Technic Launcher is a fantastic launcher for Minecraft and contains a large collection of mods, all selected and made to work well together. If you’ve been playing Minecraft from when it was in alpha and find the game a bit stale at this point, the Technic Launcher really adds a lot to the game. There are a few different ‘packs’ of mods to choose from once you start TL up. In the drop down box in the top left, you can choose from Technic, Tekkit and a few others. Technic is designed (and only works) in single player, whereas Tekkit is the cut down version of Technic, desgined so as to work in multiplayer. I’ve only ever played Tekkit in multiplayer; to the point where I’m quite comfortable with most of the additions, but Technic is new to me.
Tekkit not only adds more ores, it also adds various machines. These machines can perform various functions, such as the Macerator, used to double the amount of ingots you get from your ore. You can also add various pipes and pumps to get items to be moved between chests and machines. There are also various magical items added that you can use to allow you to fly, or take huge chunks out of the world to speed up mining. I could spend some time trying to list every feature of Tekkit, but it would never be complete. Technic adds even more, including new mobs and pets.
Before I started playing a Technic world, I made plans of what I’d hope to achieve within the first few hours of playing. Like vanilla Minecraft, you’ll spend your first moments punching trees and trying to get some stone. Luckily, the Technic pack includes a mod that will fell an entire tree if you take out the bottom log using an axe, so getting enough wood to begin with wasn’t too troubling. I tried to make sure I’d have enough wood to be able to build a reasonably sized house for my first night. All too often in Minecraft, I’d spend my first night locked in a dark small room made of dirt, or digging under my half finished lodgings looking for coal. Not this time.
The main outline of my house took shape and then it was just a case of building it up. I had plenty of wood, I wasn’t worried. Except night was coming and I’d once again tried to build too much on my first day. Despite my best efforts, I spent my first night in a dark hole under my base, desperately trying to find some coal. It took some time and some changing of the lighting setting before I found my first collection of coal. I was able to continue mining further and further down through the night not in complete darkness. It was quite a successful first mine. I collected enough coal, iron, tin and copper to allow me to complete some of my early ambitions for this world.
First thing after emerging in the morning I did was finish the house. I wasn’t prepared to spend another night forced underground. I then set off in search of rubber, one of the first Tekkit/Technic items you’ll be in need of. Rubber is required to make insulated copper cable, something that’s used extensively in a lot of the early machine recipes, but is also used to transport power between your machines.
A lot of the machines you’ll want to build to begin with require electricity. Electricity can be generated through various different sources, such as wind power, solar power and even nuclear power. To begin with though, the aptly named Generator will do. This will simply generate electricity from any coal you give it to burn. Because I’m familiar with these machines, I also wanted to add a BatBox to the side of the generator which can be used to store and hold electricity. This means I won’t have to worry about any excess power being lost or wasted as my BatBox will store it for later. I needed to get more tin, iron and rubber in order to build my first few machines.
I spent the daytime getting rubber and I spent the nights mining, finding strange new materials. I found various gem-like structures that turned out to be Vis Crystals. Even after reading the wiki page for these items, I still have no idea how to use them. They’ll be safe in my chests for now.
I began to feel confident in spending the nights in my house (even if there were zombies riding zombie horses outside) to smelt and craft enough materials to build a Macerator, Generator, BatBox and Electric Furnace. My Generator and BatBox went in small basement I dug out and would supply power to the undersides of my machines. The Macerator would be fed ore to it from a chest, turn the ore into dust (you get two pieces of Iron Dust per Iron Ore) and then the dust would be fed into the Electric Furnace to be smelt into ingots and then fed into a final chest to hold my ingots. It’s a system that works great. Until ogres smash your house to pieces.
Damn ogres. I couldn’t really bear to play anymore once my house and machines had been smashed into oblivion by a rampaging ogre. Usually you lose items or parts of your buildings through stupidity or not dealing with a creeper properly. But this time, there was nothing I did to contribute to this mess; and ultimately, time and effort wasted.
I think I might stick to Tekkit in the future, the version with less ogres.
Desperately Bored 