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Does the Alchemy Table still have a use in the 1.12.2 version? I cannot find it in the Sanguine Scientem, there is no mention of it in the official FTB wiki, and although it appears in JEI and is craftable, there do not appear to be any recipes associated with it.

I'm playing in the Direwolf20 1.12.2 FTB modpack.

NM, I just found the recipes in JEI.

No idle sound: all the better for Creepers to sneak up on you.

When you're playing modded, you may have a number of options for item disposal. Extra Utilities 2 has a trash can that voids items placed into it. There's also a trash can option built into FTB Utilities. Unlike the EU2 trash can, items don't disappear until you close the GUI. This allows you to retrieve items you did not want to trash.

Then there's ProjectE. If the item has EMC, you can simply dump it into a Transmutation Table/Tablet.

Now if you want to void blocks in the world, the Destruction Gadget from Direwolf20's Building Gadgets mod is useful. You can undo this if you delete blocks you did not want to. This can be handy for voiding tall grass and other plants, such as the Garden blocks from Pam's Harvestcraft.

I no longer throw items into lava as I have accidentally lost relatively valuable items this way. Back before I started playing with any mods in my original world (this was in Alpha 1.22), there was a lava lake underground along one of my tunnels I made, and I had a very sensitive mouse. I threw my Clock into lava when I meant to throw excess cobblestone and had to make another one. After that happened, I got a less sensitive mouse.

I started playing with a mod that I have never played before: Blood Magic. It was the 1.6.4 and 1.7.10 versions of the FTB Direwolf20 modpack, but I removed it from both instances. It also wasn't in Stoneblock. It is based on life points - LP (health), and is of a darker nature, magic-wise. I have am still fairly early in the mod.

I expanded my base area on the east past Botania and my bees, and located everything there. The new area is 29 E-W and 30 N-S. I may have to expand it again, more on that later. A screenshot of the new area, and an Astral Sorcery ritual in the area north of the bees:

The multiblock in front of me is the main crafting mechanic in Blood Magic, the Blood Altar. This one is a Tier 2. You build higher tiers outward like you would with a Beacon. The other structure a little more than midway up on the left is the Incense Altar. This gives LP bonuses and speeds up regen based on items placed around it. It has tiers, and is Tier 1. I have to add what are called Tranquility blocks to boost its effect and LP bonus. At the top of the image in the center is the Astral Sorcery ritual I set up. It has a crystal attuned to Aevitas, with a Enchanced Celestial Collector Crystal also attuned to Aevitas linked to it. The Incense Altar will also convert the Sacrificial Dagger to one which drains 90% of your health to fill the Blood Altar instead of of one heart for the Sacrificial Knife. Then I just run over to the Aevitas ritual and get Regeneration II. This even works during the day time. Both crystals used are 900 size, 100% purity and 100% cutting. No Spectral Relays are needed to reflect starlight back on to the Ritual Pedestal.

On the right, next to the Refined Storage Grid isthe Hellfire Forge. It is another crafting mechanic in Blood Magic.

Higher tiers of the Tranquility setups require more and more space, up to 21x21 at Tier 5. So I will need to expand the walls around the Incense Altar to make room for the new blocks.

An update on the Blood and Incense Altars. Both are at Tier 4. Screenshot:

The red runes are of Augmented Capacity, the yellow ones Self Sacrifice, and the blue ones Speed. The Altar can hold around 374,000 LP. I'm using several red and black blocks: Red Nether Brick, Black Concrete bricks, Red Concrete bricks and Bloodstone bricks.

The Incense Altar provides a 200% bonus to the Sacrificial Dagger, and around 3500 Tranquility. I had to expand the base in this area yet again to make room for the top tier structures. I'm in the process of upgrading the Blood Altar to Tier 5.

I'm also at the stage where I can do the Well of Suffering ritual with a dark room and Cursed Earth to spawn and damage mobs for LP. I started digging out an area under the Blood Altar for this purpose. I also added an Astral Sorcery Ritual Anchor above the Blood Altar so I do not have to keep running over to where the Ritual Pedestal is and back again. At night I regen my full 63.5 hearts in about 5 seconds due to the effect of Aevitas.

Edit: I updated the Blood and Incense Altars to Tier 5, and set up the Well of Suffering ritual under the Blood Altar. I had a couple of issues to deal with when building it, though. One of those was that mobs were regenerating as well, so I moved the Astral Sorcery Ritual Anchor a bit higher up. The other issue was that Endermen were teleporting out of the dark room. I solved that by placing Ender Inhibitors on each of the 4 walls of the room. These are from Mob Grinding Utils, and prevent teleportation from within an 8 block range. The Endermen still teleport, but get instantly teleported back into the room. And they have a range which is shorter than the Well of Suffering ritual, so they continue taking damage from it.

I sped up the ritual using a Watch of Flowing Time on a Dark Matter Pedestal on top of the Master Ritual Stone, which is just above the top edge of the image. I found that without these, Witches were healing themselves faster than they were taking damage.

A screenshot of the completed Tier 5 altars:

The Blood Altar holds around 3.6 million LP, and the Incense Altar gives a 250% bonus with around 4900 Tranquility.

An image of the Collector Crystal I am using for regen:

it took several attempts to capture the lighning bolts that come from the Collector Crystal. I just happened to be lucky as one occurred during a lag spike, so I was able to capture it.

I went through parts of my base and replaced my existing Thermal Dynamics Item Ducts and Fluid Ducts with their EnderIO equivalents. While both types can be hidden using Covers (Thermal Dynamics) or Conduit Facades (EnderIO), the latter is unique among tech mods in that you can place multiple conduit types in the same space. These make it easier when for example you have to run both power and fluids to a machine. And single conduits take up less block space than ducts do.

I have also been breeding up some of my bees, and have 4 Imperial, 4 Industrious, 2 Cultivated, 1 Valiant, 2 Diligent and 2 Noble bees. The Imperial ones are the only bees with Production Upgrades in their Industrial Apiaries. These require 1 Royal Jelly (only gotten from Imperial Queen bees) per upgrade, and an Apiary can take up to 8. The Diligent and Noble bees are in the process of being bred up to Iindustrious/Imperial. The last time I did anything with bees was in 1.7.10 - I could not legitimately get the hives in Stoneblock (I think they were turned off in the config).

When you breed bees, expect to get a lot of flowers around your Apiaries. In 1.7.10, these would be random vanilla and BoP flowers. With Gendustry in 1.12.2, any flower types placed near the Apiaries will eventually be duped around them, and up to about 1 chunk away, but random flowers will not be generated by the bees.

The 2nd Apiary from the left in the back next to the Steel Pole and Draconic Wireless Energy Crystal is empty, as are the 8 to the left of the Chunk Loader. All of the occupied Apiaries have Automation Upgrades in them, except the four in the front.

The green bees are Imperial, the white ones Industrious, and the blue ones are Cultivated and Valiant. The last two don't show up very well in the image. You might also notice some pink particles coming from the back Apiary on the right of the red tulip. This is because the bees on that side are all Imperial, and give players Regeneration when within the area of effect.

I also edited the sign behind my gravestone for the Pink Wither:

The sign is from the Bibliocraft mod, and the color is light purple, which is the closest to pink in the mod.

I got most of my Forestry room done, and also made all of the Gendustry machines I would be using or might eventually want to use. In addition, I taught all of the components and the upgrades that go into the Industrial Apiaries to my Refined Storage system. And I discovered that some of the products from centrifuging combs had EMC, so I taught them to the Transmutation Tablet. Honey Drops, Beeswax, Propolis, and Silky Propolis all have EMC. The last of these I got enough of to make the Apiarist's Suit, which I put on an Armor Stand in my Botania area. Since most of that area was set up for the Gaia Guardian arena and the Archangel's Smites I put on DM Pedestals for when I run the Loonium, I chose to expand my base yet again.

The Sacred Oak tree I planted in the SE part of my base is gone, and there is where I set up 4 Indsutrial Apiaries:

I am currently up to the Cultivated bees, which is the starting point for 2 important branches - the Noble and the Industrious. The former leads to Imperial bees, which have a regeneration effect when players are nearby, and produce Royal Jelly used in making Alvearies and Gendustry Production Upgrades, while Industrious bees produce Pollen Clusters, also used in Alvearies. With Gendustry, I really do not need to make one of these, and it makes the entire process of bee breeding a lot easier.

This area is outside my claimed chunks, so I put a Chunk Loader here. Industrial Apiaries require power, and since I had a Draconic Energy Relay Crystal nearby, I chose to use that power system. Of course it is considerable overkill when I could have used a couple of Wireless RF Transmitters from Extra Utilities 2. Those produce 80 RF/t, and with the Automation Upgrade (it puts the Princess and Drones back into the Apiary automatically at the end of each Queen's life cycle), they use 22 RF/t, so 2 of these would have been needed.

The flowers around the Apiaries are those I have placed; I have only seen a few others that have appeared as a result of the bees being here.

The Forestry/Gendustry room, with most of the machines I am using:

From left to right: 2 Apiarist's Chests. These have all my bees in them. The bottom one is full, so I added the 2nd one above it. To the right are 3 Large Storage Crates, containing combs, Forestry/Binnie's saplings and other bee products, butterflies and serums, and identified bees, saplings and butterflies. The Iron Chest was where I was storing all the Gendustry machines, and the Energy Condenser below it I was using to convert other items into seeds. On the back wall are 3 Centrifuges, a Carpenter using water, a Squeezer with a Hopper on top, a Fluid Storage Tank in the wall, a Carpenter for Seed Oil, another Squeezer for honey, another tank with honey in it, an Analyzer using that honey to identify bees, butterflies and saplings, and a 3rd Carpenter for honey.

Next to the last Squeezer is a Mutagen Producer, an Advanced Mutatron, and above it a tank for Mutagen. To the right of those is a DNA Extractor and Protein Liquifier, both used in Gendustry's genetics system. There are a few other machines not in the above screenshot. Those are below:

These are the Genetic Sampler, Genetic Imprinter, Genetic Transposer and Genetic Replicator.

I did a little bit with these machines in 1.7.10, though the only one I used was the Sampler. There are a few Forestry machines I have yet to make, such as the Thermionic Fabricator.

Last, I discovered that my friendly Pink Wither had died or despawned when I had gone exploring earlier.

Edit: I think my Pink Wither suffocated to death. This has happened in past versions of the game with other mobs, and I've seen it occur with animals in 1.12.2. There's a mod in the pack that you can make gravestones with, so I put one in the room where he lived and I put a sign on the wall behind it:

I have now travelled around 730,000 meters in exploring the western part of my world. And I have been finding that the Sipiri trees that you get Greenheart wood from are fairly common. I have 20 saplings from this tree, having gotten another 15 in addition to the 5 I already have.

I have been keeping all my Forestry items such as bees, saplings, combs, butterflies, serum and pollen in two large storage crates; I recently moved all of the bees into an Apiarist's Chest, which is now full. I also took all of the pollen, which had been in my Refined Storage system, and moved it into the crate with the butterflies and serum. It is time to get going with Forestry and begin breeding up bees. Gendustry is in the pack; it makes bee breeding a lot easier. There's also Binnie's Genetics - I seem to recall that the machines from this mod were expensive in terms of crafting and in power (RF) usage. So I may go with Gendustry rather than Binnie's this time. The last time I used the machines from Binnie's (then called Extra Bees) was in 1.4.7.

I also completed the Monsters Hunted challenge after looking it up and finding out that the last mob I needed to kill was a Polar Bear, not a Vex or Skeleton Horseman. So far the only place where I've seen Polar Bears has been Cold Desert biomes.

Last, I found 0,0 in my world; it is in an ocean biome.

A few screenshots from my exploration:

Lava flow on the side of an Alps Foothills biome. The reason why it is night time at 10:33 in this image is because there was a solar eclipse on that day. The Alps biomes often generate in the middle of the ocean as this one did. A few other Biomes O' Plenty biomes also sometimes generate like this.

A Mesa (Bryce) biome I encountered. This biome was renamed to Eroded Badlands after 1.12.2.

Overhangs at the edge of a Magical Forest (Thaumcraft) biome. The biome beyond I believe is Extreme Hills M (maybe Wooded Mountains after 1.12.2).

A Meneglin (Integrated Dynamics) biome. Sometimes these have cliffs and overhangs like that of the Extreme Hills biome.

The other side of the previous screenshot. The Meneglin biome in the last two images is overlapped with a Birch Forest. The lighter green in the minimap is the Meneglin, the darker green is the Birch Forest.

In all my travels, I have yet to encounter something I used to find a lot in 1.7.10: Poison Ivy. These were such a nuisance to deal with in the earlier parts of the game, and I would destroy any I came across. I have yet to encounter a single one in 1.12.2. They are listed when I check BoP in JEI.

Edit: Back in my base again, I decided to set up some Forestry machines. I made 3 Centrifuges, 3 Squeezers and 3 Carpenters. I have just encountered a problem with getting power to them - they do not accept Draconic Evolution's power transfer system, either I/O Crystals or Wireless Crystals. I am going to have to do this using an Energy Cell and Fluxducts from Thermal Expansion, or if those do not work, maybe Ender IO's Capacitor blocks and energy conduits.

I've figured it out - I did not have the Wireless Crystal linked to anything else in my base. I had planned on setting up Forestry machines in the room, but had not linked the crystal nor the Relay crystal in the same room to the rest of my network. Once I did, the Centrifuges all filled up with RF.

So I've been exploring parts of my world in order to get as much terrain mapped in JourneyMap as possible. I went around 11,000 meters west (the center of my base is at x=1246, z=173). I started at x=-10,000, going from z=-5000 to z=5000 (later 6000), doing a grid pattern every 150 meters, which allows for full mapping in JourneyMap (the mapping area is a 10 chunk square centered on the player's current position).

I'm now at about x=-5100 and z=-1700, in the middle of a tropical rainforest, a biome added by Biomes O' Plenty. Along the way, I've encountered many Astral Sorcery shrines, the desert and mountain/cold variants, and the Small Shrines, Infested Greatwood trees from Thaumcraft (these have a Cave Spider spawner with a loot chest under them, and have cobwebs on them), several Ocean Monuments, a few Desert Temples, and a Jungle Temple as well as several villages.

I keep a bed with me on my hotbar; I also have with me my Satchel, Transmutation Tablet, Ender Pouch, an Evertide Amulet so I can walk on water, Baguettes from Actually Additions, as well as my pickaxe, sword and bow. I usually get about 3/4 of the way through each N-S traverse of the grid before I have to stop and sleep for the night. If it is close to dark and I am going to be on the ocean, I will place the bed before going on the water, and wait until night (18:32).

I have encountered some mobs along the way, and the rarest of those has been a single Basalz from Thermal Expansion. It was encountered during the day time in an extreme hills biome. The next rarest has been the Lesser Crimson Portal from Thaumcraft. These will spawn Crimson Knights and Clerics, and are a good place to farm for the Crimson Rites book if you do not have it yet. I have encountered perhaps 6 or so of these; while they are quite resistant to melee damage (my Draconic Sword does 64, and it takes around 2-3 hits to kill one), but weak to ranged damage - I can one shot them with the Draconic Bow.

Throughout the world are random Forestry trees. There is also a house in some villages using Forestry woods, some of which are fireproof. I have captured 3 Forestry Villagers (2 Apiarists and an Arborist) and brought them back to the village inside my base walls. I've been using JourneyMap to set waypoints, then teleporting home to drop off things like bees and combs I've picked up. Most of the trees I already have wood for, but in addition, I have been buying saplings from any Arborists I encounter.

One of my favorite Forestry woods is Greenheart. I like using the stairs for roofs on my houses, and have done so since 1.6.4. Today is the first time I have encountered the tree that produces this type of wood in the wild. It is called a Sipiri tree, and is almost as tall as a jungle tree. I got 2 saplings from it, so now I have a sustainable source of the wood (without having to use the Transmutation Tablet). And just a chunk or so north of the Sipiri tree, I found both a Wenge (produces a medium-dark gray wood), and a Mahogany tree. I got some saplings from both. While Forestry saplings do not crash the game like they did with the 1.7.10 version when put into a Transmutation Table/Tablet, they aren't recognized by it and do not appear in the learned saplings. Instead I am sending all of them home to my Refined Storage system.

I've done so much mapping that I have gained another Astral Sorcery Perk Point. I am not sure what I want to use it on. I am thinking of continuing along the Discidia tree and getting either +10% melee or +10% ranged damage.

Edit: I found another Jungle Temple, and there was a Sipiri sapling in one of the chests. I also found another Sipiri tree a little further south. Here is what it looks like:

It stood out as it was taller than the surrounding trees. And since the last post, I found another Jungle Temple in addition to the one containing the sapling.

I changed my mind slightly on the current build I am doing. I still plan on building a base where the Woodland Mansion was, but I am not going to be placing rails. Travel by rail in the pack I am playing is going to be slower as there is no Railcraft in it.

Instead I am going to use the flight capability of my Draconic Armor to get back and forth quickly. At maximum flight speed (600%), I can get from my current base to the area in about 3 game hours. That speed is actually too fast for the server to keep up, but I do not really encounter a problem as the entire way has been mapped and there are no new chunks to be rendered along the way.

I did explore a bit of the area to the south and east, and some to the west. I found a couple of villages and a Desert Temple (which I looted only the most valuable items from, including the TNT).

Here is the area where the mansion used to be, now covered in grass:

The building on the left is where the walkway ends. I used some Actually Additions blocks to make the stairs and railings - Ethetic Quartz Stairs and Black Quartz Pillar Walls, both of which I used in my Astral Sorcery area at my main base. The Nether Portal was in one of the Tulip Santuary rooms, and several times while dismantling the surrounding blocks, I would take out a block or two of obsidian and have to replace it and relight the portal.

I do have another way of getting back and forth here, and that is an Astral Sorcery Celestial Gateway which is linked to another at my base. These work like the old portals in Thaumcraft 2, only here you stand on the center block of the gateway and hold Shift until the portal animation occurs. It is quite similar to that of TC2.

The 19 chunks in the area which look darker are where I claimed those chunks in FTB Utilities, though I did not also load them. There was a Chunk Loader here which I will place back down when needed.

Lastly, I made a Satchel from Thermal Expansion, upgraded it to Resonant tier, and put Holding IV (an enchantment from the CoFH team that adds extra storage capacity to things like Reservoirs, Portable Tanks, Flux Capacitors, Satchels and Energy Cells). Or rather I tried putting Holding IV, but the max level that went onto the Satchel was Holding III. This increases its capacity to 72 slots, and as a result, I moved all my tools that I do not use all the time to it from my extended inventory and an Extra Utilities II Bag of Holding (which only has 54 slots). I currently have 19 slots free in the Satchel.

I finished placing the Clear Glass along the rail line I am building, and then went to place the beams. For those, I used Marble Pillars from Astral Sorcery, placing them every 50 meters. Those I finished last night and am gradually tearing down what remains of the Woodland Mansion.

The Destruction Gadget from Direwolf20's Building Gadgets mod has made tearing it down much easier. I have voided all of the blocks on the 3rd floor, and am working my way downward. The high number of single blocks is making this process take longer. Also, tile entities cannot be voided in such a manner, so things like chests, Feral Flare Lanterns (from Torchmaster) - there are a few in the image, and the Mega Torches from the same mod. Those I have moved to the bottom floor.

I was using an area behind the front entrance to make Dynamism Gems from Astral Sorcery, and had left a tank of Liquid Starlight, a Shulker Box with some items in it used in the making of the gems, and a Chunk Loader in the area. Those I removed before beginning to void the blocks in the area, and are in my inventory.

Also, I upgraded the Dank Null to a Mk VI, which is made with emerald blocks. Doing so was well worth it, as it now has 54 slots and can store 2,147,483,647 items per slot. This is much more storage than I could ever possibly need, but it means having to refill it less often.

The next step is going to be placing rails, powered rails and redstone torches. This is going to be the most time consuming, but the Building Gadget should make it easier.

I built what is eventually going to be a minecart track from my base which is centered at about x=1231, z=177 (roughly where the center of my 6 Beacons are located) to the front of the Woodland Mansion (or what's left of it after lightning got through with it) at x=3089, z=7872, or 9552 meters, making this my longest railway ever in Minecraft (and perhaps even longer than all of the tracks in my original world). The 1st phase, placing the railbed and torches, has been completed. Initially I started placing torches every 8 blocks, but after 400, I switched to 10 blocks to make it easier.

Using the Building Gadget really helped here, though I kept having to refill my inventory from my Transmutation Tablet. I used Astral Sorcery Marble Bricks for the railbed and stations (a 16x16x4 building - inside dimensions).

I plan on tearing down the Woodland Mansion, at least in part, to build a new base from which to explore further south and east from. There is a large unexplored area on JourneyMap when I open it. The Destruction Gadget should make quick work out of it.

I have already started the next phase, placing glass to make a 2x3 interior where the tracks and redstone torches will later be placed. To make placing the glass easier, I am using Clear Glass from Tinker's Construct, and a tier 5 (diamond) /dank/null. These from the mod of the same name appear to work perfectly with the Building Gadget. As with the railbed, Build to Me mode is the ideal setting for it. The Diamond /dank/null can hold up to 45 slots and 3200 items per slot, more than enough to completely run the entire length of the line (assuming 8 Clear Glass per meter of length), and still have a bit less than half of its slots still open, which I could put rails and redstone torches in.

To make the diamond /dank/null you need 20 diamonds, 20 blocks of coal and 5 cyan stained glass panes. This gives you 5 diamond panels, which are put together in a + pattern to make the /dank/null.

I logged into my Stoneblock world as I wanted to play with the Mekanism mod some more. Last time I had done anything with it was more than a year ago. I decided to pop into the Mining Dimension as I wanted to see how things were doing there.

After some exploring, I came upon this:

Nice St. Patrick's Day Easter Egg there - replacing the die spots on the Chance Cube with Shamrocks.

BTW, Chance Cubes is one EVIL mod. Early on while playing, I opened one of the Chance Icosahedrons (20 sided die) and it spawned a bunch of Charged Creepers on me, which killed me.

Edit: back again in Stoneblock, I completed the last of the Draconic Evolution quests, making a Chaotic Fusion Crafting Injector:

I have another Chaotic Core, 21 Dragon Eggs, over 2500 diamonds and 18 Chaos Shards, thanks to a dupe bug in Refined Storage's Wireless Crafting Grid in this pack. I could upgrade the rest of the fusion injectors to Chaotic with what I have, but the main reason for making it was to complete the quest line. The injector on the left I moved to its right on the floor, and put the Chaotic injector above the center one.

It's been a while since I last posted here, having done nothing in my Minecraft worlds for a while, instead playing both Terraria and Factorio.

Tonight I decided to move my Voide Ore and Resource Miners to the Overworld. They have been in the Mining Dimension, and travelling there via the portal you make in the mod causes animals to become invisible when you return until you relog.

So far, only the Ore Miner was moved, and also upgraded to Tier 5. This generates ore once every 4 ticks (5/second) and uses 38,959 RF/t:

The Miner has 8 Accuracy and 8 Speed Modifiers. These increase the chances of getting certain crystals (I got a few Tier 6 crystals, Aethium, within seconds after powering on the miner), and decrease the duration in ticks, but also increase power consumption. With 59.3 G RF being stored in my base, I'm not seeing a dent in my power, but all of my generators are running.

I'm using Draconic Energy relay Crystals on top of Steel Posts from Immersive Engineering throughout the base. Most of the network is at Draconic tier, except the crystal here - it is at Wyvern tier, which I am leaving it at.

Edit: forgot to add - this area is in the south part of my base. Originally there was a AE2 Meteorite crash site here; I filled in the terrain with dirt using the Building Gadget from Direwolf20's mod.

I launched my first satellite in my current Factorio (0.17.79) playthrough.

This is my best time yet on the game. Previously, i completed it in around 62 hours.

I have added some more screenshots since my last post: 71 from my Stoneblock (1.12.2) playthrough, and 171 from my Direwolf20 1.12.2 playthrough.

Most of them have been uploaded to Imgur.