[1.6.4] A Survivor's Handbook: Dealing with Hardmode Gregtech

Ever install GregTech and feel extremely daunted by the vanilla nerfs and changes? What about fears of the legendary hardmode changes that seem to make the world worse than TerraFirmaCraft? Worry not, GT really is not as difficult as you may think it is! In this brief proto-guide I will attempt to walk you through the basics of GregTech progression, from your first flint axe all the way to your fusion reactor. The guide is WIP and not complete atm, but I will update this guide to get more details in if I feel like it, just remind me in PM or post in giant bold letters in this thread. Remember to check out the Wiki for more detailed information about GregTech that may not be in this thread.

Note: This assumes you are playing legitimate Adventure Mode SMP with the hardest settings possible, and the contents here do not rely on anything except Industrialcraft/Gregtech (I will reference certain other mods from time to time, but they are by no means necessary for progression). Obviously if you have stuff like Buildcraft/Computercraft/Thaumcraft/Thermal Expansion/Ars Magica/Tinker's Construct/Mystcraft or whatever OP mod that make the game 50x easier, cheat jump your way through the tech tree with those.

This won't be a comprehensive hold-your-hands-every-step guide; you will have to figure out most of the details yourself. I highly recommend the following mods for client-side improvements:

• VoxelMap/Zan's Minimap <--- Cave mode and mob radar can be configured, if you feel like they're too cheaty.
• Inventory Tweaks <--- Bugs a little displaying durability of certain GT tools, due to how EU is stored.
• Not Enough Items, and NEI plugins, WAILA, and addons. <--- You can quickcraft items! Shift-click the question mark when viewing a recipe at a crafting table.

Newborn Infant Era:
So you just spawned and have naught but a flint axe; the first thing to do is to collect some wood, food, and basic necessities, lest you be stuck in a hole without the tools to dig yourself out. Afterward, it's time to venture off and find a biome to settle in! Because of GregTech oregen and various other factors, biome choice is extremely important; I will outline the pros and cons of each biome below.

• Plains/Forest
  
  
  • Pros: Bauxite spawns here, making aluminum dust plentiful once you hit the blast furnace age.
  • Cons: Nothing else really notable about this biome.

  
  

• Extreme Hills
  
  
  • Pros: Has both Tetrahedrite and Cassiterite, minerals that spawn in ludicrously large veins and provide copper/tin once processed. Also has Nickel Ore deeper down, in similarly huge veins. Hands down the best resource biome out there, save for special needs such as bauxite and ruby.
  • Cons: It's Extreme Hills.

  
  

• Swamp
  
  
  • Pros: Best biome to grow crops in, not to mention the easily accessible shallow clay for your Lithium. Tetrahedrite also spawns here, as well as plenty of rubber trees.
  • Cons: Slime invasions everywhere! Be prepared to fence off your base.

  
  

• Desert
  
  
  • Pros: Rubies, no machine-destroying rain, high visibility at night, and no trees for mobs to hide under once day rolls around.
  • Cons: Can't collect rainwater. Also crops grow horribly here.

  
  

• Taiga
  
  
  • Pros: I guess Cassiterite does spawn here, so it's got that going, which is nice...
  • Cons: Water freezes to ice without torchlight, trees are annoying to cut down, snowfall obstructs outdoors steam machine vents and is annoying as hell to clear

  
  

• Jungle
  
  
  • Pros: Infinite wood! Also jungle temples are much easier to find and loot than dungeons. If you find a fire charge you can head to the nether before you get steel (at least without relying on fire spread mechanics to light a nether portal). Tetrahedrite spawns here as well.
  • Cons: Pretty much forces you to make a treehouse if you want to live inside the biome, unless you like chopping 500 wood to clear a small space

If you feel like skipping this stage, use the seed Misaka Mikoto to spawn directly next to an NPC village with a blacksmith in horse-spawning meadows next to a small forest, river, extreme hills, and several cave openings. Did I mention the two Apiaries sitting right there if you have Forestry?

Summary:

• Get as many logs as you can collect before your Flint Axe breaks.
• Wooden Pickaxe -> Stone Pickaxe -> Stone Shovel/Sword/Axe
• Obtain food, and cook it. If charcoal is disabled, smelt with planks or natural coal.
• Find at least 3 wool, and craft a bed.
• Find a suitable biome to settle in, and start a farm to solve future food shortages. I recommend starting IC2 crops now, to save time later.

The Caveman Era:
You have a home now, but no resources to speak of. It's time to head into a cave and get some! Make sure you carry plenty of wood on you, so you can craft torches off mined coal on the fly as well as placing crafting tables anywhere. Your main goal for now is getting some iron and starting a farm, just like vanilla minecraft. I use this time to start a decent house, so once I get machines, I'll have some place to put them.

Summary:

• Collect more wood, and get a stable wheat farm going. If you have NPC village crops or reeds, plant and crossbreed those.
• Try and get an animal farm started, primarily sheep for wool. If Forestry is installed, make some backpacks; you want to keep as much as you can in terms of materials, and being limited by vanilla MC's inventory space is the worst thing that can happen to you.
• Go caving! I know it's tempting to start branch mining at diamond level, but if you have harder stone enabled that's going to be a huge chore. Not to mention caving has always been the superior method of resource collection, in terms of ores/minute.
• Flint tools aren't any faster than stone, they just last longer. Since there's way more cobble than flint, stone tools are still great.
• Mine some iron ore, and smelt a minimum of 14 Iron Ingots. This is enough to craft an Iron Hammer, Iron File, and Iron Pickaxe. I recommend getting at least 22 iron total so you can get an Iron Saw and Iron Sword in addition to all of this.
• An Iron Saw lasts 128 crafts, and gives you the vanilla wood and sticks ratios back, saving time. As iron is plentiful, I prefer to use the saw instead of spending more time chopping wood than I have to (I can mine iron in the time that a saw saves me). It also doubles as an Axe on top of destroying leaves quickly.
• Gregtech Hammers can prospect ores!

The Preindustrial Era:
You have iron tools now, meaning you now have everything you need to get Tin and Copper, and therefore craft Bronze for Steam Machines (For some reason Iron comes before Bronze in GT). I use this time to finish up my basic house (fenced off area with farm and lots of internal, sheltered space for machines as well as storage chests), as you will have a lot of downtime between mining trips.

Summary:

• A bed is basically mandatory at this point. Get one.
• Either stick with iron all the way through the Bronze age, or try to find diamonds. Diamond tools are kind of their own thing and are not affected by GT recipe nerfs, so if you're lucky, you can get a nice sword or pickaxe and make your life much easier.
• You will need to collect Tin, Copper, and Clay (for bricks) in respectable quantities, as steam machines require them in the recipes.
• If you don't live in Extreme Hills and you don't have copper/tin ore generation, you will need to go there to mine for those resources. Each Tetrahedrite vein is at least a stack of copper, and each Cassiterite vein is double that in tin. With some luck you can get enough tin/copper for your entire bronze age needs in a single trip, if you have Forestry backpacks (or if block stack size isn't nerfed to 16).
• Bronze was recently un-nerfed, and tin + 3 copper dust will give 3 bronze dust as opposed to 2. To create the dusts, make an Iron Mortar (2 iron + 5 stone bricks), which has enough durability to grind a stack of any type of ingot. It also gives one iron dust back after it breaks. Flint mortars are not worth using because they consume a ton of flint and wood, both of which require way more time to collect than iron.
• Bronze tools last twice as long as iron tools, but you will need a lot of bronze for your tech. Depending on whether you want to take it easy or rush a Blast Furnace, these tools may or may not be useful to you.
• A Wrench (Iron or Bronze) will be a requirement soon. Craft one.

The Steam Era:
You should have plenty of Bronze after mining a bit, as well as a respectable number of Bricks. You need a single Diamond for the Sturdy Grinder; other than that it's just lots and lots of metals. If you'd like to be organized instead of shoving machines next to the boiler, you'll need to craft Bronze Fluid Pipes as well, to transfer the steam.

While you can technically skip every steam machine except the Boiler, Extractor, and Bronze Blast Furnace, doing so is a giant waste of time and I do not recommend it unless literally all sources of copper and tin are unavailable in your world and you rely on Tine/Coppon plants. I will list all the machines here and explain their function; remember that steam machines need open space behind their steam vent, or they will clog up after a single operation!

• Small Coal Boiler
  
  
  • The basic steam production unit, analogous to a Generator. It has three bars at the center to denote the current state of the machine. From left to right:
    
    
    • Steam: Shows how much steam is in the boiler. Steam is constantly generated while the boiler is hot, as long as it has water. When the bar fills, excess steam is vented into the environment and you will hear an audible hissing sound in addition to seeing the steam particle effects. A single bucket of water will make more than enough steam to fill this whole bar, so a full tank will last a long time.
    • Water: Shows how much water is in the boiler. This can be filled by either placing water buckets into the GUI, or right clicking it with a filled water bucket. I highly recommend filling this to full before adding fuel, as adding water to a hot boiler with an empty tank will result in a steam explosion that will probably kill you.
    • Heat: Shows how hot the boiler is. Constantly increases while fuel is burning, and once it exceeds a certain threshold, the boiler will begin to produce steam. The hotter the boiler is, the less fuel your boiler consumes. If there is no water left, the boiler must be allowed to cool before you add more water.

    
    

  • Takes coal, charcoal, and Railcraft coal coke as fuel, nothing else works.
  • Burned fuel produces (Dark) Ashes, which can be converted to Carbon Fibre later on once you have an electrolyzer. Don't throw them away.

  
  

• Steam Powered Forge Hammer
  
  
  • Compresses 2 ingots into a metal plate. While this seems useless, it'll save you a lot of materials (a single iron hammer only makes 32 plates, and a single bronze hammer only makes 64). Definitely create one early on, maybe even as your first machine.

  
  

• Sturdy Grinder
  
  
  • Like a Rock Crusher, except it doesn't double your ores (crushed ore is only a 11% increase over smelting the ore block) and byproducts are not as common. This machine is essential to progression as it produces several unique byproducts unobtainable in any other early game processing fashion:
    
    
    • Nickel, from crushing Iron Ore, necessary for Cupronickel Heating Coils.
    • Lapis Lazuli Dust, for advanced circuits, is only possible to create here.

  
  

• Steam Furnace
  
  
  • An extremely good fuel-saver, but slow; you can smelt a lot of things off a single coal/charcoal via steam. I recommend automating one of these with hoppers, so the output doesn't clog once every six crushed ore.

  
  

• Steam Smelter
  
  
  • A low-tech Alloy Smelter! This machine lets you get 4 bronze from 1 tin and 3 copper, as well as a requirement for Red Alloy. A requirement for progression and great for material-saving.

  
  

• Steam Compressor
  
  
  • This machine is actually really useful for one thing: creating Advanced Alloy for a Composite Vest. This often-overlooked armor is actually stronger than both the Diamond Chestplate and the Nanosuit Chestplate. A composite vest plus iron legs lets you tank creepers with impunity.

  
  

• Squeezing Extractor
  
  
  • You can no longer smelt sticky resin, so you will need this machine to create Rubber Pulp from resin for your electrical components. Rubber Pulp smelts to rubber.

  
  

• Bronze Blast Furnace
  
  
  • Smelts Steel! Required for electric machines, so this is a necessary step to progress. You need 32 Bronze Plated Bricks in the structure in addition to the furnace block, and takes iron ingots as well as Coal/Charcoal to smelt steel. Coal Coke from Railcraft is also acceptable fuel.

There are High Pressure versions of the boiler and furnace, but both require Steel to make and are thus irrelevant for most of this age. Additionally, you may want to create a Bronze Workbench (or several) to store all your tools as well as making large projects easier.

Summary:

• Minimum cost to move into the Electrical Era: ~220 Bronze Ingots from ~75 tin and ~225 copper, >100 iron from crafting hammers and wrenches, and some quantity of bricks.
• If you craft every machine and use fluid pipes to connect them all, you'll spend more bronze and iron in total, but get a lot of infrastructure in return. Many steam machines remain useful for a long time even after you get electricity.
• I recommend Boiler -> Smelter (more efficient bronze) -> Forge Hammer (more efficient plates) -> a bunch of Bronze Fluid Pipes -> Sturdy Grinder -> Hoppers (automation) -> Steam Furnace -> (Compressor optional) -> Extractor -> Blast Furnace
• Once the Blast Furnace is finished, place it somewhere far away from flammable blocks and begin smelting steel! It takes a very long time to smelt steel, so you may want to build more than one of these if you have excess bronze.
• If you've found Tetrahedrite and pulverized some, you should have a bunch of Antimony Dust. Smelt some Battery Alloy in the Steam Smelter if you have Lead; you'll need those RE-batteries soon enough.

The Early Electric Era:
After obtaining your Bronze Blast Furnace, you will need a LOT of time to smelt the steel needed to move to pure electrical; due to the immense material and EU requirements of the Industrial Blast Furnace, you will most likely need to build at least two or three of these things if you are in a hurry. Aside from getting yourself a nice set of Steel Tools (10x more durable than iron), there are a few main things you want to rush as soon as possible: a Generator, a Plate Bending Machine, a Battery Charger, a Wiremill, and a Canning Machine if you are playing with natural regen disabled, as canned food becomes the only way to restore health without golden apples or potions. You also need tons of redstone for Red Alloy; mine them now!

Summary:

• Smelt at least 40 Steel Ingots (the minimum number to create and power a Plate Bending Machine with a Generator), and craft a minimum of 4 RE-batteries (ideally you want a lot more resources stockpiled away). You will notice that wires now require a Wire Cutter (8 iron) used on a metal plate to craft, and only yields 2 wires; this is another reason to build the wiremill early on.
• Rush a Plate Bending Machine. It's expensive, costing 22 iron, 32 steel, and a whole bunch of other materials, but it allows you to make plates from 1 ingot instead of 2. Since just about every recipe uses plates, this machine pays for itself in no time at all.
• You should have 3 RE-batteries left. Build a BatBox, connect it to the Plate Bending Machine, and put 27 Redstone into it. This consumes the Redstone to generate enough EU to bend 8 Steel Plates, which you can use to craft a Steel Machine Hull for the Generator.
• With the Generator, BatBox, and Plate Bending Machine, you can now losslessly create metal plates while only spending some fuel to generate EU! Make a Nether Portal if you haven't already, and mine some Glowstone Dust so you may produce an Advanced Circuit for the Macerator, a machine that can convert ore blocks into two piles of crushed ores and double your mining output!
• While you are at the nether, try to find some Sphalerite Ore; if you do, mine some until you get a Dirty Pile if Zinc Dust. Smelt this with 3 copper in the Steam Smelter for 4 Brass, make Brass Plates, then construct a Wiremill.
• Circuits are cheaper now! But not cheap enough. Craft an Assembling Machine next, so you can finally make circuits without the damned Red Alloy plates.
• Smelt some Electrum in the Steam Smelter, if you've found silver in Dungeon/Blacksmith chests.
• Create some Machine Parts, and Basic Circuits if you have Electrum. The Assembling Machine will reduce your steel expenditure of each hull further, from 8 to 6.
• With the above machines, your hulls and circuits are now substantially cheaper, putting you comfortably in the Electric Era. At this point, either upgrade your Steam Furnace (if you heavily automated it), or switch to an Automatic E-Furnace. Upgrade your Steam Boiler as well; until you get reliable EU generation, steam is still a far more efficient use of your coal/charcoal.
• If you need a lot of stone, a Bronze Jackhammer can be a nice investment.

The Electroindustrial Era:
You are now getting nearly the maximum amount of resources per ore mined with a Macerator, but you still cannot create electric tools and the Industrial Centrifuge, both of which require Stainless Steel, which you not only cannot smelt yet, but don't have the EU-generation or storage capacity for. This age will primarily focus on expanding EU generation and storage capacity, while filling up your workshop with various GT machinery and multiblocks that further improve your processing power.

Summary:

• Make an Electric Jetpack. Seriously. Best item ever.
• There are several viable approaches to pre-nuclear energy generation: Lava, [Nitro]Coalfuel (if you did IC2 crops and have a sizable farm of Withereeds), Charcoal (if not disabled), or Steam (if Railcraft is installed). Note that you do not necessarily need a Steam Turbine; all GregTech machines accept steam as a source of power losslessly, if you apply a Steam Upgrade to it.
• If Coal Chunk compression to an Industrial Diamond is disabled, you will require an Implosion Compressor before your Industrial Grinder. Build whatever it takes to get your Industrial Grinder up and running.
• If you decided to go the Nitro-coalfuel route, create a Chemical Reactor after your Industrial Electrolyzer. Both machines will be extremely useful to have even if your energy generation is not Nitro-Coalfuel, due to the ability to create many different kinds of chemical cells to improve your processing efficiency.
• You can electrolyze Dark Ashes to carbon dust, which make Carbon Fibre with 8 in a wiremill.
• Bauxite gives a ton of Aluminium. While they're expensive now, the metal becomes very cheap to mass produce once you get EU problems sorted out, and is a nice iron substitute.
• To get HV energy storage, there are quite a few ways that do not involve an MFE (which is very expensive):
  
  
  • Large Charger full of Energypacks (the old Lappack recipe now makes an Energypack for some reason). This can be up to 32 million EU, easily comparable to an MFSU, but way cheaper.
  • If the Energypack thing gets fixed at some point, Lithium Batteries (which can be made with Battery Alloy and no aluminum) still give 1.6m EU when you fill a charger with them. After you get a Blast Furnace, a charger of 16 Lithium Batpacks can hold up to 9.6 million EU.
  • The Poor Man's MFE, which outputs 512 EU/t due to E-net changes. Very bronze-intensive, however.

  
  

• Create your Industrial Blast Furnace after you have the rest of your Ore Processing chain figured out. With only Standard Casings and lava in the center, you reach 1520K, allowing you to smelt:
  
  
  • Steel - 60000 EU. Much faster than a Bronze Blast Furnace.
  • Galena Dust - 2400 EU. Nearly instant, and solves all your silver problems.
  • Titanium - 432000 EU. Pretty much useless right now without stainless steel, other than making some efficient mixed metal ingots.
  • Silicon - 120000 EU. Cheap advanced circuits!
  • Iron with Calcite - 18000 EU. 3 Iron Ingots per ore, very good deal if you don't need the Industrial Grinder byproducts of a small pile of Nickel and Tin.

  
  

• Replacing 9 Standard Casings with Reinforced Casings allows you to hit 1700K and smelt Aluminum and Chrome. To reach 2000K for Stainless Steel, replace 24 Standard Casings with Reinforced Casings.

The Stainless Steel Era:
After getting your Blast Furnace to 2000K, you can now smelt Stainless Steel! I recommend using the first 4 on an Industrial Centrifuge, then the next 4 for a Plate Cutting Machine. If you are missing either Chrome or Manganese due to not finding Dungeon Chests, here are some ways to get some:

• Chrome - Electrolyze 6 Ruby Dust, or Industrial Grinder 2 Ruby Ore (if you have a silk touch pickaxe).
• Manganese - Tungstate Ore in Industrial Grinder (4 for 1 pile). You can get this either from The End or in single-ore veins inside Black Granite.

With your Plate Cutting Machine, you can now create Ruby Plates from a block of ruby, used in a Lathe for crafting a Ruby Lens, needed to create the Mining Laser, which is both an excellent mining tool (100 EU per block broken in Low-Focus mode!) and a necessary ingredient for a Thermal Centrifuge, your first step to Nuclear Power.

A Mining Laser also needs a 360k Helium Coolant Cell to craft, made from six Helium Cells. You can get helium from either End Stone, or Glowstone. If you don't have access to the end, you'll need to centrifuge 96 Glowstone Dust for six Helium cells. (Pretty expensive, but you get 48 Redstone and 48 Gold out of it, so it's not too bad.)

Notice how you need several crafting steps to make something now? The GT Workbenches will come in handy now, as you can use them to hold crafting recipes. If you have Applied Energistics, consider starting an ME network and encoding GT machine patterns for use in a Molecular Assembler Chamber around this point. You generally won't have the spare EU to run one (especially at the 4x/10x multiplier common on hard servers) until nuclear power, but we're almost there.

Summary:

• Make an Industrial Centrifuge, as it is necessary for processing most dirty dusts as well as giving you a reliable source of Ruby Dust, via centrifuging Redstone. Ruby Dust = Energium Dust = higher tier stuff.
• Create a set of Diamond Sawblades for your Plate Cutting Machine, necessary for both creating gem plates and losslessly making item casings.
• Make two Mining Lasers, and craft one into a Thermal Centrifuge.
• You need a full hazmat suit to handle radioactive materials! The full set consists of the Hazmat Suit/Leggings, a Scuba Helmet, and Rubber Boots.
• Create at least two nuclear reactors: One to burn Uranium Fuel Cells, one to burn MOX (you should have quite a bit of Plutonium from grinding Uranium Ore in the industrial grinder). MOX Reactor designs are here.
• At this point, your power storage most likely needs upgrading. I recommend not making any MFSUs and just upgrading your Large Charger to EV, filling it with Lapotron Crystals. This is 160 million EU, four times the capacity of an MFSU and bigger than an AESU, not to mention the crystals can be taken out later and crafted into Lapotronic Energy Orbs. Note that an AESU is still necessary if you want to recharge Tier 5 things quickly, but we'll make that later when iridium isn't an issue.
• Now is a good time to do some automated mining! Create lots of Mining Pipes, a few Mining Drills, an equal number of OV scanners and Miners, and set them loose in Extreme Hills (Tin/Copper) or Plains (Aluminium/Titanium). Remember that miners are LV and don't take upgrades, so either power them directly with Lithium Batpacks or use transformer blocks. The Advanced Miner is also an option but you most likely don't have the EU to run them.
• OD scanner has 4 radius, OV scanner has 6 radius. This means they mine 9x9 and 13x13, respectively.
• With Automated Mining and EU generation taken care of, it's time to bask in the luxury of Electric Tools! Make some and craft an Energypack to recharge them. (You can use the old Lappack recipe to craft these, which is odd.)
• Remember that you can also auto-recharge electric tools in an Advanced Crafting Table, so you can get a bunch of lossless planks with an electric saw if you are so inclined.

The Highly Advanced Era:
With automated mining and stainless steel enabling nuclear power, now is a great time to enter the highly advanced era!

Summary:

• If you did crops and have Redwheat, make a decently-sized field (at least 4x8 size), and automate it. This should give about 1k redstone (100 ruby) overnight minimum. 4x16 will be 2k redstone, etc. Crops can be spread exponentially.
• Create and automate a few more industrial centrifuges, to process all your stuff.
• Create a few more Thermal Centrifuges and Universal Macerators to 100% efficiently process ores, and finally allow access to Bauxite Dust.
• Add an AESU to your power supply, both for fast tool charging and to have a 8192 EU/t block whose energy level can be displayed on a redstone display block for coolness.
• Assuming you have Applied Energistics installed, if you don't have an ME network yet, make one! The storage and auto possibilities are absolutely huge.
• Next step: Tungstensteel. Create 20 Advanced Machine Casings (or 24, if you also want a distillation tower), and replace your basic and reinforced machine casings on the Industrial Blast Furnace until you hit 2500K.
• Craft 16 Kanthal Dust (create 144 Tiny Piles of Kanthal Dust to avoid waste). Smelt them. Now yank 6 Advanced Machine Casings out of your Industrial Blast Furnace and make a Vacuum Freezer.
• Freeze the Kanthal, and create 4 Kanthal Heating Coils in the wiremill.
• Alloy Smelt 20 Nichrome Ingots. Create 4 Nichrome Heating Coils in the wiremill. Apply the Kanthal/Nichrome coils to your blast furnace in that order. It is now safe to replace all the advanced casings with reinforced ones, and your blast will still be over 3000K, able to smelt Tungstensteel.
• Note that to smelt Tungstensteel your blast furnace needs 500EU/t. Apply a transformer upgrade, and feed it HV.
• Tungstensteel tools are awesome! Craft yourself a set.

The Quantum Era:
It is time to fabricate matter!

<WIP Quantum Era coming up>

Cross-Mod Exploits and Easymode Tricks/Features:
Not technically part of GT, but they exist so I might as well mention them. If you are a server owner concerned about balance, fix the exploity things with Minetweaker or similar and possibly nerf the super-good features.

Industrialcraft 2:
- Tin/Copper/Lead oregen.
- Metal Former is not disabled by default, effectively substituting for three high cost GT machines.
- Induction Furnace still smelts ingots at ridiculous speeds.
- Industrial Diamond from Coal Chunk is possible in the regular compressor.
- Advanced Miner requires less tech to make than a regular Miner.

Buildcraft:
- Pipes
- Quarry
- Oil biomes
- Tanks

Forestry:
- Tin/Copper oregen.
- Infinite of tons of metals from Demonic Bees (Tin, Copper, Silver, Gold, Tungsten, Chrome, Iron, Mercury).
- Clockwork Engine -> free MJ
- Worktable as cheap early-game workbench
- Mailbox instead of tesseracts/teleporters for item transport
- Multifarms

Railcraft:
- Abundant steel in dungeon chests, directly smeltable to steel ingots.
- Cheaper, faster steel-smelting Blast Furnace
- Lossless Iron/Steel plates from Rolling Machine.
- Cheaper steel tools that do not require iron rods.
- Efficient early-game boiler.
- Raintanks
- Coke Oven
- Infinitely-spawning saltpeter

Tinker's Construct/Natura:
- Natura wood is not nerfed.
- TiC completely obsoletes IC drills and GT jackhammers.

Minefactory Reloaded:
- Essentially everything

Thermal Expansion:
- Literally everything

Mekanism:
- Want a stack of iridium? Mine for 10 minutes.

Thaumcraft:
- More of GT making TC easier, and only lategame.

Thaumic Tinkerer:
- I hope you don't have KAMI enabled.

Binnie's Mods:
- You're probably not that concerned about balance if you have these.

Ender Storage:
- Who needs tesseracts when you've got these?

Dartcraft:
- INFINITE LOOPS! WOO!

Ars Magica:
- Godmode is fine too.

Quote from okaolias

Are you sure hotter boilers produce steam faster? I'm pretty certain steam is produced at a constant rate after the heat threshold is reached, but fuel efficiency increases the hotter the boiler gets, i.e. a single piece of coal burns longer.

This changed recently; higher temperatures = higher fuel consumption, but the boiler also produces more steam. You get the same steam per unit fuel no matter what temperature the boiler is at (as long as it's over 100), but a hotter boiler makes steam faster (and also uses less water per steam).

I don't know if this applies to the GT boilers; to be honest I just add water, a stack of coal, and forget about it for a few days. One GT boiler per 2 machines seems to be a nice rule of thumb.

Quote from okaolias

Also, how about a note regarding the bronze jackhammer as an early game electric tool? They're not as useful with harder stone making strip mining a chore, but they're still infinite durability, just add EU.

If you cave mine, a jackhammer is 100% optional. With harder stone it's pointless to mine anything that isn't an ore except to get yourself un-stuck. I agree that a bronze jackhammer is pretty beastly at its job for how cheap it is, but I don't want to instill the notion that strip mining is in any way an efficient use of your time.

Quote from okaolias

It's not in as a change yet, but Greg recently mentioned the titanium recipe for the diamond jackhammer being removed, as it's easier to get than the steel one as it is.

Yeah, I asked Greg about the diamond jackhammer recipe inconsistency after I wrote this. Once he updates, I'll remove it.

Quote from okaolias

Edit: Forgot to mention. This guide is pretty beastly

Thanks! I'll try to update it more.

Quote from Skythe

Should add somewhere that the Steam Grinder can be used to make Lapiz Lazuli Dust from Lapis. I had skipped it since it wasn't really needed. Took a while to figure out how to obtain the dust =P

NEI wasnt much help honestly

I knew I was missing something with the grinder, thanks!

Oh, the Electrum is for Basic/Advanced Circuits. Perhaps I should've been clearer.