IndustrialCraft 2/Guide

''This is a community article originally created by ShneekyTheLost. It has been edited for tone/content/style.''

What is IndustrialCraft 2?
IndustrialCraft 2 (IC2) adds a variety of electrically-powered machines to the Minecraft world, bringing Minecraft to the Industrial Age and beyond. It offers machines that can double ore output and generate power, as well as nuclear power and quantum armor. This mod is considered to be a base mod with many mods based off of its mechanics as well as some mods that modify recipes/mechanics.

A Note on IC2 Affecting Mods
There are some mods that affect the way IC2 recipes and machines work, as well as change the world generation. The most widely known one of these is GregTech, however, other mods make some changes as well or add items to the Forge ore dictionary that may change game play. Please keep in mind as this guide is followed that some differences may be seen in game play and progression due to this.

New Resources
IC2 adds 5 new resources for players to find within their world: Rubber, Copper, Tin, Lead, and Uranium. Rubber is supplied by Rubber Trees, which can be discerned from regular trees by the presence of an extra 3 blocks of leaves on the top-center of the tree; these trees are most plentiful in swamp biomes but can also be found in forest biomes as well. The other resources are found buried in the ground, so are found by going mining.

Power
IC2 provides its own power system based off of Energy Units, or EU. EU is measured in two different ways: For more on how EU Packets work as well as the other minutia of EU loss/attenuation and packet rates, refer to the Energy Units article.
 * EU/t, or Energy Units per Tick - This is the measurement of the rate of energy production/consumption.
 * EU/p, or Energy Units per Packet - This is measurement of the size of the packet carrying EU. Packets are emitted by generators, storage units, and transformers.

Most IC2 machines and cables has a maximum amount of EU/p they can accept; attempting to use more than that will cause the machine or cable to explode. The following table breaks down the various tiers of EU/p sizes...

Gathering Resources
To get started with IC2, one needs to gather some of the new resources as well as some old favourites. Start out by harvesting a 2 stacks or so of wood, as well as digging up at least a stack each of copper, iron, tin, gold, redstone, cobblestone, and coal; don't go processing this stuff yet, there will be a more efficient way very shortly.

On top of these basic resources, one will also need Rubber... and lots of it. Make a wooden Treetap and go out looking for some rubber trees (remember, they're usually found in swamps but can also be found in the forest; they're discernible by the three blocks of leaves on the top (an easier way of finding rubber trees is to toggle fast graphics and the leaf blocks will remain transparent as if in fancy mode)). Once a rubber tree has been located, break all of its leaves and gather any resulting saplings (these can be planted some place much more convenient later). After the leaves have been broken, use the tree tap to harvest Sticky Resin from the sap holes (orange spots) on the tree (note that one can harvest each hole multiple times, however, doing so can render the hole unable to generate more Sticky Resin in the future... if the tree is going to be used for continued Rubber production, it may be best to let the holes regenerate sap between harvests).

Make 2 furnaces and place one of them down for use, then smelt 16 iron (using 2 coal). Once that's done pick the furnace back up.

Crucial Tools
With the removal of Refined Iron as a tier 1 material, all of IC2's recipes now use some form of metal plate. In order to make the plates, you need to make a Forge Hammer. Fortunately, they're not one time use, they can be used 80 times before breaking. As well as a Forge Hammer, you need a way to make cables before you can get a machine to replace both tasks. The cables require a Cutter to cut plates up. Cutters too aren't single use, although they only have 60 uses before breaking.

If you really tried, you could only need to make one Forge Hammer and Cutter, before you had the Metal Former to replace the tasks that they do. It is more common to need to make 2 Forge Hammers, and 3 if you make many machines before making a Metal Former.

More Efficient Furnaces
Use the forge hammer to make 5 iron plates to turn one furnace into Iron Furnace. Iron Furnaces can process 10 items per piece of coal/charcoal and do it faster than a vanilla furnace can. Place it down for use and first create 60 charcoal; this will use 6 coal but will save 54 coal for future use in other crafting recipes/processes. Once the charcoal is done make 20 copper, 20 rubber, and 10 iron.

Electric Smelting
Electric Furnaces are slightly faster than Iron Furnaces, and use EU instead of fuel directly. Each smelt requires 400 EU. One major advantage of using an Electric Furnace is you can speed up your processing system. When the demand of smelting is high you may consider upgrading your Electric Furnace to an Induction Furnace. To do this you will need to make a Wrench to pick up your Electric Furnace, or simply making another furnace.

Power Storage
There are four power storage units from IC2; the most basic being the BatBox, then the CESU, followed by the MFE, and finally, the grand daddy MFSU.

The BatBox can store up to 40,000 EU at one time. It outputs and inputs at 32 EU/t, or Low Voltage, which is effective for the basic IC2 machines.

The second tier of storage is the CESU. It can store up to 300,000 EU at one time. It inputs/outputs at 128 EU/tick, or Medium Voltage, which is effective for medium tiered IC2 machines.

The third tier of energy storage is the MFE. This can store up to 4,000,000 EU at one time. It inputs/outputs at 512 EU/tick, or High Voltage, which is effective for higher tier IC2 machines.

And finally, we have the top tier MFSU. This can store up to 10,000,000 EU at one time. It inputs/outputs at 2048 EU/tick, or Extreme Voltage, which is effective for only the top tier IC2 machines.

Ore Processing
To double ore using IndustrialCraft 2 you must build a Macerator. This will convert every one ore into two crushed ore at the cost of 2 EU/tick. Every crushed ore can be smelted into an ingot, therefore turning the normal 1:1 ore:ingot ratio to a 1:2. In order to make the ore go even further, an Ore Washing Plant can be made to get 2 tiny piles of the metal, 9 of which make a dust which can be smelted into an ingot, as well as giving a purified crushed ore. The purified crushed ore can also be smelted into an ingot, but can be processed in a Thermal Centrifuge, which gives you 1 dust of the metal and another tiny pile of another metal. The extra metals can be seen in the table below:

Note that in an ore washing plant, lead ore produces 3 tiny piles of sulphur, rather than 2 tiny piles of lead and uranium ore produces 2 tiny piles of lead dust. Uranium Ore produces 5 Uranium 238 and 2 tiny piles of Uranium 235 in a thermal centrifuge. This will be important for when you get around to making a Nuclear Reactor.

Ores such as Factorization's Dark Iron, and Tinkers' Construct's Aluminium cannot normally be macerated into dust, but can however if the mod Another One Bites The Dust is installed. If it is, and Factorization and Tinkers' Construct are installed (for example), the following extra ore processing recipes are added:

More Efficient Rubber
Up to this point, the only way of getting Rubber for use in crafting is smelting Sticky Resin. As good as that is, it's a 1:1 ratio, there's a much better way of doing it - using an Extractor:

Extractors can not only process Sticky Resin more efficiently, but also break blocks down like Snow and Bricks into Snowballs and individual Bricks as well as produce Hydration Cells (for watering IC2 Crops) and emptying Tin Cans.

Making Better Machine Casings
Further up this guide, there is a section about making an Induction Furnace. This requires an Advanced Machine Casing, which is an upgraded form of the Basic Machine Casing used for tier 1 machines. This process needs 3 things - Advanced Alloys, Carbon Plates and Refined Iron. None of these are too complex for just getting started, all will require work. Refined Iron will be covered further down in the Getting Started - Heat Machinery Section. Carbon Plates and Advanced Alloys do not require Heat machinery, but do require a new electric machine to be made - the Compressor:

Compressors can not only make Advanced Alloys and Carbon Plates, but also compress air in Empty Cells to make Compressed Air Cells, compress plant matter into Bio Chaff (which is used in Biomass and Biogas production) and make Diamonds.

Advanced Alloys
Advanced Alloys will be crucial to moving up into the tier 2 above machines, but they are simple to make:

Carbon Plates
Carbon Plates too will be crucial to tier 2+, but they are slightly more complicated to craft:

As Advanced Machine Casings are used for making tier 2 machines, information on what can be made using them can be found on the Advanced Machinery (IndustrialCraft) page.

Upgrading Machines
Most machines can be upgraded using the various upgrades from IndustrialCraft 2. The only machines which can't be upgraded are the Generators and Storage Units. The following upgrades are currently available in IndustrialCraft 2: