How to start out?

Quote from Nanille

for ic2 startup i generaly:

1. collect wood
2. dig temporary underground base
3. start burning wood into charcoal
4. make staircase from base to lvl 12
5. dig around for tin, copper and redstone.
6. go back up and search for a rubber tree.
7. create generator, extractor, macerator and batbox (in that order)
8. start building solars

after that i just do what i want really. no real order of doing things.

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Fairly standard 'build' to be honest. First 4 machines are the goal you want to shoot for early game in Minecraft... Then, you have a few decisions you can go for as your beginning resources climb up.

9. Choose a base set of energy production
- Geothermal
- Wind, Water, or Solar
- or Standard Generator (either by Charcoal of Fuels)
10. Expand energy capacity
11. Advance your manufacturing capacity
12. Enhances your resource gathering capabilities

These are about a few choices that you can do mid-game...

If you have tree capatstor, sorry dammit touch screens, charred coal is kinda OP.

I always set my base at x:0 y:16 z:0. Allows easy access to minerals and lava, and easy to navigate. Then I dig a 64-meter grid.

On one hand I love the very start of Minecraft - finding an ideal location and building a base, mining out the world yourself, hunting animals and monsters for materials - it's all cool. After having played with so many mods for so long though I'm very spoiled with Automatic Sorting and Macerating/Cooking machines. I hate hate hate coming back from a long expedition and Macerating/Smelting everything by hand. For this reason I always make it a priority to build a rudimentary auto processing system as early as possible with buildcraft with the idea of upgrading it to a full fledged system in the future (Logistics Pipes or Redpower).

First Day
1) Basic starting routine (get wood, cobblestone, food, and at least 3 wool)
2) Unless I find a swamp, I completely shear the first rubber tree I find in search of sapplings. I also harvest as much sugarcane as I can.
3) Sleep in a hole the first night.

From there I spend the next day or two searching for an ideal location to set up camp. I'll travel a while usually, and will often plunder any small cave I come across for coal, iron, and copper. I usually avoid setting up my base in Deserts, Tundras, and Jungles and like to be near volcanoes and oil wells if I can. As soon as I find an ideal location I set up with a small house and plant all my rubber trees and Sugarcane. I then go down deep deep deep and mine for quite a while in search of Redstone. When I get back :

1) Generator, BatBox, Macerator, and Electric Furnace. If I have enough materials I build an Extractor as well.
2) I build a couple redstone engines and, using a mix of Sneaky Pipes, ABO, and Additional Pipes for Buildcraft, build a very rudimentary auto processing pipeline with an input and output chest.
3) I usually have to go mining again for something but I try to set up solar panels ASAP... at least three to start.
4) I start doing some Thaumcraft related things, Vis production and Research. Probably more mining as well.
5) Then I go enderman/zombie hunting for pearls and brains, I also grab as much clay as I can during my jaunts out.
6) BatPack/Drill and then a quick trip to the Nether for glowstone.
7) At this point, I see if I have the materials to upgrade my sorting system to Redpower. I usually avoid a Sorting Machine unless I'm playing on a server without Logistics Pipes since that's my final goal. If I have the resources I build a Alloy Furnace, Battery Box, etc... and set up a simple Filter/Retriever contraption to replace my buildcraft pipes.
So much more mining, usually have forestry Backpacks at this point so I collect a lot and the sorting system speeds it along. Thaumcraft is also getting along well and from here the game takes off.

1. Spend the first day collecting wood, and apples
2. Spend the first night building a basic cave (I generally just go for spawn point, this is temporary), then build a ladder down, get some basic ore and redstone; I usually mine between height 12 and 15, for diamonds and lapis lazuli
3. When the day comes, search for a rubber tree, get saplings, plant them near the cave
4. Spend the few following days searching for food (kill animals, grow wheat, whatever you can find) and the nights digging for more ore
5. When you have enough resources (iron, tin, copper, redstone, resin), build a generator and a macerator (optimizing iron ore), then use the macerator to double your ore; use charcoal to power it, not natural coal
6. Build an extractor to get more rubber from resin
7. Build a batbox to buffer energy for the machines
8. Get some diamonds and make yourself a diamond drill with a batpack // build a geothermic generator, get some lava stock (pile of 64 is usually enough)
(Somewhere between 8 and 12: find a good spot for your final base, move everything)
9. Mine some more and build a passive power source (not water - inefficient); I find windmills to be much more effective than solar panels
10. Build an MFE, nano armor, go to the nether and quickly get some glowstone dust (have an enchanted bow - Power I is enough to one-shot ghasts)
11. Build a mining laser, nano saber, electric jetpack
12. Build a mass fabricator, route the excess power to it; use the blobs to create missing resources
13. Build an MFSU, quantum armor, a lappack, return to the nether to search for blazes and die falling in a lava lake because of lag
14. Ragequit like everyone else, go back to playing monopoly with your little sister

My latest adventures in flatcore with mystcraft world:
1. Kill chickens for description books
2. Visit some ages and do some mining before instability kills that world.
3. Hate slimes with all your heart.
4. Decide to write stable age, realize that only weather option so far are eternal rain, eternal snow and eternal storm.
5. Hate rain with all your heart.
6. Use carpenter for wood pulp and eventually paper (no reeds were found)
7. Finally get normal weather symbol, start new flat mystcraft world with essential bees biomes and caves.
8. Gather more resource, made rubber farm.
9. Make macerator, extractor, electric furnace, compressor, quarry, peat bog, a few apiaries and couple of coke ovens.
10. Fall into quarry, survive with half of heart, start using rubber boots.
11. Make diamond drill, chainsaw and batpack.
12. Macerate some coal for nano suit.
13. Realize need for some more diamonds for nano suit.
14. Find diamonds in a cave.
15. Dig down.
16. Lava.
17. World deleted.

mine is a much more simple setup:
1. get homebase set up. (solar cells over watermills usually ends up being my primary)
2. get 2 reactors built, one 'superbreeder' (8->20+ ratio), one primary power (4 cell)
3. begin construction of the Executor (super star destroyer)
4.???(haven't got there yet)

i've had to restart construction 3 times. 1 ragequit due to miscalculation in the construction, 1 ragequit due to it being on Singleplayer (wanted to show it off). currently still building it on my server.
only thing i would change if i could right now is that the bottom of the ship is currently below the clouds...should have started it higher up

oh, did i mention the primary materials are reinforced stone, netherbrick, and reinforced glass? this isn't an easy build.

big projects prevent ragequit...set out to build SOMETHING.

Build a basic house.
Mine for a good while.
Build a generator.
Build a macerator.
Upgrade to geothermal (if I have the lava).
Get solar (I don't use water mills, way to overpowered)
Then I progress onwards, I'll normally get a rubber tree plantation setup pretty quick. The next task is a sorting system using Redpower, followed by a tree farm to get saplings. Then I build a biofuel plant which I use to power a quarry for resource gathering. I want to try some nuclear engineering soon.

Wind energy and RedPower controlled watermills are the best for starting.

* Find a suitable place to live. Ensure you have sufficient rubber trees locally, or you have sufficient rubber tree saplings to create a small plantation to harvest from.

* Build a house which is mob-proof, including overhangs along the roof to keep spiders off. Possible entries include underwater from a shore or river bottom, to prevent doors being beaten down.

* Mine and gather resources. In particular, get up an iron/gem pickaxe to harvest Redstone. Furthermore, attempt to locate an abandoned mine and check chests for Melon seeds.

* Make Generator, Macerator, Extractor, and Electric Furnace. If you have sufficient resources, also a bat-box.

* Make your electric tools... notably the drill and the chainsaw. Once you have the resources, also make a battpack

* Establish solid mining base at level y10 for branch mining operations. Intent is primarily for gold and diamonds, but any other resources can be husbanded for future projects. In particular, copper and tin will be used extensively for setting up the next stage of energy generation and for Forestry.

* Use RP2 Retriever, Filter, and Deployer along with some RP pneumatic tubes to bucket-brigade water mills. This is a continuous and consistent power supply necessary to upgrade facility.

* Upgrade machines to Advanced Machines, except Extractor (which requires Electrolyzed Water Cells), which shall be put in storage after producing Electrolyzer.

* Upgrade batbox to MFE. Attach Electrolyzer and get the electrolyzed water cells to upgrade extractor.

* Create Nano armor for head, legs, and feet.

* Create nano-sabre.

* Sprint through Nether for Glowstone. Make Lappack.

* Start up Forestry production, using an Electric Engine to start up the Thermionic Fabricator.

* Create Peat Bog, Turbary, Arboretum, and Logger

* Create fermentor and biogas engines. Use surplus saplings from the Arboretum and Fertilizer using Apatite until you have sufficient ash production for more efficient fertilizer production.

* Create Lasers and Assembly Table. Start producing gold circuits.

* Create Logistics Pipes network, using circuits in place of gears for resource conservation. Hook up Forestry machines and the peat engines that run them to fully automate.

*Create chassis-pipe based sorting system, using polymorphic item sink module and a Provider module for storage. Set up your 'sorting chest' with Quicksort Module and ItemSink module set to default route (any items the system doesn't know what to do with will end up in sorting chest). Sorting chest can be any size, or may be an EnderChest for ease of remote sorting.

* Start up your mass resource harvesting system of choice, be it RP2 Frame + Blockbreaker, or Quarry, or whatever you prefer.

* Firmly establish nether base. Secure blaze spawner. Set up Mass Fab with MFSU powered by long series of Geothermal Plants fed by lava pumped from the endless lava oceans prevalent in the Nether. Feed scrap via EnderChest attached to block breaker + cobblegen. Flip back to Overworld from time to time to refill enderchest with scrap.

* Make the last suit you will ever wear, and win.

1. Establish a small base of operation inside the nearest hill, gather food and wood till the end of minecraft day. Start charcoal production once it's starting to get dark.
2. Dig down from the base, searching for a cave. Though I can go for an outside cave if there's one nearby.
3. Getting an iron pickaxe as soon as possible, using it only for redpower gems, uranium and redstone.
4. Once redstone is found, I'm starting to smelt the ore neccessary for generator and macerator, harvesting rubber (and establishing a plantation near the house) at this point.
5. Macerating the ore, getting power with charcoal. I'm usually able to get a basic setup of macerator, e.furnace, extractor, batbox, a couple of windmills and a normal generator.
6. Getting a drill, going for diamonds and resources necessary for a miner. Once diamond drill is made, making a portal and getting glowstone.
7. Constructing portable mining station - miner, 64 pipes, drill, OV, batbox and a bat-pack. I usually have around 8 windmills at this point, as well as a normal generator to get power when windmills are not enough.
8. Getting a laser asap.

Once the miner is working and there's a hard laser counter to everything out there, I'm just doing whatever I want to do.

1. search for a seed with a village somewhere reachable near spawn (i get lonely easily)
2. repair/upgrade the village and make myself at home
3. prepair for adventure (2miner's backpacks from forestry, enough food, torches, etc.)
4. search for a deep cave. there are always some deep caves nearby if you search a little, they give me lots of resources for little effort, most times they lead down to diamond lvl and they satisfy my adventure meter. with mystcraft i also start playing around with random ages for this.
5. use this resources to build a watercell (8EU/t small imp. watermill/pump setup) and build basic machinery (macerator, E-furnace, etc.)
6. setup my first RP2 energy generation and alloy smelting as good as possible
6. try to automatice the refinery process as much as possible with the remaining resources
7. prepair for the second expedition and a small expedition into the nether for glowdust
8. prepair my first miner and start getting resources while doing nothing
9. start to setup my late game energy source, may require additional expeditions
10. build my quantum suit (that's actually the first armor i use )
11. expand base for world domination, build flying constructions, automatic farms, whatever i feel like (mainly the end of being poor)

on a side note: prepairing a hit and run miner setup for fast mining missions in "dense ore" ages with mystcraft really helps gathering the valuable resources like redstone, lapis or diamonds, but you have to be fast so you won't lose everything once the decay gets out of hand.

on another side note: i notice that i never use enchanting or alchemy

• Wood, stone -> tools and weapon
• Cow tipping (feds you for days and gives leather for some armor)
• Rubber trees
• Spelunking for tons of ore, redstone and lapis (and fun!)
• If I find lava (which I usually do), I burn 4 tin, build 16 cells, keep 2 for the generator and fill the remaining 14 for 280.000 EU later.
• Build base either right next to a lava lake (if I am in a hurry) or somewhere in a nice place.
• Macerator, Extractor (both powered with redstone initially), then geothermal generator (or plain generator fed with scaffolds) for power.
• Buckets for lava to build a portal to the nether
• Glowstones and no dieing.
• Nuklear reactor, first 20 EU/t, then upgrades till I have a 70 EU/t stable setup
• 2 Miners
• ???
• Profit!

I usually do not hurry to get a quantum suit as this tends to be the "Ok there is nothing else to do in this game" moment in time. Still lacking of any good idea to build after I hit that point where you have near unlimited resources and no more chests to put them in.

Not much new here...
1) Deforestation - everything but jungle (Using TreeFeller with duability turned on for lazyness.) Till 4 of 5 full satcks of wood, Rubber Saplings (rubber), and usualy mushrooms from the swamp biomes that I find the rubber trees in.
2) Digging - I usualy make my starting room with the floor at water level, 14x3x14 often underground always with ladders/trapdoor. (First room is always chunk alligned)
3) Oring - First priority is always a basic Generator, closely followed by a drill and batpack. (If I'm using EE (1.2.5) then the only thing I make is the Alchemical chest ->Condenser)
4) Rubber Tree farm (manual at this point).
5) Rooming - from first room down to bedrock, then up past ground level to the 100's, then building up adjacent rooms, ground up, then down. Lava gets tanked, ores get saved till Macerator and electric furnace is up (then other power tools).
6) BuildCraft AutoCrafting Tables and lots of redstone engines to make solar panel factory, (still running on charcoal in the gens!)
7) Compact Solars to HV Panels, get MFSU(s) up and running upgrade to lappack, transformer and overclocker upgrades in all machines.
Forestry - Wheat - > Peat -> Tree -> Rubber Tree. Then I'm 'happy' that I've set up my base.
9) Forestry Bees - Mystraft Ages - EE - Dust - Thaum - whaterver

I end up with usualy a 4 room square tower bedrock to sky. A water and lava tank the tower only seem to need one of each :D. If I'm still Oring I might get lazy and quarry the inside of the rooms and put in the floors/lights after. Underground usualy ends up a honeycomb of rooms, I've been using RP2 lights to navigate to ladders, othewise the ant hill is easy to get lost in.

I havn't tinkered with the reactors, or the IC2 crops. If the gens run on sugar then I guess I'll start doing that too

Play until fps drops below 20 and start crying and create a new world

Whatever else I have installed (BC, ComputerCraft and some more, as the mood strikes), I have backpak mod

Day 1)
Punch a tree, make wooden pickaxe, mine some cobblestone, make a set of stone tools/weapons.
Find at least 3 sheep and make a bed.
Kill every cow that happens by.

Night 1) Sleep in my new bed.

Day 2) (sometimes day 3 also).
Find and kill as many cows as possible. Make at least 3 backpacks. Cook the steaks Gather some wood for torches.

Days... many days: MINE!

Day ... something or other, all the backpacks are full of goodies (ores, gems, redstone, coal, things found in chests in dungeons and mines):
Find a really nice spot for a base.

Next day(s):
Build a base, generator, extractor, macerator, electric furnace, compressor. Upgrade generator to something better (Advanced Solar, usually). Build everything else I need/want.
By the time I run out of resources I have some more or less automated way to gather them, so I play mostly stationary.

1) Search for rubber trees
2) dig down
3) macerator + generator + drill
4) everything else

I can barely imagine how playing minecraft *without* IC2 would be. It has been such a long time... Everything I do from the start is based of IC2. It just feels natural.

Find the rubber tree. Get the macerator up and running asap. More power. Can never have too much power!

I wish we could work with "oil" in IC2. That part of BC I really enjoy, the hunt for oil and refining it to fuel.

Quote from huldu

I wish we could work with "oil" in IC2. That part of BC I really enjoy, the hunt for oil and refining it to fuel.

Use the Transformer's Add-on... I know it's slightly out-of-date atm... but it's the best BC/IC crossover add-on right now..

Quote

on another side note: i notice that i never use enchanting or alchemy

Honestly no need with IC... unless you intergrate some of its functions with Thaumcraft 2 and such..