Getting Started (BuildCraft 4)

First Steps
As with any Minecraft world you are really going to want to find the usual resources and BuildCraft is no different.

Make sure you have a good supply of the following items.

You'll need these to create your first simple pipe system. Not to mention all the chests your going to need. Don't forget to bring a crafting table.

Find a nice flat area, or create one near your home to give yourself some space. If you really want create a basement to work in.

Craft a few chest's and place one somewhere in the middle. This will be where we will put a few items later.

First Transport Pipes
The first type of pipe we are going to use are Transport Pipes. These are used for moving items around by pulling them from Chests and other inventory items.

In order to pull items from these inventories we need Wooden Transport Pipes. These require power from an engine in order to function, but we'll get to that later. Here's how you make them.

We'll need to attach one to the chest we created earlier. To do this click on the block adjacent to the chest and this will place your first wooden pipe and attach it to the chest.

NOTE: Its a good idea to place the wooden pipe first before placing the required power source. This will ensure the engine orientates itself correctly to connect to the wooden pipe.

Bear in mind you cannot connect any more wooden pipes together. You can put multiple pipes around the chest if you want, but you'll need cobblestone pipes or better to do anything after that.

Now we need some cobblestone pipes. These are crafted in a similar way to the wooden pipes, but we replace the wood with cobblestone.

Now attach a few of these pipes to the wooden one to make a small network. Not too many though as anything that flows through them will be slowed down due to the pipes drag/friction effect. This means cobblestone pipes aren't all that good at transporting things any great distance as they will take a very long time to get there.

Now put another chest at the end of the pipe system. I know this doesn't seem all that productive, but this is just to demonstrate the basics of moving stuff around.

At this point nothing will happen. This is because in order to make your pipes work you need power. Minecraft Joules(MJ) to be precise.

First Simple Power
Now to make any use of the pipes we'll need to supply power. BuildCraft introduces Minecraft Joules(MJ) as our power. How do we create this power? Easy. We build an engine.

Our first engine is going to be a Redstone Engine and in order to make it you will need to have already crafted a piston. In fact as all the engines require a piston why don't you go ahead an make a few of them. 4 or 5 should be fine for now. Why not store them in the first chest you made.

Next we'll need some gears. As this is a simple engine we only need wooden gears.

Now we can create our first Redstone Engine.

Once you've crafted the engine go ahead and place it next to the wooden pipe attached to your first chest.

The engine should point towards the wooden pipe if you have done this correctly. Now the final thing to do is turn the engine on. We do this using a Redstone Signal which you can supply by crafting a Lever and placing it behind the engine. A quick flick of the Lever will then turn the engine on.

You'll notice that anything you have placed in the first chest will now start to flow through the pipes to the second chest, but they are coming out somewhat slowly. This is because the engine is cold as can be seen be the blue colour in the engines core.

As the engine warms up, from Blue to Green to Orange to Red, the engine will speed up and so will the flow of items through your pipes. The items will still be moving through the pipes quite slowly, but we'll fix this later.

This is an effective transport system and allows you to move materials from one location to another and is bidirectional. However, as we are using Cobblestone Pipes this will take place very slowly. We can add some Golden Transport Pipes, but due to the high drag of the cobblestone pipes we'll need a fair few to keep things moving nicely.

Smelting cobblestone to make smooth stone and then creating Stone Transport Pipes will be a better option as they don't have as much drag as cobblestone, but the two pipes won't connect which means you need use another pipe type to connect them.

Long Distance Transport
Now that we know how to make a simple transport system lets show you how to make it more useful by transporting the items over longer distances. This is helpful when you want to have a system for pumping all your mining materials to the surface from a deep mine. Saves you so much time.

We're going to need some Golden Transport Pipes for this so go ahead and craft some.

Now if you remove the Cobblestone/Stone Transport Pipes and put three Golden Transport Pipes directly after the Wooden Pipe when the items enter the Golden pipes they will start to speed up.

I place 3 Golden Pipes every 9 Cobblestone Pipes or 15 Stone pipes. This keeps the items going at a nice pace without using too many Golden Pipes.

This method is a great way to get items from your strip mine to your home without all the boring traveling.

More to come when I get the time.