Getting Started/sandbox

NTM is an exceptionally large tech mod with a vast quantity of complex and intricate features that are often only very lightly documented, if at all. As such, a significant portion of players will experience issues in determining exactly what they should be working towards at any given moment. As well as this, due to the extremely long history of NTM, there are some machines and items which may appear as a logical next step in progression for players but are actually severely outdated and are likely to be removed.

To rectify this issue for newer players, this guide will present a common track of progression through this mod in addition to a multitude of additional pathways that can be taken to make progression faster or more interesting. Once you have a full grasp of the operation of this mod, this guide can be replaced by your own personal goals as NTM does not strictly have a singular defined end goal.

Preamble

NTM generally does not require additional mods to operate properly unlike most other tech mods as most of the features common to tech mods are already present in NTM, such as: item transport, power generation, industrial scale mining, and more. Despite this though, there are some key quality of life features that are incredibly useful during a playthrough of NTM that are considered practically a necessity in most cases given the complexity of this mod.

Not Enough Items is the most useful of all of these QoL mods as it permits access to the recipes of every single item in the mod along with built in compatibility for various machines in NTM which given the sheer quantity of items present is incredibly useful. NEI has a very large amount of powerful features that can be useful for organization of tasks and searching items but only the most important features will be highlighted here.

Hotkeys

Key	Action
R	Look up recipe of item hovered over
U	Look up recipes that use the item hovered over
A	Add item to bookmarks list
T	Search nearby block inventories for item hovered over
B	Toggle bookmarks tab on or off
O	Toggle NEI display on or off

Search Bar

The search bar is contained at the bottom of the screen and behaves generally as is expected, searching every item that exists in game for the specified string of characters such that searching "ton" will yield results for stone, piston, and redstone. The search bar can also be double clicked to set it to highlight mode which will gray out any items in a currently accessed inventory that do not match the given search term.

Since many items can have many methods of creation, most recipe tabs in NEI will have multiple pages of possible recipes and possible machines in which the recipes are used. To navigate through the possible machines, use the topmost set of arrows, click on the icons at the top of the menu, or scroll while holding shift. To navigate through the recipes in a given machine, use the bottommost set of arrows or scroll while holding alt and hovering over the window.

Notable Locations

A missile silo, a dangerous but resource rich structure.

Though not a reliable source of materials, generated structures can give you a head start in this mod's progression by giving you a variety of useful early game items and weaponry to defend yourself while you work through the early stages of the mod. Some of the more noteworthy structures are:

• Antenna, basic early game loot like steel and wires.
• Radio, a much more resource rich structure which contains a highly valuable loot chest buried under the steel blocks on its roof. Contains a multitude of loot chests throughout the structure.
• Relay, a very large structure which contains moderate value loot in various hidden places throughout it. The deco blocks that compose most of the structure can be recycled into ingots.
• Spaceship, a crashed spaceship which contains advanced later game loot such as deuterium cells and PWR components that won't be useful until much later into the game.
• Vertibird, a crashed VTOL aircraft that contains decent loot as well as many deco blocks, found in deserts only.
• Factory, an abandoned brick building that contains a large quantity of loot as well as some basic early game machines such as anvils, electric furnaces, and more. Useful as an early game base to squat in due to its large size and complete lighting setup.

Some locations are also notable but not as a function of the value of their loot. Instead, some locations are incredibly dangerous to early game players and should be avoided if ever seen until properly equipped.

• Desert atom, a defunct nuclear power plant in the desert that contains a large amount of valuable loot but is permanently surrounded by a dense cloud of radiation due to the large quantity of nuclear waste barrels stored outside near it. Only proceed if you have a geiger counter and strong radiation protection.
• Waste tanks, a large tower in the desert that contains liquid nuclear waste. Contains a treasure chest but is difficult to access without proper protection.
• Silo, a large structure that contains incredibly valuable loot (including parts for the mods most destructive missile) but is defended by a powerful automatic turret with infinite ammo that will shoot at you if you are within range as well as a barbed wire fence. Avoid completely until you have good armor and a way to disable the turret.

Important Early Materials

Warning: Mining in NTM involves multiple new hazards. Avoid mining asbestos ore and avoid staying in areas where you have recently mined out large amounts of coal or uranium ore.

Much like the base game, a large portion of early progression is based around mining resources from deep within the earth. NTM adds in a variety of useful new ores which can come in handy later and are good to stockpile early on, but a few are of particular importance in the early game. Make sure you have a decent supply of each before settling down to make a base.

• Iron, copper, and redstone in large quantities.
• Aluminium, titanium, and lead in smaller quantities.
• Ample amounts of solid fuel, usually coal.
• Clay and sand for metallurgy.

Aluminum ore on its own is very useful in making fire bricks, so keep a small portion of it in its raw ore form for later use.

While mining, keep an eye out for hematite and bauxite, a light brown and bright orange rock respectively. They are the oxide form of iron and aluminum and can be processed into their native metal form through a slightly more complex but well worth it chain later on.

First Machines

A basic early game setup in NTM usually consists basic functional blocks in vanilla Minecraft as well as the following:

• A template folder.
• An anvil of either iron or lead (not the vanilla kind).
• A burner press, whose stamps can be made from flat stamps in the template folder.
• A blast furnace.

And optionally, though not required at this stage.

• A crucible above a firebox or heating oven for increasing ore yields and melting hematite.

Template Folder

The template folder is used primarily to create specific shaped stamps from flat stamps, alloying recipes, and later on assembly templates. It will be useful throughout the rest of the mod for a variety of purposes, so it is usually good to keep it in your inventory for convenient access. The material requirements for making each item present in the folder are listed in its tooltip.

Anvil

A very simple machine but a very important one, used for making simple machines and tools which can be done by selecting the item in the list in the anvil's GUI and pressing the blue crafting button above it to create it. Also used for creating higher tiers of anvils and foundry templates in the top crafting slots.

Burner Press

The simplest form of a press, using solid fuel input into the leftmost slot to perform stamping operations. All early game stamps will have a limited durability and need to be replaced after many operations with obsidian stamps being relatively easy to obtain but the most durable. The burner press is highly inefficient and takes time to warm up after not operating for a long period, meaning that it is most effective to process materials in batches rather than in small amounts as needed.

Metallurgy

Alloys are a very important component of progression in NTM, and to make them you will need either the blast furnace or the crucible. Generally, the blast furnace is easier and cheaper for early game alloying and will be the primary point of focus. The most important early game alloys consist of the following:

• Steel, a nigh universally important high strength alloy, made from coal and iron ore in a blast furnace.
• Red copper, a widely used electrical alloy, made from copper and redstone.
• Advanced alloy, a less widely used alloy with important applications in tools, made from red copper and steel.

The production of steel is particularly noteworthy in the blast furnace as you can use flux together with iron ore in order to yield a greater quantity of steel than any other production method. Flux can be obtained cheaply in small amounts from crafting fluorite and sand together. After making your first few steel ingots, you will be able to craft a blast furnace extension which will greatly accelerate the process of blasting for no additional material cost. As well as this, the unlocking of advanced alloy allows for the crafting of an advanced alloy pickaxe which is the first tool in the mod that is capable of vein mining which can greatly accelerate the process of obtaining ore.

Though not strictly necessary at this stage, the crucible and associated foundry infrastructure can allow for the creation of items such as cast plates which are used in the creation of machines such as the combination furnace which has a multitude of useful recipes such as bauxite refining and coal coking. The crucible will be a necessary machine for progression later on though, so it's usually best to make one now and reap the benefits.

Once you have a decent quantity of steel, you should craft a steel anvil in order to advance to the next stage of progression. Generally, it is good to work towards the next tier of anvil in NTM as they provide a rough outline of material progression throughout the mod.

The Electrical Age

Assembly ready to go.

Electricity is a core component of nearly all machines in NTM, and in the future you will have access to devices that can produce it in nigh unfathomable quantities. But for now, you must start small. The simplest and easiest to make power generation device available in NTM is the wood burning generator. As the name may imply, it burns wood to produce a decent supply of energy but it can also burn fluids as well with operation being able to be switched between with the arrow in the middle of its interface. Power can be transferred in two primary ways, either with electricity connectors/pylons and a cable drum or with red copper cable. In order to pull electricity from the burner, you must first have a destination that will accept electricity and a valid connection between the two which can be started by placing any valid connector against the orange plate on the back of the generator.

The likely first machine that you will need to generate electricity for is the assembly machine. The power draw of the assembler nearly perfectly matches that of the wood burning generator, meaning that it serves as a great complement to it in the early game. Upon unlocking the assembly machine, a vast array of new possibilities of industrial devices become available so progression may become unclear at this point, but there still exists a clear progression through material tiers despite the assembly machine's wide applicability.

Working With Fluids

Note: The different type of fluid ducts are purely cosmetic, there is no functional difference between them.

Fluids are an essential component to a variety of recipes and whole processing chains in NTM, and as you advance further into the electrical age, a clear understanding of their function will become more and more necessary. Unlike most other mods, fluid transferring pipes in NTM do not actually hold fluid but instead define connections between machines or containers, meaning that transfer is instantaneous. To contrast this significant increase in simplicity of use, each fluid pipe must have the exact type of fluid it will carry designated manually by a Fluid ID. These can be crafted in the machine template folder from an iron ingot and a single dye and will designate any fluid transfer pipe right clicked with them as a valid route for a fluid to travel. As well as this, fluid IDs can be used to designate storage tanks, machines, and certain buffers inside of machines as accepting a specific type of fluid.

At the moment, each fluid ID must be crafted manually but later on, you will be able to craft a multi fluid identifier which can be set to any valid fluid, leading to far less inventory clutter than an assortment of normal fluid IDs.

A Threshold

After reaching this stage of the game, you have likely gotten a decent handle on the basic mechanics of NTM: assembly, new materials, fluid transfer, and working your way through chains of recipes to obtain new machines. As such, the rest of this guide will be of a looser format, primarily focusing on larger mechanics and large scale goals that should be worked towards whose exact path towards obtaining can be reasonably discerned from use of NEI.

Good luck.

Basic Oil

Oil is a resource that isn't as readily accessible as simple ore bearing rock, instead requiring machines and electrical power in order to extract and make use of. The exact manner in which all of this is done is detailed more fully in the guide to oil processing, so instead this guide will cover what your goals in an oil setup should generally be during this stage of the game.

Oil Products

The most important oil products at this stage of refining technology are polymer/bakelite (functionally identical) and oil tar. Polymer only requires petroleum gas and some basic minerals to produce and is useful for making small amounts of in order to make devices such as the arc furnace and solidification machine but is difficult to automate due to the rarity of fluorite, so production of it should be kept minimal. Bakelite acts exactly the same as polymer but requires slightly more refined chemicals, making it difficult to obtain at this stage in large quantities though still possible.

Oil tar is less widely used by is required for all reasonably capable fluid storage devices, meaning that a decent stockpile should be made if you are intending to make a refinery.

Oil Power

Power from refined fuels will grant you a significant step up in terms of power generation capabilities compared to previous generators, particularly if used in combustion engines such as the industrial combustion engine and diesel generator rather than simple burners. An important point to note with this new kind of power is that it will produce greatly more soot than previous methods of power generation, meaning that an excessive use of combustion power may anger the local glyphids.

ZIRNOX

WARNING: Before interacting with any radioactive materials, it is highly recommended to read up on radiation safety first.

The ZIRNOX nuclear reactor is the first nuclear reactor that most players will be able to access and it serves as a gentle introduction into basic mechanics surrounding operating a nuclear reactor. Similar to oil, its operation is described in more detail in its respective page but there are some components to its operation that may catch players off guard for the first time.

1. ZIRNOX outputs super dense steam, not normal steam. As such, the first fluid pipe that connects to the reactor should be set to super dense steam and the turbine it leads to should be set to super dense steam as well. The next pipe and turbine should then be set to dense steam as running a dense type of steam through a turbine will lower it down a level of compression (Ultra Dense Steam -> Super Dense Steam -> Dense Steam -> Steam -> Low Pressure Steam).
2. If the reactor's temperature gauge is not at minimum 100C, then no steam will be produced. The reactor's temperature can be increased by venting CO2 and therefore allowing the reactor's core to run hotter, but the reactor will not function below 4000mb of CO2.

It is recommended not to rely on the ZIRNOX reactor for power over long periods of time due to it having greatly lower than average fuel efficiency compared to other kinds of reactors, so it is recommended to use it to provide power only as long as it takes to set up a slightly stronger reactor.

RBMK

Big and progression necessary, talk about mechanics in basic detail necessary for progression (bismuth, irradiation) but link to the main page on it

Also mention alternative reactors like the PWR and watz which is post RBMK but hey, it's worth mentioning

Alternative Bismuth Sources

Acidizing lol

Uses for bismuth, bismuth pickaxe, bismuth circuit

Advanced Oil

Vacuum n' shit or the reformer. Just basics, talk about simple products and chains

Watz

Progression necessary now because ICF lol

Fusion

Fusion, fusion products, ionized particles, the whole shebang.

ICF

The Big boy, the head honcho, the final finangler.