GETTING STARTED
Mekanism adds a few ores to the mix, but the most important one is Osmium ore. Though brittle in real life, this is the key metal in Mekanism crafting alongside Iron. It is recommended to collect a lot of it throughout your trip to the mines. Once you’re set up and ready to start, the first step is to get some basic machines up and running. These machines will enable you to make key crafting components for the rest of the modded links and machinery.
THE HEAT GENERATOR
Assuming you don’t have any other mods installed, the first thing we’re going to make is the Heat Generator. If this isn’t showing up in your Creative Menu or JEI, perhaps you missed the add-on mod, Mekanism: Generators. If you do have other mods installed or are using a modpack, the power systems are generally interchangeable. You can plug in your machines to a pre-existing power source or make beginner generators from other mods to substitute Mekanism’s.
The Heat Generator takes a fuel input, this can be any basic minecraft fuel type as well as Mekanism’s own fuel types and converts it into Forge Energy (FE). FE is an energy type used by a lot of different mods, so Mekanism adopted it for convenience. Redstone Flux (RF), Joules (J) and Energy Units (EU) are other types used by some popular mods.
The fuel will convert to a set amount of energy that will be stored in the machine up to 64FE. In order for the Heat Generator to transfer its stored power, the machine or block you want to power must be in front of it, on the side with the green square outline.
THE METALLURGIC INFUSER
Your first and most important machine to make is the Metallurgic (Met-all-ur-jic) Infuser. This takes a fuel input of a certain material, and combines that material with your second input.
Here we have a Metallurgic Infuser in front of a fuelled Heat Generator. The power will automatically transfer to the Metallurgic Infuser, filling up the green bar on the right in the UI. This machine can take a variety of materials which includes:
| Material | Fuel Type | Fuel Amount Per Piece |
| Coal | Carbon | 10Mb |
| Charcoal | Carbon | 20Mb |
| Block of Coal | Carbon | 90Mb |
| Block of Charcoal | Carbon | 180Mb |
| Enriched coal | Carbon | 80Mb |
| Redstone Dust | Redstone | 10Mb |
| Block of Redstone | Redstone | 90Mb |
| Enriched Redstone | Redstone | 80Mb |
| Diamond Dust | Diamond | 10mb |
| Enriched Diamond | Diamond | 80Mb |
| Refined Obsidian Dust | Refined Obsidian | 10Mb |
| Enriched Obsidian | Refined Obsidian | 80Mb |
| Gold Dust | Gold | 10Mb |
| Enriched Gold | Gold | 80Mb |
| Biomass | Biofuel | 5mb |
| Tin Dust | Tin | 10Mb |
| Enriched Tin | Tin | 80Mb |
| Any chemical tank that contains the corresponding fuel | Any | Any |
FUEL TO MB RATES
This table shows all the available sources of each material and their corresponding Mb values. The enriched versions of each type are by far the best value per link. Nine coal or a block of coal will give you 90Mb of carbon, but in contrast nine enriched coal will give you 720Mb of carbon, but more on that in a minute.
To input one of these fuel types, simply place the link in the fuel slot box outlined in yellow next to the fuel bar. All the basic forms of the listed materials should give you 10mb. Should you no longer need what’s stored in the fuel bar, you can click the, “DUMP” button to empty it. The box outlined in red is your input slot, this is where you put links in to be changed by the fuel type. By hovering over the fuel bar, you can see how much of each material is stored.
STEEL INGOTS
One of the early goals is to make Steel. Steel is important and used in many, many recipes and machines in this mod. Once you have the steel dust, you can cook it by any means available to make a steel ingot.
- So the method is:
- 10mb of Carbon + 1 Iron Ingot = 1 Enriched Iron.
- 10mb of Carbon + 1 Enriched Iron = 1 Steel Dust.
FUEL EFFICIENCY
Don’t pile all of your carbon into the machine at once!
We have a few more things to make, and a way to make our fuel more efficient. The second most important use of the Metallurgic Infuser is to make alloys and circuits. The first tier of alloy is the Infused Alloy, which is red and made by combining 10mb of Redstone and an iron ingot. To make the first tier of circuit, the Basic Control Circuit, which is green, you combine 10mb of Redstone and an osmium ingot. These and the later tiers will be used in a lot of crafting.
STEEL FRAMES
With steel ingots and basic control circuits, we can make our second machine, the Enrichment Chamber. This involves a steel frame. Steel frames are used for most machinery frames, made using 4 steel ingots, 4 glass of any colour and an osmium ingot.
THE ENRICHMENT CHAMBER
The enrichment chamber has two very important roles. The first is turning items into their enriched counterparts for better fuel efficiency. The second is the ability to multiply ores. By placing 3 of any raw ore in, you will get 4 dusts, which can be smelted into 4 ingots. We will talk more about this in the next section, but for now it's important to mention.
The enrichment chamber only requires 1 input and FE. You can place links inside the red outlined box to convert those links into their enriched version. In this example, we’re converting coal into enriched coal. Enriched coal is worth much more at 80mb, as opposed to coal’s measly 10mb. This is a much more efficient use of fuel, and all enriched versions can be put into the Metallurgic Infuser fuel slot just like their normal counterparts.
POWER
Now that we have our fuel efficiency sorted out, we can look into a more efficient power source. We have a few options: The solar panel, the wind generator, the gas burning generator, the bio generator, the fission reactor and turbine combo and the fusion reactor. The gas-burning generator and reactors are mid to late game power sources respectively, so for now we just want something that’s cheap and renewable.
ENERGY PER TICK
When it comes to generators, unlike the Heat Generator which makes a set amount of energy per burn time, these generators all run on the concept of “Energy per tick”. This refers to the base game’s program loop, which runs at a fixed rate of 20 ticks per second. This means that one tick occurs every 0.05s. These generators will be outputting their set FE amount based on their criteria per tick. Meaning that whatever the machine says it’s outputting “FE/t”, that happens 20 times in a second. If the generator is outputting 9.6FE/t, that means every second it’s producing 192FE. To start with, a few of the options and energy related blocks use an energy tablet as a crafting option. This is 3 gold ingots, 2 infused alloys and 4 redstone.
THE SOLAR GENERATOR
Using osmium, glass panes, redstone and infused alloys we can make solar panels. These are a key component in making the solar generator.
Using 3 of these, an energy tablet, more infused alloys and osmium we can make a solar generator. The solar generator will produce energy on its own, but if you want more FE, you can make the advanced solar generator.
THE ADVANCED SOLAR GENERATOR
The advanced solar generator is 4 solar generators, 2 infused alloys and 3 iron ingots. The solar generator alone will produce 17.84FE/t, whereas the advanced solar generator will produce 106.89FE/t. This is a fantastic upgrade if you can afford all the iron and osmium it will cost. The only drawback to these options are the daylight limitations, they naturally don’t work during the night.
THE WIND GENERATOR
Another option is the wind generator, which produces its energy based on the Y height of where it is placed. The base level is 9.6FE/t, while the maximum amount is 76.8FE/t. However, there is also the limitation of being able to connect to them.
It’s possible you may need a lot of cables to be able to reach a desired FE/t higher up while powering the machines in your base. The basic energy cables are made with 2 steel ingots and 1 piece of redstone. Crafting many of these can be expensive very early in the game.
THE BIO GENERATOR
The last beginner option is the bio-generator. This generator requires a bit of setup, but can be very reliable. This doesn’t have the previous limitations of nature in the physical sense, it requires biofuel. Biofuel is made using a crusher, by inputting any organic matter. It is possible to create automatic farms that feed into the crusher, which then feeds the biofuel into the bio generator. It outputs 500FE at a rate of 1FE/t.
The bio generator is made using 2 iron ingots, 2 infused alloys, 2 biofuel and a basic circuit. This will require the crusher being made first, which is a steel frame, 2 buckets of lava, 2 basic circuits and 4 redstone.
THE CRUSHER
The crusher looks and functions similarly to the enrichment chamber. You put the link you want crushed in the red outlined input slot, and it comes out in dust/paste form. The amount of biofuel you get out depends on what organic matter you put in, every link has its own output value. It would be wise to pick something that’s easy to grow/automate that gives a high output value, like melons/melon slices.
MOVING ON
Once you have a basic power source, your basic crafting material making-machines and lots of resources, we can move on to some more advanced prospects of the mod, such as personal equipment like jetpacks or ore processing.
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