Getting Started (Forestry)

The Basics
Forestry is a mod designed to enhance the agricultural aspects of Minecraft and adds some interesting mechanics that provide many benefits to the player willing to put in a little time. This is by no means an early game mod, but you can take advantage of some of the mods components or build some of the structures once you have explored and collected some resources.

Once you have a good collection you can build large multi-block Farms capable of automatically planting and harvesting crops, trees and even Netherwart. If you have IndustrialCraft 2 installed these farms can harvest the Sticky Resin from the rubber trees.

There is an extensive and rewarding bee keeping system where you can breed bees to provide you with a variety of different products. If that's not enough you can use the bees to help you breed different trees which will then attract a variety of Butterflies you can capture and breed also.

"Green" fuel and engines, honey-based foods and backpacks to increase inventory space for specific items and blocks are also noteworthy.

World Generation
Forestry adds a few ores and items to your world which you'll need to collect before you can get started. You'll notice some of these while out exploring your world or when you are mining.

Ores
While digging/mining you may encounter some Tin and Copper metal ores or the more unusual Apatite. Apatite is usually found in very large, but uncommon, veins at higher Y levels. If you want to build the farm structures you'll need a healthy collection of Apatite in your stores as the farms will use this as a Fertilizer.

Tin and Copper can be used to make Bronze alloy which you'll need later for crafting the machines.

Hives
There will be some unusual blocks, that glow in the dark, you'll notice while out exploring. Some will be found high up in the canopy of Jungle Tress while others will be found in the deep depths of your strip mine.

They will look like coloured blocks with stripes around them and can be found in the different biomes of your world. These are the Beehives and the only way you can collect what they contain is by breaking them with a Scoop.

Create one of these and take it with you when you go exploring so you can collect the Bees and bring them back to your base for later.

'''Note: The Princess Bees won't stack and will use inventory space quickly. You'll need several chests at your base to store them until you have the components to build an Apiarist's Chest.'''

Backpacks
Because there is no such thing as ‘too much inventory space’

There's nothing more frustrating than when you're happily mining in the deep depths of your strip mine and your inventory fills up. You have to amble all the way back up to your base to dump your findings and then amble back down to continue mining. This process is time consuming.

Thankfully Forestry provides us with Backpacks. There's two of them immediately useful to you: the Digger's Backpack and the Miner's Backpack.

These Backpacks have some great features. Firstly each Backpack can only hold certain items. Digger's Backpacks can hold things like Cobblestone, Dirt, Sand and gravel. Miner's Backpacks can hold anything from the Ore Dictionary, so ores and gems. Anything you pick up that should go in your backpack automatically does so without hitting your inventory first. You can also click a chest with your backpack and dump its entire contents into said chest.

Shift + Right-click with the backpack in your hand. You'll notice the icon now has a green arrow. Basically, if you click on a chest, then anything that is supposed to go into that backpack goes into it until it is full, so the reverse functionality of what it normally does.

Shift + Right-click again, and now it's a yellow arrow. This is really handy on the digger's backpack when building things, because it will automatically fill stacks in your inventory. So you could have fifteen stacks of cobblestone in your backpack and one in your inventory, while building your Great Wall, that stack in your hand keeps getting refilled from the backpack until it runs out. Clicking on a chest with the bag now dumps everything into that chest.

Shift + Right-click again, and now you've got a picture of a lock. Basically, nothing goes in and nothing comes out unless you say so.

These are a great help when mining or any kind of excavation or building project where inventory space is at a premium. Later on you'll be able to upgrade them into Woven Backpacks and they will hold even more.

Power Generation
There are three engine types available in Forestry, 4 if you have IndustrialCraft 2 installed. In older versions of Forestry these engines used to create MJ. Now they will output RF and just like BuildCraft engines they will need a redstone signal to run. However, Forestry engines will never explode.

Clockwork Engine
The simplest engine to get started with is the Clockwork Engine and only requires the player to wind the engine, by right clicking, to generate power. Stop when the engine turns red otherwise you may get injured. The next two engines require a functional farm in order to operate, one of which has to be a Forestry farm.

Peat-fired Engine
The Peat-fired Engine requires a functional Forestry farm as this is the only way to produce Peat or Bituminous Peat to fuel the engine.

Biogas Engine
The Biogas Engine takes a little more to setup and you probably won't get one until later in the game once you have a fully automated way of supplying it with one of the fuel types it needs. The Biogas Engine also requires Lava in order to start the engine and some fuels will require Lava to be constantly pumped in.

Electrical Engine
The Electrical Engine will only function if you have IndustrialCraft 2 installed and acts as more of a converter rather than a generator. The Electrical Engine will take EU as an input and subsequently output RF.

First Machines
You'll need to set yourself up with four main machines before you can do anything else. There are other machines, but these machines will help you get started and are needed to create certain items and refine products from Bee Combs. Most of these machines will need a Sturdy Casing as a component to build.

This is where you'll need to make the Bronze that I mentioned earlier so make your self a good amount and keep it handy.

Thermionic Fabricator
The first machine will be a Thermionic Fabricator.

The Thermionic Fabricator requires RF power to generate heat. This heat is then used to melt sand, glass and glass panes into Liquid Glass which forms part of the recipe for Electron Tubes. Electron Tubes will be needed to upgrade certain machines or to configure your farm, but more on that later.

Carpenter
The Carpenter also uses RF power and will require water, Seed Oil or Honey depending on the recipe.

If you intend on Bee Keeping you'll need this machine as it's the only way to create the components needed for the Alveary. It's also needed to create another essential item, the Soldering Iron which you'll need to put Electron Tubes onto Circuit Boards when configuring your farm or upgrading other machines.

Squeezer
The Squeezer is no exception as it too will require RF power.

The squeezer allows you to make Seed Oil and a few other liquids some of which you'll use in the Carpenter.

Centrifuge
The Centrifuge is every Bee keepers must have machine. It allows you to extract Bee products from their honey combs. RF will be needed to power the machine.

= Green Energy = I'm sure you've used Oil from BuildCraft and refined it into a fuel source. I'm sure you've also struggled with finding the oil and even more so getting it back to base to be refined, not to mention what happens when you run out. Well Forestry can help you go green and to do that we'll need to create a few more machines.

First up you'll need to make a Fermenter.

It's going to require Fertilizer plus either water or Honey plus something to ferment. The best thing is just saplings, but if you don't have a lot of those and you have Industrialcraft 2 installed then grab some shears and get some leaves. You then turn these into Plantballs which you can throw into the Fermenter. If you use liquid honey, it'll produce 50% more biomass. However, it will use a LOT of honey to do so, therefore it might be better to use water until you can produce enough honey.

The Biomass that is produced can then be put into the Biogas Engine and this will then generate power. The engine will require lava in order to get going from cold.

The Biomass can also be refined in a Still to make Ethanol for use in BuildCraft's Combustion Engines, Railcraft's Liquid Fueled Firebox or even Industrialcraft 2's Bio Generator. Ethanol produces more power than Biomass and can also be used in the Biogas Engine.

To make a still use the following recipe and don't forget to hook it up to some power so it can function.