Getting Started (GregTech 6)

*First things first: where to build a base, general tips.

Small ore and sand ore are quite handy in the early game, so I myself prefer the desert. Coal, magnetite, bauxite and quartzite sand ore are useful and relatively easy to find without spelunking. Alternatively, the jungle is nice if you're messing with crop breeding.

Nickel and copper ores, among others, sometimes yield radioactive cobalt-60 during processing. In addition, in Gregtech, skeletons shoot arrows made with random metals, including uranium and plutonium. It's good to carry milk around; drink it to cure poisoning. You can craft a wooden bucket pretty early for milk; no crucible required.

Industrial TNT is made with 6 flint and 3 TNT blocks. Industrial TNT and string makes mining dynamite. Totally use mining dynamite; you're worth not doing everything manually.

Flint and certus quartz can be used to build tools as with stone. Flint tools are more durable than stone tools. Certus quartz tools are as durable as iron tools.

Finished metal is a valuable commodity in the early game. Stick to leather armor and stuff dropped by mobs; the crucible will kill you faster than enemies. If you find iron or steel armor in dungeon treasure chests, melt it down for tools, especially the thermometer (2 steel) and the cauldron (7 iron).

*Smelting basics: crucible, burning box, molds.

Gregtech 6 nerfs smelting; only copper, tin, lead, zinc and bismuth can be smelted in a vanilla stone furnace. Everything else gets smelted in a crucible made of seven blocks or plates of heat resistant material using a hammer and a chisel.

Gather at least 80 clay lumps, small lead equal to 8 ingots, a bunch of small copper, and the usual coal, cobblestone, wood and flint. Smelt a bunch of cobblestone into stone to make cheap hammers. Hammer 2 ingots together to make a double ingot, then hammer that to make a plate. 2 plates and a stick make a file. Use the file on an ingot to make a rod. A copper plate, a copper rod, a stick and tools make a chisel.

Smelt clay blocks to make hardened clay blocks. 7 hardened clay, a hammer and a chisel make a ceramic crucible; 5 hardened clay blocks, a hammer and a chisel make a ceramic mold. Hammer together 2 copper plates to make a double copper plate. 4 lead plates, 1 double copper plate, 3 blocks of clay bricks and a hammer make a lead burning box.

Place crucible somewhere away from flammable things. Place burning box under it with an air block in front; maybe you sink this into the floor. Place molds next to crucible. Right click molds with hammer (no GUI) to carve shapes into them. Right now, you want a rod mold and a plate mold. Find mold shapes at Smelting Crucible Manual (GregTech 6) - Official Feed The Beast Wiki.

Contrary to what NEI might suggest, you can throw all manner of ores into the crucible: crushed ore, purified crushed ore, dust, metal tools and armor, etc. Only pristine, unused tools and armor will work in the crucible. Combine multiple copies of used armor and tools to get a single perfect one.

You won't regret crafting copper pincers before you try to smelt anything - otherwise, if you pour metal into a mold and don't wait 10 seconds before pulling out the finished piece, you get burned.

You need something to light the burning box. Flint can be combined with any of the following to craft a firestarter: steel nugget, iron nugget, quartz, certus quartz, nether quartz, and chipped jasper (look for small jasper in the desert, then hammer until you get the chipped kind). It won't light until you right click in fuel. You'll want to right click out the ashes now and then. It takes a few tries with most things to get the box lit.

Once the metal inside a cauldron melts (changes color from gray-black to the color of the metal), you can right-click adjacent molds to pour metal into them. Colors will be confusing if you have more than one kind of thing in the cauldron; it might not change colors.

Touching a hot cauldron or a mold with molten metal in it will kill you instantly. If something with a low boiling point falls into a hot cauldron (notably, water and sand), it'll vaporize and kill anyone near it. If a creeper gets to a hot cauldron, it'll explode.

Right-clicking the top of a cold cauldron will clean out cold contents by hand to yield scrap. Hold down the right-click button and switch inventory slots to get everything. Scrap's a pain; it only stacks in piles of 16, and each scrap is equal to 1/9 an ingot. You can use a mortar to turn it into dust or throw it back into the cauldron.

If a cauldron gets overheated by a lit burning box, it'll explode, so don't put too much fuel in at once. You can't put out a lit burning box; you have to wait for the fuel to run out. An empty cauldron will heat up faster than a full one. Once you're done smelting, you can throw more ore into the cauldron to cool it down; the ore will wait there until the next time you smelt. Maybe throw in something with a low melting point, so that you can pour it out too. Until you have a thermometer, you'll have to use the melting point of the metal you're smelting as a general indicator of temperature; bronze is around ~1300K, iron is ~1800K, steel is ~2050K, titanium is 1984K, gold is ~1500K.

*Manual essentials: bucket, cauldron, thermometer, sifter.

You want a thermometer before anything else, if possible; it's real easy to overheat the crucible without it. You'll need two units of red alloy (four copper+one redstone each; it burns off most of its mass once it hits its melting point) and some glass, but the two steel plates are the difficult part. Steel requires temperatures of around 2050K with a ratio of one unit carbon dust to 50 units wrought iron. 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 those into the crucible. The thermometer sticks on the front of the crucible. You'll need wire cutters, a rolling cylinder and a hammer to turn red alloy plates into red alloy wire.

A sifter costs another ~8 steel, but it does most of the work processing sand and gravel ores, so it's well worth it; an efficient macerator or crusher for normal stone ore is a long way off. Right click ore into the top to place it, then hold down right-click to sift, then right click the bottom 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.

Bucket and cauldron require 10 iron plates, a wrench, a hammer and a rolling cylinder. It's easier to find iron things in dungeon treasure chests, then melt those down. Alternatively, combine magnetite and dark ash in a 7:3 ratio; when it hits ~1800K, it'll smelt down to 3 iron. Limonite also requires dark ash, but it yields better ratios. Pyrite and actual legitimate iron ore are even better, but they're harder to find. Banded iron is a pain in the behind, because you have to smelt it with dark ash AND calcite (from marble).

Use the bucket to put water in the cauldron, then throw in crushed ore and impure dust to clean it and get extracts. Don't mess with copper; you'll sometimes get radioactive cobalt-60. It's especially worth cleaning crushed ore; otherwise, it'll bring a bunch of stone with it into the cauldron.

--> Obsidian tools are awesome: use them all the time. Unlike Gregtech 5, you can hold a bucket of lava without burning yourself. Right-click the top of a cauldron with a lava bucket to pour it into the cauldron, heating it to around 1050K. You can pour the lava out just like any molten metal to produce obsidian tools. You'll need to use the tool molds; one mold for axe head, one for sword blade, etc. It's totally worth it, though; you don't even need to light the burning box or wait to smelt out obsidian, and obsidian tools are level 3 with adequate durability. You can get by with stone molds and cauldrons for lava, so consider a separate set of equipment for making obsidian tools. Sharp tool heads will require finishing with a file.

*Getting rubber, IC2 machines, the hazmat suit.

Now we're messing with scary, scary steam power. Be careful. Go to the desert and find a sand bauxite vein. Dig it all up, especially the ilmenite, and put it through that sifter. Bauxite yields trace titanium, especially when you crush the purified crushed ore with hammers and clean the impure dust in the cauldron. Ilmenite smelts down to 1/4 its volume in titanium. Craft a titanium burning box, a titanium boiler, a titanium engine, and a bronze squeezer. Don't forget to right-click water into the front of the boiler; if it boils dry, it'll explode. Put the boiler on top of the burning box, then run pipes out of its top to the back of the engine. The front of the engine goes to the squeezer. As for pipes: make sure they have fluid capacity no greater than the capacity of the engine, around 200mB/t. Bigger is not better; steam in Gregtech 6 is an incompressible fluid; instead of pressure, increased steam power is expressed by increased flow rate. Small pipes won't burst under high flow in; instead, they restrict flow, keeping your engine from overloading.

You'll also need a pain in the butt coagulator, made of stainless steel. You'll need iron, nickel, chromium (dungeon treasure chests or extract from ruby ore) 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; make 2 batches of 9 ingots each just in case. Combine the iron and nickel first to make invar; otherwise, the nickel will get permanently bound with the chromium to make kanthal.

Place the coagulator under the squeezer, put rubber resin in the squeezer, put coal in the burning box, check again to make sure there's water in the boiler, light the burning box, and make rubber in the coagulator. Watch the boiler carefully and refill it with water.

Use rubber with copper wire, tin wire, redstone, tin item casings, iron plates and wooden treetaps to build an IC2 generator and an IC2 extractor as quickly as possible; this rig is a pain in the butt and you don't wanna use it for rubber longer than you have to.

Use rubber, orange dye, wool, glass and iron bars to build a hazmat suit. It'll protect you from all crucible accidents and it'll allow you to pick up hot finished metal from molds without pincers.