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I have done a lot since my last post. One of these has been to complete Chapters 2 and 3. Along the way, I made several Create contraptions, some of which were required to advance through the pack. I also built a Coke Oven from Immersive Engineering, and then made a Pyrolyzer from Thermal, which is so much easier to automate. I set it up with a Nullfier to void excess Creosote Oil, and for now am manually pulling the Coal Coke and Tar out of the machine. I plan on setting up a drawer system with a void upgrade on one of them to get rid of excess tar, though I am keeping a few stacks of it on hand to use as fuel.

Coal Coke is needed to make steel in an Induction Smelter, or it can be made in 2 Metallurgic Infusers with carbon, one to enrich the iron and the other to enrich it again to steel dust. This may be a better method as it would produce no byproducts. Steel is needed for gears, used in the Regular Mechanical Essence, which is a component in the chapter 3 version, Improved essence. In addition, I need both Invar gears and Bronze Rods for this, plus the basic essence. This is made in a Mechanical Mixer without a heat source (Blaze Burner). That is needed for the chapter 3 essence, which also needs one of each of the elemental charges (Thermal adds ones for Blizz (ice), Blitz (lightning) and Basalz (earth). These are made using Effigies that are custom added by the mod author using Kubei JS. These can either be right clicked to summon their respective entity, or placed in a Sawmill to make their drop. I am using it to get those. The Thermal items are no longer called rods, but rather Blizz Cubes, Blitz Motes and Basalz Shards. Each can be pulverized into their powder form, which will get you 3, but this can be boosted with Pulverizer Catalysts, of which the various Basalz items also function as. Each is then combined with gunpowder and coal or charcoal to make their respective charges. One of each plus the regular essence and a basic control circuit from Mek is needed. This goes into the Mixer basin, and heat needs to be applied. Anything that can be burned can be used to fuel it. If a Blaze Cake is used on it, it will become super heated. This is needed for some advanced recipes using it, including a prerequisite for the next tier of mechanical essence.

Other Create contraptions I made were a single Deployer (these are ones with the hands) above a Depot, and a second depot with a mechanical press above it. This I needed to make the AE2 Inscriber Presses. Initially, I only made the Silicon one in it, and got the Engineering one as a quest reward. I picked this because 10 diamonds are pretty expensive EMC-wise, and then made the Calculation and Logic Presses. I also made all of the Inscribers, an Energy Accepter, a Charger, and made both Certus and Charged Certus Quartz. These are made by washing Sky Stone Dust using an Encased Fan. These are also used for bulk smelting, cooking and haunting. I am using this to get redstone, dough, and nether quartz, in addition to the certus. I later set up one of these vertically in a cobblestone frame far away from any wood as I would be using it with lava to smelt some items. Most of the Create area has a lot of wood in it, and having lava anywhere near would make a mess to say the least. I used the Inscribers to make 16 of each of the processors. I also needed Fluix crystals for the ME controller, which can be made in a mechanical mixer using 250mb water, nether quartz, charged certus quartz, and redstone. If doing 8 or more, you'll want to make sure not to then place any nether quartz, as this will end up making rose quartz. I have a belt setup with two andesite funnels (these extract or insert items, but are slow and only move one item at a time. Brass funnels can move entire stacks). I will place the charged certus in a chest first, then the redstone, and last the nether quartz after adding water to the basin. Each one of the ingredients will make 2 fluix.

I also got a pair of crushing wheels going, which I can use to obtain free sky stone dust. There are some recipes where the item to be processed is given back to you 100% of the time. Sky stone is one of these. Obsidian gives you back 75% of what you put in. Netherrack will produce Cinder Flour with a 50% chance of an additional item. That can be washed to get redstone for only 1 EMC (or less given the bonus output). Wheat can be ground into flour, and bones into bone meal at 5 per bone, with white dye as a byproduct.

In addition, I got creative flight in the form of Swiftwolf's Rending Gale, which costs much less EMC to make as the Dark Matter needed only has 1/8th the normal amount of EMC in this pack as it normally does. I also made a Klein Star, and upgraded it to a Zwei, which can store 200K EMC. This allowed me to expand the area under the main platform to run some infrastructure (mostly Create shafts and so on). I am also running power cables under there, and built a 32x32 area out of dark oak wood planks where I am going to set up Thermal and Mek machines.

Below are some screenshots. Descriptions below:

1) Create Crushing Wheels, Water Wheels, Millstone, Mechanical Mixer with Blaze Burner, Depot for bulk smelting, Mechanical Crafters and Deployers

2) RF Tools timer, Dropper, Vacuumulator (pulls in completed items from washing), mechanical mixer with no heat, a Deployer over a Depot and a mechanical press over another one, where I made the Inscriber Presses

3) back to front, left to right: Animal farm (chickens, cows, sheep and mooshrooms), wheat and industrial hemp farms, storage, crafting, smelting and an infinite water source, Thermal machines and AE2 Inscribers (the blocks with the ProjectE symbol are EMC-links, providing 1 item/sec to the machines they're connected to. Basic energy cable from Powah and Logistical Transporters from Mek connect the machines. These are all going to get moved soon.

4) New area for Thermal and Mek. I built a platform below the upper level to run cables. The center is where my ME Controller is going to reside. Power is in the form of 16 Magmatic Dynamos with Reinforced Integral Components in them. This increases their outputs to 120 RF/t. This is optimal for the cable I am using, which can only handle 2000. I eventually plan on replacing it with Mek Universal Cable.

Edit 10/11/2024: I added a couple of additional Mekanism machines, such as a Basic Crushing Factory, a Basic Smelting Factory, and another Basic Enriching Factory. I also upgraded all of my Powah cables to Hardened tier. These can transfer a max of 5000 FE/t. I added an augment called Auxiliary Reaction Chamber to each of the dynamos. This doubles the power generation to 240 RF/t per dynamo, but reduces fuel efficiency. This equals a capacity of 3840 RF/t.

A major milestone I completed was to get autocrafting going in AE2. I was originally going to do a flower/tree style setup on a single Dense cable coming from the ME Controller, but decided to go with 4 2x2x4 cuboids of 8 Pattern Providers and 8 Molecular Assemblers each instead. I had a small setup of these I had made initially, but dismantled it and put the Crafting Storage and Co-processors on a single standard 8 channel line. I made 1 64k, 3 16k and 4 4k storage blocks. These are what use the channels; the co-processors do not use any. As a general rule in AE2, if data is being transferred or manipulated by that device, it will use a channel. The providers allow 9 crafting recipes each. This is a total of 288 recipes, which is more than I need. And that is just the crafting recipes - machines will use separate providers for processing recipes.

Last, I got the blue essences that were unlocked in the Create/Immersive Engineering chapter fully automated. I used a combination of several mods in the build: Create, RF Tools, Thermal Series, Pipez, Powah and ProjectE. The completed essences are being split 50/50, with half going to making the crystals, which have 20480 EMC each, and the rest getting sent back to the AE2 network via an ME Import Bus. There is also an ME Export Bus, which has a Redstone, Capacity and 2 Acceleration Cards in it. The default number of slots on an Export Bus is 1 without any cards in it; a single capacity card increases this to 5 items, which is all that are needed - 2 bronze rods, 1 steel and 1 invar gear, and a basic (red) essence. The redstone card is set for a single activation on a pulse, and the distribution behavior is set to round-robin, which appears to be the equivalent of blocking mode in earlier AE2 versions. The pulse is being provided by an RF Tools Timer, which is set to pulse once every 60 ticks/3 seconds.

I got the Portal to Alfheim opened, and made 4 Kekimurus. These are generating flowers which consume cake. I intend on using them to keep the portal supplied with mana.

Then I decided I wanted to change things up a bit, and got back to play Mechanical Mastery, a pack I had started just before starting FTB Revelation. So I logged into Curseforge where my instance is, and in the world, I made a few Thermal machines (3 Stirling Dynamos, and a Pulverizer. In addition I made some basic energy cable from Powah. These transfer a max of 500 FE/t, which is not that much, but since this is only tier 1, I likely will not need much more than that. I will however need a means to store that power; if it is not already unlocked, I will see what quests I need to do to make it. I'm also working on getting the first of the Mechanical Essences processed. These need to be run through a Multi-Servo Press (this is essentially a Compactor).

All of the raw ores (ore for redstone and coal, ore chunks for all the metals) have EMC, as do most other raw resources. I've been expanding the platform on which I am using dirt (Quark makes this very easy and is ideal for a sky block map like this one.) This is so I can grow a lot of trees. A stack of oak logs or saplings has 2048 EMC, the same as a gold ingot. Those I am going to need to make Redstone Flux Coils, one for each machine. I have around 185k EMC stored, I'm going for 200k. What I've been doing is to plant a line of saplings, then make them grow by repeatedly sneaking in front of them. This mechanic was also in Stoneblock, where you would twerk to grow trees. Once I had a line fully grown, I would use FTB Ultimine to harvest a lot of logs and leaves at a time. This does consume hunger faster, but I get a lot of apples as well.

And just to be on the safe side, I turned off auto jump when I had first started the pack, and built a fence around the edge of the platform.

Edit: I got my first Basic Mechanical Crystal, which has an EMC of 8192, same as diamond. I made a Redstone Furnace as well, and also made my first Thermal alloys, bronze, invar and constantan. Bronze is 3 copper-1 tin, invar is 2 iron-1 nickel, and constantan is 1 copper-1 nickel. This gave me a quest reward of 16 more of these, 139,264 EMC total. Looks like the next machines to make are the Sequential Fabricator and Induction Smelter. The former uses constantan, while the latter uses invar.

I wanted to hide my IC2 cables, so I looked in the wiki and found that I would need to make Construction Foam (CF). In order to make the solid form of CF, I needed clay, sand and stone dust. The last of these is only obtained through either ore washing or thermally centrifuging cobblestone. The Thermal Centrifuge is quite a power hungry machine, using 48 EU/t, and running on tier 2 (MV, 128 EU/t) power. This machine also requires a mining laser, which is also used in making the Pattern Storage, a component of the matter fabrication process. Also used are a Scanner and a Replicator, both of which are tier 4 (EV, 2048 EU/t), and the Matter Fabricator itself, which is tier 3 (HV, 512 EU/t) In addition, I will need a bunch of Recyclers to make Scrap. This is used to speed up and also reduce the power consumption of the Matter Fabricator. It produces a fluid called UU Matter.

The centrifuge is used for processing uranium into U-235 and U-238, both of which are radioactive and will give you lethal radiation poisoning unless you wear a Hazmat Suit. The fuel rods are also radioactive. It is also used for ore processing, being the 3rd stage of it.

I was going to power this entire line from a fluid reactor, but I could not find any good designs for one, and found that running one is a lot more complex than a direct EU reactor, and the potential for it all to go boom is quite high. So I am not going to build one, but instead power the entire matter fabrication line from my purple Flux Network. I can place a Flux Point on the MFSU input and it will charge it up. The last time I set up one was in 1.7.10. I did not do this in my last 1.12.2 instance in the Direwolf20 pack. With Flux Networks in the pack, I am able to power IC2 storage blocks from my RF storage.

I got some CF and ran it through the Fluid/Solid Canning Machine in fluid enrich mode, and then used a CF Sprayer to coat the cables. Then once the CF is dry, it can be painted or a tool called the Obscurator can be used to make the cables look like the blocks around them, much like covers with RS cable.

An update: I did find a stable design for an IC2 fluid reactor in the forum, but I had to go to my old Win 7 PC which I had the Reactor Planner javascript app on it as it would not work on my new PC.

In addition, I went ahead and built the entire Matter production line, and have about 100 mB of uu Matter in it. I still need to have that piped from the matter fabricator to the replicator, which uses it to duplicate items. If there is anything that I can have scanned that does not have EMC, it would be worthwhile having the replicator make it.

One of the things I needed to make the replicator was reinforced stone. This is made by spraying CF onto iron scaffolding and waiting a long time for it to dry. Once it does, it is tougher than obsidian (if you have IC2 installed in a pack, it deliberately nerfs the blast resistance of it, making you use reinforced stone instead). It also takes almost twice as long to break with my cobalt pickaxe as obsidian. A Red Matter Pickaxe at full power can break it much faster, and as I was using one of these to break the reinforced stone, it also broke other blocks, like my marble brick walls, and my Dragon Egg Mill. The Egg dropped on the floor where it used to be, and I just wanted to get rid of it, and mined it to make it teleport away, since it has EMC and I could just get another one.

I did go looking for it, and could not find it either in the room below or on the roof. And the odd thing when I went up there is even though I have Mega Torches to prevent mob spawns, somehow 4 skeleton horses had spawned up there. And I got no lightning strike nor did any skeleton horsemen appear. Seems strange that it coincided with the Dragon Egg teleporting, though I have never heard anything about this occurring in vanilla. Perhaps a mod spawned the horses on my roof. This is something I am going to have to ask in the FTB subreddit.

Edit 2: I found the Egg - it had teleported into the TE machines room just to the north. I have an idea of how those skeleton horses got on my roof - I recall hearing a nearby lightning strike, which I think hit my roof.

Update 08-13-2024: I built a tier 6 Void Ore Miner. This went in the place of one of my tier 3's, and produces ores at 1/t. It has 10 Speed Modifiers, 5 Accuracy Modifiers and 5 Luck Modifiers. It uses 109,856 FE/t. It is on my purple line, which is coming from my Energy Core storing 356G RF. It is getting 645,120 RF/t from 14 Petrified Fuel Generators running blocks of ProjectE Aeternalis Fuel at 46,080/t for approx 37s per block. There are also 2 Draconic Solar Panels outputting 524,288 FE/t total.

I plan on taking an area on the roof to run RS cable and set up duplicates of the machines on my main ore processing lines, specifically the standalone SAG Mill and the Induction Smelter, as these process the majority of my ores. Most of the dusts and gems go into the SAG Mill, which has End Steel Grinding Balls, which increase main output to 140%, and bonus output to 240%, while most metals get processed at 4x yield in the Induction Smelter. At 20 ores/s, I am going to need to scale up my production capacity.

Edit 08-18-2024: The new build area is done, As with any major build like this, there are going to be potential problems with things, that is why you test all your builds as Direwolf20 would say. I had issues with items not being pulled out of conduits and also had to change some of the color and filter settings on them. I also found that using an Importer with a stack and 3 speed upgrades is way faster than EnderIO, which effectively has a max item transfer speed of 64/s.

I would let the tier 6 miner run for several minutes, or until the diamond chest on the input side to the new processing lines was about half full.

There are 3 colors of Ender Chest in the build - the one that my Ender Pouch is linked to (red/purple/green), the one the miner is linked to (red/blue/black) and the one that is linked to the machines in the base (red/orange/blue). #2 is shared only by the chest next to the miner, while #3 is used to move items from upstairs into machines inside the base for processing, or in the case of crystals and glowstone, directly into my RS system. There are 48 ore the ET void miners can get, 3 of which cannot be processed normally like other ores. One of those, Railcraft Firestone, is extremely dangerous, especially in larger amounts. I keep no more than 2 stacks of it in a diamond chest. This has a conduit with a filter for Firestone going directly into an Extra Utilities Trash Can. I also am manually deleting using the trash can or FTB's trash function to get rid of excess Resonating Ore. Although I have never really gotten into Deep Resonance, it is also not needed at the stage of the game where I have 1.1M FE/t generation and 356G FE storage. And Rock Crystal Ore I am really not needing any of, and anyway I have stopped my Astral Sorcery crystal growing for now.

The 12 ores that don't get processed in the new build are Nickel, Platinum, Iridium, Draconium, Redstone, Destabilized Redstone, Energized Netherrack, Resonant End Stone, Oil Sand, Oil Shale, Electrotine and Black Quartz. The 1st 4 of these go to a SAG Mill/Alloy Smelter, the next 6 in a Pulverizer, and the last 2 in a Red Matter Furnace.

I reached the Radiance Chapter in Astral Sorcery when I upgraded the Celestial Altar to an Iridescent Altar. To support this, I made 2 Celestial Collector Crystals and placed them on the enhanced multiblock structure. This uses a couple different types of marble and 8 buckets of Liquid Starlight to enhance the crystal's power. I have 2 such structures on either side of the altar, about 20 blocks apart. This is important as Collector Crystals will cannibalize starlight from one another if placed closer than 16 blocks. This results in diminishing returns. This can also occur with Spectral Relays as well, though you can place up to 8 within a 16 block area and they will still function properly. There were 8 around the altar, but I removed 2 to allow for a collector crystal. One of these is attuned to Octans, the other to Discidia. I am not sure if a crystal needs to have its attuned constellation be in the sky to function, so I deliberately chose these 2. They have roughly opposite moon phases when they are in the sky, with both being in the sky on the first and last quarter moons.

With both in the sky at midday, the altar is almost full, maybe about 95%. If the attuned constellation needs to be in the sky, this would decrease significantly once that constellation sets.

A few screenshots of my main Astral Sorcery area at Y=150, and my Celestial Crystal/Dynamism Gem farm on the roof of my base, and one of me being attuned to Vicio. This was earlier in my progression in the mod, and the crafting altar and space around it has been upgraded twice since then.

I have also been encountering Forestry butterflies around my base lately. This is from plant several tress from the mod in the area. Now I recall doing this back when playing Direwolf20 1.12.2, and having a lot of butterflies around the base. This time so far all I've seen has been a Postman which I caught using the Scoop, and an Orange Tip, which is currently flying around my base. I'm content to let it do so for now, because it like the other one seems to be staying in the area.

I reached the end of Feed The Factory and found it disappointing. All it did was give me an item which teleported me to the Lost Cities Dimension. I decided not to play the pack any further as it was too buggy, which is something the pack author, Vnator, even said in the r/feedthebeast post about 100% completing the pack.

I chose to play Ammonium's Mechanical Mastery, mainly to get into Create and the newer Mekanism, but I also wanted to do a large kitchen sink pack as well. I started it Thursday night after finishing FTF. Then this morning I started FTB Revelation. I'm planning on adding ProjectE, Logistics Pipes and the 1.12.2 version of Mekanism to the pack. So far all I've done as far as this goes has been to unlock the pack in the FTB App to add the mods.

I have been playing for about 5 hours, and have found 12 diamonds, a lot of coal and iron, a bit of gold, and a fair amount of modded ores. I think I might have enough resources by now to get a basic ore doubling setup going using the Tinkers Smeltery. And getting a Tool Forge is also going to be a top priority. I'm beginning to get tired of having to constantly make new tools.

Like my Direwolf20 1.12.2 instance, the 1st thing I did after spawning was head to the nearest village. This village has food, and there's also a Waystone here. I also found lava near my spawn on the surface, and put a waypoint there in JourneyMap to go back when I could collect it.

The pack has a lot of mods I am familiar with from that version, and some older mods that have newer versions are in the pack, such as Railcraft. I might also add Cyclic to the pack, as it is not in there. I should not have any trouble with adding these, as the pack already includes Not Enough IDs.

So I am at the stage of the FTF pack where I need to accumulate as many items as I can. To assist with that, I unlocked TE's Flux Anodizers, which double ores and dirty dusts, This augment gives me 5x ore multiplication. This covers copper, iron, gold, tin, lead, nickel, platinum, aluminum, thorium and uranium. All of those metals are in Compacting Drawers. I added a 2nd diamond level upgrade (adds x16 stacks to the drawer) to each of these. Each drawer can accept up to 7 upgrades, so if I need to, I can add more.

I am still at the burner stage for my mining drills, as the powered ones uses 150 RF/t, and I do not have enough power to run more than one of these, of which am mining from 4 different areas, so would need 600 RF/t to run all 4. As a consequence of this, I am going through charcoal at a pretty rapid rate. I am manually chopping down trees for this, and putting the logs in the Redstone Furnaces (which I have to remove the x2 augment to smelt). I had planted a large oak tree farm. The pack has Treecapitator in it, and I found I could harvest several trees by placing logs at their bases. These trees I made so they were 1 block between each.

I later found dark oak to be more suitable for getting a lot of wood, so I planted a couple dozen around the factory, I am also using the dark oak planks for the drawers, and more making Treated Wood. The nearest thing to bonemeal I have is TE's Phyto-Gro. It usually takes around 1-3 of these to grow a dark oak, though sometimes up to 6.

I got some upgrades to some of my equipment, such as the diamond drill head (iron level, mines faster than iron), Travellers Boots Mk IV (gives Speed IV and Jump Boost II), and also upgraded both my TE Reservoir (holds fluids) and Satchel (adds an extra inventory row, at Reinforced level is the same as the player inventory).

Then I started looking into what it was going to take to get to Utility science. For this, all 3 high-level TE alloys (Signalum, Lumium & Enderium) will be needed. And for those I need to get into Deep Mob Learning. This mod is a sort of a successor to Soul Shards, which allows you to spawn and slay mobs for their drops. This is done in a Simulation Chamber with a Data Model for the mob you want to obtain drops from, along with a catalyst called Clay Polymer. As you run the simulation, the data model increases in quality, starting at faulty and going all the way up to self-aware. At that level, the chamber uses 150 RF/t. I'll need data models for the Witch (gives Redstone, unlocking Signalum), Ghast (gives Glowstone, unlocking Lumium), and Enderman, which unlocks Enderium. That's 450 RF/t.

In order to do this, I am going to have to go solar, making a total of 10 Solar Panel IV's from Solar Flux. That is going to need over 1,000,000 Glass, so a cobbleworks was in order. I made a total of 4 more TE Pulverizers and 2 Redstone Furnaces to make the glass. The Pulverizers all have secondary output nullifiers, which destroy excess of that item made, leaving a full stack in them, yet allowing the machine to continue to run. These have also been upgraded to Reinforced tier as well. Each machine uses 70 RF/t, so this is close to my current max gen capacity of 450. So I added some automation to feed my old coal generators charcoal from a chest so I could run other machines while all that glass was being made. This doesn't add much, only 80 RF/t, but it helps.

Solar Flux was in Stoneblock, though the highest level I crafted was Mk III.

Edit: I reconsidered going the solar route for power for Deep Mob Learning, and found that with a couple of TE Steam Dynamo augments, I could generate the same 640 RF/t, with a much easier crafting chain than going the Solar Flux route. To that end I made 16 Steam Dynamos, 4 Boiler Conversion augments and 12 Turbine Conversion augments, as well as 36 Capacitor Bank blocks, plus some MV energy conduit. I also calculated how much research I would need for the DML Data Models - 384 green, 192 red, and 144 blue. In the process of making Fluxed Electrum for the blue science, I was also running my entire pulverize/smelting line. I watched as my existing capacitor bank drained completely, eventually running out of redstone, which allowed the LV capacitor bank to recharge.

It's been a couple of years since I last played Minecraft, and the other night decided to install a modpack in the Curseforge app called Feed The Factory. This pack basically turns Minecraft into Factorio, and is the single most un-Minecraft like pack I have ever played. For one thing, the only ores/gems/dusts you can get at the start are iron, copper, coal, redstone and diamond. You will never have to mine these by hand, instead placing down multiblock structures called Burner Mining Drills, which are a lot like their counterparts in Factorio as they require fuel (coal or charcoal). Other ores are unlocked in later tiers through research. There are 5 types of science in the pack, the first of these being Logistics/Transport, which is green, like that of the packs in Factorio. These take conveyor belts and iron plates from Immersive Engineering, and coal. They also take 30 seconds each to craft. This is 6 times longer than the equivalent science in Factorio, which takes 5 seconds to craft.

The first few packs I am going to manually make, but later ones I'll have to automate.

Some of the other major mods in this pack: all of the Thermal series mods, Chisel, Deep Mob Learning, Iron Chests, Buildcraft (including the Logistics Pipes addon), EnderIO, Tiny Coal, Xaero's Minimap, Nuclear Craft.

Many of these mods are gated behind game progression and doing research in multiblock machines. Also, a lot of vanilla things are this way as well. I don't yet have access to Minecarts or gold ore. The former requires 16 of the green packs.

Also, the pack is set to peaceful mode and it is always day time.

A few days ago, I made an Angel Ring from Extra Utilities 2. This item grants creative flight, and uses Grid Power (GP) to function. GP is a power system in EU2 that allows certain items and devices to be powered from any dimension so long as enough power is being generated. GP is generated using a variety of Mills, the most basic one being a Manual Mill. Others include the Lava, Water, Fire and Wind Mills, which generate 4 GP each, Solar and Lunar Panels, which generate 1 GP each, at day or night only, the Dragon Egg Mill, which generates 500 GP, and a Creative Mill, which is Creative mode only, and generates 10,000 GP.

The Angel Ring uses 32 GP. Crafting it requires capturing a couple of different mobs in Golden/Cursed Lassos. Golden Lassos are used to capture non-hostile mobs, while Cursed Lassos are used for hostile mobs. Mobs captured by it need to have a 1/2 heart in order to do so. The mob needed for the Ring is a Ghast. I am so OP right now that I had to do it with a plain, non-enchanted vanilla bow, and then not draw the string back fully. This also meant not reflecting the Ghast's fireballs back on it, as doing so will most likely one shot it. It took several attempts before I successfully captured one. The other mobs needed (a Chicken, a Squid and a Bat), were much easier to get.

I do not really need the Ring as I have Draconic Armor, but wanted it as an alternate means of flight. I don't fly as fast with it vs. the armor, so I am sticking with the latter for now.

Later, I greatly increased the amount of food items in my kitchen, so much so that I can now craft 257 different foods at last count. Since then, I've been going around and harvesting fruit from Pam's trees, using the Acceleration Wand to rapidly grow them, getting a stack of each type per tree. I have gotten most of them at this point, but I think there are still a few I have yet to find, so more exploring is in order.

I plan on growing many of the Pam's trees inside my base, and in order to make room for them, I expanded it yet again:

The new area adds about 10 chunks south of my Botania and Blood Magic areas. I also added a Mana Enchanter to my Botania area. This uses books and Mana to enchant, but does not consume the books.

Last, I started working on the 2nd floor of the house, adding interior walls. I'm kind of stuck on this, as I am not sure what size or how many rooms I want upstairs. For now I have left it unfinished while I look for more Pam's related things in the world.

Edit: I decided to add interior walls to the 1st floor of the house, and enclosed the stairwell to the 2nd floor. In addition, I was looking at Bibliocraft's option to add custom paintings. Initially I tried doing it with a separate resource pack, but later decided to add it to Soartex Fanver. There is an example resource pack on Bibliocraft's website, and I just added the contents of the assets folder. I added around 16 images to it. One did not render, which was that of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. I may try again later.

Here are a few of the paintings I added to my Library/Study room:

The one on the right is that of Mount Everest. I wanted it to be a 4x4.

Most of the paintings I've added lately have been borderless, but a few have Dark Oak Frames around them. Dark Oak contrasts well with the lighter Birch walls in the house.

Last Saturday, I went back into my 1st Minecraft world, started around 10 years ago this week, and explored a bit. My two original worlds are still in 1.2.5, and I never updated them to the new launcher, so I have been playing them offline.

In my world 1, I had built multiple minecart tracks all over the world, 3 houses, a castle, a large arch bridge made of bricks, and a 50x50x2 underground mob farm. All along the rail lines, I would place outposts; one of those I put on a mushroom island I found south of my southernmost house. I chose that outpost as a starting point for exploration, and went to around 10,000 south, but found nothing but ocean, with occasional islands, and 2 more mushroom islands as well.

I later gave up on exploring that world and went back to my 1.12.2 world where the main thing I did was to tear down and rebuild my house there.

This is what the old house looked like:

I had found it too small for my liking, and replaced it with a much larger house, which is below:

The new house is 21x28 on the inside:

I chose a combination of bricks, polished stone (from Extra Utilities 2) and chiseled black concrete for the outer walls. Again I am using greenheart wood stairs for the roof. The floors are all made out of birch planks. Another big difference between this house and the previous one is that all of the wood used is fireproof. Fire proof wood is added by Forestry, and can be made using Refractory Wax (produced by centrifuging Simmering and Molten Combs, both produced by Nether bees). Since all the wood also has EMC, I can craft any of the fireproof items from the wood if I have one log of the same type.

The house is still a work in progress; I chose to make the 1st floor open, with no interior walls.

There are a couple of things from the Bibliocraft mod in this screenshot. The music discs are on a disc rack from that mod, and there are actually 2 stacked on top of one another. Each rack holds 9 discs.

This is supposed to be a living room area, but I have yet to add all the furniture here. Since I do not have a furniture mod such as Mr. Crayfish, I'm having to use vanilla items such as stairs and signs. Bibliocraft has a few furniture items I can use. The painting with the sun in it which has a frame around it is a custom painting from Bibliocraft. It is even possible to import your own images for paintings in this mod.

The Study/Library area. Most of what is here is also from Bibliocraft.The lamps are from that mod, as are the 3 blocks in front of and to the right of the window. Those are the Typesetting Table, Printing Press and Painting Press. The first 2 of these can be used to duplicate any book, including enchanted ones, at an XP cost up to 40 levels. Above the Painting Press in the Dark Oak Case is a pair of Reading Glasses. These are used with the Typesetting Table. On the right wall past the Crafting Grid are some Bookcases. Each can hold up to 18 books. Next is a Desk and Chair, and a Table with a Typewriter on it. It has no usage; it is merely decorative. Right of that is a Fancy Workbench. It functions like a Crafting Table, but can store up to 9 recipes in it, much like the Worktable from Forestry. Then a Disenchanter from Draconic Evolution, and an Enchanter from EnderIO.

The Kitchen/Dining Area. The Table and Chairs are from Bibliocraft; you can place carpet on the table to make it look like a table cloth. Nothing can be put on the plates, though. In the back is the kitchen area. From left to right is a Market from Pam's HarvestCraft, a Kitchen Corner with a Cutting Board on it (behind the Chair), 2 Kitchen Counters, one with a Toaster, the other with a Cow in a Jar, an Oven, Cooking Table, Sink and another Kitchen Counter, and 2 double Fridges, all of which are from Cooking for Blockheads. Pam's has over 300 different foods that can be crafted; the Cooking Table allows crafting of anything that has the needed ingredients and tools nearby. Everything on the right wall except the cabinets along the ceiling are part of a multiblock kitchen.

The Cow in a Jar is one of the more amusing items here. It supplies infinite milk which slowly refills when used to all recipes. It is made by placing a cow on top of a milk jar, then dropping an Anvil on it.

I still have to do a bedroom; that's going to be upstairs, and that floor will have interior walls. I also need to finish out the living room area.

The flooring in the kitchen area is made using coal and quartz blocks.

The pack used here is Soartex Fanver.

It's been a long time since I was last in my 1.12.2 world as I have not been playing Minecraft for a while, so yesterday I logged into it for the first time in about 5 months.

I had finally found a place for the Astral Sorcery Horologium ritual that actually worked; I'm still not sure why it works in some places and not in others. I ended up locating it next to the Aevitas ritual:

If you look closely at the Ritual Pedestal (which is behind one of the Lenses), there is a purple hourglass shape of the constellation Horologium on the ground under it. The Ritual Anchor is linked to another one in my Thermal Expansion/Ender IO room. All of the machines show blue particle effects on them indicating they are being tick accelerated. My SAG Mills in particular seem to be running quite fast.

I've been running my Void Ore Miner (which is at Tier 5) for a while, and can now upgrade it to Tier 6. For that tier, I need 92 Strcuture Frames of that tier, which use 2 Aethium crystals each, and a controller of the same tier. The controller uses 6 Aethium blocks. So I need a total of 238 Aethium crystals.

Environmental Tech has 6 tiers of machines, such as the void miners, solar arrays, and nanobot beacons (which function like the vanilla ones). There are also 6 tiers of crystal used for each machine. They are (1) Litherite, (2) Erodium, (3) Kyronite, (4) Pladium, (5) Ionite, and (6) Aethium. Blocks of the tier 3 and higher crystals are also Wither proof. Only Litherite is craftable; the others must be obtained through Void Ore mining.