Getting Started (GregTech Community Edition)

This guide will aid the player in getting started with GregTech Community Edition.

Before beginning
It will be helpful to install the following additional mods:


 * Just Enough Items, to help look through the many complex recipe chains in this mod.
 * A minimap mod such as JourneyMap, to save the location of important places.
 * Mods for item logistics such as Applied Energistics 2 or Ender IO, as GregTech Community Edition currently does not have a way of dealing with items.
 * A mod such as WAILA.

Additionally, be sure to allocate sufficient RAM to your Minecraft instance. If you are running GTCE on its own with minimal other mods, you may require 3 - 4 GB of RAM dedicated to your Minecraft instance. For a larger modpack, you may need up to 8 - 10 GB, depending on how demanding it is.

Changes to the world
When you begin a new GregTech Community Edition world, you may notice two different additions to the world: Rubber Trees and Surface Rocks.

Rubber Trees when broken down yield Rubber Wood and Rubber. Rubber is useful for making Rubber Sheets, which is used to make insulated Cables. They are distinguishable from other trees by their tall height and bright leaf color. Be sure to collect the tree's Saplings, as they are slightly uncommon. Surface Rocks are small stones containing 1 nugget of their metal. They provide a tiny amount of metal resource, which is a way you can collect small amounts of later-game resources early. Most importantly, they indicate the presence of a large vein of ore underneath them. In GregTech, ores spawn in extremely large clusters, or veins. Every 3x3 chunk area of the world, or a section, will have one or more ore veins containing 2 - 4 different types of ores. A single ore vein can be 20 - 40 blocks wide, containing 1,000 - 5,000 ore blocks. It is a good practice to save the location of all ore veins you come across, as they are very large and will last you a while.

Each type of ore vein will have a set Y level range at which they can spawn, as well as a group of ores it can contain. For example, the pictured Chalcopyrite vein contains Iron, Copper and Chalcopyrite, which smelts to Copper also. Look through JEI to find the various uses of an ore.

First steps
Once you have a standard survival base, it's time to go searching for important materials. You will need a source of Copper, Tin and Iron to begin. You will also need a significant amount of Clay.


 * Tin comes from Cassiterite veins, which spawn close to the surface.
 * Copper spawns as Pentlandite higher in the world, and Chalcopyrite deeper down. However, you may wish to save Chalcopyrite, as later you can process it for Platinum Group Sludge, which is an early source of Osmium, Platinum, Iridium and other valuables. It also can come from a number of other sources, such as Chalcocite and Malachite.
 * Iron can be found in Magnetite veins along with Vanadium Magnetite and Gold. Limonite veins are slightly denser in iron, and also contain Malachite for Copper.

Make sure to mark off locations of ore veins you find on a map or in a text file somewhere, as you will return to them multiple times. It's advisable to spend a while mining out important veins like these - GregTech is extremely resource-heavy, and you will save time by mining ores in bulk. Area mining tools such as Hammers from Thermal Foundation, or veinmining with Ore Excavation may help with this task.

Should you encounter any other types of veins, feel free to take with you a few blocks from it and be sure to mark it on your map. Later on, you will build ore-processing chains to obtain useful byproducts from all types of ore. Nickel, Redstone, Oil, Diamond, Silver, and Aluminium will all be useful very soon. A Coal vein is also a useful find so you don't have to destroy forests for Charcoal.

When you get home, feel free to simply smelt directly all your smeltable ores - proper ore processing won't be available for a while, and your Copper vein likely still has 2,000+ ore blocks left. Then, take about half of your Iron, convert it into Nuggets and shove all of them into a Furnace for Wrought Iron (you can only do it nugget by nugget). Next, make a Mortar with 5 Stone and 2 valid metal ingots, and a Hammer with 6 valid metal ingots and a Stick. If you have Cobalt, Uranium 238 (it isn't radioactive enough to damage you) or another valid tool material, you can use those as tool material to save on your other metals, otherwise you can use Wrought Iron.

Smash Copper and Tin into Copper Dust and Tin Dust, craft 3 Copper Dust with 1 Tin Dust to create Bronze Dust, and smelt it into Bronze Ingots. You'll need a lot of this, so perhaps create a few stacks. Bronze is the main material for your next step - the Steam Age.

Steam age
Before you can progress further, you'll need some tools. Make a File, Saw, Wire Cutter, Knife and Wrench out of suitable materials. You may also wish to craft an Axe, which chops whole trees at once, a Pickaxe, a Sword, and a Butchery Knife, which has Looting III on it.

Make some Bronze Plates with a Hammer and 2 Bronze Ingots - no bothersome Double Ingots here. Use those Bronze Plates with Bricks and a Furnace to create a Bricked Bronze Hull. Then, create a Small Coal Boiler. Insert lots of water and some Coal, and you'll begin producing Steam! If you have another mod which is able to provide a source of Steam, such as Steam Dynamos with Boiler Conversion from Thermal Expansion, you may use those for powering Steam machines.

(WIP)