Getting Started (Age of Engineering)

Introduction
This guide will teach you the basics necessary for getting through the 15 ages in Age of Engineering. The goal is not to explain every little thing you can do in each age, but rather just the basics necessary for getting through.

The assumption here is that the player has a basic knowledge of Vanilla Minecraft, but is unfamiliar with the mods. This modpack is excellent at forcing players to go deep into many of the mods, so it is likely a good pack for someone new to modded Minecraft. As such, it seems imperative that a very basic guide for it should exist.

The guide is initially written by Chezziks (IGN: Chezzik), but I encourage others to add to it.

Other Online Guides
* The |This "Age of Engineering Walkthrough" by Vyraal1 has many tips that will be quite useful to those who want to automate more. It also contains links to several Twitch streamers with video guides.

Task 0.0: Build a Smeltery
The first task is to build a Smeltery from Tinkers' Construct. It is necessary for our first ore smelting. I am assuming here that we want one of the most basic setups, which is a 3x3x2 grid of air enclosed on the bottom and all sides by Seared Bricks, a couple Seared Faucets and Smeltery Drains, a Casting Basin, a Casting Table, a Smeltery Controller and a Seared Tank.

The main work here is gathering the crafting materials. I suggest finding a river, and hiking along it until you can find necessary amounts of all these ingredients.

Crafting materials:

Recipes for Smeltery Components:
To build the Smeltery, first place 9 Seared Bricks in a 3x3 grid on the ground, and then (optionally) place a block on each edge that can be used for as a foundation for building the walls. The four walls will each be made with 6 Seared Bricks, although four of those Seared Bricks should be replaced with our 2 drains, controller, and tank.

If all is built correctly, the controller will light up with fire particles, to show you that it is a valid configuration.

On each of your drains, place a faucet on the outside face. Below one faucet, place a casting table. This will be used for casting tool parts. Place a casting basin below the other drain. It will be used to get full blocks of metal out of the Smeltery at once.

Next, build a couple Clay Buckets, and fill them with lava. These will only work once, but will be sufficient for now. With a lava bucket in hand, right click on the Smeltery tank to add that lava as fuel.

Now, right click on the controller to open the interface. From there, shift click on stacks of ore to add them to the furnace. If you want to add liquids (lava or water, for example), you'll need to hold the bucket in one hand and then right click on one of the drains.

In most modpacks, placing one ore in the Tinkers' Construct Smeltery will result in 2 ingots worth of liquid metal, but not in Age of Engineering. We will need to build an IC2 macerator (Age 1) before we can take advantage of ore doubling.

To test it out and prepare for the next task, add 12 copper ore, 2 tin ore, and 4 clay. All of these will melt. The 2 tin ore will combine with 6 of our copper to make 8 units of iron. Try left clicking on the different liquids, and notice how the liquid you click on will always go to the bottom.

Now, add 9 iron ore. Once it melts, the gui will show "1 block of iron". Click on it to make it the lowest, and then right click on the faucet that is above the basin, and you will see one block of iron be poured. Right click on the cooled block to add it to your inventory. If you accidentally used less than 9 iron, then the block will not fully form. At that point, the basin would become unusable for anything else until you either finish that recipe or break the basin (thus losing the metal that had already been poured).

Task 0.1: Building Tinkers' construct tool station and first metal tools
Wood and stone tools can still be made in a crafting grid, but all other variants need to be crafted using the Tinkers' constructs crafting system. First make about 20 Blank Patterns, and then make one each of the following: Part Builder, Tool Station, Stencil Table, and optionally a Pattern Chest and Crafting Station. Place all 5 together in a line (like along a wall as seen in the picture below) if you want to be able to access the guis of all 5 after clicking on just one.

One of the first items we will want is a bronze pickaxe. It should be able to break anything up to diamond, and if we use a copper binding, it will generate more experience for us than normal!

First, got to the stencil table, and set what is remaining of your blank patterns inside. This seems to be the best place to keep them, as it is where we will most frequently need them. Find "tool rod", "binding" and "pickaxe head", and make one of each.

Now, go to the part builder, and place the tool rod pattern in the left slot, and planks in the top slot. Pick up the wooden toolrod from the right side of the gui. Our first part is made!

Next, do the same with the binding and the pickaxe head, but this time, use cobblestone instead of stone. We will be using this for a cast for the actual parts, which will be made from metal. Now that we are done with these 3 patterns, you can place them all in the pattern chest, so save them for later.

Next, go to the smeltery, and place the stone binding in the casting table. From the controller, click on "Liquid Clay", so it is at the bottom, then go back to the faucet above the table, and right click it. This makes a disposable cast, and note that it consumes our stone binding. Now from the controller, pick copper, and use the faucet again, and this makes our copper part! Now place the stone pickaxe head in the table, make a clay cast, and then fill the cast with bronze.

Now, go back to our part builder, choose "Pickaxe", place the 3 pieces in there, pick a name for it (if you choose), and then pick up the final product. We have our first metal tool!

From the part builder, we can see other options for weapons and tools. My recommendation is to use the bronze pickaxe to get some bauxite ore (you couldn't mine this before), and then with it you can make aluminum bronze in the smeltery. With aluminum-bronze, you can now make casts that don't disintegrate upon using. At this point, craft a few more bronze items. I would suggest a shovel, short sword and then either an axe or a Mattock (axe that also can shovel dirt). To repair broken items, place them in the tool builder again, and then place one bronze in any slot.

Task 0.2: Portal to Mining Dimension
This step is purely optional, but is rather quick, and I suggest doing it. Make a Mining Multitool, and from there 10 Portal Frames. Place the frames in the same way you would make a vanilla portal, and then activate it with the multitool. This portal doesn't make eerie sounds (like the nether portal does), so feel free to keep it in your base. It goes to a dimension where it is always sunny, and you can mine to your heart's content. Also, since the top layer is flat, it is easy to find pumpkins, which will be needed for age 3. If you are on a server that doesn't have a mining dimension, keep an eye out for pumpkins in the overworld.