want to go really absurd, you could easily connect 9 furnaces up to a single chest to smelt things really really really fast.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Smelter? Alloy Smelter? 😎

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

For storage of the  portable kind, try the Bag of Holding once you’ve picked up some gold

[Greboth 2,721]

19 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Smelter? Alloy Smelter? 😎

 

Regular smelters and smelting will be covered in the ore duplication.  The alloy smelter is basically power it, put the right ingredients in and wait.  However there are several ways to make alloys so I can cover them too.

 

Just thought of another one- mob farms.  Mob drops are important for many things and there’s numerous ways to go about it.

 

10 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

For storage of the  portable kind, try the Bag of Holding once you’ve picked up some gold

 

Good point, I will add it to the general tips tomorrow as can’t be arsed to try and edit long posts on my phone.

 

A cheeky trick with the bag of holding (or any back pack).  If you’re using a chest transporter to move a chest or spawner.  Pick the chest/spawner up and then put it in your backpack.  You lose all the horrible effects but still transporting the chest/spawner  

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

I think I have all the ingredients now to build an auto-quarry on my mining world so your chunk loading section will be very useful. I’m following ChosenArchitect on YouTube to see what I can do

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

5 hours ago, Plumbers Crack said:

I think I have all the ingredients now to build an auto-quarry on my mining world so your chunk loading section will be very useful. I’m following ChosenArchitect on YouTube to see what I can do

Oh no I don't!! Forgot the solar controller and that's a bit expensive in terms of time

[Greboth 2,721]

3 hours ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Oh no I don't!! Forgot the solar controller and that's a bit expensive in terms of time

 

What do you mean expensive in terms of time? the time to get the gold and lapis?

 

I was hoping to have to mining guide done today but ended up needing to go out so it won't be until later tonight / tomorrow.  The short version though is you don't need to build the tier 1 solar array.  Yes it is handy, it produces a decent amount of power and will run continuously but, the builder will mine with whatever power you give it.  Each block has an associated RF figure to mine it so provide it with little power and it will mine just very slowly.  SImply the more RF/t you can power it with, the faster it will mine (up to a limit).  So if you can't power it with the solar array, even a single culinary generator or dynamo would be enough to get going slowly.  If you can build some power transfer conduits / ducts then you can power the builder with 2, 3, 4, 5.... generators / dynamos which will make it faster and make getting the gold and lapis for the solar array easier.

 

Chosen Architect does have a pretty good series on Beyond but he does some odd things too.  Storage Drawers are a good idea with the builder but you can place the drawer controller directly on top of the builder then the items will go directly in to the draws.  You can attach a lot of draws to one controller, mine was set up in a 5 high 17 wide grid of drawers centre on the drawer controller.  Though for common items such as cobblestone, diorite, andesite, gravel, granite etc. I'd put void upgrades in the drawers.  This means when they hit the maximum 2,048 items any further items are just destroyed rather than filling up other draws else you end up with tens of thousands of cobblestone very quickly.

 

I hope that makes some sense but I typed it quickly and will get the proper guide posted tonight or tomorrow.

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Thanks mate! I got everything sorted before I went out tonight but I’m struggling with the setting out. However, I think I know what to do after finding the dev’s Reddit page https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/719iq7/a_short_rftools_builder_faq/

 

I like ChosenArchitect but find he doesn’t fully explain everything he does. I’m pretty sure he didn’t cover the solar controller until he suddenly put it into the build!

 

I’ve got the item filter in the builder block to void out cobblestone, gravel, stone, dirt and sand so hopefully that will reduce the storage requirements. If you could expand on void upgrades to the drawers that would be great.

 

This automation stuff is quite interesting! 😀

 

[Greboth 2,721]

Nice one

 

When you say setting out, do you mean setting the area for it the mine? I still don't know what the numbers mean.  The easiest way is, with the shape card in hard, shift right click the builder, then right click a block to select the first corner and the right click to select the second corner.  The first corner and second corner you select should be opposite corners of a box.  So if the first corner you select is to be the front, top, left of the box then the second corner needs to be the back, bottom, right corner.

 

There are guides out there by the mod authors or videos on mod spotlights for most things as the FTB packs are popular mod packs.  If you're considering using or are using a mod I'd still recommend looking up more information than I'm posting.  I'm aiming for this thread to be more of a general guide to getting starting than any detailed focus on specific mods.

 

ChosenArchitect is pretty good, I've watched some of his videos as I was trying to find some detail on blood magic before I blew my first world up.  The one I watched when I first got in to this modpack and getting back in to I've re-watched a couple videos of is Welsknight.  He does a pretty good job of explaining too (though worth noting the modpack has altered slightly since he created the videos).

 

I've got everything typed up ready for the builder and using it in the mining world (including the upgrades to the storage drawers).  I want to add some stuff about the more mid/end game mining, a bit about chunk loading and some information on automating getting it all back to your bases storage system.

 

I agree the automation is fun but even in vanilla I like automation I just didn't think Mr Dig a massive hole by hand would ever say it

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

11 hours ago, Greboth said:

I agree the automation is fun but even in vanilla I like automation I just didn't think Mr Dig a massive hole by hand would ever say it

 

Got the bug know...how can I make it mine faster? More solar arrays on a single builder? A complete duplicate setup? How to pipe it back to base {I cannot seem to catch another Enderman!!!}...c'mon Greb....FEED ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Greboth 2,721]

3 hours ago, Plumbers Crack said:

 

Got the bug know...how can I make it mine faster? More solar arrays on a single builder? A complete duplicate setup? How to pipe it back to base {I cannot seem to catch another Enderman!!!}...c'mon Greb....FEED ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Haha what have I created!!!!!!

 

However, your wish is my command - Mining and storage all covered in post #3 but to provide simple answers

 

How to mine faster - keep to a single builder but more power.  I don't know the exact figure which is why I didn't post in the guide above but I think the builder can use upto something silly like 6-7000 RF/t when it mines the fastest.  So simply the more power you give it the faster it will mine.

 

As for Endermen - a couple tips, run round a desert at night as they're easiest to spot in a desert and look at them then they will come to you.  If you need enderpearls - try to add luck to your sword (if you have a tinkers sword) or make The Ender sword .  Also the nebulous heart in a crafting grid will give you more enderpearls.  If you need enderman heads, try adding beheading to your sword (again, if you have a tinkers sword).

 

A very brief answer but I'll give a better answer when I get round to doing a full post on mob drops / farms.

[Greboth 2,721]

I've added a guide for Mobs - spawning, killing and collecting the drops and I've also added a brief bit on ore multiplication

[Greboth 2,721]

And the basics of refined storage added too post #4 as requested I'll add the rest another day.

[Greboth 2,721]

Auto crafting also now added to post 4

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Nicely done sir! 😊

[Greboth 2,721]

Thank you There's some bits of Refined Storage I've missed out as I am still working them out myself but will post an adendum once I have.  Mostly this is wireless crafting as it takes a power source that isn't RF so trying to work out the best way to power it.  You can also automate the autocrafters so if you get below a certian number of items, it will autocraft back to that number.

 

Is there anything else you'd like to see a guide on?

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Unless I've missed it, how to automate transfer of "stuff" from the mining world into Refined Storage at my base

Via the FG App

[Greboth 2,721]

44 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Unless I've missed it, how to automate transfer of "stuff" from the mining world into Refined Storage at my base

Via the FG App
 

 Covered in Transmitting items in the third post and some extra detail in the Refined Storage section

 

The simple / headline answer to how I do it is;

Put an Ender Storage Ender Chest on top of the builder in the mining world (it HAS to be an Ender Storage chest not the vanilla Ender Chest)

Put a second Ender Storage Chest next to your Refined Storage system

Place an importer on the chest and link it in to your Refined storage

 

A single importer probably won't be fast enough so you can put 3 speed upgrades and 1 stack upgrade in the importer.  If that still isn't fast enough, put more importers on the chest with speed and stack upgrades.

 

[Greboth 2,721]

@Plumbers Crack After chatting last night, I've added a guide in the OP on extreme reactors too The automated on/off part is the bit Chosen Architect did weird, the way I posted is much easier and simpler

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

38 minutes ago, Greboth said:

@Plumbers Crack After chatting last night, I've added a guide in the OP on extreme reactors too The automated on/off part is the bit Chosen Architect did weird, the way I posted is much easier and simpler

Nice and easily explained...thanks mate

[Greboth 2,721]

Is there anything else you’d like to see a guide on? I’m aware I’ve missed a number of mods out, especially the magic ones but that is because I haven’t played with them that much to know how to use them properly.

 

At some point I do plan to learn blood magic and Botania but I’m too busy building at the moment  

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

1 hour ago, Greboth said:

Is there anything else you’d like to see a guide on?

 

Not at the moment but thanks for all the work you've put in. If anything else crops up and Dr Google fails, I'll give you a shout