Alchemical Math (Equivalent Exchange)

Introduction
This guide will help to show you a few things. First of all, it will help you understand better how alchemy and transmutations really lead to.

First off, a little bit about me. My name's Slev, I'm studying Biochemistry at a University. That being the case, I'm well acquainted with chemistry, which is really the science of what alchemy was. Alchemy in history was the quest for the philosopher's stone, said to be able to transmute base metals in to coinage medals like silver or gold, and grant eternal life. Now, not all of this stuff is impossible. With the right chemicals you can make gold out of lead, but you generally have gold in one form to being with. The core of alchemy, is to create something out of nothing. Luckily for us, Minecraft isn't real life.

In a quick guide you'll learn:


 * The Math Behind Alchemy
 * How to plan ahead
 * How to get diamonds really easily

So Let's get Started!

The Basics of the Math
We'll start with some basic fundamentals of alchemy. The humble dirt block. Useless for practically everything, until you transmute it. It takes 4 Dirt to make one Cobblestone. This being the case, it means to make 64 cobblestone, you need 256 Dirt to make one stack of cobblestone.

Or in a formula 4 Dirt → 1 Cobble, with the Philosopher's Stone as a catalyst. So simply multiply through that equation by how much cobble you want, to figure out how much dirt you need.

Example: If I want 25 cobble, I multiply through 25(4 Dirt → 1 Cobble) to get 100 Dirt → 25 Cobble

This is pretty basic stuff, I mean, who needs cobblestone really?

The most well known transmutations are of course from cobblestone up.

Listed below:

8 Cobble → 1 Redstone

4 Redstone → 1 Iron

4 Iron → 1 Gold

4 Gold → 1 Diamond

Using these we can make other assumptions such as

16 Iron → 4 Gold → 1 Diamond or even further

512 Cobble → 64 Redstone → 16 Iron → 4 Gold → 1 Diamond

Since we know 4 Dirt → 1 Cobble this means 2048 Dirt → 1 Diamond

These are you base reference reactions. In your general mining adventures these are all the minerals you'll encounter.

Here's the full progression table. Find the item you wish to have in the left column. Following the row across to the right, you'll find the number of the lesser materials needed to transmute into that item. Note in this table, all minerals are the "Ore" blocks (Redstone, Iron, Gold, and Diamond)

Other blocks can be transmuted into this basic progression as such, here's a list of other materials, and their "Dirt Value" (how many dirt blocks they could be transmuted into), in case you want to use them as substitutes for the classic blocks above, or just trying to figure out the relative worth of different blocks:

Lapis Lazuli, Obsidian, and Glowstone Blocks
I don't include these in the regular conversion math because they're special cases. We'll dissect them below.

Lapis Lazuli comes in two forms, Ore Block and Ore/Lapis Chunk Lapis has a few conversion factors.

1 Lapis Chunk → 1 Obsidian

8 Lapis Chunk → 1 Lapis Ore Block

4 Lapis Ore Blocks → 1 Diamond

These are the base reactions of Lapis, but they lead to some interesting conclusions.

64 Lapis Chunks → 8 Lapis Ore Blocks → 2 Diamonds

This makes Lapis one of the most lucrative minerals. And, with a little substitution, we get this:

64 Obsidian → 8 Lapis Ore Blocks → 2 Diamonds

Even better when we get in to a discussion on aggregators later.

Glowstone has a lot of uses, I mean a lot. With alchemy, you can reliable turn a block in to 4 dust, so this gives us a constant conversion, let's add it to some other formulas.

1 Glowstone Block → 4 Glowstone Dust

1 Glowstone Dust → 6 Redstone → 4 Coal

4 Glowstone Block → 2 Iron Block

Highlighting the last of those, this means

64 Glowstone Blocks → 32 Iron Ore → 8 Gold Ore → 2 Diamond Ore

This conversion is also very favorable as compared with working up from cobblestone. The real magic happens when we start doing real alchemy, as in, making nothing out of something.

The Glowstone Aggregator
Now for the sake of this discussion, we'll focus on one conversion for the Aggregator.

1 Glowstone Dust → 1 Glowstone Block in 3:00 (or 1:30 with optimal light)

Now this combined with the knowledge from above that

1 Glowstone Block → 4 Glowstone Dust

means we are effectively creating 3 Glowstone Dust for free. I'll let you figure out how to get optimal lighting with the aggregator, but let's assume you have optimal lighting, we can do some math.

It takes 96 Minutes at optimal light to convert 64 Dust in to 64 Blocks. Assuming you replace your Dust after conversions.

64 Blocks → 256 Dust assume we replace the dust we used. You have a net gain of 192 dust or 48 Blocks

48 Blocks → 24 Iron → 6 Gold → 1 Diamond and 2 Gold Not a bad trade off for basically doing nothing. Plus, you can infinitely increase this output by simply adding more aggregators, since as we've shown above, they replenish their own fuel supply.

Fuel Conversion
Just like the blocks above, the power items from this mod use certain elements as fuel, and can transmute more advanced fuels used for more powerful transmutations. The basic conversion table is:

Other items in the game can be transmuted into an item in this progression, and hence can be considered to have a "Redstone Value" (how much redstone dust it can get transmuted into), if you're short on fuel, or trying to figure out the relative worth of items.

Ores to Fuel
If you have too many diamond ore blocks, and not enough fuel for your Power Items, there's a way to convert your ore blocks into fuel items. That bridge lies in the conversion of iron ingots into glowstone. Ignorning the cost of smelting iron ore into iron ingots, the conversion rate comes to 1 iron ore = 6 glowstone dust. From this, we can determine the "Redstone Value" of the common ore blocks:

Fuel to Ores
If you have an abundance of redstone dust or glowstone dust but no Power Items to use them with, there's a means to convert fuel back into ores. Glowstone blocks can transmute into iron ore or gold ore, giving the ratio of 8 glowstone dust = 2 glowstone blocks = 1 iron ore block. From this we can determine the "Dirt Value" of the various fuels:

From the two types of conversions above, it's possible to give a "Redstone Value" or "Dirt Value" to any craftable EE item, if you want to compare relative rarity of items. For example, dark matter, which takes diamond blocks (73,728 dirt) and mobius fuel (120 redstone) is worth 10,488 redstone, or 74,048 dirt.