User:Codewarrior0/Sandbox

has hundreds of ores and more than a dozen types of stone to harvest. Some types of stone are themselves ores, or are valuable resources in their own right. This guide covers all of the different goods a GregTech 6 player can find in or beneath the earth.

Stones
GregTech 6 adds several new types of stone which will generate in the world. These new stones have various properties and mining levels and form the basis of the new Ore Layers world generation. Each type of stone layer can be found at any world height, but the layers can only be ore-bearing when they are found at heights specific to those ores. Some types of stone can be processed for resources even when they do not contain ores. Stones in the form of small Rocks found on the surface (sometimes called Pebbles) can be used to craft tools including Pickaxes and Hammers, allowing players to obtain tools with Diamond mining level early in the game. Having these tools will be essential to mining ores contained in layers of tough stones like Basalt and Granites.

Hammers made from these stones can be as durable as ones made from Lead, offering a substantial cost savings if they are used in place of metal Hammers. Cobblestone of each stone type can be hammered to obtain the Rocks used to craft Hammers and Pickaxes.

Rock Ores
The ores Bauxite, Lignite Coal, Anthracite Coal (i.e. Vanilla Coal), Rock Salt, Salt, and Oil Shale are now considered Rock Ores, which means that instead of being found as ores within a layer of stone, they are now found as entire stone layers consisting of a solid mass of thousands of blocks of a single ore.

Ores
Like in previous versions of GregTech, standard Vanilla ore generation is disabled and all vanilla ores but Emerald will generate in Gregtech's unique distribution patterns. These patterns are compatible either by default or through configuration with almost all ores from almost all other mods, so unless explicitly noted, ore generation from other mods can and should be disabled, as GregTech will compensate.

GregTech ore blocks do not work exactly like other ore blocks. Most mods treat their ores as single blocks, with nothing special to them except for the few that must be silktouched or can be fortune mined. All GregTech are non-ticking MetaTileEntities, defined not by block ID or metadata but by TileEntity data. Each of these TEs contains only two variables: the internal ID of the ore, and a True/False boolean denoting whether the ore block was placed by world generation or by other means. This is mainly used to determine whether or not a Small Ore's drops can be enhanced by a Fortune pick. Their being TEs though has some unfortunate consequences: not all mods are prepared to deal with TE ore blocks, and so GregTech ores are not always mined by other mods' automated mining systems. (For example, for several months, the  could not mine GregTech ores.) The most unusual consequence of the ores being MetaTileEntities is that GregTech MTE rendering is done by combining a base texture with an overlay. When viewed at steep angles, those overlays can exhibit some odd rendering behavior, either looking like black lines, white lines, or oddly transparent. It's hard to say exactly what the visual effect looks like, but once you've seen it once or twice you come to realize that it looks wrong, and that its looking wrong is a telltale sign of the presence of ore.

There are four types of ore generation: Small Ores, Mix Veins, Ore Layers, and Bedrock Ores. Both Ore Layers and Bedrock Ores are new in GregTech 6.

Small Ores
Small Ores generate as semi-common single blocks. They are intended as a way to get started and acquire initial tools, but are not intended to be used as primary sources of metal for machinery. When broken, they drop a Crushed Ore or, if applicable, a Gem. They may also drop a Dust or a Dirty Dust of the Stone they were found in. Small Ores cannot be picked up with a Silk Touch Pickaxe, however a Fortune Pickaxe will slightly increase their yields. Importantly, Small Ores can be mined at 1 mining level lower than the ores they contain, allowing a miner with a Stone-level pickaxe to obtain enough Copper and Tin to begin crafting Bronze tools and machines. In GregTech 6, Small Ores can appear in any type of GregTech stone, and will also appear in Sand or Gravel. As a result, Deserts and Beaches present a large number of Small Ores clearly visible on the surface.

Mix Veins
Mix Veins are the 3x3 chunk veins familiar to GregTech 5 players. Mix Veins can contain up to four different ores. Vein contents are dependent upon height and dimension, but are not dependent upon biome. Veins can range in size from 16x16x5 up to 80x80x8 blocks, with very few and small gaps between ore blocks. In GregTech 6, ores found in Mix Veins can replace any type of GregTech stone, and will also appear in Sand or Gravel. By default, Mix Veins will not generate in the Overworld, only appearing in the Nether, the End, the Twilight Forest, and a few other dimensions added by supported mods.

Ore Layers
Ore Layers are new in GregTech 6 and by default will generate only in the Overworld. Ore Layers replaces not only the vanilla ore generation, but also the generation of Stone underground. Vanilla Stone is replaced by large layers of the various GregTech stones, each six to twelve blocks thick and several chunks across. A single column of rock will be made of several layers of different stones. Each type of stone layer can appear at any height, with some types of stone being more common than others.

Each layer of stone has a chance to be an ore-bearing stone. If the stone layer is found at the correct height, many of its stone blocks will instead be ore blocks corresponding to the stone type and height level. Ore blocks near the top and bottom edges of the layer will be small ores, while those near the middle will be normal-sized ores. Each type of ore is associated with a type of stone, so Chalcopyrite Ore for example will only ever be found in a layer of Marble, and never in a layer of Granite. (If Chalcopyrite appears in a Granite layer, that's a clue that it is part of a Bedrock Ore deposit, and it will also be found close to Bedrock.)

Ores found in stone layers are still blocks of that particular stone and will inherit its mining level, so a Pickaxe or Hammer of mining level 3 is needed to mine any ores found in layers of Black or Red Granite. As noted above, those stones themselves can be used to make Pickaxes of the appropriate type.

Some ores will only be present in specific types of biomes. Ores originating from many supported mods will also generate in ore layers.

Some ores will only be found where a particular stone layer is directly above another stone layer. If an ore requires one layer above another, it will be present in both layers.

Bedrock Ores
New in GregTech 6, many ores can be found embedded in the Bedrock at the bottom of the world. These Bedrock Ores provide an infinite supply of ores, but cannot be harvested by hand, so the Bedrock Mining Drill must be used to extract them. Bedrock Ore deposits are indicated by flowers found on the surface (if the surface blocks can support them), and also by a cloud of Normal and Small ores in the stone directly above Bedrock. These indicator ores will spawn in any stone type, so if an ore is found in a type of stone where it does not normally appear, this means a Bedrock Ore deposit is indicated beneath it.

Smelting
Smelting metals in a ceramic Crucible is the earliest form of ore processing. The Crucible also creates alloys including Bronze, Brass, and Tin Alloy. This topic is covered in much greater detail in the Smelting guide.

Early Game Crushing, Washing, and Shredding
Initially, ores can be crushed and washed by hand. Breaking an ore block using a Hammer drops one Crushed Ore (or rather, it drops half as many as you would get from a Crusher). This Crushed Ore can be smelted for one and 1/8 ingots of ore, but also deposits an ingot of Stone when thrown into the Crucible. To remove the stone, increase the ore yield slightly by turning it to Purified Ore, and produce byproducts, the Crushed Ore can be dropped into a Cauldron filled with water. A filled cauldron can process three items of ore in this way before needing to be refilled. A Cauldron can be automatically refilled by connecting a water pipe with a capacity of at least 334L. The byproducts from washing Crushed Ores in a cauldron are selected randomly from the ore's Ore Byproducts table and may be in the forms of Nuggets, Tiny Purified Ores, Tiny Dusts, or Chipped Gems.

The Purified Ore can then be smelted for one and 1/4 ingots of ore. Alternately, it can be ground by right-clicking it onto a Mortar for one and 1/4 units of dust, which may simplify the amounts needed for Crucible smelting.

Mechanical Crushing, Washing, Drying, Spinning, and Shredding
After obtaining enough Bronze, the Crusher machine can be used to double the amount of Crushed Ore produced by one Ore block. The Crusher also has a chance to output dust corresponding to the type of stone the ore is embedded in. The hardness of the type of stone also affects the speed of the Crusher, where stones that take longer to mine will also take longer to process in the Crusher.

Instead of throwing Crushed Ore into a Cauldron, the Sluice machine can be used to wash the stone and byproducts from the ore. The sluice will take the same amount of time to process each kind of ore, producing both a Purified Ore worth 1.25 units of ore, a number of Tiny Purified Ores corresponding to the ore's Ore Byproducts in roughly equal amounts, and a small amount of Sluice Juice. The Tiny Purified Ores amount to, on average, 0.3 units of various byproducts, and can be further processed for a second level of byproducts.

The Sluice Juice contains trace amounts of metal dust, which can be recovered either by using the Centrifuge to obtain Iron, Copper Tin, Zinc, and Chromium, or by using the Dryer to reduce the juice into Distilled Water and Sluice Sand, which can later be run through the Magnetic Separator to obtain Iron, Neodymium, Nickel, Cobalt, and Manganese. It costs roughly the same amount of energy per liter to produce Distilled Water from Sluice Juice as it does from ordinary Water.

If the Crushed Ore contains any elements that dissolve in Mercury or react with water and Sodium or Potassium Persulfate, it can be placed in a Bath with the respective reagents. This will yield one Purified Ore plus nine tiny piles (1.00 unit) of the soluble element. Generally, ores containing Gold, Silver, or Platinum can be bathed in Mercury, while ores containing Copper, Zinc, Nickel, or Cobalt can be bathed with a Persulfate.

The Purified Ore can be ground in a Mortar to yield 1.25 units of dust, or mechanically ground in a Shredder for an equal amount of dust.

To obtain more byproducts from the Purified Ore, it can instead be run through the Centrifuge to yield one unit of dust plus roughly 0.152 units of each of the ore's first three byproducts, in the form of Tiny Refined Ore. This increases overall yield but decreases the amount of the ore's primary yield.

If the Purified Ore contains any magnetic elements or compounds as byproducts, the Purified Ore can instead be run through the Magnetic Separator to yield one Refined Ore (1.375 units of ore) plus Tiny Purified Ores for each magnetic byproduct. On average, the Separator produces 0.162 units of each magnetic byproduct. This process increases both overall yield and primary yield, but is available somewhat later than the Centrifuge.

If the Purified Ore contains any elements that dissolve in either Sulfuric Acid, Hydrogen Fluoride, Hydrochloric Acid, Aqua Regia, it can instead be dissolved in a Bath with the respective acid. This will yield one Refined Ore, three Tiny Refined Ore, plus a Vitriol, a Vapor, and in some cases Water. The Vitriol can be Electrolyzed at a considerable energy cost to yield one unit of metal per ore. The Vapor will be either Hydrogen (which can be burned or reacted), Carbon Monoxide (which can be electrolyzed for Carbon or simply vented), or Nitrogen Monoxide (which can be recycled into more Nitric Acid and Aqua Regia). Of particular note are the platinum-bearing ores that react with Aqua Regia to produce Platinum Group Sludge. This sludge can be centrifuged as a source of Osmium, Iridium, and Platinum, which may otherwise be scarce. This is an energy-intensive process requiring multiple steps to synthesize the acid and recover the metal from the Vitriol, but increases both overall and primary yield and can also yield byproducts that are not otherwise obtainable.

The Refined Ores produced by various means can be smelted for 1.375 units of ore, or ground in a Shredder for an equal amount of Dust. Grinding Refined Ores in a Mortar only yields 1.333 units of Dust, but does not result in 1/72 Piles of Dust that must be managed.