Age of Engineering Guide: Ages 4-6

This is a continuation from Getting Started (Age of Engineering). It has been broken into multiple parts because of the limit on number of crafting grids per article.

Age 4: The Farming Age
Age 3 was fast, but we will make up for it here. You may as well make 3 or 4 more of those sturdy castings, as we will use them all.

In addition to all the things you have been mining so far, you will also need blue slime blocks (find a slime island in the sky, and mine the blocks around the lake), and soul sand (from the nether).

Task 4.0: Crusher
I don't think the crusher is strictly necessary, but it is faster than the macerator from IC2 at this point, and it runs off RF, so it's nice to have when you suddenly realize you need to make multiple piles of coal dust.

If you really want speed, make 2 crushers, and then combine them to make a double crusher, and hook it directly up to a Powered Furnace from Actually Additions. This makes for a very nice ore processing system.

Task 4.1: Thermal Centrifuge
Please notice that the advanced circuits take Empowered Restonia Crystals and Empowered Palis Crystals, both of which are made with the empowerer. For now, you only need 2 restonia and 4 palis, but eventually you will need many more (of the restonia, especially). You can choose to do the small versions, which use 400,000 - 600,000 Rf, but if you do the large versions (4-8M Rf), then you can save a lot on resources.

The ingredients necessary to make Empowered Restonia:


 * Restonia Crystal or Restonia Crystal Block (full block is recommended)
 * Rose Red (plant a rose bush, and use Fertilizer on it to get lots
 * Ardite Ingot
 * Resonating Crystal
 * Red Garnet

The ingredients necessary to make Empowered Palis:


 * Lapis Lazuli or Lapis Lazuli Block (full block is recommended)
 * Prismarine_Shard (made from reconstructing Nether Quartz
 * Cobalt Ingot
 * Blue Slime Crystal - from Congealed Blue Slime from slime islands
 * Raw Fish

Crafting recipes:

The Thermal Centrifuge can be used to get better than a 2x return on processing ore. In addition to making 2 dust from one ore, an additional tiny dust of a different ore type will also be produced. However, it is often questionable whether the extra power is worth it.

For now, the main reason we need this is for producing lithium dust from nether quartz. It is a necessary ingredient for empowered diamatine, which we will use very soon.

The Thermal Centrifuge will continue to draw power when not in use. An EU-Splitter cable can be used to turn off power to it when not in use. Alternatively, you could just make 18 tiny lithium dust, then remove the thermal centrifuge and put it in a chest. It won't be needed again until we get to nuclear power.

Task 4.2: Thermionic Fabricator
The thermionic fabricator is used for making many types of electron tubes. The copper electron tubes are the first we will need, as they are necessary for making any capacitors from EnderIO.

Once you have this made, you can test it by making copper electron tubes. JEI lists several recipes, but only the ones that contain Thickened Glass and Redstone Ingot are usable. You will need to make Clear Glass from Enriched Sand also, and place it in the top left slot. It will be used up at a very slow rate.

The thermionic fabricator will continue to draw power even when not in use. Unlike the thermal centrifuge from IC2, though, you can turn it off with just a vanilla lever.

Task 4.3: Algorithm Separator
For this task, you will need to make 6 power cubes, but that's not the hard part. The worst part is the Empowered Diamatine Crystal.

To make the Empowered Diamatine Crystal, you will need to use 2M Rf in the Empowerer, and provide the following ingredients:


 * Benitoite (mined from lowest or highest areas of the nether)
 * Fertilizer (made from sand and Apatite)
 * Lithium Powder (made in the Thermal Centrifuge)
 * Ash (from putting peat in a furnace)

There is a larger version that will save on resources, but the Rf cost is pretty high (20M). Eventually, you will want to only use the block version, but for now, it may make sense to just make the single version.

If you do want to make the block version now, you could expand your waterwheels to 2 (or 4), chunk load your base (with FTB Utils), and then go mining while you let it work. Or, you could build a few Coal Generators from Actually additions, and then use them for an extra burst of power.

Once you get the empowered diamatine crystal, it is time to make the algorithm separator:

Immediately, you can use the algorithm separator for making redstone ingots for a much lower cost than before. More importantly, you will soon be using it to make Weakened Diamond, which is necessary for many age 5 tasks.

Task 4.4: Carpenter
Strictly speaking, you can get by with 1 of these, but I highly recommend making 2 now:

One can be hooked up to infinite water (once you get it), and be used for making conduit binder, and the other should be placed near a squeezer. The squeezer's main task will be to turn 100 seeds (almost any kind) into 1 bucket of seed oil, which will then be used in the carpenter. In addition to seed oil's normal use (impregnated stick and impregnated casing), it is also needed for a Machine Chassis, the base of all EnderIO machines.

Task 4.5: Squeezer
Throw extra seeds that you have (regular seeds or canola seeds) into the squeezer.

You will need 100 seeds to make 1000mb of seed oil, so if you are stuck, jump ahead and make the garden cloche from age 5. You won't be able to automate it entirely (because of the need for water), but it will work pretty well without automation. The greenhouse from calculator is also great at automating seeds, and can be used if you don't want to wait for the garden cloche.

Task 4.6: Machine Chassis
This will complete the age:

Take a bucket of seed oil, and put it into the UI for the carpenter. Make a recipe by dragging the items for the recipe to the crafting grid in the top left. Then place the resources for the farmer to use in the large area in the lower part of the UI, and watch it work.

Drop the item and pick it up to trigger age 5.

Age 5: The Ender Age
You may have breezed through the last 3 ages, but age 5 is going to be different. There is a lot to do here, and it may easily take as much time as the first 5 ages combined.

Some things you need to be looking for from the beginning: villages (for emeralds), slime islands, and mob heads (especially enderman heads). If you are playing on an established server, finding a village with villagers still alive, and a slime island that still has many blocks of slime may be difficult.

Another option for Emeralds is to mine for them in extreme hills or extreme hills+ biomes. Emeralds are found there in the same y-levels as diamonds (strip mining at y=11 is the best for me).

We will need to go to The End dimension for this age, so it is worth taking time to make some good armor. While we are traveling to the end, it may be worth it to find an elytra to enable true flight (by way of jetpack), so it should be obvious now why this age frequently takes so long!

In addition to this, we are going to need many machine chassis for our new machines, so we will need to greatly increase our power capabilities so that we can use our Empowerer for large recipes. So, we will be spending a lot of time mining for all the materials we need for such equipment.

The first task is the alloy smelter, because it is needed for many of the other tasks. After that, the order that you follow is kind of up to you. There will be a few steps that you can't 100% complete in the order that I give, for example, 5.1 is the conduits, but one type of conduit (redstone) isn't available until after you have made a Forestry centrifuge, which is listed later.

Task 5.0: Alloy Smelter
Once you have this, you can make Quartz Glass, which is useful for making the Reservoir, a device that can provide your machines with unlimited water, and for making pressurized conduits. You can also now make Soularium, which allow us to make the metal press, and many other goodies from EnderIO. Here's those recipes:

If you play around with the alloy smelter a bit, you can see that it it can be restricted to only make alloys, or only smelt ores.

I think it's worth having 2 or 3 alloy smelters around, and have them on different settings. Then you can use conduits to automate how your materials are processed. Send ores into the furnace-restricted alloy smelter, and you won't need to worry about two metals going in at once and being turned into an alloy.

Task 5.1: Extraction Chamber (for circuits)
Circuits can be used for a lot of things. Most of them are optional, but there are almost certainly some that are mandatory. Creating them is very slow, so it is worth starting it now. They also take a lot of power, so for now, we are going to do the first step. Even if it can't be run 100% of the time, running it a little will make a bit of stone dust, which is very useful for making conduits.

First, make some weakened diamonds using your algorithm separator, and then use those to make an extraction chamber:

Take a stack of cobblestone, and set it inside, and just wait for it to work. If you are in a hurry, there are upgrades to make it work faster, but by starting it early, you shouldn't need to do that. For each cobblestone processed, you have a 12.5% chance of getting some kind of circuit.

Unfortunately, once it gets one circuit, it stops. So, I'd recommend making a Wrench (Calculator), then digging down below your extraction chamber, and right click on the bottom face to turn it red (which means output). Put a hopper there, and have it send output to a nearby chest. Feel free to put a hopper above it also for inputting cobblestone.

There is a bug with this device that makes it stop running if it can't fill entirely with power, and this seems to happen if you power it with connectors from Immersive engineering. Mine tends to get to 39,995, and then stop. To fix this, you need to use Energy Conduit to deliver power to the extraction chamber (instead of the Wired Connector). Alternative, I believe an energy laser relay can work well for powering calculator machines.

What I did is place one block of Energy conduit on top, and then place a wired connector off the side of the block of conduit. After doing this, it no longer gets stuck.

In addition to running cobblestone through your extraction chamber, you'll also want to run dirt through it to make dirty circuits. You could do cobblestone now, then switch to dirt later. Eventually, you'll probably want to make 2 extraction chambers, and dedicate one to cobblestone and one to dirt. The outputs of these machines do not stack, so I'd recommend making a saparate crate for storage from each extraction chamber. Eventually you'll get machines that can clean your circuits, and at that point, they can be easily stored in a drawer array.

I'm a big fan of automation, so I'm making conduits the next thing on our Age 5 list.

Task 5.2: Conduits, conduits, conduits
In most modpacks today, there are multiple options for how to move things around, and AoE is no exception. I have settled on conduits when possible for 4 big reasons:

* You can have conduits of multiple types (item, pressurized fluid, redstone, energy) all in the same block, and they won't interfere with each other * Item conduits and redstone conduits have multiple channels, so you can have multiple pathways in one block by only placing one conduit. * Conduits can be set to not connect to conduits in the next block over, and no painting is required. * Where conduits meet machines, you can set them to only insert or only extract. This reduces the load on the server, and reduces the chance of something going wrong.

Conduit binder is annoying to make, but it's cheap, so it's worth making 6-8 stacks of it at once:

Note: stone dust can be replaced by Small Stone (Calculator), which is a waste product of the Extraction Chamber.

If you have a little CF Powder leftover, keep it. You can use it in age 7, if you want to use a CF sprayer to make reinforced stone for your nuclear generators.

If you have an alloy furnace and conduit binder, you should be able to make 3 types of conduits. The 4th below (Redstone conduits) will also require a [Centrifuge (Forestry)] to make the silicon for the redstone alloy.

The energy conduits require ender pearls. If you don't have a good way to farm these yet, then don't worry about them yet.

In addition to all the conduits, also make a Yeta Wrench. When viewing it in your inventory, hold down shift to see instructions on how to use it. I use mine the most when trying to adjust a conduit that connects to the bottom of a machine. You could dig down into the floor so that you can click with an empty hand on the connection pad, but it is easier to just shift-left click the node itself with a yeta wrench.

Task 5.3: Garden Cloche (optional)
This step is marked as optional, but it will make it much easier to get large quantities of seeds, because it can grow canola extremely fast. Thus, I would say that it is highly recommended.

Advanced Greenhouse
For this, you will need to make another Basic Greenhouse. You could dismantle and use the one from before if you are sure you have enough coal dust from it already.

You will use your algorithm separator to make the tanzanite.

Don't place your large greenhouse yet. Save it to make the farmer.

Farmer
Don't place your farmer yet, save it to make the garden cloche.

Reservoir
If you have played a lot of 1.12 packs, you probably know this item as an "Endervoir", but in 1.10, it is still called a "Reservoir".

The garden cloche can be built in age 4, but I have it here primarily because the easiest way to generate water for it is a reservoir, which requires an alloy smelter. It's not a bad idea to build the garden cloche in age 4, but you will need to restock the water for it manually.

The garden cloche is also useful for your carpenter. If you made 2 carpenters, you can have one filled with water constantly from your reservoir, and use the other for anything else (eg. seed oil).

Place the 4 reservoir blocks in a 2x2 grid (can be vertical if you wish), then fill two opposite corners with water (using water bucket). They will give an infinite water source.

Now, make both a Transfer Pipe, and a Transfer Node (fluid). It can pull water from your reservoir to go into your Garden Cloche.

Garden Cloche assembly
Bring in power from the top, and water from the bottom. In the UI, place soil in the bottom square and canola seeds in the top square. Then, exit the UI, and attach a chest directly onto the node in the middle block of the 3 blocks. Your output will go in there.

Task 5.4: Travel Anchors
If you are like me, this is about the point that you will need to expand your base. Do you have multiple floors? Do you want to jump through walls? If so, it is time to make Travel Anchors, and a Staff of Traveling.

These are a huge quality of life improvement, so I recommend doing it, even if the recipes look a bit expensive. Travel anchors that are placed vertically can be used like elevators. The staff of traveling can be used to jump to any travel anchor, over a very large distance, for just a small amount of power.

A capacitor bank from EnderIO can be used for charging your staff. Better yet, a battery from actually additions held in your inventory can recharge your staff as you use it, and it can be recharged in a capacitor bank. There is an upcoming task for these items.

Task 5.5: Metal Press
A Metal Press is not very expensive, and it will make it cheaper to make Bronze Gears, which is going to be nice considering how many Sturdy Casings we need to make now. After following these recipes, you will have enough to make 2 metal presses. There are three metal press templates that we will want: Gears, plates, and wires. So, if you have the space in your factory, you may want to just make 3.

Construction
The Metal Press is relatively simple to make. It uses:
 * 2 s
 * 1
 * 1
 * 1
 * 2 s

The orientation the Conveyor Belts are in is important; one should be facing into the Piston and one should be pointed the opposite way, away from the Piston. The orientation of Piston also matters; it should be facing down, as if it is to push the Redstone Engineering Block.

After it is fully arranged, shift right-click the left or right side of the Piston with an Engineer's Hammer to complete the multiblock.



Canola press and fermenting barrels
We are going to begin to need a lot more power now, so it's time to get the canola presses going. Make a press and couple barrels, and place all three along with an ender IO tank into a 2x2 square:

The press will take your Canola, and make Canola oil, which will go to the barrels, which change it to basic oil, which can then be pulled from the Ender IO tank.

If space is not an issue, you can keep 3 barrels going from one canola press, and then use them to power 3 oil generators.

Oil Generator
Place this next to the ender IO tank, and have the tank push into the generator. You can probably keep 3 of these generators going at once. This will make lots of power!

If you are really ambitious, then you can use transfer pipes to take your canola directly from the garden cloche to the canola press. If you have more than 2 going, then you may need to move the oil further than just one block. If this is the case, use pressured fluid conduit instead of a fluid tank.

The amount of RF from a bucket of [Oil (Actually Additions|Oil] is 120. You can increase this to 280 by crystallizing the oil. To do this, place the oil in world, drop in a crystallized canola seed, and then pick the [Crystallized Oil ]back up.

The amount of RF can be increased again to 400 by placing crystalized oil in the world, dropping an empowered canola seed in, and picking it up. This makes [Empowered Oil]

These extra steps can be automated using

Task 5.7: Other optional fuel sources
Canola seems to be the favorite method for generating power in age 5, but there are other options, such as ethanol.

Task 5.8: Experience Obelisk (optional)
This is purely optional, and is quite expensive, but it is nice to be able to push and pull experience into this, so you won't lose it all on deaths:

In addition to not losing experience on deaths, you will waste far less experience when you enchant things now, so this is highly recommended.

Task 5.x: Centrifuge (Forestry)
This is fairly simple to make, and you'll need it to make silicon from silicon dioxide:

Task 5.x: Vibrant Capacitor Bank
The Vibrant Capacitor Bank can hold 25,000,000 Rf, and has an interface that can be used for charging armor, weapons, drills, etc. We will be using a lot more power soon, so it is time to make one.

Either recipe will work, but I usually find the first one to be easier, because it contains less single capacitors.

For the electrical steel, you will need to make silicon, using the Forestry centrifuge.

Task 5.9: Dark Steel armor (optional)
Now that we have an alloy smelter, we can get new armor, which will be very useful for going to The End:

Use these ingots to make a full set of armor. The non-enchanted versions are similar to iron, but you can put some great enchantments on them. Shift click to see the enchants possible.

Make a vanilla anvil to apply enchants.

For all 4 pieces you will want to enchant them first with a Vibrant Crystal and 4 levels of experience, followed by a Basic Capacitor and 6 levels of experience. If desired, you can enchant further with a Double-Layer Capacitor, followed by an Octadic Capacitor.

After these enchants, you will want to add Glider Wings to the Dark Plate (chest piece]], a Speed Potion to the Dark Leggings, and no fall damage to the Dark Boots. If you wish, you can add a Solar Panel to the Dark Helm.

It is also recommended to make The Ender as a sword, if you haven't found one already, and a Dark Bow for a weapon. The sword is useful for getting mobs to drop heads (especially endermen), and the bow can be enchanted with Power V, and has an infinite supply of arrows, so it is a great weapon for fighting the ender dragon.

To make all of these, I believe you will need 27 dark iron. Dark iron takes a long time to make, so set it up, and then go mining.

Task 5.10: Mob spawners (optional)
Going to The End and taking [The Ender] is a good way to get enderman heads and enderpearls, but sometimes you want your own spawner at home. I ended up making two rooms for powered spawners in my base. One was used for enderman, and the other for blazes.

Slice'N'Splice
The Slice'N'Splice is needed for making Z-Logic controllers, which are important for making some of the EnderIO filters, and also for making things such as powered spawners:

Soul Binder
If you have found any dungeons or mineshafts, and broken the spawners and saved the scraps, good news, we can change them to create the creatures that we don't see often enough (ie. Endermen). To change what type of spawner you have, you will need to make a Soul Binder:

Next, make a Soul Vial and click it on the enemy whose soul you wish to capture. Take a brokne spawner and the filled soul vial, and place them in the soul binder to change the spawn type.

Next make a Powered Spawner:

Finally, place the broken spawner and the powered spawner together in a vanilla anvil to get a powered spawner of the type you want. Hook it up to power, and you have the most important part of a mob farm!

Task 5.11: New mining bags
Traveler's Sack

Void Sack

Item Filter (Actually Additions)

Place in the item filter all the items you don't want to pick up (Andesite, dirt, cobblestone, arrows, etc.). Then use it as a whitelist for your void sack, and a black list for your traveler's sack.

In the void sack, there is a red I in the top left of the interface. Click it to turn it green. Now, anything you pick up that matches the white list will instantly be destroyed.

The traveler's sack can also be set to auto pick up, but it doesn't always work if it is in your hotbar (not sure if this is a bug, or if working as intended). When you are done mining, place the traveler's sack in your hand, and shift click a chest to automatically empty everything from it into the chest. If you have that chest as the start of a long automation queue, this feature is extremely handy!

Task 5.12: Quadruple Battery
You made a double battery early, and then used to craft your empowerer. These batteries can be held in your inventory, and when you do, your armor, weapons, etc. will be filled from it.

You can upgrade the double battery as far as a Quintuple Battery. I recommend going at least as far as Quadruple Battery, which is able to hold 8,000,000 Rf -- enough to keep your stuff charged for a long time!

Task 5.x: The End (Chorus Fruit)
Take a trip to the end, and harvest some chorus fruit. You will need it for nutritient distillation.

Task 5.x: The Vat
This will be needed late for rocket fuel, but for now its main purpose will be to make nutrient distillation:

Task 5.x Machine Frame
The Machine Frame (RFTools) will be needed for nearly everything in age 6. This is the last thing you need to get to age 6 also:

Task 6.x: Hazmat suit
This seems like a good point to beef up our IC2 machinery. Theoretically, you could wait until age 7, but in my playthrough, this was the point that it just made the most sense.

So, make yourself a full Hazmat Suit. You'll need the suit, leggings, Scuba Helmet, and rubber boots:

You'll need to be wearing all 4 pieces of this while carrying almost any type of nuclear fuel. It isn't necessary for Uranium ore (like what you get while mining), but after any processing at all, make sure you are wearing it.

Also, try very hard to not die while carrying nuclear fuel. If you do, you'll want to make a full new suit before picking up your gravestone.

Task 6.x: 100EU nuclear reactor
First, you'll probably want an offline reactor simulator for testing your setups, to make sure that they won't blow up. The best choice is the first link, but it is Android only. The second link is to a .jar that can be downloaded and used on Mac, Linux, or Windows:

* https://forum.industrial-craft.net/thread/12453-ic2-experimental-planner-for-android/ * https://forum.industrial-craft.net/thread/10998-ic2-experimental-reactor-planner-open-beta/ * https://forum.industrial-craft.net/thread/8966-official-new-reactors-design-thread/

The third link there is a list of popular designs. Use the hash that goes with any reactor listed there in one of the tools to see its setup.

The hash for the most popular 100 EU reactor is 21p0axsp4l073uhxj0vluhyyum4k6qvj0sqr867wl4ylcn4qdoix3yd83b78y8enonfoolys5g23280. That hash can be used in either tool. In order to build it, you will need * 1 Nuclear Reactor * 3 Component Heat Vents * 7 Overclocked Heat Vents * 2 Component Heat Exchangers

Place the reactor in the world, and place a lever on it. If you wish, you build a barricade around it using Reinforced Glass (Industrial Craft 2), in case of explosions. If you are playing single player, you can type "/backup start" before turning it on, just in case you have something wrong.

After turning it on, immediately open the UI, and begin watching the components. If something is going to blow up, you'll usually get some indication in the first 5-10 seconds of it running, and hopefully you'll be able to turn it off before it does.

Since the output of this reactor is below 128 EU/t, you can send the output directly into a CESU without blowing anything up. Of course, at this point, building at least an MFE is probably a better choice. If you have lots of resources to spare, build an MFSU.

Task 6.x: IC 2 Overclocker upgrades
Distilled Water isn't necessary for making Overclocker Upgrade (IndustrialCraft 2)s for IC2 machines, but by using it over regular water, you can greatly reduce the amount of lapis required. We have enough power now, so, let's do it.

Task 6.x.x: Boiler
First, you need to make another Electric Heater. You've made one before, but this time you will need to make 10 Coils, because we are going to need to take it all the way up to 100hU/tick. Attach it to power. The nuclear reactor that you built in the last step should be exactly enough to keep it going (handy, huh?).

This time, build a Boiler, and attach it to the Heater (once again, the large orange squares show where heat connections can be made.  You'll need to connect them.

Supply water to the boiler using fluid transfer nodes.

Task 6.x.x: Condensor
Next to the Boiler, attach a Condensor. Make one more basic Heat Vent, and place it in the boiler. This will speed up how fast it works, and keep it from exploding. Hook it up to power. It won't use much, so you can power it and the boiler at the same time from your reactor. If you can't give it power, that's ok, it will work without it, just it will be a bit slower.

Place a fluid tank next to it to pull out the distilled water.

Task 6.x: Mining drill
Make a Mining Drill, and charge it in your 25M capacitor bank. Make it your active tool and then sneak-click to access the upgrade bank. Give it each of the following 5 upgrades. They are expensive, but worth it:

Now, you can use this tool to mine a 5x5x1 area at once, and it will handle dirt and gravel the same as if it were stone! Sneak-left clicking can be used to mine just a single block. The fortune upgrades are great for when you encounter diamond or emerald.

Task 6.x: Restoration Chamber, Reassembly Chamber
Build a Restoration Chamber and Reassambly Chamber for processing your damaged and dirty circuits.

Task 6.x: Elytra, Iridium shards
Go to the End, and using your glider, explore the outer islands. When you find End cities, look for airships, and then loot them. You'll want to find one Elytra, and 8 Iridium shards.

Task 6.x: Forestry Bees
This could go anywhere in the guide, but I think near the end of age 6 makes sense. The goal will be to get some imperial bees that can be producing royal jelly while we do all the busy work in age 7. Once enough royal jelly is made, we can build an Aviary, which is necessary for continuing the wintery line of bees.

Build a single Bee Smoker (it never wears out), a Portable Analyzer, and a number of Scoops. You'll need a number of plains bees and forest bees. You can get the plains bees easily from the mining dimension. Use the smoker on a hive for a few seconds, then break the hive using the scoop. You'll get a princess and a drone, and a honeycomb.

Build another Garden cloche, squeezer, and carpenter, because we are going to need a lot of impregnated wood and impregnated sticks. If you want to build a tree farm, now is the time to do it. Personally, I just got stacks of dark oak by using my lumberaxe in a roofed forest. You can use many different choices in the cloche. I chose to just use regular seeds, then piped them into the squeezer, and then piped the seed oil into the carpenter. I recommend fully automating this.

Make 10-15 Apiarys. You're going to need 50+ Impregnated Frames also, but these don't stack, so you may want to craft them as you use them. You'll want to find a chunk in the world that you can use for your bee stuff. It will need to have normal climate and normal humidity, so basically this means forest or plains. Make sure you have it chunk loaded, and clear enough space for your apiaries. You'll need to have flowers around (although the bees will create more), and you'll need an open view of the sky.

As you have been collecting bees, you may have noticed that sometimes you get a stack of drones. This means that these drones have identical stats for both the dominant and recessive traits. If you don't have stacking drones, begin randomly creating some by mating a princess and drone of the same type (ie. Plains) in an apiary.

Once you get about 5 drones that are the same, you can force a princess of that same type, by brute breeding. Place an apiary with an item conduit pulling out, then branch the item conduit. Send one branch back into the apiary, and send the other to a chest. Place 5+ drones and one princess in there. The princess will die, and any drones that match the 5 in the apiary will join that stack. All non-matching drones will leave. The new princess will be more similar to the drones than the old one, and will take the her place as queen. Eventually you will get a princess that matches the drones completely (assuming that the dominant and recessive genes of that drone were identical). Once you have succeeded with this, the pile of drones will begin to grow, and you will have automated honeycomb production.

I personally got about 8 automated apiaries going, and gave each of them 3 impregnated frames. I chunkloaded them, and let the frames wear out. This gave me plenty of honeycomb for a lot of bee analyzing. I didn't bother with impregnated frames during the main breeding steps.

Now that you have a lot of honeycomb, begin centrifuging it. Place a hopper above the centrifuge so that you can put in 5 stacks of honeycomb at once. You will get honeydrops, which you can now use with your portable analyzer. Placing one honey drop and a stack of drones in the analyzer will then put visible stats on the drones that you can use for breeding purposes.

Now, set up a number of non-automated apiaries. With them, begin breeding forest + plains bees. With a bit of luck, you should get common bees, or more likely hybrid bees that are part common and part forest/plains.

Look up imperial bees in JEI. You'll notice the recipes always specify which type of bee needs to be the princess, and which type needs to be the drone. Just ignore this. All the bee breeding recipes are symmetrical, in other words you can switch which is the drone and which is the princess. The main thing you need to learn now is the path from imperial all the way back to common.

Once you understand this pathway, you are ready to go. I recommend having 10+apiaries all running at once. When you get offspring, just throw out the drones that are upgrades, and keep going until you get imperials. It takes a long time. When it becomes night, go to sleep, since bees do not function at night. Hopefully you won't have too much rain.

For other stats, you can basically ignore them all now. You can introduce mutations once you reach imperial. Focusing on stats early is just going to bog you down. That said, you want to avoid any that say they only produce 1x offspring. This is referring to how many drones you get, and you really want 2 or 3 drones made if you are going to be effective at breeding. I think the 1x mutation is fairly rare. Just throw it out if you get it.

Once you get imperials, then set up your automated breeding system again, and force breed stacks. Make impregnated frames again, and put 3 in each apiary, because you now care about the output. You will need lots of imperial jelly.

Now that we have bees going steady, it is worth moving on and finishing this age.

Task 6.x: Pattern Storage
Make one Pattern Storage (Industrial Craft 2) to advance to the next age.