Minecraft - f13 Server is: chugging along... again (Read OP)

[koro]

My catalyst is working on basalt now, which would've been nice to have happen a long time ago.

At any rate, I've got one powered teleporter set up at my volcano base using infinite geothermal, an ender chest with the materials to set up another teleport station next to it, and a matching color coded ender chest in my alchemy bag (I know I could use an ender bag, but I'd need a second chest eventually). All I need to do now is find a suitable location for a second base and set up camp.

I'm also contemplating whipping up some Red Matter tools for the heck of it, or at least the hammer. I toyed around with it on a test creative map, and it's practically cheating. It acts like a "smart" destruction catalyst: it will smash all blocks in a large radius that aren't lava, clay, gravel, water, or dirt, and drop the loot directly on top of you. You can just run around on the surface whacking it against grass and get surface cobble, coal, copper, and iron 6 layers deep.

[Rendakor]

Color coded alchemy bags also work the same (shared inventory). No idea why your catalyst wasn't working on basalt, I don't ever remember that happening to me.

That hammer sounds pretty sick; I haven't made it to the Red Matter level before and never bothered to futz around on creative.

[koro]

Yeah, I know about the alchemy bags. I actually have multiple made up in different colors to plop into the ender chest when it comes time to transfer stuff over to the new digs. The thing is, though, unless I want to build some nuclear reactors and MFS units, teleporting large (1000+ x/y) distances with stuff in my inventory (I dunno if the bags would count their contents in the EU requirements or not) is unfeasible. So I put my alchemy bag that has all my stuff on me into the chest and then use the teleporter to lower the cost as much as possible.

[Rendakor]

The bags do not count their contents when porting.

[koro]

So on my superflat machinery test world, I hacked out what seems - at least, from the tests I've put it through -  like a decent setup for a Thaumcraft lab:


The piping setup is a bit sloppy, but is capable of supporting up to two more tanks of taint that the purifiers can take care of pretty quickly. With just one reinforced tank for taint, you can probably get maximum taint removal from it with only three pumps and purifiers. The arcane bellows increase the efficiency of the crucible they're attached to by 5% per bellow, to a max of 20% with 4 of them. With a Thaumium crucible, that's down to a 90:10 vis:taint ratio; if you put an arcane furnace underneath the crucible, attach the furnace to a vis tank connection, and attach the bellows to it instead, it changes to 100% vis while the furnace has power, no taint. I could probably also move the enchanter/quaesitium setup so that it's attached more directly to the vis tank to avoid shenanigans with cross-piping and having to use so many gold vis conduits.

All that'd remain would be to cover all the space I can around the infusers and taint storage with silverwood logs, leaves, and totems of dawn.

[Rendakor]

Your setup looks good, much better than mine. I kind of lost interest in ThaumCraft because certain mats are just a pain to farm and don't have EMC values.

[koro]

If you can get Relic Hunter II or III on a weapon, you'll be swimming in artifacts. If you can get the Zephyr sword unlocked, it's incredibly fun as well (no fall damage! Enderman-like leaping and bounding!).

My biggest annoyance with Thaumcraft is the aura/taint mechanic and how poorly documented it is. I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to get the actual taint bar to go down.

[Rendakor]

I really hate the random nature of the enchanting system so I don't use it. How costly are the ThaumCraft enchants, Vis-wise?

[koro]

Depends. The really good rolls are about 1200-1600 vis, mid-tier ones are 700-900, and low-tier ones are a couple hundred. But if you can research and craft an Occult Enchanter, you can actually pick and choose what enchantments you want on the item from a big list. The problem is that the enchants for the Occult one are far more expensive; 3 good enchants can run you up to 7000+ vis required, but there's no random aspect to it, which could potentially save you a lot in the long run. However, there are upgrades you can slot into the Occult Enchanter, but you can only choose one out of:

15% vis cost reduction
4 max enchants on a weapon (instead of the default of 3)
No max enchantment point limit on a weapon (each enchant is worth a certain number of points, and you have a cap, which this upgrade removes)

So if you slot the 4 max enchants you can have a Self-Repairing, Power V, Punch II bow with infinite arrows for 4300 vis. A Relic Hunter III, Sharpness V sword is 3900.

Oh, and if you DO do random enchants, use Thaumium gear to do it with. They get better chances for good enchants.

[Rendakor]

That Occult Enchanter sounds like exactly what I need. Maybe I'll do some more ThaumCraft tomorrow since I've got the day off; I'm almost out of footage for YT anyway so I've gotta record some more.

[koro]

Welp, found a new place to settle, laid down a base plan for a home+tower, then set up the spare teleporter.

Turns out that teleporting 1100 tiles requires about 700k EU a pop. Naked. With nothing in my inventory.

Ouch.

[Rendakor]

With a fully charged MFSU that's not a whole lot; they hold what, 10 million? Once you get your new base all set up you shouldn't have to make the port often anyway, and you can probably get around it using MystCraft if you're so inclined. That's probably going to be my next project: a MystCraft dimension created to serve as a teleportation hub.

[koro]

Yeah, turns out I had enough different dyes to make about six or seven differntly-colored alchemy bags, which ended up being enough to hold literally everything from my old digs. So it doesn't look like I'll be needing to make too many more trips back here, but the teleporter will be nice to have.

As for the power, yeah an MFSU could've been more than enough, but those things are an enormous pain to make. After the trouble I went through to craft the teleporters, I didn't feel like spending the time or EMC to whip a couple up, opting instead to use two MFUs since a teleporter will take EU equally from adjacent machines.

Also, another quick thing about enchanting: armor enchants are hella cheap. The most expensive thing is Self-Repair, which is almost never needed, so you can load up armor with some really good stuff for very very little.

[Rendakor]

Good to hear; you can put the alchemy bags inside one another too (just don't put a bag inside itself) so that you're teleporting with only 1 item. Regarding power, I honestly didn't know you could even power a teleporter with MFEs; I've always built MFSUs first but never though of using a pair of MFEs.

None of the armor enchants actually seem very useful, though. I guess if you focused on ThaumCraft earlier than IndustrialCraft/Equivalent Exchange (or just went with the vanilla enchanting table), but most of the armor enchants are rendered moot by the endgame items from those two mods. While we're talking about enchanting, are all weapons/armor enchantable, or only vanilla/Thaumium ones? Relic Hunter on a Dark Matter Sword would be pretty badass.

[koro]

All enchants, Thaumcraft or otherwise; on my test world I was able to do Thaumcraft enchants I hadn't even learned yet. There's even some on the list I don't recognize, like Ice Aspect, Venom Aspect, and Disjunction. Venom Aspect is fairly obvious (it poisons) and Ice Aspect seems to slow enemies down. Disjunction is apparently from Redpower and fucks up Endermen from what I've read.


That's the menu for it. The icon under the sword is where the upgrade you have installed is displayed (they're permanent and can't be removed, but will clear if you break the table and re-place it), the empty bar to the right of the sword is where your selected enchants are, the bar to the right of that is where your current/max item charge points and the cost are, and the bar below is the progress bar.

Armor enchants aren't bad, especially something like Aqua Affinity (underwater mining at normal speed) or Swimming that provide boosts that other things can't. Striding is also really good, especially on some of the special Thaumcraft magic boots you can make.

Oh, and Dark/Red Matter weapons can't be enchanted. Basically anything with one of those charge bars at the bottom can't be; this goes for IndustrialCraft nano armor as well.

Edit: One more thing I just realized. You need brains in a jar to get much done with the Occultic Enchanter. I just planted one in a circle of bookcases on my test server, and I get only about half the available enchants; the Thaumcraft ones don't even show up at all unless I put a Thaumium sword in there. Be warned.

Edit 2: Upon further testing, the minimum to get all available enchants available for use with a Thaumium sword is 30 bookshelves and 15 brains in a jar. For a diamond sword, it moves up to 21 brains in jar and a correspondingly lower number of bookshelves. With 30 brains you don't need any bookshelves.

[Sky]

Pfft teleporters. There needs to be high speed rail systems!

[Rendakor]

Oh, and Dark/Red Matter weapons can't be enchanted. Basically anything with one of those charge bars at the bottom can't be; this goes for IndustrialCraft nano armor as well.

Ah well, I figured as much.

Brains in a jar are something I really need more of; guess I should spend some time in one of those eternal dusk worlds farming zombies. Other than that, the Occultic Enchanter seems to be exactly what I was looking for.

[koro]

Pfft teleporters. There needs to be high speed rail systems!

Technic does include a mod that overhauls the rail system with a bunch of new stuff (including elevators), but I haven't looked into it yet.

[Sky]

Ooh, I believe I just got delivered some goal-oriented gameplay! :)

Why does GW2 have to be fun? I'll be back to minecraft, but I don't really have time to split between two games and paint (and I really want to get some brush time tonight).

[Rendakor]

I haven't bothered with RailCraft either, mostly because of the lag I used to get taking a cart back into my factory; the sudden chunk loading would always rubber band me like crazy.

[Xanthippe]

I'm dying to play the mods you guys are talking about but I don't want to play SP (more than I already am with Millenaire).

Are there servers with this stuff?

[koro]

Yeah there are servers that run Tekkit, which is the multiplayer equivalent of Technic, but it lacks certain mods like Thaumcraft, which can have a big impact on server stability.

[Sky]

I'd be ok with everything but thaumcraft.

[koro]

Speaking of, I've got my Thaumcraft lab in my new house almost done. Just need some brains in a jar and to upgrade to an occultic enchanter, and it'll be pretty much done:


My crucible is hooked up to an Arcane Furnace, which is in turn hooked up to four bellows. When I decide to smelt some stuff down to vis, I toss some charcoal into the furnace, and I generate 0 taint from smelting. If I do need some taint, I take the charcoal out of the furnace and the taint'll head over the taint storage thing that you can't see from this angle. There is a pump+purifier hooked up to it, though, and I can flip a switch to turn it on if I do need to burn off some taint. All the silverwood logs and leaves pretty much ensure that I'll get no atmospheric taint from anything. When I can, I'll also toss down some totems of dawn to seal the deal.

[Xanthippe]

I want to try one of these Tekkic servers - does anyone have a favorite to recommend?

Millenaire is fun but some of the bugs are preventing my villages from growing, so I'm loathe to put in more time on my Millenaire world until these get fixed.

[Rendakor]

I've never played Tekkit, so I've got nothing. If you find one please let us know, it'd be cool to play with some other people.

Edit: So my teleport pipes bugged out again. They mostly disappear, but if you mouseover where they were you see an outline of them. You can't place blocks where they used to be unless you mine this outline-block, but of course it doesn't drop the fucking pipe when you do. I knew this happened regarding the Nether, but I'm not sure what did it this time; either way, I think I'm going to switch to quarrying things into Ender Chests and just pulling them out remotely. However, even with a ton of time logged in this Technic world I've somehow never found a single Ender Pearl.

[koro]

It took me a long time killing Endermen to finally get a pearl. I'm not ashamed to admit I EMC'd two more stacks of them immediately.

I finally got into Mystcraft as well. I'm sure Rendakor will be pleased as punch to learn that my very first Mystcraft world was Eternal Day, Single Plains Biome, Dungeons, and constant nice weather. It also has a shitload of monoliths scattered around, so I can just hop from one to the next, looting them of goodies if I bring my stash of crystals and infused keys. My third world was weird as fuck.

Cave world (which meant you're basically in the Underdark) with weird green sky. This is what I spawned in to. The "ceiling" above me was actually another smaller landmass, and faaaar above that was the real roof of the cave world. Looking down was the weirdest part. This is what I saw, and if you count carefully, you can see no less than seven wonky dungeons down there, with dozens upon dozens more if you swim around. It was a haven for artifacts and some of the unique weapons, but the weirdest part was that looking at the Descriptive Book for it showed that it did NOT have the Dungeons symbol. Weird. I used the Sword of the Zephyr to leap up as high as I could and my Destruction Catalyst to bore upwards, and I was kind of surprised to find the surface. I was more surprised to discover that it was a bleak wasteland. Miles upon miles of absolutely nothing but plains and monoliths. All the land was weirdly flat, even more so than normal plains. I eventually came across a strange jungle with even stranger greatwood trees. Dozens of greatwoods in that jungle, and they all ended up like that.

Of course, I then discovered that I forgot to restock on Overworld linking books and was stuck. So, I had to set up an impromptu surface library where I bored up through the ground and started Quantum Leaping until I found a world with a Star Fissure.

After all that nonsense (and farming up several stacks of Silverwood in throwaway forest worlds), I more or less finished up my new digs.

The front. I did have pressure plates opening the front 'doors', but got tired of hearing slimes and skeletons tripping them, so I replaced them with just simple on/off levers.

Just inside. Been at a loss as to what to do with this room that I really have room to do, so it's mostly just kind of there. On the left between the two small Silverwoods you can see a small doorway that leads to the very spartan teleporter room. The small marble staircase leading above it goes to the power grid controlling the factory floor. All the wiring is hidden by panelings and covers.

The big spiral stairway connecting all the floors. Also the obvious byproduct of all the Silverwood farming I did. Due to the unintentionally fortuitous placement of the stairway, that big Silverwood mess actually boosts the aura of no less than four chunks at once.

The factory floor and storage. The single furnace/macerator/extractor/compressor to the right are connected to an MFE and a couple LV solar arrays just on the other side of the wall dangling outside. Just to the left of the storage center offscreen is my collector energy farm. I decided to go with the ender chest method of supplying the factory with quarried materials, letting me do a more mobile setup without having to fool with wonky teleport pipes. It also has the good fortune of being able to be supplied directly off the power grid, freeing up more solar arrays to power the quarry.

Thaumcraft lab, finally finished. I'm very conscious of taint considering I do everything in the Overworld, so I went overboard with the dawn totems and Silverwood. But it also means I have to try really really hard to generate even a taint charge, never mind actual atmospheric taint itself (which I still don't know how to get rid of, since no taint-busting article I've seen ever mentions that part), so that's nice. The vis crystal clusters scattered around also help a lot. I took down the Quaesitium since it serves no purpose anymore (Relic Hunter on a weapon and a small handful of visited monoliths means you can fill up your Thaumonomicon very easily), but I put it elsewhere as decoration.

The library. Where all my Mystcraft stuff is done, and also a little showcase of what kind of things you can do with Redpower's micro-blocks, like the 'rail' for the bookshelf ladder, the swanky chair, and the desk itself, which is just a gussied-up Mystcraft writing table with my old Quaesitium alongside it.

Finally, the little-used bedroom, situated above the bookshelf area of the library and at the top of the building.

Edit: Also, Rendakor, when you finally do get an Occultic Enchanter up and running, do yourself a favor and toss Striding III and Feather Falling IV on your Boots of the Meteor. You run crazy fast.

[Xanthippe]

Exactly how many mods are in Technic, and how many can you use at once? Sounds like a ton.

I gather that you're playing 1.2.5 Minecraft, not 1.3.2, right?

These all sound so cool.

[koro]

Technic has, I believe: Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, Thaumcraft, Redpower, and Equivalent Exchange as "major" mods that do huge overhauls and additions. There's also Not Enough Items (NEI) as a UI mod, Mo' Creatures, MAtmos Sounds, Balkon's Weapons, Rei's minimap, Farmcraft (I think). There's also little things like logistics pipes, Somnia, and Ender Storage.

Tekkit (the multiplayer version) has a bit less, lacking stuff like Thaumcraft which can do a lot of bad stuff to server stability.

It's currently running on Minecraft 1.2.5, but the launcher/patcher creates a new Minecraft install just for Technic, away from your normal MC stuff.

[Xanthippe]

Just looked at all your pictures. Wow! Very nice writeup - I think I even understand most of it.

I gather that taint is some kind of corrupting influence on the world from Thaumcraft?

[koro]

I gather that taint is some kind of corrupting influence on the world from Thaumcraft?

Just a little. There were two other massive taint infections like that not far from my old volcano base, which is the main reason I packed up and moved.

Basically the way Thaumcraft works is that every chunk in the game has an Aura level and a Taint level that goes from, I believe, 0 to 20,000. Typically most chunks will have 2700-3000 or so aura and about half that in taint. If there's nothing in the chunk to influence it one way or the other, the values tend to just sit there and do nothing. But if you do something that either has a positive effect on the environment (planting Silverwood logs and leaves to make a tree or plopping down a Totem of Dawn), or a negative effect (too much Thaumcraft machine usage, using Vis Filters instead of more expensive Purifiers to remove the taint from your piping by pumping it into the atmosphere, etc.) the aura or taint can become charged. If the charge gets high enough, then the aura or taint in the chunk will start to rise. If the taint level gets above about 6,000 or so, it's possible for tainted ground to appear. It's that ugly purple ground and it spreads to any naturally-occurring block (with a few exceptions with mod-added blocks) adjacent to it, with its speed getting quicker as the taint level goes up. Some chunks will randomly generate with a naturally high Taint level, thus you have stuff like the screenshot above where there are 2-3 chunks full of taint. When the taint level gets high enough, it can also start to infect mobs as well; passive animals become purple, corrupted, and hostile. Even tainted Creepers can spawn, having more HP, their explosions doing more damage, and the explosion itself leaving more tainted ground. It's an enormous pain and costly in terms of resources just to clean up a taint infection; I still have no idea how to actually get rid of atmospheric taint to bring the overall taint level down.

That's why I go to such extreme pains to keep my taint level as low as possible in the chunks my Thaumcraft lab occupies. Nearly everything you do with Thaumcraft, from smelting down items into liquid vis to do stuff with, Infusing items with vis to make stuff, using my Occultic Enchanter, slapping magic seals and runes on a wall to boost machine output, to even something as simple as plucking a single vis crystal from one of my wall clusters, all of that produces taint charge. Thus I do everything Thaumcraft in moderation and I never automate anything with it; my taint levels in and around my lab remain at about 1300-1700 tops. It's why Rendakor uses a Mystcraft world to do his Thaumcraft stuff; if he gets too much taint going that it becomes a hassle, he can just pack up the tools, destroy the book to the world, and make a new one with the same variables.

[Xanthippe]

I bit the bullet and downloaded the Technic, installed it, ran it. Created a new world, survival, normal. Everything seemed great!

Landed in a jungle edge. Look, a minimap in the top right corner, neat! Heard birdsongs. Saw pretty purple flowers in the plains, walked through the plains.

A village right near me! Took possession of the church. Saw a huge volcano next to the town with lava spilling out.  Gazed at the different critters spawned around me. Grabbed some wheat, replanted, started to dig a tunnel down.

Nighttime came. I had to rise to the church to make a new pick. Heard a weird whirring machine sound. Looked out the window and what the fuck a huge green monster SMASHED THE BUILDING TO BITS. I ran and the monster smashed another building to bits. I was in the dark with nothing around me except mobs and critters. The big green monster ambled out of town, so I made a beeline for it, only to be ambushed by a pack of... werewolves, I think. They ate me.

When I respawned, I realized I can give myself anything, so this time I gave myself a set of diamond tools and armor. Ran into a werewolf(?) again and smashed him with my diamond sword again and again and again and again about 15-20 times until he finally died (dropped a golden apple!).

Well that was quite a different minecraft experience. I think I shall live below the surface for now. Lucky for me there's a mine under me.

(I'm torn between actually reading about the mods in the game and just winging it.) Is there  a way to turn off the "I can give myself everything" feature?

[koro]

I think the big green thing that blew up the town was an Ogre from Mo'Creatures. It's possible to actually disable mods you don't want or like, like the new creatures. If you want to, just go into your &appdata&\roaming\.techniclauncher\technicssp\mods\ folder and remove what you don't want. Just move the .zip for the mod elsewhere and it'll remove it from the game. The creature one is "DrZharks MoCreatures Mod v3.7.1.zip"

You can disable the cheat item spawning with NEI by opening your inventory, clicking Options in the lower-left, and then look in the top-tight of the NEI options menu for "Cheat Mode". Change it to Recipe Mode and you can see what it takes to make an item by left-clicking on it (after searching for it), and see what recipes use that item in them by right-clicking it.

As far as looking up what mods do, you may just want to consult some basic tutorials for some things like IndustrialCraft, as it's not incredibly intuitive and many IC machines take a lot of steps to make them. If you want to retain some of the wonder of it, just stick to the basic tutorials to get you acquainted with the Technic stuff, as a lot of it really does take a wiki to get a bit of a handle on.

[Xanthippe]

Thanks, koro, you're very helpful!

I'm going to play with this a little at the time, maybe.

Some weird portal thing was near my village - it had odd blocks I'd never seen before. I tried to go in it but nothing happened. Maybe a Mystcraft portal?

I need to do some reading!

[koro]

Portal? No idea, I haven't seen any wild portals anywhere. Screenshot it?

Oh, was it a big floating black void thing? If so then yeah, it's a Thaumcraft thing.