Minecraft

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So the guy who coined the term skyblock wasn't making any money off of it, and battled for 5 years only to be 300k in debt. 1779792444166.png
 
So, I'm about seven hours into my first world with this pack and I am miffed.

There are no real guides on how to use Create. The mod's official wiki is mostly for developer purposes. The fanmade wiki is a scattershot mess with less than 400 pages and no real "beginner's guide" (this is their sorry excuse for one). Similarly, in-game ponderings are all extremely disconnected and rely on existing knowledge that can only be gained through more pondering (or outside resources that don't exist). The advancements seem to have some sort of throughline, and I'm trying to follow them just for some kind of guidance, but they're very information-sparse and not good at explaining anything.

For example: why do I need to make a windmill? I'm guessing it's for a consistent source of rotational power, but if I hadn't spent hours in Creative pondering random shit while trying to figure out how to build an airplane (which I still don't know how to do, mostly because I cannot figure out a proper steering/control mechanism for the life of me; all of my creations inevitably twirl into the air and despawn when I try) I wouldn't know that. Similarly, I have no idea how to make a windmill since I'm 200% confident that I'm not supposed to use a Physics Assembler (from an add-on) to make a bunch of sails count as one entity, then stick that entity onto a shaft, but genuinely don't know what else might allow such a big entity to twirl around. (Haven't tried this yet, but I'm certain it'd cause a weight imbalance and just lead to the entire sail falling apart.) Not even sure where to start looking for information on a windmill specifically.

I have also learned, a little too late, that the mod heavily encourages settling near water due to the existence of water wheels and their part in (maybe?) perpetuating rotational force. This isn't too huge an issue, as I was planning on settling somewhere within walking distance of a big body of water to begin with (because I want to make a big fuckoff ship that I can use to traverse the giant oceans Terralith spawns asap), but had I stuck to my original (and honestly still desired) plan of setting up in a Badlands then I'd be pretty screwed if I wanted to learn Create as easily as possible.

I'm sure there are YouTube tutorials for this somewhere, but I also know the type of people who play this mod and I do not want to hear their voices. It is also a pain in the ass to keep scrubbing back and forth on a video bar when trying to cross-reference, at least when compared to going back and forth on a paragraph of writing or some sort of infographic, so I've been trying to find one or the other to no avail for almost an hour now.

I am baffled at how a Minecraft mod 190 million downloads strong has this little documentation on it. I have my suspicions that it's because nobody genuinely cares enough to explain this shit outside of tranny-infested discords, but still. 190 million downloads, over the course of 7 years, and the best guides out there for getting started involve either basic explanations on how to install mods in Minecraft or basic "find Andesite, rotational force powers contraptions, here are contraptions but no explanation of what you can do with them" """"guides"""""!!

Does anyone here know wtf to do with this thing? I am sort of kind of teaching myself, but I have so many gaps in my knowledge and no solid idea of anything that I can't really apply it anywhere. Pls help.

I know that shafts create rotational force, rotational force can be monitored through a specific block, conveyor belts convey things but I'm not sure how exactly.
There's a pair of goggles that's very important (but all they really do is show you how much rotational force is affecting any given block?) and a wrench that's even more important (but all it does is change the direction of various rotating entities when you smack them with it?).
You can press, crush, and compress things. Crushing seems to be a more efficient method of sticking something in a furnace (especially when crushing Create-specific blocks). Pressing things only seems necessary to make ingot sheets (which are important because you need them for the important goggles). Compressing things... I have no clue what that does.
There is some kind of typewriter that lets you control redstone components. Redstone components are also mostly unimportant to Create "contraptions," except when they are and you need some redstone knowledge to make use of them.
Super-glue connects things and makes them into one entity (a "sub-level"). This is how you build planes/ships/cars/gigantic dicks on wheels. To move these entities, you need some kind of force (typically provided with a propellor and/or engine) or source of hot air (campfires? general hot stuff underneath wool?).
You can automate crafting somehow.
Nuggets of experience seem important somehow, as does... chocolate.
Apparently, Andesite and Copper are the most common Create ingredients and the most essential to basic functioning. This is ticking me off because I have two whole stacks of Zinc but I've never seen a single block of Andesite.
There exists rose quartz for... some reason. Seems mostly decorative?
 
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Got a couple more buildings added over the last week. A somewhat-tudor style house in the back left that still needs some detailing work, and a little landing pad/den for my dragon buddy.

Next building is going to be a portal room/enchanting setup I think. I've got Twilight Forest and the Aether in this pack so a little building for all the different portals will be nice.



So, I'm about seven hours into my first world with this pack and I am miffed.

So Create is one of those mods that takes a little while to wrap your head around but once it 'clicks' its so easy. Also, I assume you have JEI installed, but if not you should, as it will make connecting the dots in create much easier.

I would take a step back from the Aeronautics stuff and just focus on learning the basics of base create, only because a lot of the aeronautics/physics simulation stuff is almost it's own stand-alone thing.

conveyor belts convey things but I'm not sure how exactly

You output items from inventories (chests/vaults/machines) onto them with chutes, mechanical arms, or funnels. They can then be picked up and put into other inventories with those same methods.

There's a pair of goggles that's very important (but all they really do is show you how much rotational force is affecting any given block?) and a wrench that's even more important (but all it does is change the direction of various rotating entities when you smack them with it?).

The wrench can also be used to instantly pick up any Create block by shift right clicking. Makes it much easier to pick up andesite casings after youve made them out of stripped wood.

You can press, crush, and compress things. Crushing seems to be a more efficient method of sticking something in a furnace (especially when crushing Create-specific blocks). Pressing things only seems necessary to make ingot sheets (which are important because you need them for the important goggles). Compressing things... I have no clue what that does.

Crushing can be used to multiply ores in certain cases (like silk touched blocks, mileage may vary depending on what other mods you have installed as well) Pressing is mostly used for making sheets but has certain other applications, pressing 'U' while hovering over the block will show most of its use cases in JEI. Compressing can be used to make things like packed dirt, or automate turning wheat into haybales once you have a fast farm up and running.

Also some items in the mod will require multiple steps to make, like being crushed, having something deployed on them (the deployers are the things with hands on them), and then a liquid poured on them, etc, all sequentially, and often repeated several times. There are cases where all these machines work in tandem to create a single thing.

There is some kind of typewriter that lets you control redstone components. Redstone components are also mostly unimportant to Create "contraptions," except when they are and you need some redstone knowledge to make use of them.

You are correct that redstone is /mostly/ unimportant. There are some neat wireless options that are offered through Create but it's one of those things where you only have to make it as complicated as you want.

Super-glue connects things and makes them into one entity (a "sub-level"). This is how you build planes/ships/cars/gigantic dicks on wheels. To move these entities, you need some kind of force (typically provided with a propellor and/or engine) or source of hot air (campfires? general hot stuff underneath wool?).
You can automate crafting somehow.

Again, this is where Aeronautics and base Create are seperate. Contraptions can be plopped into minecarts with the cart assembler and run on regular minecart rails, which is useful for making things like tunnel bores that you can carry in your pocket and the like, but they can also just be standalone things like drawbridges, moving doors, rotating farms, etc. Think of contraptions (doors/spinning things/etc) as 'things that move on 'rails' under set parameters' and simulations (planes/cars/dicks on wheels) as 'things that move however i want in 3d space'

If you look at my screenshot you can see two little farms in front of the copper roofed building. Those are literally just a few blocks placed on top of a windmill bearing and glued together. A couple harvesters on them with some chests and you have a completely hands off farm that will fill a double chest up in a couple of hours. That's near-total automation of the farming process with about 8 blocks worth of create stuff.

Crafting of literally anything can be automated with the Mechanical Crafter. It's a multiblock structure that can be given a recipe and produce it (with a nice animation) as long as it has the given materials. Some of the Create specific items require this, as they require a larger than 3x3 grid.

Nuggets of experience seem important somehow, as does... chocolate.
Apparently, Andesite and Copper are the most common Create ingredients and the most essential to basic functioning. This is ticking me off because I have two whole stacks of Zinc but I've never seen a single block of Andesite.
There exists rose quartz for... some reason. Seems mostly decorative?

Nuggets of XP are just a convenient way of physically storing XP for later. But they also make nice glowy decorative blocks too.

Andesite alloy is made by combining andesite (a vanilla block, its the ugly grey stuff that ISNT stone, usually lots of it in mountainy biomes but its also everywhere underground) with iron or zinc nuggets. The copper will be used for Brass later.

Rose quartz is a pretty base ingredient for a lot of the more 'advanced' create stuff, I think deployers use it and most of the redstony type blocks too. I think there should be naturally spawning rose quartz biomes in the Nether, but it can be made from regular quartz and redstone I believe.



The real hurdle with Create is just figuring out how to power things (remember that you can make literal gearboxes to increase the speed of your power sources until you have speed controllers) and then what each of the machines/blocks do. Once you have that down the rest is just logistics, and the magnitude of that headache is entirely up to your discretion. It also helps to have a creative flatworld that you can hop into to experiement with stuff before you build it in survival.

Also I agree with you that most of the Create youtubers are pretty insufferable, but some of the guys on the Just Create SMP are somewhat tolerable. ChosenArchitect and FoxyNoTail do pretty good videos, though Foxy is british so viewer discretion is advised. Not so much 'tutorials' but you can glean a lot of how different blocks/machines interact with each other by watching how they set up their factories and stuff.

Good luck though! It really is a fun mod once you figure everything out. It has all the aesthetic perfection of BetterThanWolves with the autistic logistics sim of literally every tekkit mod ever and mashes them into something surprisingly consistent.
 
Does anyone here know wtf to do with this thing? I am sort of kind of teaching myself, but I have so many gaps in my knowledge and no solid idea of anything that I can't really apply it anywhere. Pls help.
I pretty much learned most of what I know from the Ponder system w/ base create. Pondering is essentially the reason why there's no "real" online documentation, it's all built into the mod.
you just hold your cursor over an item in the inventory and hold w, and it'll explain to you what it does with nice visuals to go along. It's a very good system and very intuitive to use, legitimately one of the best instances of in-game documentation I've seen in a Minecraft mod.

If you want a video to follow along, Direwolf20 has an old series on the mod. It's a few years old at this point, but it's still plenty applicable and covers the bulk of the base addon.
His spotlight series is probably the best to watch before diving in, but honestly, given how the ponder system works, I think Create is best learned through hands-on experimentation with the mod in a creative world, and I suspect the mod authors designed it that way.
Either way, Direwolf's mod spotlight + pondering any new items should get you up to speed.
 
Still working on the pack. I think I've found someplace to settle down after seven hours of searching (pretty brisk tbh given my usual estimates of 10-20 hours of wandering), and it is indeed a Badlands.

1780239774807.png 1780239799420.png 1780239812394.png

Looks pretty gorgeous, though, so I don't mind. And it's near enough to water to sort of count. I'll just need to figure out what to do about the wet/dry season thing for farming and whether there's any aberrant weather here other than sandstorms...

Current plan is to build one of those poppy midcentury flats. You know the ones. Midcentury modern, but stuck in a mountain. The Jetsons, halfway to the ground. Pure googie filth that looks slightly terrible in real life, but might not look so bad in a game where everything is blocky. This sort of thing.
1780240425088.png 1780240442747.png
These are not what I was describing, but much closer to what I was intending to build. Just imagine a midcentury luxury house in similar places to these things, I guess.

...in spending nearly an hour searching for images to convey what I want and coming up short, I have realized i could've done a quick sketch and conveyed my intentions much more clearly. Here you go:

1780241069320.png

It's not meant to be super elaborate. It's a stopgap between Cobblemon versions while I figure out all the new shit I added (Create, MCA, etc.). And, given the sheer space between the canyons, I have no doubt I'll have to revise this unless I want to have something that amounts to the architectural equivalent of a gigantic train carriage. But, for now, this is my intention.

little landing pad/den for my dragon buddy.
Might I ask which mod you used to get said dragon buddy? I've been searching for a decent dragon mod for ages. Ice & Fire was too bloated with other shit and amateurish when I last played it to heavily consider, Dragon Mounts Remastered seems to be very buggy and hasn't been maintained in at least a year (there are bugs on the tracker that have been opened for multiple, but I think the mod itself was updated last Marchish?), and most other mods seem to have to do with How to Train Your Dragon or let you play as a dragon... which is not what I'm looking for.

If this really is Ice and Fire, I'll eat my tongue. I haven't played it in years, so it could've improved since then.

So Create is one of those mods that takes a little while to wrap your head around but once it 'clicks' its so easy. Also, I assume you have JEI installed (I do), but if not you should, as it will make connecting the dots in create much easier.

I would take a step back from the Aeronautics stuff and just focus on learning the basics of base create, only because a lot of the aeronautics/physics simulation stuff is almost it's own stand-alone thing.
See, that's what I'm trying to do, but again-- everything is very scattershot. I have to put the pieces together through pondering or I'm screwed. That's doable, of course-- it just takes a very long time and isn't optimal, since pondering doesn't pause my game and I still don't have a house. (That's going to change now, of course, but still.)

Now for a barrage of questions that I had upon reading your reply:

You output items from inventories (chests/vaults/machines) onto them with chutes, mechanical arms, or funnels. They can then be picked up and put into other inventories with those same methods.
Picked up manually? And how do you output items? Do you need a dispenser/redstone signal? Or do contraptions somehow automatically draw from chests?

What's the difference between chutes, funnels, and conveyor belts in terms of mechanisms? Do you only need one of the three? Or are there marked differences in function that I need to take into account? I haven't even seen chutes/funnels while browsing JEI, so I'm wondering if they're from an add-on you have or if I just missed them.

Compressing can be used to make things like packed dirt, or automate turning wheat into haybales once you have a fast farm up and running.
Is packed dirt a Create thing? Or do you mean coarse dirt? And is there much purpose to this besides the wheat - > haybale thing (presumably can also turn coal into blocks of coal, iron ore into blocks of iron ore, etc.)?

Also some items in the mod will require multiple steps to make, like being crushed, having something deployed on them (the deployers are the things with hands on them),
Wait, what? Deployers are mechanical arms? Or are deployers some sort of contraption class that you can make by using specific blocks? And how am I supposed to know what things require multiple steps beyond the usual "look at the final product's recipe, look at the recipes of its ingredients, work backwards from the raw components"? Is that just what you meant to refer to, and I'm overcomplicating things in my head for the sake of being thorough? *yawn*

and then a liquid poured on them, etc, all sequentially, and often repeated several times.
So-- I've seen a lot of talk of liquids in various recipes, but I'm still completely clueless on what to do with them. It's heavily implied that there's some kind of fluid-transfer system you need to take advantage of, both for lava and water (and also honey, experience, chocolate again, etc.), but I'm clueless as to how to do so and I'm not sure whether it's an essential component of basic recipes or only really required for more advanced things. You seem to imply the latter, but I genuinely cannot tell if you're correct because I'm completely in the dark on this part of the mod.

There are cases where all these machines work in tandem to create a single thing.
If the trailer I watched was any indication, this seems to be an overarching goal of the entire mod.

Again, this is where Aeronautics and base Create are seperate. Contraptions can be plopped into minecarts with the cart assembler
Is that like the Physics Assembler-- a one-time block that changes the classification of a group of objects to make them function differently? Or is there some other way to classify mobile contraptions that I'm missing?

and run on regular minecart rails,
Do they also work on the train tracks Create seems to provide? Or only vanilla rails? (I'm probably going to build a train to the nearest village, which seems very far away, and want to know if I'll be able to make use of leftover railings at all.)

which is useful for making things like tunnel bores that you can carry in your pocket and the like,
Tunnel bores... ore drills? Are those the big contraption things you can use to mine? If so... how do you carry them in your pocket?

If you look at my screenshot you can see two little farms in front of the copper roofed building. Those are literally just a few blocks placed on top of a windmill bearing and glued together. A couple harvesters on them with some chests and you have a completely hands off farm that will fill a double chest up in a couple of hours. That's near-total automation of the farming process with about 8 blocks worth of create stuff.
windmill bearing
...well, I feel stupid. Do you just stick blocks on this thing to make it a windmill?

EDIT: went and pondered it-- yes, pretty much, but it refers to 'sail-like blocks' without elaboration. WHY.
What the fuck counts as "sail-like"?? Just wool and actual sails? Do modded materials like canvas or flax qualify? (Both are from pretty popular mods; not sure if Create has compatibility with them.) Or is there some specific quality they need to have? Some kind of weight threshold they can't pass? Could I theoretically build a windmill out of fence posts and wooden slabs and have it work?

Crafting of literally anything can be automated with the Mechanical Crafter. It's a multiblock structure that can be given a recipe and produce it (with a nice animation) as long as it has the given materials. Some of the Create specific items require this, as they require a larger than 3x3 grid.
That seems to require rose quartz (and a metal sheet)... so, are the electron casings made out of that quartz important for more advanced stuff?

Andesite alloy is made by combining andesite (a vanilla block, its the ugly grey stuff that ISNT stone, usually lots of it in mountainy biomes but its also everywhere underground)
Except for where I've gone underground, yes. >:(

I know it's biome-specific. I think I might've taken my one and only mining trip so far someplace where Andesite just doesn't spawn. I'll have to go look up the biomes it's plentiful in once I've settled down.

Rose quartz is a pretty base ingredient for a lot of the more 'advanced' create stuff,
Oh, that answers my last question. Thank you.

I think deployers use it
What's a deployer? Just a fancy dropper?

and most of the redstony type blocks too.
So redstone is important... for late-game advanced stuff?

The real hurdle with Create is just figuring out how to power things (remember that you can make literal gearboxes to increase the speed of your power sources until you have speed controllers)
Can't remember what I didn't know! *yawn*

Are speed controllers modifiable? Maybe a stupid question, but I remember them just being used as a measurement block and not a literal controller. Maybe they have a wrench interaction that I missed?

Also I agree with you that most of the Create youtubers are pretty insufferable, but some of the guys on the Just Create SMP are somewhat tolerable. ChosenArchitect and FoxyNoTail do pretty good videos, though Foxy is british so viewer discretion is advised. Not so much 'tutorials' but you can glean a lot of how different blocks/machines interact with each other by watching how they set up their factories and stuff.
Thank you for the recommendations. I'll see if they're tolerable.

Good luck though! It really is a fun mod once you figure everything out. It has all the aesthetic perfection of BetterThanWolves with the autistic logistics sim of literally every tekkit mod ever and mashes them into something surprisingly consistent.
It also has an add-on that lets me make planes in minecrap :) :) :)

Sincerely, thank you for your help. Even if it's mostly just been me bombarding you with questions, it's made me realize that I was somehow getting Simulated and base Create mixed up to such an extent that I couldn't figure out the basics of either.

On that note-- where should I start with Create? Like, if I just wanted to get a very basic idea of the mod, what would be my starting point? I know Andesite casings, aluminum alloys, shafts, cogwheels, and windmill bearings seem to be the most basic things. Crushing wheels also seemed basic and important, but they require an automated crafter (which is very not basic) so I guess they aren't. Mechanical Pressers seem much more basic and much more necessary, given how prolific sheets seem to be in various recipes, but I'm guessing they need rotational force to function and that's where the windmill I was recommended to build comes in. Dunno. I'm still pretty lost on this whole thing.

Nevertheless, thank you again.

EDIT: it takes 3 stacks of blocks just to get from one end of the canyon to the other :stress:
this is going to be a while
 
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Got a couple more buildings added over the last week. A somewhat-tudor style house in the back left that still needs some detailing work, and a little landing pad/den for my dragon buddy.
i hate that the redditghast looks like a fucking sore thumb, it was the first thing i saw when i looked at the image, everything looks good as a villa but that fucking ghast...
not even the pink dock drew my attention as much as that ghast and reddish colors are supposed to be the ones that humans notice first... ho-lee-shit.
 
Might I ask which mod you used to get said dragon buddy?

It is Dragon Mounts Remastered. I haven't really encountered any bugs, but I mostly just use the dragon to get around faster.

Picked up manually? And how do you output items? Do you need a dispenser/redstone signal? Or do contraptions somehow automatically draw from chests?

What's the difference between chutes, funnels, and conveyor belts in terms of mechanisms? Do you only need one of the three? Or are there marked differences in function that I need to take into account? I haven't even seen chutes/funnels while browsing JEI, so I'm wondering if they're from an add-on you have or if I just missed them.
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The funnel can be attached to the side of basically anything with an inventory and will just automatically spit out any items in the inventory, no power or redstone required. If there is a belt in front of it the items will be pooped out onto the belts. Smart Funnels also exist which can be given filters.

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Chutes work mostly like hoppers. Items get pulled from inventories above, or can be thrown directly into the chute and travel downwards (they can also be set at angles.) You can also stick a powered fan underneath a chute and it will allow items to be moved upward.




Mechanical arms can grab things from belts and depots (possibly other things) by clicking on them with the arm in hand. One will be designated as input, and the other designated as output (shift right clicking.) Providing the arm with rotational power will allow it to move things between things. They can also place things into inventories like furnaces, mixers, etc.



Deployers act as a 'right click' machine. They can place things down, or use items on things. Give one a sword and it will attack things, give one a bucket and it can milk cows, give one a block (via the front manually as in the video, or by attaching an inventory) and it will place it.

Is packed dirt a Create thing? Or do you mean coarse dirt? And is there much purpose to this besides the wheat - > haybale thing (presumably can also turn coal into blocks of coal, iron ore into blocks of iron ore, etc.)?

Maybe I meant coarse dirt. But lots of things can be compressed/packed. Nuggets to ingots, ingots to blocks, blocks to stairs, etc.

So-- I've seen a lot of talk of liquids in various recipes, but I'm still completely clueless on what to do with them



Liquids are relatively easy. Just pipes hooked up to pumps which require rotational energy. Also note that the pump block has an arrow on it to denote direction, that can be changed by right clicking with the wrench.

In this setup we have a pump sucking water from an infinite source, putting it into a tank, and then removing it from the tank with another pump and pumping it to a spout which automatically squirts whatever liquid onto whatever item put onto that depot. In this case we have dirt to grass conversion.


Do they also work on the train tracks Create seems to provide?

I believe so, but they require the correct train chassis block. I haven't messed around with the trains too much, to be honest. Theyve been made somewhat obsolete for logistics with the introduction of frogports and chain conveyors.

Tunnel bores... ore drills? Are those the big contraption things you can use to mine? If so... how do you carry them in your pocket?

Ore drill, tunnel bore, tomato, tomahto. But yeah. You can put one in your pocket like this:



So here I am using the super glue to glue this contraption together. We have mechanical drills on the front and an inventory for them to deposit drops. Then you put down a rail, a Cart Assembler on top of that, and then your minecart (Normally you would use a furnace cart so it can move on its own. You'd also install deployers to put down new track automatically and also deploy something like cobblestone so it can place track over empty space, and a Mechanical Plow on the back to pick up said track again, I can make a better video to demonstrate this if that's confusing) and then apply a redstone signal. Notice how the whole thing lifted up a little?

Then you just shift right click the cart with the wrench and the whole thing is turned into a portable contraption.

This isn't limited to just ore drills either, you can make an entire portable base if you so choose.

That seems to require rose quartz (and a metal sheet)... so, are the electron casings made out of that quartz important for more advanced stuff?

Correct

Are speed controllers modifiable? Maybe a stupid question, but I remember them just being used as a measurement block and not a literal controller. Maybe they have a wrench interaction that I missed?



There's a little window on the side of the controller, if you hold right click you can vary the speed and also direction of the rotational energy.



I think that covers everything. Feel free to throw out any more questions, like I said I'm not as well versed in the trains and rails portion of Create, but I can probably do some tinkering to figure out whatever you may be confused about.

Edit: formatting and spelling
 
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On that note-- where should I start with Create? Like, if I just wanted to get a very basic idea of the mod, what would be my starting point? I know Andesite casings, aluminum alloys, shafts, cogwheels, and windmill bearings seem to be the most basic things. Crushing wheels also seemed basic and important, but they require an automated crafter (which is very not basic) so I guess they aren't. Mechanical Pressers seem much more basic and much more necessary, given how prolific sheets seem to be in various recipes, but I'm guessing they need rotational force to function and that's where the windmill I was recommended to build comes in. Dunno. I'm still pretty lost on this whole thing.
The mod is split into the Andesite age and the Brass age; i.e., stuff that doesn't need brass and stuff that does. The distinction is important because the stuff that needs Brass allows for more complex automation, but you need to go to a Nether fortress to get Brass, and often, Brass-age items are more complicated to set up.
I wouldn't say that Brass-age stuff is gated behind the Andesite age, but if you're new and don't know where to start, just focus on everything you can make without Brass and/or a blaze burner. They're often much simpler to craft & set up vs. brass-age items and don't require much automation to get working.
And so that it's written down: I would also make sure to craft the engineers' goggles as soon as you can, so you can read a machine's detailed statistics.

On power; power does not work like most other tech mods. There is no "RF" or "FE". There are instead RPM and Stress Units.
Stress Units (SU) are probably the closest equivalent to energy in other tech mods. The more SU you can produce, the more stuff you can power.
If your power source cannot produce the SU required to run the machines connected to it, then it and all the connected machines will become overstressed. There is no "warning" if you are close to overstressing your system. The only tell is if you have a stressometer to measure stress usage. Otherwise, if you overstress a system, everything will spontaneously stop working, and there's a good chance something will break that you'll need to pick up and place down again.

RPM is just that: Revolutions per minute. Its just a way to measure how fast a machine is running. A higher RPM will make a machine run faster, but the faster a machine runs, the more SU it will need.
You can adjust RPM in a few ways in the mod, but in the early game, you will adjust RPM through gear ratios.

pretty much the entire mod is based around balancing these two values. I have built entire machines dedicated to automatically balancing Stress and RPM, so I don't accidentally overstress my machines.
As an example, let's say a mechanical press is overstressing your factory. If you cannot expand your power generation, you can always run it through a gear reduction to lower its RPM (speed). It won't work as fast, but it will use less SU.

The most common early game sources for mechanical energy are hand cranks, windmills, and water wheels.
Hand cranks are the cheapest and most convenient. You place them down, hold right-click on them, and they produce 256 Stress units at 32 RPM, or 8 SU/RPM. Not much, but enough to power a single machine OR multiple if you add a gear reduction. If you need a small batch of an item, and you don't have a good power setup, or you're just not near one, just use a handcrank and make what you need.

Windmills you are already (mostly) familiar with.
EDIT: went and pondered it-- yes, pretty much, but it refers to 'sail-like blocks' without elaboration. WHY.
What the fuck counts as "sail-like"?? Just wool and actual sails? Do modded materials like canvas or flax qualify? (Both are from pretty popular mods; not sure if Create has compatibility with them.) Or is there some specific quality they need to have? Some kind of weight? Could I theoretically build a windmill out of fence posts and wooden slabs and have it work?
The icons on the side of the ponder menu take you to an entry list related to the given ponder. For the windmill bearings, it'll show you what counts as "sail-like". (The other one is added from Create: Aeronautics.)
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always check these.

water wheels:
I would personally recommend water wheels for most things because they're more power dense (windmill bearings have a maximum power output; you can continuously add more water wheels if you need more SU.) and you don't need to worry about sourcing wool.
You just need to put them next to one block of flowing water in order for them to work. That's all they require.
There are two types: a small and a large water wheel. The large one is larger (Duh), needs more materials, and makes more power. those are the only differences; they behave identically otherwise.
 
Here's a video of a lot of these systems working in tandem to make a single functional machine.



We have a cow in a jar from Farmers Delight being milked by a deployer. That milk bucket is spit out of the funnel onto an item drain that drains the milk out. The empty bucket is then rolled onto the depot to the left and collected by that mechanical arm. The arm then puts the bucket back into the deployer for the system to start again.

The milk is then pumped into that big tank, which is pulled out and pumped into another part of the machine that is still being tinkered with (it's meant to automate making Brewin' and Chewin' recipes. The kegs are a little finicky so I'm still working out how to move everything around properly.)
 
Jesus, you people are spoiling me. Thank you immensely for the in-depth explanations. I'm still a smidge overwhelmed, but this really helps a lot. Thank you.

No questions so far, still trying to digest everything. I'll pop up again if there's anything particularly confusing that I need help with. For now, I have a ridiculously enormous apartment to build and a windmill to roughly fashion. Thanks again.
 
I was looking for a way to reset chunks to the original world seed after some accidents and changing my mind about certain things I put in the world while fucking around with editing mods, and found this super useful program called MCA Selector. It just deletes chunks of your choosing so when you reload them in the game they regenerate as if brand new, and it’s also really really useful if you have an old world or added a mod and don’t want to go on an odyssey to reach new generations for new biomes or structures or whatever needs to be generated. Highly recommend if you’re one of those people who stick to one world.
 
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