Guide: Pre-Nuclear
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Petrochemicals
With the refinement of the oil completed, we are ready to continue progress. The next step is to learn about Petrochemicals, products made from petroleum, they are one of the most useful materials in this mod.
Polymer/Bakelite
Polymer is what its name implies, it’s a polymer, which can sometimes be confusing since there are multiple other polymers added. It is specifically a type of plastic. Latex is also a kind of polymer but it's not the same as normal polymer. It is used in many recipes and crafting just like rubber.
Polymer bars can be made with petroleum gas, fluorite, and coal in a chemical plant. It can be also acquired by smelting plastic scraps which is useful early game.
Bakelite, is a alternative plastic to polymer, as it uses aromatic hydrocarbons instead of fluorite.
You can make it by mixing aromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum gas in a chemical plant to get it. You can also craft it with laboratory glassware, by mixing 2 tanks, one with aromatic hydrocarbons and the other with petroleum gas. This results in 2 bakelite powder, which you have to smelt in order to get the bar.
Rubber/Latex
Rubber is a type of synthetic polymer. It has elastic properties, unlike plastic, another type of polymer. Rubber is used in many recipes, like hazmat suits, machines, missile fuselages or machine upgrades.
It can be made in a chemical plant by mixing sulfur with unsaturated hydrocarbons.
Latex is a cheap, natural, organic polymer, used as an alternative to rubber in certain recipes. It can be obtained without an oil refinery, which means you can obtain it just when you spawn and get your first furnace. It is used in recipes that don't need insulation meaning you cannot use it in all recipes.
To get latex, simply place four dandelions in a crafting table or in your mini inventory grid, this will give you a ball form of latex, which then you have to smelt in order to get the bar form. Alternatively, latex can be obtained from pressing jungle wood logs using a flat stamp, which is likely to be the preferred method once automated presses and jungle tree farms are made.
Desh
Main page: Desh
Desh is a fictional material that is almost unbreakable and is exceptionally useful. It has very high blast-resistance, heat-resistance, and corrosion-resistance, and durability, an overall excellent material. It has a deep red color and is very stable. It emits no radiation or particles whatsoever, if anything, it is a radiation shield. This element is essential for progression because it's used in many crafting recipes. and also used for some optional useful stuff. It creates unbreakable tools which are great for early-game and a steam suit which provides various buffs.
Desh blend must be refined and processed in a chemical plant with mercury and light oil to produce a single ingot of desh. Might seem pretty expensive but you'll get used to it. Desh blend itself is acquired from rare earth ore, which must either be centrifuged or crystallized and then centrifuged to get the best output. If you don't have the silk touch enchantment, then fragments dropped must be shredded. Mercury can be obtained by centrifuging redstone ores, yes ores, to obtain a drop of mercury and light oil has been obtained just recently by the use of your good ol' oil refinery.
Silicon
Main Page: Silicon
Silicon is an essential material at this stage since it is required to make higher tier digital circuits such as the integrated circuit board and the military grade circuit board which are required in advanced machines. To make your first silicon boules you need an electric arc furnace and some sand, nether quartz or flint (there are other materials that can be used but the aforementioned are the most abundant), you can choose to either operate it in solid mode or liquid mode with the red button on the top corner of the GUI; solid mode directly deposits the silicon nuggets in the arc furnace's inventory, while liquid mode liquifies the silicon nuggets and outputs them through a crucible output at the side of the arc furnace (for some inputs it also gives you a bonus of a few nuggets/quanta), you can then setup a foundry basin with a billet mold to produce silicon wafers.
The silicon wafers should then be pressed with a circuit stamp to actually make printed silicon wafers to be used in circuits as shown in the recipe below.
Arc Welding
The arc welder is an important machine in the game, it being needed for building key machines in the progression of the mod.
Crafting
It is made in the anvil with:
Usage
The arc welder has three item slots and one fluid slot. Some recipes take in a fluid, others don't and only have input items. Each recipe has a specific power consumption, measured in HE/t and amount of time required, measured in ticks.
For I/O, the arc welder is more special. Each of the three item slots are color-coded (red, yellow and green respectively), which correspond to those of the welder's ports(4 red, 4 green and 2 yellow). The fluid input can be done on any of the welder's ports.
Uses
One core feature of the arc welder is welded plates. They are made out of two cast plates which are three ingots each, thus 6 ingots for each welded plate. Welded plates are used in machines that are important to the progression of the mod, such as the oil refinery, the Watz Power Plant and the fusion reactor.
Besides its use for welded plates, it also has simplified recipes for frequently used components, such as circuits and motors.
It is also the main machine used in the assembly of generic missiles.
Machine Upgrades
Different machines have specific areas in their interface. known as upgrade slots. Not all machines accept every upgrade, and some have unique upgrades that are exclusively theirs. You can install upgrades in these slots, which enhance performance based on the upgrade you choose. The three upgrades that are most frequently utilized are compatible with the majority of machines.
- (Red) Speed: Increases the operation speed of a machine. Sometimes increases the power usage as a takeback.
- (Blue) Power Saving: Decreases the power usage of a machine. Sometimes decreases the speed as a takeback.
- (Black) Overdrive: Most powerful of them all, increases the operation speed and some other properties by a huge amount.
All upgrades require the Machine Upgrade Template, which can be crafted in 2 different ways:
Silex & FEL
The Laser Isotope Separation Chamber (or SILEX) is a machine that separates isotopes and elements from compounds or other materials via the SILEX. It's kind of like a centrifuge. It needs to be used with another machine, the FEL. Using our newly acquired Desh, rubber and other materials, we can craft both the FEL and Silex.
The SILEX requires the materials to be in a liquid compound state in order to be processed, this means it can take in uranium or plutonium hexafluoride, but it doesn't require them to enrich either material. It can use hydrogen peroxide to liquefy any material to be processed, the material may even be in a powder state. The processed items come out into the right side collection of slots.
The FEL or Free Electron Laser is a large (7x3x3) multiblock utilized with the SILEX to produce various laser wavelengths needed for all SILEX recipes. To start it up, simply place a laser crystal inside the marked slot, and supply it with power, then just click the switch to activate it. You must place the SILEX at least 2 blocks away from activated FEL laser, or else Its going to melt, you can power up to 5 SILEX'es with one FEL, which is probably more than enough for all of your needs. In order to "cut" the laser (and perhaps protect the chests if you placed it in front of them for some reason), you have to use place any type of concrete on the laser. Glass on the other hand is going to let the laser through, while reinforced not, resulting in it being melted. Any other block other than concrete is replaced by fire, except for Digamma, which replaces it with Digamma Fire, and the block under it with Ash.
Ore Acidizer
Main page: Ore Acidizer
The Ore Acidizer (also referred to as a crystallizer or just acidizer) is a useful machine, used for processing various items for utility, ore multiplication, and more. It is powered by electricity and requires various solvents depending on the item.
The acidizer represents a hike in power consumption, requiring improved generation or the use of upgrades to counteract. However, its recipes tend to be superior alternatives to other methods. You can insert a Effectiveness upgrade into this machine which increases the output but increases the fluid usage as a takeback.
Bedrock Ore Processing
Main Page: Bedrock Ore / Bedrock Ore Processor
Note that this is a optional thing to do, you don't HAVE to make a bedrock ore facility.
Are you tired of running with low resources and mining with low resources? What do you know, you can automate it and get an endless amount of iron, copper, gold, thorium, uranium and whatever you need! It's not easy as it takes a lot of resources to create your first basic bedrock ore processing setup. This setup also requires a lot of space depending on how you build it. You can produce a large quantity of basic resources very fast making things much easier. Even materials such as Techetium Steel, Uranium, Thorium, Radium, and more can be produced. You don't always get all the resources you want from it, but you'll get some. Visit the Bedrock Ore Main Page and find out about it.
Schrabidium
Main page: Schrabidium
Schrabidium is a rare, fictional super-actinide in NTM and plays a key role in progression. It is mainly used for crafting powerful tools and armor. There are two main ways to obtain it: using a Schrabidium Transmutation Device or exposing uranium to strong radiation. However, the transmutation device requires magnetized tungsten, which, in turn, needs Schrabidium—creating a problem. To work around this, we first need to get Schrabidium by bombing uranium.
It is used mainly for crafting recipes but you can use it for other things like making tools and equipment with it. Schrabidium tools and armor are very strong and great for early to mid-game. However, each piece of armor requires a full Schrabidium block, making it quite expensive. Despite the effort needed, Schrabidium gear is well worth the investment.
Getting Schrabidium by Bombing Uranium
To obtain your first Schrabidium ingots, you must expose uranium ore to radiation. You will need the following materials:
- 10 uranium ores
- 1 radioactive barrel
- 1 det cord
- 1 detonator (or TNT and flint and steel if det cord was unsuccessful)
Procedure
- Place 10 uranium ores in a square on the ground.
- Build 10 blocks up from the center of the square.
- Place the radioactive barrel at the top, attach the det cord, and connect it to the detonator. If det cord does not work, TNT and flint and steel can be used instead.
- Move far away to avoid radiation, then detonate. To reduce radiation spread, you can also cover the barrel with concrete before detonating.
- After the explosion, at least one or two Schrabidium ores should appear among the uranium.
A More Efficient Method
Bombing uranium is a good way to get Schrabidium at first, but it is not practical in the long run. A Schrabidium Transmutation Device will be needed later to create Schraranium Ingots, which is then processed through Crystallizing flowed by centrifuging to produce Schrabidium Nuggets. This method is slower, but much more efficient over time.
Preparations
You can use various machines to make your work easier or do some stuff. Either it be automating, making everyday tasks easier or just efficiency in he thing we already built.
- Make a Desh or Saturnite anvil to craft some more stuff and plates easily.
- Make a Servo Set or the Desh one and put it in your armor as it improves your movement and speed.
- You can replace your oil derrick with a pumpjack, it does the same job but the pumpjack is faster and uses more electricity.
- M1TTY Environment Suit is a great early-game power armor at this stage of your progression.
- Seeing that dirt blocks are turning into dead or oily dirt near your oil refinery? This is called pollution, you can connect your machines into a smokestack using exhaust pipes to reduce the amount of pollution made.
Now you should be pretty much prepared for the Nuclear Age, true pain.