This guide is meant for new players, who are brand new to industrialcraft, and would like to know how to get started.
So what is industrialcraft? Industrialcraft is a mod that adds in all sorts of new stuff to minecraft.
The additional content added in Industrialcraft can be divided into 3 major sections:
Resources (including new tools)
Machines/Generators
Wiring
Since this is a beginner's guide, we will only cover the basics of all three. Let's begin.
After installing the mod, and loading up a new world (you can use an old world, but be aware that the new ores will only be found in unrendered chunks), we can begin our IC adventure!
To start, just play minecraft like you normally would. Get wood tools, upgrade to stone, mine resources and so on and so forth. Just like standard minecraft. Realize that Industrialcraft is a "tier 2" mod, in that you need some resources before you can even begin getting the basics. You will need iron especially so, so conserve as much iron as you can. While in your mines, you may discover three new ores: copper, tin and uranium.
Copper is the orange one, Tin is the silver one, and Uranium is the green one.
Copper and tin ores can be mined with a stone pickaxe, and are smelted into ingots and can be used for wires, machines, batteries, etc. Uranium ore is mined using a steel pickaxe, and is used for nuclear reactors, so we won't care about it much.
I suggest getting a MINIMUM of 17 iron, 4 tin, 6 copper and 6 redstone. You will also need rubber, about 6 of it. In order to get rubber,you will need rubber trees.
While you were finding base or searching for wood, you may discover a new type of tree. These trees are called rubber trees.
As you can see from the picture, they have a darker looking wood with lighter looking leaves. On these trees, you may notice yellowish rectangular dots on them. As you can see in the picture, the right rubber tree has one. These yellow dots are resin, and you can use a tree tap to get the resin. To craft a tree tap:
Right clicking on the resin with the tree tap will shoot the resin out, allowing you to collect it. The nice thing is, is that if you wait a minecraft day or two, the resin will regenerate on the rubber tree, letting you collect it again.
With resin, you can throw it into a furnace and get one rubber for each resin.
So once you have at least 17 iron, 4 tin, 6 copper, 6 redstone and 6 rubber, we can craft two of the most basic, but useful machines in industrialcraft: The generator, and macerator.
You might ask, what does the macerator and generator do? The macerator, turns any ore block (iron, copper or tin) and turns each block into two dusts. And each dust can be smelted into one ingot! You heard me right, you can now DOUBLE the amount of ores you have. The catch? The macerator needs power. Now you can power it using redstone (one redstone macerates one ore), but we don't want to use our precious redstone do we? Rather, we need to find another way to generate power. That is where the generator comes into play. The generator works just like a furnace, except that it turns fuel into energy. EU to be exact. By throwing coal, charcoal, wood or other fuels, we can generate power which will make the macerator work
Now the question is, how do we make em? Let's begin with the generator, as a macerator is useless without power. The first step to making a generator is a refined iron. Refined iron is made by putting iron ingots into a furnace, making refined iron ingots. With refined iron ingots, we can make a machine part.
From there, we need cable. Using our copper and rubber, we can make copper cable like so:
With 1 cable, 4 tin and 4 redstone, we can make a RE (re-chargeable) Battery:
Finally, with a machine part, battery, and a furnace (you should know how to craft this), we can finally make a generator.
Now just put some coal, charcoal or other burning material in, and watch as the red bar fills up. The red bar shows the built up power, and will store up to 4,000 EU, and will stop burning fuel once the meter is filled up.
Now that we finally have our generator, we can now make the macerator! Now the macerator uses a machine part just like the generator, but it needs some other stuff. One of which is the electronic circuit. Crafted from 6 cables, 1 refined iron, and 2 redstone, it is used in almost all machines in Industrialcraft.
Now using a machine part, electronic circuit, 2 cobblestone and 3 flint, we can craft the macerator!
Once you have the macerator, just place it right by the generator.
Now just put some ores in on the top slot, and watch as the they turn into dust, and your ingots double! Remember, each ore is macerated into two dust, and a dust can be smelted into a ingot!
Notice the red lighting bolt-that signifies that the macerator is receiving power.
While this is going on, the macerator will draw power from the generator. Unless you place the macerator right next to the generator, it will not receive power and therefore work. Now you may notice there are two slots on the macerator. You can also use a battery to power the macerator. If you craft another battery, you can place it in the top slot of the generator, and it will charge the battery. With the charged battery, you can put it in the lower slot on the macerator, and the macerator will be powered. With the generator and macerator operational, you have the most basic machine and generator of Industrialcraft!
So we covered the basics of Machines/Generators, but we still have to talk about tools. Since this is just supposed to be a basic guide, we will only cover bronze. What is bronze you might ask? Bronze is an ingot that can be used to make pickaxes, axes, hoes, swords, shovels and armor. It is just as fast and good as iron, but it lasts 30% longer! Plus, you want to save your iron for your machines/generators, so bronze is a GREAT alternative!
To make bronze, you will need at least 3 copper dust, and 1 tin dust. Placing it like so, will create bronze dust.
[Insert image]
Then you just throw the bronze dust into furnace, and you can make bronze ingots! Then you can craft all the same tools and armor you would with iron, but at a far cheaper cost! Remember, copper and tin are more common than iron, so bronze is easy to make, plus it lasts 30% longer!
From here on out, I suggest you take a look at the Industrialcraft Wiki, so you can see all the machines, generators and tools that industrialcraft has to offer. You can make new, better machines, generators, tools and lots of other cool stuff! Just click the link and look at the bottom of the pageto see every item in industrialcraft! Each page offers a description of what the item does, as well as the crafting recipe. If you want some basic direction, I suggest you get an extractor, batbox, solar panels and mining drill.
BUT WAIT! Don't click on that link yet! We have on last topic to talk about: wiring. You will need to know wiring to figure out how to work a batbox, so we ought to do this first before you begin getting deeper into Industrialcraft.
So what is wiring? Well wires in IC2 allow EU to travel from point A to point B. There are multiple types of wire, but for now we will use copper wire. For example, say your generator is on one side of the room, and your macerator is on the other side. Instead of having to use batteries, you can just connect the two with wire like so:
[Inset image]
EU flows from the generator, into the wire, and then into the macerator.
While this is nice, one of the more useful features of wire is being able to hook up multiple machines. As you may recall earlier, we put the macerator by the generator, and it was powered. But what if we want another macerator? Using wires, we can do this:
[Insert image]
Generators will emit energy from any side, and macerators and other machines will receive energy from any side. This means that so long as the cable is touching it, power will be sent/received.
The major advantage with wiring over batteries, is that you don't have to waste time charging up the battery and then putting it in the machine. With wiring, it's all there. Plus, a batterie can only power one machine at a time, as opposed to wiring which can give power to multiple machines. Now while this is a nice setup, we can make it even better.
Introducing the batbox! What is the batbox you might ask? The batbox works like a giant battery, in that it can hold 40,000 EU, the equivalent of 4 batteries! Now you might ask-what is the use of the batbox? While the first one is that it can charge batteries very quickly. Unlike a generator which takes a while to charge batteries, batboxes do it within seconds, provided that it has at least 10,000 EU. Second, the batbox helps deal with EU loss.
[To be continued]