Getting Started (Immersive Engineering)

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This guide is on getting started with Immersive Engineering. It is meant to get you up and running like a pro.

Getting started on getting started
The Engineer's Manual is one of the most useful items in Immersive Engineering. It is an in-game guide to the mod, and contains information on all of the crazy blocks and items Immersive Engineering adds. In fact, it's almost as good as this guide.

You'll also want an Engineer's Hammer. This handy tool can be used for a lot of things.

Resources
Immersive Engineering adds a couple of resources. Unlike other mods, Immersive Engineering isn't wimpy on using them; you'll want to collect as much ore as possible. This includes vanilla ores too, not just the ones listed below.
 * (Aluminium)
 * (Aluminium)

Villagers and villages
Immersive Engineering, like many mods, has its own villager and villager house. The Engineer's House is pretty much guaranteed to have some useful loot in it, and the Engineer Villager can help get you a few useful things in exchange for those useless Emeralds.

If you find an Engineer Villager, you'll probably want to mark and protect it. Their deals really aren't half-bad.

Industrial Hemp
Industrial Hemp is a crop added by Immersive Engineering. There's really not much to say about it. Industrial Hemp Seeds can be obtained by breaking Grass. It grows much like Wheat, although it is two blocks tall. It drops Industrial Hemp Fiber and of course, more Industrial Hemp Seeds.

They aren't super-vital, but you'll need them later for things.

Getting hot
What's the best way to get hot? By making a Crude Blast Furnace and a Coke Oven of course! The Crude Blast Furnace is used to make Steel, which you'll want a ton of. It also makes Slag, although that isn't very useful.

The Coke Oven makes Coal Coke and Creosote Oil. Coal Coke is pretty useful, but Creosote Oil is actually required to progress; you'll need Treated Wood for a lot of things.

Instead of making a Crude Blast Furnace, you could make an Improved Blast Furnace, but that requires Steel... and there's no way you would cheat using a lame mod like Railcraft, right?

A revolution!
Electricity! Well, sort of electricity. Immersive Engineering uses Redstone Flux (RF), one of the most popular energy frameworks.

Redstone Flux is supposedly magical, but in Immersive Engineering it acts a bit like electricity. There are three voltages- low, medium and high, with 256 RF/t being low, 1024 RF/t being medium and 4096 RF/t being high. Different voltages can't connect, but if they did, very bad things would happen.

Immersive Engineering wiring is a bit different from other mods. There are Wire Connectors and Wire Coils. Wire Coils are what transmit RF, but they aren't actually blocks; they're entities. Wire Coils always require Wire Connectors to exist and to transmit power. Wire Connectors are actual blocks that exist in the world.



From this point on, you'll want an Engineer's Wire Cutters. It's how you discount wire coils.

Energy creation and storage
Immersive Engineering has few, but very distinct power generation options. For your basic power, your best bet is using a Kinetic Dynamo or a Thermoelectric Generator.

The Kinetic Dynamo requires a Water Wheel or a Windmill, or an Improved Windmill. The Water Wheel can generates more power, but it requires Water which can awfully messy. If you go the Windmill route, then you might as well create an Improved Windmill instead of a regular one. It costs a lot of Industrial Hemp Fiber, but if you have a good Hemp farm (like I told you to do) it's pretty cheap.

The Thermoelectric Generator is a bit strange. It generates energy based on the difference in temperature between blocks/liquids adjacent to it. For example, Ice and Lava together will generate 16 RF/t. This setup may not be so good if your base is in a wooded area, and it doesn't look that cool either.



Energy can be stored in a LV Capacitor. There's also the MV Capacitor and the HV Capacitor, but you might not be able to afford them quite yet.

Like in many other mods, Capacitors can be broken and picked up, storing its energy, without any adverse effects.

Each side of the block has a certain configuration- no dots indicates no energy input or output can occur, one blue dot and one orange dot indicating an input, and two orange dots indicating an output. Right-clicking the capacitor with your handy Engineer's Hammer will change this configuration (shift-right-clicking will change the opposite side).

The LV Capacitor can store 100,000 Redstone Flux. This is a pretty good amount for your basic usage. If you want to know how much energy it stores, you can right-click it with an Engineer's Voltmeter. Or, if you're one of the 99% that has WAILA installed, you can simply hover over it.

Using energy
Rhetorical question- what's the point of making, storing and transmitting energy without using it for anything? Well, there's pretty much no point whatsoever. If you set up energy system to create, store and transmit energy, but don't actually use it, then maybe you should talk to someone.

Immersive Engineering, fortunately, gives you plenty to do with your energy. The most basic example of this is the External Heater. It, unlike most similar mods, is not a RF-powered Furnace; it is a block powers the Vanilla Furnace through RF.

To function, it should be placed next to a normal Furnace. Right-clicking one of it's sides with an Engineer's Hammer will allow that side to accept RF energy.



The Furnace will be able to smelt items without any fuel, from it taking energy from the External Heater. Initially, the External Heater will consume up to 32 RF/t, but once the Furnace reaches optimal temperates, it will only need around 8 RF/t to stay warm. However, it will still use 32 RF/t total; the other RF used will be used to speed the Furnace's smelting processes. If efficiency is preferred over speed, that functionality can be disabled through a Redstone signal to the External Heater, making it only consume around 8 RF/t.

Automation
Many mods rely on automation- BuildCraft, IndustrialCraft, Thermal Expansion... the list goes on. Immersive Engineering, believe it or not, is also part of this bandwagon.

Immersive Engineering adds a very simple form of item transportation- Conveyor Belts.

Conveyor Belts are simple; they move items on them in the direction the belt faces. They're pretty cheap, too. They even can automatically pull items of out inventories and automatically put them into inventories too.