Minecraft - Home Improvements

After my somewhat disastrous trip to the Nether last report, I spent last week working on base improvements. After upgrading base power to provide more efficient ore processing and a more energy for farming, I started working on a Botania setup. This proved interesting since there have been some changes to recipes since I last used this mod. Here's how things turned out.

Power

Survivalist Generators are a great way to get started, but in the long run they produce very small amounts of RF. With more farms in the works, I need more power. I decided to run with Combustion Generators from Ender IO. These devices burn flammable liquids to produce RF, but they need a water source for cooling. The basic setup is something like this:

• A four-block Ender IO Reservoir acts as an infinite water source.
• An Ender IO Vat converts sugar and potatoes into Hootch.
• Combustion Generators burn Hootch and produce RF.
• A Leadstone Energy Cell (Thermal Expansion) acts as an energy buffer.
• Ender IO Conduits move energy, liquids and materials between machines.
• A Pulverizer (Thermal Expansion) turns sugar cane into sugar, doubling it in the process.

Here's what the whole setup looks like. OK, most of the setup. There are some hidden conduits in the wall and below the floor. The potato and sugar cane farms that provide fuel are just downstairs, and a few Item Filters keep fuel flowing between machines.

Base Power

Sugar Cane and Potato Farms

Now you can see why I chose potatoes as my first crop. They're food for me, and my base.

Digging It

With power secured, for now, it's time to move on to resource collection. An extended mining trip made easier by my awesome tools, a Digger's Backpack and a Miner's Backpack (both from Forestry). means I can build a BuildCraft Quarry, which automates mining.  That's all good, but it also needs power, and I don't want it near my base since it leaves gaping holes behind. For now, I've set it up with one of my Survivalist Generators, which means very slow mining, but it works for now. I dropped it in a nearby arid biome. You can expand the area mined by using Landmarks, but I just kicked things off at the default size.

Quarry

I think the quarry had been running for several Minecraft days when I grabbed this image. Yeah, pretty slow.

Plant Life

With power and mining out of the way, I was ready for Botania. I built a new structure next to my base to house all the Botania paraphernalia, a greenhouse structure, sort of.  Setting up basic Botania requires:

• A Lexica Botania, the book that explains everything
• A Wand of the Forest, which lets you control Botania blocks
• A Petal Apothocary to do basic Botania magic
• A Runic Altar for more advanced magic
• A Mana Pool to accumulate mana
• Pure Daisies to create Livingwood and Livingrock

After creating a few Dayblooms to provide some initial mana, I switched to Endoflames for mana generation. Dayblooms only last a day or two, and feeding Endoflames with coal is pretty simple. Here's what the initial build looks like.

Botania Lab

Mana Generation

Those are Dayblooms on the left and Endoflames on the right. The contraption next to the Endoflames is a dispenser that drops coal into a Botania Open Crate. This block ensures coal falls straight down onto the pressure plate below. There's some redstone wire and a NOT Gate (Project Red), that flips the pressure plate signal. When an Endoflame consumes the coal, it toggles the redstone state of the pressure plate, which triggers the dispenser, dropping more fuel. This keeps things running without wasting coal.

With Botania up and running I made myself a Sojourner's Sash and a Ring of Magnetization, two very useful Baubles.

Wrapping Up

I think that covers the big stuff I worked on last week. I also set up an Ender-lily farm, but that's just some blocks of dirt and slow-growing seeds, so not much to see there. I started setting up a pair of tree farms, one for wood and one for rubber trees, but they still need work. My power needs are met for now, but adding harvesters means I need to deal with sludge, so a Sludge Boiler is in the works for next report too. After I have a source of wood secured, I'll probably look at setting up animal farms to provide hides, feathers, meat, and other essentials. I'll also have to do some exploration to find some additional crops. I still haven't found carrots or melons, and eventually I'll want to grow all the things.

Until next time, happy digging.

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