IndustrialCraft 2/Guide

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Industrialcraft2 For Newbies (A Reference Guide for the Rest Of Us)

So first off, what does this mod do?

Brings your production to the industrial age with machines that run on electric power There’s also a machine that can double your ore output Provides new power-based tools that never break, but needs to be recharged New armor which never breaks, but needs to be charged Plenty of options for producing EU

What mods does this mod work well with?

Like Buildcraft, this is one of the ‘grandfather mods’, which other mods try to be compatible with Any mod with machines or tools that run on EU are built to be compatible with this mod The new tools and armor work well for anyone

You will need the following to get started with this mod:

Rubber. You’ll need to find Rubber Trees and use a treetap on the little orange nodes to do anything with this mod Iron. Lots of it. Also Copper and Tin. Plenty of Redstone as well. Diamonds will be needed to make the jump to Tier 2 tech, but not to get started

WARNING: There is a mod called GregTech which alters the recipes of ‘core’ IC2 items. I will try to flag the changed recipes as I come across them. I will first present the recipe as it is found in Core IC2, then I will go over the changes found in the default configuration of the FTB Pack. Most notable will be your electric tools and solar panels.

As a suggestion, if this is your first time using mods, you may wish to consider clicking ‘edit mods’ on your FTB Launcher, and removing GregTech. It’s an awesome mod with a lot of cool things, but it is definitely designed with more experienced users in mind, and might confuse the new player.

The Basics: Getting your facility up and running

To get started here, I’ll assume that you’ve made your first mining expedition down to Redstone level and have enough Iron, Copper, and Tin to get started.

Oh yes, Copper and Tin. These are new ores that you will find. They’re fairly common, so don’t worry too much about scarcity. Actually, depending on configuration settings, there might be several different kinds of copper and tin. But don’t worry, we’ll be building a machine that can solve that problem in a bit.

Another resource we are going to need is introduced by IC2, and that’s Rubber. For that, we’re going to need to make a treetap. Go ahead and look up the recipe in NEI, it’s just five planks so nothing too expensive.

Next we’re looking for a rubber tree. It has lighter colored leaves and a darker trunk, but its most distinctive feature is the spike of leaves shooting out of the top of the trunk. They are a biome-dependent spawn, meaning which biome you are in will determine the likelihood of their spawning. They spawn most frequently in Swamp biomes, but can also appear in Forest biomes. They tend to appear in clumps when you do find them. You can try to use REI’s Minimap and look for the lighter colored leaves. That might just lead you to a birch tree or something, but it’s at least a way to scan a lot of terrain at once.

On the trunk, there might be some orange spots, these are what we need to use our treetap on. Just right-click ‘em with your treetap and it’ll make a noise and spit out the sticky resin. You should get an achievement for it as well.

Oh yes, IC2 has its own achievement progression. Pulling up Achievements in your Game Menu, then click on ‘Minecraft’ button next to ‘Done’ will switch you to your IC2 achievement line. If you ever get lost, this is a handy way of figuring out what you might want to do next.

So, rubber trees. Right. You’ll also want to punch all the leaves to get as many saplings as possible. They are rather more stingy with their saplings than most trees are, so you might not get one out of your first tree. Sometimes, the nodes spawn up higher in the leaves, so this might uncover more spots to tap. You are probably going to want at least 24 sticky resin for your basic setup, but a half stack would be a solid number to shoot for.

So first things first, look up the recipe for the Iron Chest. It’s needed in making the electric furnace, so building it now will only slightly improve your efficiency and speed of smelting. Five iron and your traditional furnace. Now it’ll smelt 10 items per coal rather than 8.

Oh, right… that’s another thing you might want to know. I’d strongly suggest making charcoal to burn rather than using coal. Coal now has additional uses up the tech tree that charcoal won’t work with. Trees tend to be easy to come by. So does coal, to be honest, so don’t sweat it if you already used some, but later on you’ll be going through stacks of the stuff, so you may want to be conservative with them now.

Now, look up the recipe for a Copper Cable. You notice there’s a couple of different recipes for it. If you want to make them six at a time, the recipe with copper and rubber is faster. However, three copper make uninsulated copper wire, and you can then insulate them individually. Which way you decide to go is your personal preference, you get the same end result either way.

Okay, now to look up two more recipes. You’ll be seeing a LOT of these two things, as they are components for MANY items in this mod. The first is the RE-BATTERY (the empty one), and the second is the Electronic Circuit. The Battery needs that new Tin ore, four of them, a couple of redstone, and one of those copper cables. No, uninsulated won’t work. The circuit requires six copper cables, two redstone, and a refined iron.

Whoa, wait a sec… refined iron? Yea, you’ll want to be getting used to this as well. It’s just iron that got run through the furnace a second time. So go ahead and cook up some iron ingots. You’ll want to make 10 of them right now.

The next thing we’ll need to make is a Machine Block. This is another very common component in any of the IC2 machines. It takes eight refined iron to make.

So now we’ve got an electronic circuit, an empty battery, and a machine block. Time to get building!

One machine block, one cobblestone furnace, and one battery make one Generator. This is what we will be using to power our machines. It produces EU by burning combustibles. For now, you’re probably going to want to stick with charcoal, but just know that there’s lots of things that can be burned in the Generator. Go do some research, if you are curious.

Now go ahead and grab that iron furnace we were using, the electronic circuit, and a couple of redstone, it’s time to make the Electric Funace. In addition to being faster and more efficient at smelting things, it also doesn’t draw energy until it is needed. Meaning you can smelt one or two items, and not ‘waste’ an entire coal on it, the rest of the energy is stored in the generator, which can hold about one coal’s worth of energy.

You can run copper cable from your generator to your electric furnace. There is some energy loss, but that’s a more advanced topic. For now, as long as you don’t put down more than four copper cables, you’ll be safe. That should be plenty to get your initial setup going.

Now, we need another machine block, another electronic circuit, a couple of cobblestone, and three Flint. We’re going to make a Macerator

GREGTECH NOTE: There is a configuration option (off by default in the FTB Pack) which requires diamonds instead of flint. If you are playing on a server with this option enabled, you will likely want to use Thermal expansion to get your initial ore processing plant done. You can check to see which version is enabled in NEI. I would not suggest enabling this option for new users, but old sweats might enjoy the additional challenge.

The macerator is another machine that requires power, so hook it up to your copper cable. Now throw… hmmm… let’s say throw some iron ore into it. You should hear it start to make noise, see a cute little particle effect, and the arrow progressing. When it’s done, you have two iron dust. Now throw that iron dust into your electric furnace. Note that each one smelted into an iron ingot. Congratulations, you’ve just doubled your ore output!

Now, you may be having problems keeping up with rubber demand, so that’s the next thing we’re going to help with. You’ll need a machine block and an electronic circuit, plus four of those treetaps (undamaged, please). We’re going to make an Extractor. Looking up the recipe might also show something called a Centrifuge Extractor. Don’t worry about that for now, that’s a higher tech item.

You know how smelting sticky resin nets you one rubber? Throwing it into an Extractor nets you THREE. Yes, triple your rubber production! It’ll also get one rubber out of a rubber wood log. You know, there’s probably a dirty joke to be made there, but I think I’ll give it a pass for now.

It also needs power, so drop it down attached to your copper cable.

Now you have a Generator, a Macerator, an Electric Funace, and an Extractor. These three machines will form the core of your industrialization, at least for now.

Tier 1 Tech: More toys to play with

Now then, the next thing you’re going to want is more energy storage. I mean, your generator really only holds enough energy for one coal worth. Wouldn’t you like more storage? You’re going to need three batteries and a copper cable for this, it’s called a BatBox. Look it up in good ol’ NEI.

This will store about 10 coal worth of EU. COOL! Now, it’s a bit tricky, so let me explain about that orange dot. Now would also probably be a good time to build a Wrench. It’s the recipe that calls for six bronze, not the one with the gear. Bronze is made with 3 copper and 1 tin in your crafting square to make four bronze.

That orange dot on your Batbox is your output slot. EU will ONLY be sent out through that one side, any other side will accept EU and store it, if possible. So you’re going to want to put this batbox probably directly adjacent to your generator, and have your dot facing the cable that your machines are hooked up to. You can use your wrench to change the facing of the dot. Clicking a face with the wrench brings the dot to that face. Shift-clicking points it in the opposite direction.

The next machine on our agenda is going to be a Compressor. Look it up in NEI. Not too bad, machine block, electronic circuit, and some smoothstone. This will become extremely important later.

Now here is where I would normally suggest building your drill and chainsaw and batbox, but there’s a kind of a hitch. Pull up the recipe in NEI. If you are using the default config settings from the FTB Beta Pack, you’ll note that these recipes call for Steel, not reinforced iron. In the FTB Beta Pack, the only way to get steel is through a Blast Furnace from Railcraft. And that requires nether brick, soul sand, and magma cream. As well as coal coke and a lot of patience.

If this is your first time playing with mods, and you are just wanting to try out some new toys, I’d suggest going into your config file and editing the line that replaces refined iron with steel. That information is found in a different guide. The other option is to start a world without GregTech enabled. Or, just bite the bullet and wait until you have some nether supplies.

Oh, here’s a cute trick, though: Netherrack can be compressed into Nether Brick, if you have enough. Magma Cream can drop from magma slimes. So -technically- you don’t need to find a nether fortress and farm blazes, but it might take longer to do so..

Here’s another cute trick: Your macerator can produce more bone meal and blaze powder out of bones and blaze rods than you can by hand, at the cost of some energy. Pretty handy.

Right, so either way, it’s an electronic circuit and a battery to make either the drill or the chainsaw, plus the metal that is shown depending on your configuration settings.

They are pretty handy tools, actually. The drill runs like a combination pick and shovel, about as fast as an iron version thereof. The chainsaw works like an axe and a pair of shears. Yes, you can shear sheep with a chainsaw, how cool is that? The chainsaw is also a pretty darn good weapon, although you can’t block with it.

Of course, they can only store 10k Eu. You’d be surprised how fast that goes by if you are branch mining. The solution is the BatPack. Six batteries, an electronic circuit, and another piece of tin for the scaffolding. Very tin-intensive, but very worth it, since it can store 60k Eu. Yes, that’s right, it can store more EU than your BatBox can.

You might also want to look up the Electric Wrench right now. Yes, you will need to build a new wrench, since it needs to be undamaged. A battery and an electronic circuit to go with it, and you’ve got the last wrench you will ever need. But more importantly is the ‘lossless mode’, which will enable you to remove machines without risking getting just a machine block back. Careful though, it’s a real energy hog. You might need to re-map your ‘mode’ key to something other than ‘m’, due to key configuration problems with REI’s Minimap. Holding your ‘mode’ key, plus right clicking, should swap it into lossless mode. From here on out, whenever I talk about modes, that’s how you switch modes.

While we’re here, I might as well mention the Scuba Helmet. Look up the recipe in NEI. Basically, if you need to do a lot of work underwater, this is going to be useful. It requires compressed air cells. Toss empty cells into a Compressor to get them. They return the empty cells when discharged. It’s not perfect, but it’s a low-tech and effective way to build underwater.

MOAR POWER

At this point, you’re probably starting to outgrow your old fashioned generator. There’s several options available to you, depending on how you want to do it.

Option 1 is to ‘go green’ using solar, wind, and/or water power. Each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Wind turbines are a great way to passively generate power… assuming they are high enough. Of course, the problem is going to be storms, which can make them produce too much power, and break them. There’s also the problem of needing a lot of air around them, and they function better the higher up they are.

Solar panels are a great passive energy supply method, they’ll continually produce power during the day. Nighttime, or bad weather, will shut them down. The only problem… is the price tag. Look up the recipe in NEI.

GREGTECH NOTE: This recipe has been modified by GregTech in the default configuration. You’ll need an Industrial Centrifuge to get any, and that’s not a toy we can play with just yet. The ‘core’ IC2 recipe is 3 coal dust, 3 glass, two circuits, and the generator. You can edit your config settings to return it to this recipe, or just realize that you won’t be able to build them yet.

Water mills can be a good passive energy generation system. It doesn’t generate a great deal of power, less than 1 eu/t even under optimal conditions, but they’re fairly cheap to mass-produce. There’s two modes you can use here: passive, which generates a mere trickle of power if you surround it with water, or active feeding, which generates more but requires automation.

Each of these methods have an enormous amount of information that you can use to set up optimal EU output, but they are so in-depth that they really deserve guides of their own.

Option 2 is to go Geothermal, and by that, we mean cooking with Lava. By now, you’ve probably encountered lava pools, maybe even some sizable ones, in your hunt for redstone, gold, and diamonds. Maybe you’ve even stepped into the nether and seen the massive oceans of lava found there. Before now, you just saw it as an environmental hazard and a danger. Now, it’s a fuel source. The trick is getting the lava into the Geothermal Generator.

Buildcraft can really help you with this, since you can pipe lava through waterproof pipes. Setting up a Buildcraft Pump with some redstone engines will let it suck up the lava, which you can then pipe up to your base. Don’t worry, the geothermal generator will accept direct-feed of lava from waterproof pipes.

Another option is to manually fill it with buckets. While tedious, it’s at least an option. But not an attractive one. We’re trying to automate things, not do it manually.

tin cells are an easier way to transport a lot of lava. Simply clicking a lava source block with a tin cell will get you a lava cell, and eat up the lava source block. Fortunately, these things stack. Gonna be tin-intensive, though, since it’ll eat the cells when you put them into the generator. Thermal Expansion can help here. The Liquid Transposer found there can unpack Cans of Lava, and you get to keep the cans, you can then pipe the lava to your geothermal generator in waterproof pipes.

If you’ve made it into the Nether, you probably have an odd stack or twelve of netherrack laying around. Thermal Expansion has a solution for this: the Magma Crucible. It can turn netherrack into lava fairly inexpensively. Which you can then pipe into your geothermal generator.

If you have Mystcraft, and you have plenty of Crystals, you can set up a massive lava pump in the nether, using Railcraft Liquid Tanks, Liquid Loaders, Liquid Unloaders, and some Reinforced Track, as well as a couple of Mystcraft Portals, and get your lava from ‘tap’, as it were. Heck, you can even build an enormous Iron Tank to hold a MASSIVE reserve of lava, if you so choose. Enough to power LOTS of geothermal generators.

For now, those are going to be your main options. Later on, you can get into nuclear power, or even fusion with GregTech, but those are further down the tech tree.

Tier 2 Technology: Energy Crystals Ahoy!

Okay, your batbox was pretty awesome when we first built it, but it can’t even fill up your batpack anymore. We’re going to want to upgrade it. HOWEVER, before we do that, we need to make sure we won’t make our machines to boom.

Voltage and EU loss in cable is a guide all to itself, so I shall be brief. There is Low, Medium, High, and Extreme Voltage. Using a higher stage of voltage on lower stage machines = boom. So far, all of your machines are Low Voltage. So if you try to feed them Medium Voltage, they will make lovely looking craters in your base, which might be quite attractive but not particularly useful.

The upgrade to the batbox is the MFE. However, it outputs Medium Voltage. So we’re going to also want an LV Transformer. Not too bad, some copper, some cable, and some wood.

Okay, let me ‘splain about this box. The three-dot side is where the medium voltage should go into. It will then output low voltage to any one-dot side. Like the batbox, you can use the wrench to click on a face to turn the three dot side to that face, or shift-click to point it directly away from that face.

Don’t worry though, you won’t be losing any energy, it just splits it up into more manageable packets.

Back to your MFE. You’ll need four energy crystals. Each one is a diamond and some redstone. Ouch. Yea, from here on out, expect to be using diamonds in a lot of things. But that’s okay, you can also make them. Yea, more on that in a bit.

Anyways, you’ll also need some gold cabling. This will need to be double insulated as well. Combining rubber with insulated gold cable nets 2xinsulated gold cable. Four of those, for energy crystals, and a machine block. Now you’ve got far more power storage than before.

So, now that we’ve upgraded our industrial energy storage, it’s time to upgrade our personal energy storage. That means a Lappack!

Lapis is going to be used a LOT in the higher tier technological items. This is our first example. Six lapis BLOCKS (that’s 54 lapis total), your batpack, and an *advanced* circuit. Whoa, full stop! What’s that?

Looking up the recipe in NEI, you find that you need redstone, more lapis, and now some Glowstone. So this will definitely require a presence in the nether, even if it is a quick mad dash in and out to grab glowstone and some netherrack.

Since you are in the nether, now might be a good time to make blast furnaces for steel to make your electric tools with, if you are running with the GregTech modifications.

Your Lappack should have enough storage to suit your needs, even if you are branch mining with your drill and slaughtering creepers with your chainsaw. In fact, there’s another tool we can build now which is a lot of fun. It’s called the Mining Laser.

For that, however, we’re going to need some Advanced Alloy. For that, we’ll need Mixed Metal Ingots. Pulling up the recipe in NEI, we see that this is some Refined Iron, Bronze, and Tin. Then you toss it into the compressor to get your plates.

You’ll need another couple energy crystals as well, and another Advanced Circuit. Oh, and redstone, can’t forget that.

The Mining Laser has lots of different modes. I suggest you fill up your Lappack, go out somewhere you don’t mind leveling, and playing around with it. Try out the different modes. See what kind of havoc you can wreak.

There’s also some armor you can craft now, Nano Armor. It requires a lot of carbon plates, and one energy cell per armor piece. So it’s not a free ride, it protects about like iron does, but it runs on energy rather than durability, so it will never ‘break’, just run out of juice and stop protecting you. Look up the recipes. I’d strongly suggest this for your personal protection.

Another thing you’ll likely wanting to be using is Glass Fiber Cable. You should have silver from one of the other mods, so you can get six cable per diamond. This stuff is great because it can run 40 blocks before it loses any energy. It can also handle up to High Voltage. So if you need to run power long distances, this is probably going to be your best bet.

Machine Upgrades!

Also, right about now, you are probably wondering if you can make your machines any faster. The answer, my friend, is YES!

There’s three types of Upgrades you can put in the slots on the far right Overclocker, Transformer, and Energy Storage. Look them up in NEI.

The Overclocker Upgrade increases your production speed, but also the amount of EU it draws. The effect is multiplicative.

The Transformer Upgrade allows it to use a higher voltage. You’ll need one per voltage upgrade. So if you want your machines running off of HV, you’ll need two of them.

The Energy Storage Upgrade basically lets them hold more Eu internally. Not very interesting, actually.

There’s also a new machine called the Induction Furnace! It runs WAY faster than a regular electric furnace, at optimal heat levels, and can smelt two things at once. Here’s the catch: You have to apply a redstone signal and turn it on, and let it run a while to heat up. This eats up 1 EU/t, a small price to pay for the speed we’re talking about. It just needs some copper, your electric furnace, and one of those fancy shmancy advanced machine blocks.

There’s also a mod called Advanced Machines that does similar things with the rest of your machines. Check them out, if you like. They all function similarly.

Tier 3 Tech: UberTech!

Honestly, you’re going to take a while to get to this level of operation, so I’ll only briefly go over some of the new mechanics.

Most of the stuff here will need Lapotron Crystals. An Energy Crystal, two electric circuits, and some lapis. The MFSU is the energy storage device at this tier, holding a whopping ONE MEEELION EU! It also outputs High Voltage, so be sure to step it down for your machines which can’t take it.

Now, here’s where GregTech interferes with ‘Core’ IC2 functionality. It disables your mass fabricator, and has a whole new system of making and using UU matter. It’s really complicated, and is probably best done in its own guide.

Also, very rarely, you can encounter irridium ore. This is needed for your next tier of armor. You can also make it with UU (in fact, the ONLY way to obtain it is via UU in ‘Core’ IC2). Let’s look up Quantum in NEI.

Yea, these aren’t cheap. They are also extremely powerful. The boots make you immune to fall damage. The pants let you run faster and jump higher. The helmet is extremely powerful, it automatically feeds you, negates poison, heck it will even negate Wither, and lets you breathe underwater. The chest doesn’t do much… just makes you immune to damage until it runs out of energy. Yes, that’s right, it’s basically God Mode until it runs out of power. Have fun.

So, that’s IndustrialCraft 2. There’s a whole lot more I simply don’t have the room to go over, that will be covered later in other guides.