Glossary, Initialisms and Acronyms

• MFR - MineFactory Reloaded, precursor to Industrial Foregoing
• IF - Industrial Foregoing
• AE/AE2 - Applied Energistics
• RF - Redstone Flux
• TiCon - Tinkers' Construct
• NEI - Precursor to JEI, aka Just Enough Items.
• Big Reactors - Precursor to Extreme Reactors. Most information about Big Reactors mod should translate to Extreme Reactors.
• Bauble - An expanded player inventory system, which includes the ability to equip rings, capes, amulets and more.
• GC - Galacticraft
• TE - Thermal Expansion

Cornerstone: Industrial Foregoing - Introduction

Industrial Foregoing (IF) is a remake of MineFactory Reloaded (MFR).  It includes most of the machines from MFR, with some slight tweaks here and there for balancing.  It also has new machines such as a wireless energy system that generates a field which can power any other IF machines that have the necessary upgrade installed.  IF is all about automation: create a farm that plants, fertilizes (and waters) a field, then harvests the crops.  The systems are interlinked, so in order to make fertilizer for your field, you'll need to collect animal waste from farm animals.  You can setup an automated breeding system with crops from the automated farm, then slaughter animals for food and Pink Slime.  You'll need Pink Slime for the high end upgrades and Laser Drill, which generates random Ores for a large amount of RF.

IF has a built-in manual, which I highly recommend creating and reading.  It also integrates with JEI, so information about blocks is right in the interface.

Cornerstone: Draconic Evolution - Introduction

Draconic Evolution is an end-game mod.  It has some very powerful armor, tools and weapons, and has the largest energy storage and energy production system of any mod out there.  A fusion crafting system uses a multi-block crafting grid and millions (or billions) of RF.  Item recipes include Nether Stars, scores of diamonds/emeralds/gold, and a new ore called Draconium.  Higher tiers require Ender Dragon heart(s) (yes, plural, as in you'll be fighting the Ender Dragon a whole lot) and Chaos Shards, which come after defeating the new Chaos Guardian boss.  Think Ender Dragon on speed, with attacks that will kill you outright unless you have the highest armor upgraded as far as it can go.

The energy storage system can be upgraded to hold 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 RF.  That's not a random string of numbers, that's the maximum value for a 64-bit signed integer.  Good luck ever filing that to capacity or coming close to using that much RF for anything. :)

Cornerstone: Applied Energistics - Introduction

Applied Energistics is all about storage and automation.  Say goodbye to fields of chests in a room, and dump all your materials into a single storage system called an ME Network.  Craft right in your storage interface, or build processors and molecular assemblers to build complex items very quickly.  Connect up to machines from other mods and outsource material crafting to those machines, and import back into your network.  Items and even liquids are 'digitized' into the ME network, and reconstituted when you need to extract them from the network.  Items take up space on the network, so if you need more space, just add more storage cards.  Access the entire network from a terminal, or create a wireless terminal and place wireless access points to make a virtual WiFi network.

Tips and Tricks

1. Get familiar with Just Enough Items.  The default keys to to show recipes (R) and show uses (U) for blocks and items integrates with all the included mods, and shows you how to make something or how to use it.  Some items can only be obtained by mob drops, but some can be created!  For example, you can obtain Blizz Powder by killing the Blizz mob, but they can be hard to locate.  Instead, you can place snowballs in a Fluid Transposer and pipe Destablized RedStone onto it to make Blizz Powder.  Use the @"mod name" search string to see all the items/blocks from that mod only.
2. Make a jetpack.  They are invaluable for navigating the Nether, reaching floating Slime Islands, and just getting away from enemies.  Craft some Slime Boots to wear while you are using your jetpack to negate all fall damage, and use the bounces to get around even more quickly that you would otherwise be able to with the lower tier jetpacks.
3. Build a Smeltery as soon as you can.  Start doubling all your ores, especially rarer ones like Gold.  You can also save some iron by casting gears in the Smeltery instead of crafting them.  Trust me, you'll need lots of iron for AE2, ExtremeReactors and Draconic Evolution.  Put Cobblestone in the Smeltery to make more blocks to expand the capacity of the Smeltery.  Place multiple Drains and Faucets going to multiple Basins and tables, to cast multiple pieces or blocks at a time.
4. Save Platinum in raw ore form until you have machines that can process it to double output.  Iridium doesn't spawn anywhere in the world, but can be created by processing Platinum the right way...
5. Build a Reactor.  Even a basic 3x3x3 reactor can output a decent amount of power early game, and can be scaled up over time to mid-late game use.  Use the Big Reactors simulator to play around with designs, or build my favorite design: a 7x7x7 (5x5x5 inside) Gelid Cryotheum-cooled reactor with 5 columns of fuel rods in a plus design.  Once you convert this to an actively cooled reactor be sure to use Super Laminated Fluiducts to input water and output steam.  A companion 7x7x7 (5x5x5 inside) Turbine will only use 25% of the steam generated, so set the fuel rods appropriately.  One 7x7x7 Reactor will support four 7x7x7 Turbines.
6. Build an animal farm and slaughterhouse.  You may also need to make an automated plant farm of some kind for breeding materials.  Industrial Foregoing has all the machines you'll need.  Save enough pink slime to fill a bucket, but wait until you have a Mob Imprisonment Tool to capture the Pink Slime mob that spawn when you dump the bucket in the world.
• Build a mob spawning room.  You can rely on vanilla mechanics, or use a Drop of Evil dropped from a Wither Skeleton to curse the grass and make Cursed Earth, which greatly increases spawning mechanics.  Use a Mob Crusher to kill and grab items and Essence, then pipe the essence into a Mob Duplicator.
• Gotta Catch Em All!  Try and capture at least one of every Mob, to throw into your spawner room as needed.  Throw your Pink Slime mob into the Mob Duplicator and watch it rain pink Slime drops.
7. Make a multi-block kitchen with Cooking For Blockheads.  Certain foods don't keep you very full, and leave you needing to eat again soon.  Variety is the spice of life!  Or just bypass eating altogether and make yourself a Meat Feeder, then use it on a container with Liquid Meat.  Put that Mob Slaughter Factory to use!   As long as you keep that item in your inventory, you'll automatically eat from it as needed.

Mod Documentation

Many of the mods included in AppleCrafters are extremely well documented by the developers.  Check out some of the wikis here.  Asterisks(*) denote mods which also contain in-game documentation.

• Thermal Series - https://teamcofh.com/docs/
• Applied Energistics 2: http://ae-mod.info/
• Extra Cells 2: https://github.com/ExtraCells/ExtraCells2/wiki
• *Extra Utilities 2: https://ftb.gamepedia.com/Extra_Utilities_2
• Extreme Reactors: http://wiki.technicpack.net/Big_Reactors

• Simulator - http://br.sidoh.org
• Reliquary: https://github.com/P3pp3rF1y/Reliquary/wiki
• *Tinkers' Construct 2: http://tinkers-construct-2.wikia.com/wiki/Tinkers%27_Construct_2_Wiki
• *Industrial Foregoing - https://ftb.gamepedia.com/Industrial_Foregoing
• *Draconic Evolution - https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/draconic-evolution

Cornerstone: The Thermal Series - Introduction

Thermal Expansion is one of my favorite mod series.  The machines just make sense, and it has changed over time to be even better.  If you haven't played recently some of the mechanics have changed, some things have been added, some taken away.  TE is a true backbone mod, many other mods rely on it for a framework to build upon.  TE handles ore generation, a power system called RedStone Flux (RF), fluid/item/power transfer pipes, and a suite of machines for different tasks.  Double ore output by pulverizing into dust, then smelt the dust in a furnace that runs on RF, not coal. Melt materials into fluids, then combine fluids with items to make new items.  Recharge items, or repair them.  Make snow and ice, lava and obsidian, from basic resources like water and cobblestone.

All of the machines, containers and blocks are upgradeable, and some can be augmented to perform new tasks or specialize in a certain task.  Increase output of the Pulverizer from 2 to 3 pieces, press gears or currency, power your generators with excess gems or enchanted items.  Store all of the experience you gain in a book, then extract that Essence of Knowledge and use it to enchant, repair or process in machines.