Quick basic guide to getting started

[enforcer07]

I've seen loads of posts asking about guides and there isn't alot about this yet, I spent 2 hours watching a lets play series of videos, where the first 6 or 7 videos had nothing to do with voltz, it was basic minecraft with them mining and building a fancy looking house.

Obviously feel free to add your own hints and tips to help people out, lets work together!

Step 1 - standard minecraft

obviously, do the basics, make shelter, get tools, get mining. you will need a fair amount of iron and redstone, a stack of platinum, a little gold, some tin and make sure you start a grain farm and a cow, you will need it later.... alot!

Step 2 - 1.21 Gigawatts!

first thing you will want to build is something to get power with. so start smelting the stuff you gathered, the first new tool we will need is a Heat Generator. I wont go into materials required you can check in game! with this generator, chuck in some coal (or coke if like me the first thing you build is a coke oven) it will burn up the coal and generate mj, dont worry it wont lose charge, and if the charge is full it will keep its heat so no coal is wasted. If you found gold, i advise making energy tablets, if you didnt get gold, a battery or two will do (energy tablet is just like a bigger battery).

Step 3 - Steel

Steel will be used for alot of the machines, and the first machine will be the metallurgic infuser. once thats made it looks confusing but dont worry, stick it anywhere and make sure you have your tablets charging. while theyre charging you need to do 2 things, make more enriched iron and compressed carbon (coal put in a furnace). the bar on the left is the carbon levels, the bar on the right is power, so place the carbon and battery accordingly(ignore the top left box in the corner for now) and the enriched iron goes in the left middle box. This will create some steel dust you can smelt. job done.

Step 4 - Efficiency

Time to get things a bit more efficient, if you are still using coal, invest in a coke oven. Coal coke is more potent in voltz than tekkit, it will smelt 32 instead of 16 in tekkit, and 8 for coal. As for ores, theres a module that works the same as the macerator, the enrichment chamber which needs the steel you just started crafting. Simple to use, ore in top, battery in bottom, dust comes out on the right! currently you will be using it for gold, iron and platinum, copper and tin dont seem to work yet.

Step 5 - Keep Rolling

Unlike tekkit/technic, the rolling machine requires power. And not electricity. you will need to build a hobbyists steam engine to power it, works the same as the steam engines in other mods, put in coal, put in water, power with redstone. the rolling machine will be needed to pound things later on, i just mention it now because it requiring power seems to be a new thing alot of people are confused about.

Step 6 - Cut out the middle man

Hopefully the cow and grain farms are doing well, because to make wire in this, you need to use leather, 6 leather and 3 copper per 6 wire.... not as user friendly as technics rubber eh? build yourself a battery box, and a coal generator. the coal generator will take the place of your heat generator as it can be wired up the the bat box easily, and now you can wire up your other machines to the bat box and not have to worry about batteries so much!

Step 7 - H2ooooh

So, it's time to stop wasting our precious coal or coke on power and start exploring other electric avenues (see what i did there? ) A good first direction is hydrogen generator and electrolytic separator combo. pour water into the separator, it breaks down h2o into its base forms, hydrogen and oxygen. currently oxygen has no use but the hydrogen can go into a hydrogen generator placed right infront of the separator and produce electricity. the separator requires power but i only used 22 Kj to produce 366.8 Kj due to the removal of pumps and pipes its a very time costly way to make power, so you will either need patience, or do one of two things. 1. is add the pumps and pipes back into the game, making this a free energy making machine that is self powering. the 2nd option. If you build yourself some water tanks to collect water you can use railcraft liquid loaders and unloaders to load the separator with the water, its a small turnover, but its free!!!!

Step 8 - Igneous Rock

Now assuming you have been mining every once in a while to build your stocks up hopefully by now you have come across diamonds. Now i am definately too stingy to waste all of my precious diamonds on armour and tools, so we need the next best thing!. with your first diamond pickaxe get yourself some obsidian, plenty of it. We have already built our Enrichment chamber, so thats where we will put it! 1 obsidian becoming obsidian dust, which we can actually use to build with. If you havent experimented with the other blue machines yet, you will need to make yourself a Platinum Compressor, you power it just like the others, and you put platinum bars in the bottom slot and things like obsidian dust in the top, this will give you Obsidian ingots. Very handy stuff, used for tools, weapons, armour, its as strong as diamonds but much cheaper!

Thats all for now, i'll write some more in later so keep an eye on it. anything i missed post it so i can add notes :P

[b1gf00t]

Ok... So Have everything I need But I still can't find out how to use the rail gun I have the power setup and i have the ammo ready, but I still can't figure out how to fire the gun.

[b1gf00t]

Never mind sorry for bothering you but I kinda blew up my base with it.

[enforcer07]

Ha! well you know what they say, you can't learn from mistakes until you make them, bet you won't do whatever you did again I'm guessing you powered and redstoned it without pointing it at something not in your base first? :P

[Metalmeerkat]

Something I would add to that is to go for making obsidian tools pretty early on. You need an enrichment chamber to turn regular obsidian to obsidian dust, then a platinum compressor to compress platinum ingots with the dust to make obsidian ingots. Which make awesome tools and armor, equal to or better than diamond equipment. Expensive, but well worth it. Platinum is not too rare, and obsidian is pretty easy to get once you have an existing obsidian pickaxe/paxel.

[Prodigy182]

it seems that you have to go to the nether to get steel thats a bit time costly

[enforcer07]

Misconception, the nether is not required for steel, that is railcraft steel. All that is required is enriched iron (3 iron ingots 8 redstone) which you put in a metallurgic infuser (7 iron ingots 16 cobblestone 12 redstone 8 platinum) and you fuel it with compressed carbon (carbon = coal burnt in furnace). That gives you steel dust to smelt in a furnace and make steel ingots. No nether involved.

Thanks by the way metalmeerkat, thinking about it thats a nice place to stop the guide, basic introduction to some of the machines and power, and gets you up to diamond grade equipment, i'll stop the guide there unless anyone has any excellent suggestions as to what else can go into it

[bomboy2121]

i think u should make a youtube series

not u playing theres alot of it but theres almost no real guide

be in creative and make some stuff

[Zorbix]

First useful guide about Voltz that I find! Thanks a ton I am getting stuck at one point though. My Enrichment Chamber won't "macerate" Platinum.. I need the Platinum Dust for Solar power. Any idea?

[enforcer07]

Hmm, Zorbix is it definitely powered? and your putting ore in not ingots? i just checked and it works fine for me, double check the power and input just in case. And as for a youtube tutorial series, i would love to, but i would need someone to advise on a good (and free) recording software, i did a video before in the old days on basic minecraft of a dwarven city i built but it didn't record voice, i had to play the video and record voice over the top afterward plus i got a pretty bad framerate from the free stuff. so if you have a good suggestion i'll give it another shot. Incidently, if you search Khudnirn on youtube you should find it, not that proud of it, it was my second propper project (first was a japanese castle i took some screenshots for at the end)

[Zorbix]

Woops. Was putting ingots in hehe. Thanks for your quick response!

[andrewbragg]

Thanks enforcer07, i only have one question.. i have made my obsidian ingots and try to make a picaxe with them but it doesnt work... i can see the obsidian tools in the NEI but i cant craft any of them.. Help me please

[enforcer07]

It would seem that the latest patch has either broken them, or changed how they are built. Given that clicking the pickaxe or any other obsidian tool minus the paxel doesn't yield a recipe. Hold tight and it should get fixed eventually. Im glad they added pipes in this patch.... but they broke a fair few things lol

[ThrillBird]

Really awesome guide! I'll test this as soon as I get to the computer again ;)

[abeadles]

this has been soooo helpfull thx!

oye i blew up a second battery box .-.

how to i avoid trashing them?

p.s. i like your back to the future reference!

[Malexion]

So I just kinda:

1. Build a stable farm (cows, wheat, pigs, sheep)

2. Get to mining and don't stop (mix coal and iron for steel)

3. Build initial electricity (Cables, Coal Generator, Battery box, Electric Furnace, Enrichment Chamber)

4. Build a solar panel or two

5. Build a power tool and advance the battery to MV along with with mining,axe,shovel upgrades and the diamond pick

6. Build whatever with my limitless power and near indefinite use tool

nailed the process to #5 down to 1-2 hours alone depending on ore scarcity

[quarkhopper]

Where oh where do you get a lot of redstone? In voltz it's far, far more scarce than vanilla. I have found far more gold than redstone. The recipes make it out to be common but I've found that it severely cripples your crafting ability. Is it found somewhere other than it is in vanilla? a particular biome now?

[alekthefirst]

Where oh where do you get a lot of redstone? In voltz it's far, far more scarce than vanilla. I have found far more gold than redstone. The recipes make it out to be common but I've found that it severely cripples your crafting ability. Is it found somewhere other than it is in vanilla? a particular biome now?

redstone is plentiful, i have a full double chest with the stuff now XD. but i also use alot of redstone(Tip: Mine first, save half for later and then use the half you have left)

[quarkhopper]

...(Tip: Mine first, save half for later and then use the half you have left)

Not a bad tip! I have found a fair amount (enough to build an infuser, enrichment chamber, and a coal generator) in the last hour of play. It's funny: some areas seems to have a lot of it while other areas seem almost clear of it. Not worth speculating about I suppose.

[spartinpastic]

Hey I made a thread on it but i'll ask anyways. I'm trying to make compressed carbon but it just doesn't work (ps using latest build). I place coal in both sides of the furnace and nothing happens.

[bebo]

enforcer97 have you made a youtube series yet?