Getting Started (GregTech 6)

= General Notes =

GregTech ores generate in many forms, however the three that are the most useful are Small, Sand, and Gravel. Small Ores have a lower Mining Level than their regular versions, and when broken will drop either Crushed Ore or Dirty Dust (or a Gem if possible). Sand and Gravel Ores are mined with a Shovel rather than a Pickaxe, however much more importantly, will obey gravity and fall if unsupported. This can be exploited alongside the trick of 'place a torch to make an entire stack of falling sand drop as items' to mine Sand and Gravel Ores without the tool mining levels that would normally be required. Because of this property of Sand Ores, Desert biomes can make for good starting locations, as with little luck can an ore vein be found at the surface and easily gathered.

NEI is GregTech best friend. However, it can often show more recipes than are actually necessary or useful, as GregTech contains many, many 'recycling' recipes (which simply convert materials into different forms, or break apart machinery into the metals used to make it), and many recipes that can be produced yet because the basic materials are not setup to spawn in the world. One of the more important recipe category in NEI is "Combination smelting". You can browse this category when you search for an alloy ingot recipe (for instance Bronze). There's also a GT Book of Alloys in-game, but it's much more inconvenient because there's no search functionality in it, compared to NEI.

The extended debug display can be opened by holding H after pressing F3. This display allows viewing the Melting and Boiling Points of all items that can be thrown into a Smelting Crucible, along with exactly what materials they melt down into. If you use NEI, another perks of it is that you can cycle through chunk display modes with F9. The red lines are chunk corners, so mining straight down on these lines allow you to check the content of 4 chunks at once. In GT6 a vein spawns in every 3 chunks so if you arrange a digging matrix by using these red lines, you can easily map the locations of several veins around your base. Additionally since there's only one vein every 3 chunks you can stop digging as soon as you've reach a vein: there won't be another one under it (although there still might be sparse small ores beneath it).

IndustrialCraft 2 Industrial TNT is crafted out of Flint and TNT. Industrial TNT can be crafted with String to make Dynamite items. When placed, Dynamite will break a 3x3x3 cube centered on the impact point, while not being dangerous at all, while ITNT will kill you if your near it when it explodes. This makes it extremely efficient for early-game mining of higher-level materials or excavating an underground area, provided you have enough Gunpowder.

Skeletons have a small chance (1/16 by default) to fire a random GregTech Arrow in stead of a conventional arrow. This includes arrows tipped with radioactive materials, which cause Radiation Poisoning on hit. As such, a Wooden Bucket of Milk is often a good item to carry around. Yeah is GregTech Iron is not an early material so instead of regular Iron Buckets, you can start with Wooden Bucket to carry cool liquids like Water or Milk. Of course you won't be able to carry lava or any other melted material.

One of the most valuable resources in the early game is loot. Metal armor found in dungeons/villages/mineshaft chests can be melted down and used for tools, once a Smelting Crucible has been crafted. It can easily be worthwhile to only use Leather armor, and damaged metal armor looted from monsters, just to get the extra metal to get off the ground. Beware that only pristine stuff can be smelted in a crucible: used tools, armor, or weapons cannot. GregTech also introduce its own version of dungeons, Strongholds, which is a big place with several rooms with a lot of loot in them. Yeah, exploring in GregTech can be a valuable activity, now !

A final general note: Creative mode is your best friend to experiment things. Energy types, Steam pipes, Recipes in the Crucible: there is a lot of complex things in GregTech and in the beginning it can be very difficult to understand all the intricacies of the mod. So keep a Creative mode world on the side to test stuff. Also this guide may become obsolete quite quickly because GT is updated every week, so take everything written here with a bit of Salt.

= The Stone Age =

When you start a new map with GT6 you'll have to establish you base. But in doing so, take note of these pointers :

- GT ores spawns in veins, sometimes big ones, that can be seen quite clearly if you have some wide space and few trees. As such a Desert is often the best place to start a base. Bonus point if there's a Sand Lignite/Sand Coal vein there to help you start on fuel.

- Villages are also a valuable starting point because of their chests, which can contain precious materials you likely won't be able to craft yourself for a long time. The agriculture there is also a bonus, and trading with the villagers can help sometimes.

- Spruce and Dark Oak Wood forests are best suited for GT axes (lots of vertical wood, even for big trees) and since you're going to need a lot of charcoal on a regular basis, having such resources at hand is valuable.

Since you start in the Stone age, you'll have to act like a cave person: Flint tools will be you primary focus. In GT6 Flint has a fire aspect, which is very convenient because it allows you to light targets on fire, which kills them more easily and often cook meat when you kill animals. Flint tools may not have a lot of durability, but can be found in abundance (also note that villages have gravel paths). In addition to its killing potential, Flint is also the primary component for a mortar, and crafting mortars will be a daily routine for you until you start to build your first machines, and it won't happen soon.

Certus Quartz is also a viable alternative for tools because it has the same Tier level as Iron, allowing you to mine ores that you would not have been able to mine with a Stone/Flint Pickaxe in the first place, even though mining beyond your means can be inefficient if you're not able to use what you've gathered.

Cobblestone Pickaxes, even though they have horrible durability (barely over ten Stone blocks), are really fast at mining Stone, so they are very good for branch or chunk mining (see general notes above), and they are basically free.

You should also focus on your farming skills, since you'll be able to automate a lot of the food processing on that topic later on, and because farming is one of the only few renewable resource, you should take full advantage of it.

Under GregTech 6, the only metals that can be smelted in a vanilla Furnace are Copper, Tin, Bronze, Lead, Zinc, and Bismuth. Of those materials, only Bronze can be used to make tools. (Lead can be used, but it requires Steel Rods as handles.) All other metals must be melted, often alloyed, and subsequently cast, in a Smelting Crucible (heated by a Burning Box) and Molds.

Crafting your first crucible and learning the arts of smelting is of the utmost importance in playing GregTech 6.

Smelting
Smelting in a crucible is very basic, so basic there's not even a GUI for that.

A crucible is a block that you place on top of a burning box, and in which you'll throw your ingredients. Lighting your burning box will make it produce heat upwards, onto the crucible, which will heat up as well, until it reaches a temperature high enough to melt its ingredients...or itself. You better get used to that because a lot of contraptions in the beginning of GregTech are GUI-less, so nothing is handed out to you: you have to do the work by yourself, and only later will you be able to automate more and more steps of your work process.

To begin, and to avoid going back and forth collecting materials, go on a mining operation to collect at least 80 Clay balls, some amount of Stone, Wood, Flint, and Coal, enough Copper and Tin to make at least 25 Copper ingots and 7 Tin ingots, and 8 ingots worth of either Lead, Bronze, or Bismuth.

Copper and Tin cannot be directly combined to make Bronze. To combine them, smelt Copper and Tin Ores into Ingots, then use Flint and Stone to craft a Mortar, and use the Mortar to crush the Ingots into Dusts. Then, craft 3 Copper Dusts and 1 Tin Dust in a square to get 4 Bronze Dusts.

Combine Stone and Sticks to make Hammers (more than one will likely be needed, as Stone Hammers have very low durability). Place a Hammer and two Bronze Ingots in a vertical line in your crafting grid to make a Double Ingot, then use the Hammer again with the Double Ingot to make a Bronze Plate. Two plates and a Stick combine to make a File. Craft another Bronze Ingot with the File to make a Bronze Rod. Combine a Plate, a Rod, a Stick, a Hammer, and a File to make a Chisel. Finally, craft six Bronze Ingots (in a Y-shape) with a Hammer in the center to make a Wrench. These are the mandatory initial tools to craft your first GregTech contraption: the Crucible.

Note:  Additional tool, not mandatory but highly recommended: Pincers. Items cast in a Mold will be extremely hot, cool slowly, and cause severe damage to a player who attempts to remove them. Right-clicking with a set of Pincers allows a player to extract the hot items as soon as they solidify. You can also use Lead or Bismuth but remember that a tool durability follow its materials, so a Bronze tool will be way more durable that a Lead one. But that said, you'll need a lot of Bronze in your GregTech career, for tools and machines, whereas Lead or Bismuth will be of way lesser use then. So it's up to you to decide which material to use, as it happens so many times in GT.

Smelt 12 of the Clay balls into Bricks, combine the remaining Clay into Blocks, and smelt them into Hardened Clay. 7 Hardened Clay, a Hammer, and a Chisel combine to make a Ceramic Crucible. One Double Copper Plate (2 ingots + Hammer -> Double Ingot, + Hammer -> Plate; 2 Plates + Hammer -> Double Plate), 3 Brick Blocks, 4 Lead, Bronze, or Bismuth Plates, and a Wrench make a Burning Box. (Which of the three Burning Boxes crafted doesn't matter much yet; they serve the same purpose but work at different speeds/efficiency). Finally 5 Hardened Clay, a Chisel, and a Hammer craft into a Mold.

Note:  Molds and Crucibles can be made out of Stone. However, these are more or less useless, as effectively the only material that they can melt is Stone, which cannot be cast.

The standard basic Smelting Crucible is made of Ceramic, because it has a quite high melting point, allowing you to melt a lot of different metals and alloys. Be wary though that because it's very light, it heat up and cool down very quickly. It's very easy to go overboard with a crucible and safety measures, although efficient, won't be able to save you every time. Standard molds are also made from Ceramic because of the same temperature reason, and because Clay is easy to find, especially if you're near a river, a beach or a swamp.

Place the Crucible somewhere that does not have anything near it that can catch fire. Place the Burning Box directly below it, and make sure it has an air block in front of it. Place one or more Molds adjacent to the Crucible.

Note :  Initially Molds have no pattern in them. The shape of item created by a Mold is determined by what shape is Chiseled into it: molds are GUI-less too. Molds have 25 spaces within them, which must be knocked out in specific patterns to yield specific items; if an invalid pattern is given, the Mold will instead produce a number of Nuggets. The page on Molds has a full list of all valid patterns, and there is an in-game book that list all of them. To chisel a pattern into a Mold, right-click on its inner area with a Chisel. The chiseled piece will be knocked out of the Mold.

Note:  Despite NEI only showing pure metals being thrown into a Crucible, any shape of metal can be thrown in. Chunks, Dirty Dusts, Crushed Ores, undamaged metal tools and armor, anything except Ore Blocks. However, throwing in items other than pure metals will usually also partially fill the Crucible with Stone, which must be removed before the material in the crucible can be useful. Material that has been thrown into a Crucible can be removed as Scrap by right-clicking while the Crucible is cold. Right-clicking to remove material from a heated Crucible will result in the player taking very significant damage, most of the time lethal.

The Crucible is heated by the Burning Box under it. The material used to make the Box determines the rate at which it burns fuel, and its efficiency in doing so. However, to use the Burning Box, it must be lit. Flint & Tinder is the GregTech equivalent of a Flint and Steel, but can be crafted using Flint and either an Iron nugget, Steel nugget, a gem of Quartz, Nether Quartz, Certus Quartz, or Chipped Jasper (uncommonly found in Deserts). Feed the Burning Box by right-clicking it with conventional Furnace fuel (Coal, Charcoal, Saplings, ...). (Note : Once fuel has been inserted, it cannot be removed while the Box is lit). Once the Box has Fuel, right-click it with the Flint & Tinder to try and light it. This will likely take multiple tries because Flint & Tinder does not have a 100% success rate, more like 30%.

While active, the Burning Box will also periodically produce Ashes or Dark Ashes; right-click the Box with an empty hand to remove them (that's safe, you can do it while it's lit). Once lit, the Burning Box will continue to burn fuel until it runs out of it, or if its front side is blocked by an opaque block. This allows for an emergency shut-down, by placing a block of Dirt in front of an active Box.

Now some important safety warnings:

- An active Burning Box will cause nearby flammable objects to catch fire.

- Touching (right-clicking or touching it with your body) a heated Crucible, or a Mold containing hot cast metal, will result in the player taking very heavy damage.

- If an item or material inside a Crucible reaches its Boiling Point, or if an item falls in that has no listed boiling point, it will vaporize, dealing heavy damage to all players and mobs near the Crucible. This can include Molds, or the Crucible itself. Note :  as material vaporizes, the Mass inside the Crucible decreases, causing it to heat faster. If a Crucible vaporizes, it will also vaporize all material inside it, and set several random nearby blocks on fire.

- Be extremely cautious around the "opaque block in front of the burning box" mechanic because a Burning Box will only shut down after it has burned its current fuel. So during your first experiences, prefer using Lignite, or even Saplings, to ensure that when you drop an opaque block in front of the Burning Box, it will stop quickly because it will have burned its current fuel quickly (Lignite and Saplings both are very inefficient fuel, compared to Coal and Charcoal). For instance if you put a Block of Coal in a Burning Box, light it, and immediately put a Dirt block in front of it, it won't shut down until it has burnt the whole block, which may heat your Crucible way past its melting point, vaporising its content and itself into nothingness, wasting everything.

- Removing a Burning Box using a wrench will stop it immediately, and will allow you to retrieve ashes and unburnt fuel, but you'll lose the currently burning fuel. This may be a safer emergency measure but be careful around touching the Crucible with your body, and doing so use your wrench durability.

Once the Burning Box below the Crucible is lit, it will start to heat the Crucible. The rate at which a Crucible heats depends upon the mass of the Crucible, and the mass of the metal inside it. Once the metal inside the Crucible melts, it can be poured into adjacent Molds by right-clicking the Mold. Note:  The metal that will be poured into the mold is the one that has the highest melting point. For example if your crucible is at 1360K and contains 3 units of Bronze and 1 unit of Copper, Bronze will be poured first and only after the 3 Bronze units have been poured will the Copper be poured as well. This is an interesting mechanic when you're not following the recipes exactly.

Some notes on Materials
When in need, Chalcopyrite smelts as Copper, Cassiterite as Tin and Galena as Lead, and can all be smelted in a regular Furnace.

The notable approximate temperatures for early metalworking are: Tin (550K), Lead (650K), Copper and Bronze (1350K), Iron (1800K), Wrought Iron (2000K), Steel (2050k), Titanium (1980K), Gold (1500K), Stone (vaporizes at 2000K), and Ceramic (Crucible vaporizes at 2500K). By knowing these melting and boiling points, Crucible temperature can be roughly observed by looking at the color of the liquified metal in the Crucible, until you craft Thermometer. For instance if you mix Copper and Tin in a Crucible and heat it, you'll first see the liquid Tin (past 500K) and at some point later you'll see the Bronze (1350K). After you've poured the Bronze out of the Crucible, if there isn't any Bronze left, but there's still Copper, you'll see it liquefied (Bronze is a desaturated orange while Copper is a bright orange-red color). If there isn't Bronze nor Copper anymore, but there is Tin left, you'll see it liquefied (Tin is bright gray).

When the Crucible cool down too much, and goes below the melting point of a material everything goes back to the darkish solid state.

Note :  If you've mixed different materials in the crucible, and if these materials does not all mix (like if you've thrown an Iron pickaxe, its Wood won't melt with its Iron regardless of the temperature), you'll never see the colored liquid state, only the dark gray solid state. That's why you've have to respect recipes as much as possible until you can craft a thermometer.

Iron smelting is a bit of a special issue to handle. The primary source of Iron is Magnetite (later on you'll encounter Yellow and Brown Limonite which are much more efficient to get iron from). Magnetite can be melted, but will not melt into Iron. In order to convert Magnetite into Iron, Dark Ashes must be mixed with the Magnetite. And as Dark Ashes can be most reliably obtained by running a Burning Box, you'll need to burn a fair bit of Coal or Lignite to get Dark Ashes for Iron. Luckily you'll have a lot of Bronze tools to craft in the beginning. Pyrite and actual legitimate Iron Ore are even better, but they're way harder to find. Hematite is easy to find but is a pain, because you have to smelt it with Dark Ashes AND Calcite (gotten from smelt marble).

Steel requires temperatures of around 2050K with a ratio of one part Carbon for 50 parts of Wrought Iron (Not e: don't consider melting whole ingots, but tiny dusts, because the Crucible can only have up to 16 units). You can extract Carbon from Graphite Ore by washing it in a Cauldron; small Graphite Ore is found below z-level 20. Alternatively and far more easily, find Steel tools in dungeon treasure chests and throw these into the Crucible.

Hammers help you crush ores in crushed dusts (especially Copper and Tin that are found on a regular basis in caves), you'll get more material from an ore that way, especially if you wash them afterwards in a Cauldron.

One final note, but I'll write that again in another topic: Rubber can me smelted in the Crucible. Rubber plates are in fact Rubber sheets. Following the same principle you can also make Rubber rings with liquid Rubber. Be careful because you waste a part of the material in the process though. It's one of the "hidden recipes" that does not appear in NEI because the Crucible and Molds are GUI-less, so feel free to experiment on your own.

Before the Forge Age your current work process should more or less be :

- Mining Ore (like Copper) or getting Impure Dusts from sparse Sand/Gravel Ores.

- Crushing Ore to Crushed Dusts with hammers.

The next step will be way more rewarding.

= The Forge Age =

Before diving in the wonderful world of machines and automation characterizing the Forge Age, you'll need some very convenient tools and contraptions.

- An Iron Bucket. Made of 3 iron plates, 2 of them curved by hammering a plate on a rolling cylinder, it's your only way to carry Lava. Why would you want to have Lava ? Because Lava poured in a Crucible allows you to make Obisidan tools. Although their durability is not that great, since Lava can be found quite easily (especially if you open an early Nether Portal) and since Obsidian is a Tier 3, Fire Aspect material, Obisidan tools are the perfect upgrade after Flint ones: plentiful, efficient, and easy to make. Because Lava is hot, pouring a bucket of it in a Crucible will heat it immediately to Lava level (around 1000K) and you'll be able to pour the lava right away in tools shaped molds. That's the beauty of it: you don't even have to heat the Crucible with a Burning Box. For this very reason it's a good idea to find an underground lava lake beneath you base and keep a Crucible + tools molds there. Be careful when pouring because obsidian tools need to cool a bit before they can be safely picked up, or use pincers/hazmat suit when available. Tools retrieved from molds are "raw" and need to be sharpened to be of any use so finish them with a file, or better, a Sharpener. Of course you can use your Tools Molds with other materials, like Bronze.

- A Thermometer. It's really easy to overheat the crucible without it. You'll need two units of Red Alloy (4 Copper + 1 Redstone = 1 Red Alloy unit). Be careful because Red Alloy burns off most of its mass once it hits its melting point so overheating is very easy. You'll also need some glass, and Tin Alloy which is made from Tin and Wrought Iron. A Thermometer is placed on the front of the Crucible. You'll need a wire cutter, a rolling cylinder and a hammer to turn red alloy plates into red alloy wire. It's a time effort to craft your first thermometer, but it's really worth it: you'll make tremendous progress in understanding the smelting process and in managing your Crucible safely.

- A Cauldron is made of 7 Iron plates (or Wrought Iron plates so you can use them there if needed). The Cauldron is, with the Sifter and the Hammer, the next step in your ore mining process: throw in crushed ore and impure dust to clean them and get by-products. It's especially worth it to clean crushed ore because otherwise, it'll bring a bunch of stone with it into the cauldron. You want to try to smelt washed, purified dusts as much as possible.

- A Sifter costs 8 units of Steel, but it's your only way to manually process Sand and Gravel Ores, which are in huge veins, so it's well worth it to craft it as soon as possible. Right click Ore onto the top spot to place it there, then hold down right-click to sift the Ore, then, after it has passed through the Sifter, right click the bottom result to pull out the purified Ore and extracts. Crushed, purified gem ores can be sifted to get gems (this includes Lapis). Gravel can be sifted to get Flint, Quartzite and trace Clay. Dirt can be sifted to get pumpkin, wheat and melon seeds. You can wash the Purified Dusts in your Cauldron to retrieve even more byproducts afterwards.

- A Sharpener costs as much as a Sifter so only consider making one if you've found some Steel or a bunch of Graphite Ores, but the investment will pay off big time because sharpening your raw tools is almost a daily occupation in GregTech since you'll mine a lot and harvest tons of wood for Charcoal. Place your Sharpener on the ground, feed it Sandstone with a right-click in the middle of the Sharpener, and keep right-clicking your raw tools on it. After a few tries your tool heads will be sharpened, preventing you from using a file to do so, which costs time and resources.

- A Mixer is quite cheap and can go a long way if you're into Bread for food: Harvest your wheat (hint: use a Sense, it'll farm in a 3x3 pattern), grind it into Flour with a Mortar, put the Flour in the Mixer with a right click, and pour water in with a Bucket (Iron or Wood made): right-clicking with an empty hand will get you Bread paste, that you'll be able to craft in Bread or even Baguette form, to be then cooked in a regular Furnace. You'll need 1 water unit for 3 flour so place your mixer near a well to spare you water trips. Or you can kill a lot of animals to eat, that works too !

So, at the end of the Forge Age, your current work process is now :

- Mine Ores/Collect Sand&Gravel Ores

- Crush Ores with a hammer, or Sift Sand&Gravel ores with your Sifter

- Wash results in Cauldron to get by-products

- Crush Purified Crushed Ores (again) with a Hammer

- Wash the results again in Cauldron to get even more by-products and purified Dusts to smelt in your Crucible

Better, isn't it ? But a lot of labor work. Why don't we start letting machines do the hard work for us ?

= The Steam Age =

Your first machine
Now that you're more familiar with the Burning Box heating principle we're going to mess with scary, scary steam power. Steam, at this point of the game, is the only way to power your first machines.

As an explanation, let's make ourselves an Automatic Hammer. It's a basic machine that does not require a lot of expensive materials, and building it will help you understand the Steam mechanic in GregTech.

Make a lot of Bronze and craft a Bronze Boiler, some bronze small pipes (4/5 should be enough), a Bronze Steam Engine and, finally a Bronze Automatic Hammer.

Put the Boiler on top of the Burning Box, like the Crucible, and put Water inside by right-clicking water into the front side of the boiler.

Be careful that if it boils dry, it'll explode (TOBECONFIRMED). Then run pipes from its top hole to the back of the Steam Engine. Put the Automatic Hammer in front of the Engine.

When lit, the Burning Box will heat up the Boiler, just like it did with the Crucible. Water will slowly reach its boiling point and during that time the barometer will rise slowly throughout the left white section up until the green zone: that's the moment when you'll start to have Steam. Steam will flow through pipes and will go inside the Steam Engine. The Steam Engine with then use this Steam to make its internal piston go back and forth, which will generate Kinetic energy, measured in GregTech as KU/t.

The Kinetic energy is then consumed by your brand new Automatic Hammer that will turn it into internal energy (measured in GU). Put an Ore Block (Copper or Tin for instance) and *bam*, the Automatic Hammer will happily crush it for you, saving you a hammer use. Put another Ore and soon it'll be crushed as well. You can then stay before your hammer and drop Ores so that they can all be crush.

Naturally, being a machine, the Automatic Hammer does not wear off. You just have to feed it energy (KU in this case) to make it work.

The Hazmat Suit
Now as a more advanced tutorial, let's make ourselves a Hazmat Suit, which is a lot of work to do but will help you understand why Steam is awesome.

Note :  If finding the necessary materials for a Coagulator is too much trouble for you, feel free to skip this whole part. The Hazmat Suit is a very nice thing to have, especially when you're not fully familiar with the Crucible, but it's not mandatory in any way.

Go to the desert and find a sand Bauxite/Ilmenite vein. Dig up all the Ilmenite, and put it through the Sifter. Ilmenite smelts down to 1/4 its volume in titanium. You can dig up the Bauxite too because its by-product is Aluminium and you'll need a lot of it later, but it's not mandatory at this point.

Once you've got the required amount of Titanium, Craft a Titanium Burning Box, a Titanium Boiler, a Titanium Steam Engine, and a Bronze squeezer.

To turn your Latex into usable, solid Rubber, you'll need a pain in the butt Coagulator, made of Stainless Steel. You'll need Iron, Nickel, Chromium (found in dungeon treasure chests or extracted from ruby ore (TOBECONFIRMED)) and Manganese (dungeon treasure chests or extract from grossular/spessartine/pyrolusite/tantalite). Ratio is 5 Iron, 2 Nickel, 1 Chromium, 1 Manganese. You'll need 12 ingots to build the coagulator so you'll have to make 2 batches of 9 Stainless Steel each just in case. First combine Iron and Nickel to make Invar, otherwise the Nickel will get permanently bound with the Chromium to make Kanthal, preventing you from completing the recipe.

When you have all your machines install them like you did for the Automatic Hammer: run the titanium pipes from the top of the titanium boiler to the back of the titanium steam engine, place the Squeezer in front of it and place the Coagulator under the Squeezer.

Then feed your Burning Box with Fuel, your Boiler with Water, your Squeezer with Sticky Resin. Light the Burning Box and wait for the Boiler to heat up to its green zone. After a couple seconds your titanium engine will have started and your squeezer will happily squeeze your Sticky Resin into Latex. The Coagulator will then suck up the Latex from the Squeezer, and slowly turn it into rubber bars. Note:  a Coagulator does not use any energy, just time.

Use your newly acquired rubber, orange dye, wool, glass and iron bars to build a Hazmat Suit and Rubber Shoes. It'll protect you from all crucible accidents and it'll allow you to pick up hot finished metal from molds without pincers. Note :  You have to wear the whole set (Head, Chest, Legs AND the Rubber Shoes) for it to work as heat retardant. If only one piece is missing, you lose the effect completely, so be careful when using your Rubber Shoes everywhere. Note also that the Hazmat Suit does not lose durability from using it to get stuff from molds, or even handling radioactive elements. It loses durability just like any other armour pieces.

Energy Types and Efficiency
So, to sum up the previous tasks, you used heat (measured in HU/t) to power a Boiler (which converts HU/t to Steam/t) to power an Engine (which converts Steam/t to KU/t) to power a Automatic Hammer/Squeezer (which both converts KU/t to internal GU/t), and in the case of the Squeezer, transfered its content into a Coagulator (which uses times as a resource, measured in ticks (t), or even seconds (1 sec = 64 ticks TOBECONFIRMED)).

There are several more energy types you should be aware of:

- RU/t is Rotation energy. RU/t is very important because it's used by a lot of machines, so having good RU/t producers is critical.

- EU/t is Electric energy. Encountered later (during the Electric Age) you may already know EU/t as IC2 Energy system. Well you can just keep your general understanding of the concept and scap anything specific because it changes quite a lot in GregTech.

- MU/t is Magnetic energy. Generated by Magnets (duh !), it's a less used energy type but don't worry, you'll have to use it at some point too.

Another point to consider is your machines efficiency, starting by the Burning Box, which is at the very beginning of you chain. As you're read earlier, a Burning Box can be made of several materials, which can then themselves be of basic or dense state. Theses two parameters has a dramatic influence on the Burning Box resulting power, and efficiency.

For instance a Titanium Burning Box is very powerful (96 HU/t) for something you've built quite early, but it's efficiency is a meager 85%, while an Invar Burning Box, although less powerful (64 HU/t), have an outstanding 100% efficiency. The efficiency means your fuel will last more, and since you'll be burning a lot of fuel, having a perfect efficiency may sometimes be more important than raw heating power. Or course nothing prevents you from using a Burning Box at some point and then replace it for another one, under the same Boiler.

This efficiency rate is applied to almost all machines, so do not hesitate to do some math to understand what you need, and how you're going to produce the needed energy type and at which rate you're going to produce it.

If you overlook this two majors things may happen to your engines: they will be underpowered, even so they might not even start, or they will overflow and even explode. You may restrict the flow of Steam your boiler will produce with pipes (look at their tool to see their maximum bandwidth) but limiting the flow can have another undesired effect: Steam pressure will build up in your Boiler. If your Boiler go beyond the red zone, it will explode, and the blast radius isn't small. So be careful and think about what you're doing: Read the tooltips, adjust your math accordingly, and play it safe.

Making a machine may be long process, it would be a shame to waste all these efforts, wouldn't it ?

Calcification
Calcification is a nasty consequence of boiling water. The water you'll use in the beginning is considered impure, since Minecraft consider ocean water and river water and the same. This water, when boiled, will slowly but surely calcify in your Boiler, making it less and less efficient over time.

You can safely check the calcification status of your boiler by using a Magnifying Glass so better craft one as soon as you've found one of its possible glass crystal. The more it's calcified, the less Steam you'll have.

You can decalcify a Boiler by using a Chisel, but only if its pressure has gone down to the white zone, and you better have a Hazmat suit because if it's still hot you may instantly die.

You can also decalcify a Boiler by removing it with a wrench and put it again on the Burning Box. This is the safest way, but it uses your wrench.

In both scenarios, decalcifying will empty the boiler from its content (Steam and Water) so remember to fill it up again afterwards.

You can make Distilled Water quite easily, because each Steam consumer engine (Turbine and Engine) emit 80% of its used Steam as distilled water on its sides, so you can plug fluid pipes all around them and collect the generated distilled water in BuildCraft Tanks or ExtraUtilities Drums (more on that later).

Basic Machines
Now that you are more confident in getting your items parts from casting liquid metals and alloys into Molds, a word on this topic: You should craft almost all Molds as soon as possible. You're going to make more and more machines which will need more and more machines parts like Gears, Rods, Bolts, Plates, and so on. You'll be able to craft theses with Ingots and Tools, in doing so you'll lose a significant quantity of material in the process: For instance, crafting a Plate (1 unit) means hammering two Ingots (1 unit each) together and hammering the double Ingot to get the Plate. So you paid 2 units and 2 hammer crafting usage for 1 unit. If you've had a Plate mold you could have directly poured the material in a Plate, costing you only the unit you've put in your Crucible.

So think about what you want to make, and prepare your materials in advance: You can make batches of Plates, Rods, Gears to avoid having to craft them afterwards. Only exception are Screws, which will need a Lathe to make.

Now your biggest concern will be what to make next. As always with GregTech the answer is simple: More machines to help us make even more machines !

Your basic machines (beyond the Steam Engine, Squeezer and Coagulator if you've built them) will be ones that help you build more machines:

- Rolling Mill (RU based): Transforms Ingots in Plate, it's always nice to have one because it's annoying to fire up the Crucible just to melt ingots into plates

- Rolling Bender (RU based): Transforms Plates into Curved Plates and Rods into Springs. Also nice to have because you'll use your bending cylinder quite quickly when you'll start to make pipes, batteries, and rotors.

- Lathe (RU based): Transform Bolts into Screws. Useful because screws have no mold of their own, and are a rip-off to craft from bolts, cost-wise.

- Shredder (RU based): Transform almost everything into dust. Very useful as a recycler of old, obsolete machines/engines. Can also turn Wheat into Flour and Scraps into Dust. So basically an automatic, next tier Mortar.

- Mixer (RU based, bottom fed): Replace your table Mixer if you've got one but it's way more efficient since you can feed it water through pipes (more on Liquids later)

- Buzzsaw/Cutter (RU based): A little more tricky to craft because of the Diamond Dust, the Buzzsaw/Cutter is you Saw replacement, and can also turn gem into Plates, so it's a direct dependency to the Crusher (Diamond plates). But it has a lot of differents uses. Take some time to browse its numerous recipes. Note that the Buzzsaw/Cutter needs a liquid (Water, Distilled Water or Lubricant) so do not forget to put a BuildCraft Tank or an ExtraUtilities Drum with water under it: the machine will suck the appropriate amount of water for its needs.

- Sluice (RU based): The Sluice is one of the most rewarding machine because it does the first "Wash in Cauldron" step way better than you could ever do, even with redstone contraptions to fill you Cauldron, and more reliably. You can put a Chest on top of a Sluice, feed it with a ton of Crushed Dusts and go about your business while it safely wash all of your dusts. A Sluice need water from its top spot and produces Sluice Juice you can collect in a Tank/Drum to later Centrifuge it or Dry+Magnet Separate it into other by-products.

- Centrifuge (RU based, bottom fed): The Centrifuge is the last of the basic machines but also the most rewarding one because it does the second "Wash in Cauldron" step way better than you could ever do, even with redstone contraptions to fill you Cauldron, and more reliably. You can put a Chest on top of a Centrifuge, another one on its right, feed it with a ton of Impure Dust and go about your business while it safely takes care of your dusts. The Bronze one will do almost all basic centrifuge recipes, but you may soon realise that a lot of recipes need a more powerful Centrifuge, so a Steel might get appealing then (but it requires way more RU/t).

Note:  Unlike IC2, GT Machine are always running (that is, until you've made some specific Covers for them to not do so), so if you're not using a machine, do not forget to unplug its pipe (use your wrench to "undo" the pipe that enter the machine) from the main Steam supply.

Once you've got the necessary requirements, it's time for your two bad boys the Crusher and the Sifter. There two will replace the most tedious work you've done until now: crushing ores with your hammers (using a ton of them in the process, and a ton of time to use/make them) and sifting sand/gravel ores (which is just time consuming if you've built the Sifter). Both use KU (not RU) so your Titanium setup (if you went along the HazMat path, if not better start now) will be of good use here.

Now your work process may still be not 100% automated, but all the hard work (making machine parts, grinding Ores into purified dusts) should now be handled by machines, leaving you plenty of time to harvest more and more Coal/Charcoal to feed your never ending Burning Boxes.

But, as usual now, some notes before diving in the next Age.

Liquids and Gasses
GregTech does not have fluid (liquids/gasses) tanks (yet) so your three alternatives are : - BuildCraft Tanks: Cheapest of the lot, they are also the less practical because even though they can be filled/emptied with water with a bucket (iron or wood one), you can't move them without losing their contents, and their capacity is minimal (16 buckets or 16,000mB) even though you can stack them. Use them for water-based machines like the Buzzsaw/Cutter/Mixer/Centrifuge/Sluice but you may be quickly frustrated from their capacity, though - ThermalExpansion Tanks looks like their cousins from BuildCraft but they can be crafted from different materials for more capacity, which is always nice to have. (Could somebody add some details on these ? I don't use them myself :D) - ExtraUtilities Drums are the serious business. They are very expensive (17 units or Iron for ONE drum), but they have a capacity of 256 buckets (so 256,000mB), they can be removed while holding their content (this is their main benefit) and they also take the color of the fluid it has, which is really nice when you start to store them.

You can pipe any GT pipe into these tanks/drums and they will be filled at whatever rate the pipe is made for but extracting fluid from them will require you a Pump Cover. The ULV one can work without energy (so, for free) so craft yourself a couple ones, you won't regret it, especially when you'll start juggling Drums to tranform Water into Distilled Water or Sluice Juice, and then use these fluids for another tasks later. Just put a cover on a pipe, adjust its flow direction with a Screwdriver if necessary and it will suck up the fluid from a Tank/Drum and inject it into the pipe.

Of course you can pipe machines input/output fluid spots with fluid pipes. For instance pipe the fluid output of a Sluice into the fluid input of a Centrifuge, like you did (without a pipe though) when you put the Coagulator under the Squeezer. Likewise you can plug Item pipes in and out of machines to carry your items automatically from/into chests or other machines.

One more note, this time specifically on Gasses: you can use wood pipes for Steam as starters, but they won't be hermetic, so hot gasses will leak and damage you if you don't have a hazmat. So be carful when using them, and consider making sealant for them as soon as possible, or switch to metal fluid pipes, like Copper or Bronze.

= The Electric Age =

Steam may still be your main power production for a while but at some point you'll start to feel the need to store all this energy, maybe to use later at a much higher rate, or just because you have a fuel excess you are burning anyway. You may also be interested in other energy types like MU, renewable energy, or just want higher tier, more efficient and powerful machines.

For all these needs, at some point you'll have to step up to the Electric Age.

Unlike other mods, the Electric Age is not a whole different Age than the Steam one. Actually in the beginning you will use a lot of Steam to create your Electricity. So don't scrap away your beautiful, intricate, set of pipes and engines. You're going to use these almost the same way, to power up batteries.

Your starting batteries are made of Battery Alloy. Made from Lead and Antimony (following a 4:1=5 ratio), Battery Alloy will allow you to build Battery Hulls, these hulls with be filled with various substances that can store chemically store Electricity. The very basic one is Redstone, but more are to come, like Electrotine or Teslatite.

Charging your batteries means first creating electricity, and for that you'll be needing a Steam Turbine and a Dynamo. The Turbine produces RU and this energy is consumed by the Dynamo to make EU, just like you bike uses a dynamo on your bicycle wheel to generate electricity, and thus light, when you're riding it.

So plug a Steam Turbine, a Dynamo and a Battery Charger in a chain and put Redstone Batteries in there. They will slowly charge up as the Turbine recieve Steam. The materials involved has a lot of impact of the Steam requirements and the generated EU, so, like with the basic machines, be careful when you're crunching your numbers to decide what to build.

Then you can start making advanced machine explode by using improper Voltage or Amperage...

(WARNING, EXPERIMENTAL ZONE. I way write a lot more absurdities than usual because I just reached this part, feel free to correct me)

The two main aspect of Electricity, Voltage and Amperage, are modeled in GT6. This means that instead of following a simple Tier system, where you just have to make sure the numbers of two tooltips match (32EU/t in a wire, 32/t in a machine), GT allows you to feed a variable amount of electricity in your machines, so that you can slightly underpower or slightly overpower a machine. Of course, a too big deviation will result either in a stopped machine or an exploded one, so again, be careful, plan ahead and use a calculator.

Electric machines and wire, are defined by their ability to support Voltage, and their ability to take in Amperage. The product of the two is Power (like you have learned -or will learn- in High School). As long as you're careful with these two values, everything should be fine.

Amperage is defined by the number of batteries you use at once in the battery charger. 1 battery means an Amperage of 1, 2 means an Amperage of 2, and so on. So you can tune your Amperage in real time if needed.

Voltage is more like the EU tier you are used to. Machines need to support the circuit Voltage to be able to let the Amperage work its magic inside them. Voltage is also your basic tier converter with IC2 setup, so you can use a Polarizer/Magnetizer combo with Tin cable powered by a Battery Box, for instance.

When you have a solid Electric charging setup, you should consider walking the long path toward Solar Panels, because renewable energy alleviate the need for fuel for your batteries, and mostly because it'll require a lot of thinking, craftings, and general GT machine usage to do so. Nuclear Energy can then be considered too, but of course be careful around radioactivity, and the blast radius.

And then you have Electric tools, Laser technology, the Robotic Age, and so many other things not covered in here that will help you automate more and more steps in more and more complex work process and supply chain...

One final word: GT6 is in continuous developement so feel free to check in regularly to see everything new.

And, as always, good minin' and good craftin' !