Challenge Run
A Challenge Run is a playthrough of GregTech: New Horizons with extra player-imposed rules. These may be something as simple as "No Healing Axe" or as complex as skyblock. Challenge runs use artificially imposed limits to make the game harder or avoid mechanics the player doesn't want to interact with. Some typical challenges are listed below, the most well known examples being No Rocket Run (NRR) and Garden of Grind (GoG). Other common challenges include peaceful, no magic, tier-locked, no bees, harder pollution and speedruns. Many challenge types may make the full pack progression impossible to complete.
Challenge runs can benefit even players using standard progression, as they often map out alternate resource acquisition methods and use a greater variety of novel machine setups.
No IC2 Crop Breeding
IC2 crop breeding can be boring, slow, and highly RNG based. So why not completely avoid it? Here is a list of breed-less methods of obtaining resources crops are usually used for:
| Resource | Usual IC2 Crop Source | Alternative Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Sticky Resin | Stickreed | 1) GT++ Fish Catchers (Slimeballs work for everything that sticky resin works for, minus RC water tanks. Later after steel you can use congealed green slime anyway. You can use the byproducts for fish oil for methane/biodiesel, and works as a passive source of diamonds and other useful stuff.)
2) Slime Sapling from slime islands (Gives congealed green slime and blue slimeballs, you need an extractor for the congealed green slime. On modern versions of GTNH, axes instamine the congealed green slime.) 3) Industrious Bee Line (The bees produce stringy combs which can be centrifuged into propolis and honey. Propolis can be further centrifuged into sticky resin. The honey is useful for making biomass and can be centrifuged into sugar (a lot of sugar will be necessary to make industrial tnt for the implosion compressor, so it's also good to automate.) Bee breeding is it's own task, but only three bees (common -> cultivated -> diligent) are required. Automating the apiary itself is simple.) |
| Wood | Bonsais | Simply use the saplings to make 1/1/1 versions, and just make a bigger field. You're unlikely to take down the server with the TPS cost before the Tree Growth Simulator in IV, especially if you use a crop manager. For a completely IC2-free options there's the Multifarm, Steve's Carts, Farming Station and manual harvesting large trees like Jungle or Rainforest Oak with a Tinkers Tools Lumberaxe. |
| Gold | Glowflower/
Glowing Coral |
1) Glieonia (Thaumcraft crop - directly drops glowstone dust and CAN BE WORLD ACCELERATED WITHOUT TILE ENTITY MODE! Fast and convenient, and research is early in Thaumic Bases tab. Farming it is a bit tricky - you will have to make EIO farmer (HV) or forestry multifarm (LV, but high effort))
2) Mob Farm (eg zombie pigmen) (use the EEC) 3) Botania Alchemy Catalyst (Can transmute redstone into glowstone, which you can then process for gold) (and redstone) (the conjuration catalyst can also dupe both redstone and glowstone) 4) Mercury chem bathing magnetite (If you really hate plants for some reason, you can turn magnetite ores directly into gold by chem bathing with mercury. Although you might need to automate redstone for the mercury upkeep, so maybe use Redlon Thaumcraft crop?) 5) Thaumcraft nugget dupe (For the true Thaumcraft or bee fan. The tricky part here is getting enough lucrum and permutatio. Permutatio can come from honey drops from bees or natura barley seeds, and the lucrum can be sneakily obtained with Etched Sandy Stone - you may need the auto chisel. To fix the thaum vs. GT nugget problem, try using a chest buffer to convert between them. You can also dupe glowstone dust with the thaumatorium) |
| Terrawart | Terrawart | This actually requires zero breeding. Just pop some nether wart onto a cropstick and put snow under the dirt. It will eventually convert to terrawart. |
| Chlorine | Saltyroot
Tearstalks |
Pre-Moon:1) Mining Salt Veins (This is the simplest and easiest way, but is of course not renewable.) 2) Lazullia (Thaumcraft crop - drops lapis gem and can be world accelerated as needed. Research is early in Thaumic Bases tab. Farming it is a bit tricky - you will have to make EIO farmer (HV) or forestry multifarm (LV, but high effort. You only want the sodalite byproduct.) Post-Moon:1) Multiblock Pump for Salt Water |
| Fluorine | Black Stonelily | This is one of the trickiest fluids to obtain before late game, when you can just pump HF.
1) Electrolyzing Cryolite Veins 2) Chem Plant Fluorite Ore Synthesis (IV) (This creates fluorite from sandstone using mostly cheap inputs, except you need some Ir/Ru catalyst from platline. Very late game the catalysts become lossless, of course.) |
No Rocket
Titanium
The first real deviation is Titanium. The best ways to get it are bees or Blood Magic meteors. The Aluminium bee in particular does not need Titanium to breed, but processing its Bauxite Combs for Rutile yields a decent amount of Titanium. Another alternative is Bauxia crops, though these need UU Matter to get Titanium without some ore to mix with and that's expensive. Aluminium Ore Gravel (especially with Bauxia crops) and Scrap Boxes are also technically possible, as are stone and pahoehoe lava centrifuging, but the latter two need Titanium to unlock. The Titanium bee itself is an incredible source of Titanium, since it gives the pure ore and not Bauxite, Rutile, Ilmenite, etc. It requires a block of Titanium to breed, plus Phthalic Acid and an EV Chemical Reactor or Large Chemical Reactor to process the combs, and an EV powered Electric Blast Furnace.
Radon
When you unlock nanoprocessors, you gain the ability to directly craft HV circuits, and honestly, for the well-prepared player, circuits become cheaper from there.
However, the next upgrade, quantumprocessors, while arguably the simplest circuit upgrade in the game, requires one material you might find hard to get: radon.
Traditionally, there is one way to get radon in gregtech: a chemical reactor loop with Plutonium 239. There is another way to get in in gtnh: radium decay.
Radium decay may be better early on, it's a bit worse but still totally reasonable. Radium comes from sifting Uranium, Uraninite, Pitchblende, or Thorium ore. By far the easiest of these to get is Thorium, since it can just be mined in the nether. The others can be made from crops + uum, but this isn't very practical especially without access to spaceplant, transformium, or high tier mass fabricators. It's worth noting that while spaceplant is much better than transformium for uum since transformium mostly drops useless uua berries, transformium can technically be bred without spaceplant (or even stargatium). But the amount of effort that would take without the crop robot would be insane. There is also a Thaumcraft infusion recipe for Uranium ore from uum that does not need crops, and IIRC this ore can even be processed for a small chance of Plutonium 239, but you need 8 so this would take humongous amounts of uum.
Trollplant sounds good since it gives plutonium dust directly, but of course this is the rarer but less useful P 241. 239 can be converted to 241 in a centrifuge but not the other way around so this will not work.
The best way to actually get plutonium is by summoning a meteor with Phobos Stone in it, which when macerated at HV+ has a chance to give plutonium. Even a non-boosted meteor gives over 8 (10 or 12 iirc) plutonium on average, so you will probably be able to get enough to set up the loop. I also recommend breeding the plutonium bee so you can easily get more plutonium.
A final option is IC2 nuclear reactors, which can very reliably get plutonium and other even more rare materials like lutetium or naquadria, but is AGONIZINGLY slow. Still this may push you towards using them for power in which case you would end up with a lot of them and get byproducts at a tolerable rate.
Notes on Bees and Meteors
Bees and meteors will continue to be invaluable to your space free journey.
- Meteors can be made almost 3x as strong by using and ore drilling plant to triple the crushed ore. Before that, Witching Gadgets processing or a SAG mill with Vibrant Alloy, Melodic Alloy, or Stellar Alloy grinding balls can be used.
- GT5U ORES ARE TILE ENTITIES. Naturally generated ores and ores summoned in meteors will have a tag set indicting that they are naturally generated, but unfortunately this is impossible to do with manually placed ores (from loot bags, chemplant for fluorite ore, possibly orechid (not sure about that one), etc.
- Meteors do not contain small ores and will never exceed 48 blocks in radius, so the only advantage of using higher tier Ore Drilling Plants is that they actually have a slight built in speed boost (beyond what you would get by overclocking a lower tier one).
- Meteors can also be buffed by using the alchemic calcinator + alchemic linker to feed Orbis Terrae AR to the Master Ritual Stone, which increases the radius of all meteors by 2 (and in the gtnh fork of blood magic this does not decrease the ore density at all!)
- There are a few notable random space metals that meteors (and sometimes space plants unlock): meteoric iron unlocks extra utilities drums (which can further be upgraded into bedrockium drums by using the implosion compressor to get initial bedrockium and then duping it via thaumcraft), oriharukon (good for melodic alloy grinding balls for the SAG mill), alduorite (best turbine material for lava power due to being a higher power tier), mytryl (spaceplant only) (used for "cheaper" ichorium block recipe)
- Meteoric Iron ore is also notable because it give Iridium VERY easily and very early without having to do the platinum part of the platline first.
- The platline meteor (IV Scanner) is particularly noteworthy because it gives you huge amounts of platline materials that require less processing than the full platline.
- Different bees have different processing requirements, and most ore bees need you to combine the combs with an acid to get purified ore. This locks you out of the left half of the ore processing diagram (most notably chembath byproducts like PtMP from Nickel Ore). The top tier acid for comb processing is Phthalic Acid, so you will learn to love making it!
- There are sometimes two or more bees for the same resource, possibly even with the same name, possibly with some unobtainible. For example, Fluix and Fluix both exist, or Platinum and Valuable.
- Table of bees by acid/processing needed:
| Acid | Comb | Byproducts | Bees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hydrochloric | Pyrope | ? | |
| Hydrochloric | Apatite | Niobium | Apatite |
| Hydrochloric | Tin*† | Zinc, Zirconium | Tin/Iron |
| Hydrochloric | Sapphire | Sapphire | |
| Hydrochloric | Lead*† | Silver | Lead/Plutonium |
| Hydrochloric | Diamond | Graphite | Diamond |
| Hydrochloric | Molybdenum* | Tungsten | |
| Hydrochloric | Gallium* | Zinc | |
| Hydrochloric | Aluminium | Aluminium | |
| Hydrochloric | Zinc* | Gallium | Zinc |
| Hydrochloric | Manganese* | Manganese | |
| Hydrochloric | Copper*† | Copper | |
| Hydrochloric | Yellowgarnet | Yellow Garnet | |
| Hydrochloric | Nickel* | PtMP | Nickel/Gold |
| Hydrochloric | Lignite† | Lignite/Coal | |
| Hydrochloric | Emerald | Emerald | |
| Hydrochloric | Amber | Amber | |
| Hydrochloric | Quicksilver*† | Quicksilver | |
| Hydrochloric | Firestone | Firestone/Sulfur | |
| Hydrochloric | Arsenic* | Arsenic | |
| Hydrochloric | Silver*† | Silver/Cryolite/Astral Silver | |
| Hydrochloric | Stone† | Chem: Soapstone; Centri: Stone, Black Granite, Red Granite, Basalt, Marble, Redrock, Beeswax | Redstone/Lapis/Certus/Fluix/Diamond/Ruby/Sapphire/Olivine/Emerald/Red Garnet/Yellow Garnet/Firestone |
| Hydrochloric | Sulfur† | Sulfur | |
| Ruby | Aluminium Hydroxide, Chrome, Vanadium | Ruby | |
| Hydrochloric | Olivine | Olivine | |
| Hydrochloric | Cryolite† | Fluorine, Sodium, Aluminium | Cryolite |
| Hydrochloric | Almandine | Titanium | |
| Hydrochloric | Oil† | Oil | |
| Hydrochloric | Magnesium* | Magnesium | |
| Hydrochloric | Grossular | ? | |
| Hydrochloric | Gold* | Gold/Infused Gold | |
| Hydrochloric | Iron*† | Iron/Steel/Manganese | |
| Hydrochloric | Certus Quartz | Barite | Certus Quartz |
| Hydrochloric | Lapis | Lapis | |
| Hydrochloric | Redstone | Rare Earth | Redstone |
| Hydrochloric | Coal† | Thorium | Coal |
| Hydrochloric | Bauxite | Rutile | Aluminium |
| Hydrochloric | Redgarnet | Red Garnet | |
| Hydrofluoric | Shadow Metal† | Shadow Metal | |
| Hydrofluoric | Chromium | Chrome | |
| Hydrofluoric | Endium* | Endium | |
| Hydrofluoric | Meteoriciron (Mutatron) | Iridium Metal Residue Dust | Meteoric Iron |
| Hydrofluoric | Divided† | Chem: Diamond; Centri: Semi-Stable Nugget, Diamond, Iron, Magic Wax | Unstable |
| Hydrofluoric | Mithril (Mutatron) | PtMP | Mithril |
| Hydrofluoric | Platinum | Platinum Nuggets, Platinum Concentrate | Platinum |
| Phosphoric | Electrotine | Gold, Diamond | Electrotine |
| Phosphoric | Lithium* | Lithium | |
| Phthalic | Plutonium* | Plutonium | |
| Phthalic | Desh (Mutatron) | Desh | |
| Phthalic | Titanium | Titanium | |
| Phthalic | Uranium | Uranium | |
| Phthalic | Ledox (Mutatron)* | Ledox | |
| Phthalic | Thorium* | Thorium | |
| Phthalic | Bedrockium† | Bedrockium | |
| Phthalic | Sparkling† | Chem: Nether Star; Centri: Dragon Egg Dust, Nether Star Dust, Magic Wax | Wither |
| Phthalic | Tungsten | Molybdenum | Tungsten |
| Phthalic | Callisto Ice (Mutatron)* | Callisto Ice | |
| Phthalic | Naquadah | NqOM, Nq+OM | Naquadah/Naquadria |
| Phthalic | Lutetium | Lutetium | |
| Phthalic | Quantium (Mutatron) | Quantium | |
| Phthalic | Mytryl (Mutatron) | Mytryl | |
| Phthalic | Draconium (Awakened Draconium Coil) | Drake | |
| Phthalic | Palladium | Iridium | |
| Phthalic | Oriharukon (Mutatron) | Oriharukon | |
| Phthalic | Iridium | Iridium Nuggets, Acidic Iridium | Iridium/Osmium |
| Phthalic | Osmium | Osmium Nuggets, Acidic Osmium | Iridium/Osmium |
| Phthalic | Blackplutonium (Mutatron) | Black Plutonium | |
| Phthalic | Mysterious Crystal (Mutatron)† | Mysterious Crystal | |
| Phthalic | Americium (Fusion Reactor MK2)* | Americium | |
| Phthalic | Naquadria (Mutatron) | Nq*OM | Naquadria |
| Phthalic | Awakeneddraconium (Mega Apiary) | Drake | |
| Phthalic | Trinium (Mutatron) | Trinium | |
| Phthalic | Indium (Cinobite)* | Indium | |
| Phthalic | Neutronium (Mega Apiary) | Neutronium | |
| Centri | Oily | Oily Propolis (Oil) | ? |
| Centri | Petrolium | Petrolium Propolis (Fuel) | ? |
| Centri | Milky | Milkdew (Milk) | Bovine/Chad |
| Centri | Fruity | Juicy Drop (Fruit Juice) | Fruity |
| Centri | Seedy | Nutdew (Seed Oil) | Farmed/Sandwich/Ash/Apatite/Fertilizer |
| Centri | Iron | Iron Grains (Iron) | Rusty |
| Centri | Golden | Gold Grains (Gold) | Glittering |
| Centri | Copper | Copper Grains (Copper) | Corroded |
| Centri | Tin | Tin Grains (Tin) | Tarnished |
| Centri | Silver | Silver Grains (Silver) | Shining |
| Centri | Tar | Creosote Propolis (Creosote) | ? |
| Centri | Latex | Rubber | Elastic |
| Centri | Caffeinated | Coffee Powder | ? |
| Centri | Glacial | Kelvin Drop (Liquid Nitrogen) | ? |
| Centri | Shadow | Obsidian Dust | ? |
| Centri | Leaden | Lead Grains (Lead) | ? |
| Centri | Zinc | Zinc Grains (Zinc) | Galvanized |
| Centri | Platinum | Platinum Grains (Platinum) | Valuable |
| Centri | Emerald | Emerald Fragment | ? |
| Centri | Ruby | Ruby Fragment | Ruby |
| Centri | Sapphire | Sapphire Fragment | Sapphire |
| Centri | Diamond | Diamond Fragment | ? |
| Centri | Nickel | Nickel Grains (Nickel) | Lustered |
| Centri | Unstable | Saltpeter | ? |
| Centri | Decomposed | Compost | Decomposing |
| Centri | Certus | Nether Quartz, Certus Quartz | Quantum |
| Centri | Papery | Paper | Pupil/Scholarly/Savant |
| Centri | Soul | Soulful Wax | Spirit/Soul/Pure/Vazbee/Somnolent/Dreaming |
| Centri | Stickyresin | Sticky Resin, Plantball | Slimeball/Stickyresin |
| Centri | Ash | Dark Ashes, Ashes | ? |
| Centri | Coolant | Coolant Drop (IC2 Coolant) | Coolant |
| Centri | Energy | Hot Coolant Drop (Hot IC2 Coolant), Energium Dust | Energy/Lapotron/Pyrotheum |
| Centri | Lapotron (Mutatron) | Lapis coolant Drop (IC2 Coolant), Lapotron Dust | Lapotron |
| Centri | Pyrotheum | Blaze Powder, Pyrotheum Dust | Pyrotheum |
| Centri | Cryotheum | Cryotheum Dust | Cryotheum |
| Centri | Redalloy | Red Alloy | |
| Centri | Redstonealloy | Redstone Alloy | |
| Centri | Conductiveiron | Conductive Iron | |
| Centri | Vibrantalloy | Vibrant Alloy | |
| Centri | Energeticalloy | Energetic Alloy | |
| Centri | Electricalsteel | Electrical Steel | |
| Centri | Darksteel | Dark Steel | |
| Centri | Pulsatingiron | Pulsating Iron | |
| Centri | Stainlesssteel | Stainless Steel | |
| Centri | Enderium | Enderium Base, Enderium | Enderium |
| Centri | Thaumiumdust | Thaumium/Thaumic Shards | |
| Centri | Salismundus | Salis Mundus/Thaumium/Naga/Lich/Hydra/Ur Ghast/Snowqueen | |
| Centri | Tainted | Taint Tendril, Tainted Goo, etc | Tainted |
| Centri | Astralsilver | Astral Silver | |
| Centri | Thauminite | Thauminite | |
| Centri | Fluix | Fluix | |
| Centri | Rareearth | Rare Earth 1, 2, 3, etc | Redstone |
| Centri | Slag | Stone, Black Granite, Red Granite | ... |
| Centri | Salt | Salt, Rock Salt, Saltpeter | Salt/Lithium/Force |
| Centri | D-O-B | ... | D-O-B |
| Centri | Space | Oxygen Drop (Liquid Oxygen) | Space |
| Centri | Mercury (Mutatron) | Mercury Core Dust, Mercury Stone Dust, Ilmenite, Tungstate, Draconium, Titanium, Jade, Diamond, Helium, Vanadium, Helium-3 | Mercury |
| Centri | Venus (Mutatron) | Venus Stone Dust, Carbon, Quantium, Mytryl, Amethyst, Mithril, Draconium, CO2 | Venus |
| Centri | Moon (Mutatron) | Moon Stone Dust, Silicon Dioxide, Manganese, Olivine, Rare Earth, PtMP, Tungstate | Moon |
| Centri | Mars (Mutatron) | Mars Stone Dust, Banded Iron, Magnesium, Alumina, Ruby, Diamond, Iridium Metal Residue | Mars |
| Centri | Jupiter (Mutatron) | Io Stone Dust, Europa Ice Dust, Europa Stone Dust, Ganymede Stone Dust, Callisto Stone Dust, Callisto Ice, Sulfur, Tantalite, Tungsten, Jasper, Infused Gold, Iridium Metal Residue, Ledox, Lapis, Lazurite, Oriharukon, Barium, NqOM, Oxygen, Silicon Dioxide, Iron, Sodalite, Uranium 238, Nitrogen, Galena, Topaz, Blue Topaz, Lithium | Jupiter |
| Centri | Saturn (Mutatron) | Enceladus Snow Dust, Titan Stone Dust, Chrome, Iridium Metal Residue, Rarest Metal Residue, Mysterious Crystal, Trinium, NqOM, Nitrogen, Nickel, Emerald, Gallium, Methane | Saturn |
| Centri | Uranus (Mutatron) | Miranda Stone Dust, Oberon Stone Dust, Tin, Tetrahedrite, Iridium Metal Residue, Desh, Chrome, Rarest Metal Residue, Argon, NqOM, Uranium 235, Plutonium 241, Trinium | Uranus |
| Centri | Neptun (Mutatron) | Proteus Stone Dust, Triton Stone Dust, Copper, Uraninite, Adamantium, Diamond, Uranium 238, Plutonium 239, Radon, Gold, Neodymium, Rare Earth, Niobium, Yttrium, Gallium | Neptune |
| Centri | Pluto (Mutatron) | Pluto Stone Dust, Pluto Ice Dust, Thorium, Uranium 238, Black Plutonium, Red Garnet, Yellow Garnet, NqOM, Plutonium 239, Ledox | Pluto |
| Centri | Haumea (Mutatron) | Haumea Stone Dust, Infused Gold, NqOM, Nether Star, Lanthanum, Caesium, Crude Rodium | Haumea |
| Centri | Makemake (Mutatron) | MakeMake Stone Dust, Red Garnet, Yellow Garnet, Black Plutonium, Gallium, Yttrium, Niobium | MakeMake |
| Centri | Centauri (Mutatron) | a Centauri Bb Surface Dust, a Centauri Bb Stone Dust, Iridium Metal Residue, Nq+OM, Draconium, Cosmic Neutronium, Infinity Catalyst, Rarest Metal Residue, Neutronium, Black Plutonium, Mercury | a Centauri |
| Centri | Tceti (Mutatron) | Tceti E Stone Dust, Lapis, Apatite, Bedrockium, Draconium, Infinity Catalyst, Trinium | Tceti |
| Centri | Barnarda (Mutatron) | Barnarda E Stone Dust, Barnarda F Stone Dust, Niobium, Yttrium, Gallium, Neutronium, Bedrockium, Unstable | Barnarda |
| Centri | Vega (Mutatron) | Vega B Stone Dust, Uranium 235, Plutonium 241, Europium, Neutronium, NqOM, Awakened Draconium | Vega |
| Centri | Infinitycatalyst (Infinity, Mega Apiary) | Infinity Catalyst, Neutronium | Infinity Catalyst |
| DTPF | Cosmicneutronium | Cosmic Neutronium | |
| DTPF | Infinity | Infinity |
- = Purified/Centrifuged Ore can be Smelted into 10 nuggets for increased yield
† = Can be Centrifuged instead of Chemical Reacted (skipping need for acid and giving dust directly, sometimes with a lower than 100% chance)
- Additional combs/bees: Enddust, Ectoplasma, Arcaneshard, Stardust, Dragonessence, Enderman, Silverfish, Rune1, Rune2, Fireessence, Helium, Argon, Xenon (Mega Apiary), Neon, Krypton, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Mica, Seaweed (Mutatron), Infusedair, Infusedterra, Infusedignis, Infuedaqua, Infusedordo, Infusedperditio, Fluorine, Nethershard, Endshard, Caelestisred, Caelestisgreen, Caelestisblue, Blizz, Kevlar (UHV, comb is QFT), Dragon Blood (UHV), Force, Powdery, Wheaten, Irradiated, Bone, Lapis, Fungal, Glowing, Blaze, Static, Energetic, _ Tinted
- Bees with additional non-comb outputs: Arcane, Savant, Ghastly, Spidery, Smouldering, Brainy, Big Bad, Poultry, Beefy, Porcine, Batty, Sheepish, Neighsayer, Catty, Doctoral, Wither, Draconic, Ferrous, Auric, Cuprum, Stannum, Argentum, Plumbum, Aluminum, Ardite, Cobalt, Manyullyn, Diamandi, Esmeraldi, Apatine, Silicon, Certus, Fluix, Flux, Wispy, Empowering, Nexus, Void, Floral, Vazbee, Skystone, Imperial, Industrious, Sugary, Fiendish, Demonic, Leoprine, Tricky, Peat, Stained, Chad, Clay, Slimeball, Stickyresin, Sandwich, Fertilizer, Tea, Sunnarium (Fusion Coil/Mutatron), Salt, Explosive, Endium, Moon (Mutatron), ..., Jaegermeister (Infinity Chest)
Space Plants
Space Plants can be used to get a wide variety of exotic space materials, but are generally very inefficient at this, or they can be fluid extracted for UU matter. This is arguably the best way to get UU matter until late ZPM given how bad mass fabricators are, so making a crop breeding robot is definitely recommended for this alone. However! Space plants need a moon block below to fully grow, and the easiest way to get one in a no space run is moon dirt from blood magic meteors.
Stargatium, Titania, Bauxia, and a few others can be used to boost the yield of space ores from meteors, but these are not really worth it. After Space Plant, Yellow Stonelilly is probably the most useful
Tungsten
The next major space resource is Tungsten, but this is MUCH easier to get than Titanium.
- Pahoehoe processing is a great source.
- You can also hunt around the far end islands and hope to find Scheelite ore there, but it is fairly rare.
- These two sources have the advantage of giving scheelite dust instead of tungstate dust, which is a lot easier to process especially early on.
- Endstone dust or Ender goo centrifuging can be used to get Tungstate dust.
- Endstone dust from yellow stonelillies is actually a very popular source of tungsten, though this requires endstone under the crop. The initial endstone can be gotten from the end or from an ender sapling from thaumic bases which will produce endstone when it grows. Endstone can also be made by throwing botania ender air bottles onto stone, converting up to 64 at once, but this does not save you a trip to the end.
- The tungsten bee is pretty good later on, but scheelite/tungstate process into tungsten trioxide which can be blast furnaced much faster than pure tungsten dust, so the tungsten (and DOB) bee requires a stronger EBF setup.
Naquadah
- Naquadah virtually requires meteors. It is not the byproduct of any ore, so the only ways to get it are meteors, an extremely rare end vein that absolutely is not worth looking for, or IV+ loot bags.
- The loot bags let you get the naquadah bee without a meteor.
- The SAG mill with melodic alloy is suggested for loot bag ores, since they cannot be processed by ore drilling plants. * Besides the naquadah bee or meteors, the DOB bee is a very interesting choice for naquadah. It gets naquadah dust directly, saving you from needing to smelt NqOM for nuggets, but it is a very rare centrifuge output (and requires a multiblock centrifuge). Still with the buff to chance outputs in parallel recipes and with how good industrial apiaries are, this is at least a good supplement to naquadah production. Nq consumption will be low until ZPM anyway, mostly used for Nq doped Wafers with a bit being used for EBF coils and Gaia Pylons.
Samarium
- It is perfectly possible to set up the Monazite line (or even Bastnite line) in a no space playthrough using meteors.
- However, after the Europium nerf this line only has two worthwhile outputs: Samarium and Cerium. Both of these can be gotten other ways, although the Monazite line is still the best way
- The quest reward for the IV polarizer is a couple Samarium rods. These can be pulverized and scanned to replicate Samarium. An IV replicator can generate 1 Samarium ever 11 minutes or so, which will be enough for LuV and ZPM if it is running constantly.
- Samarium can be obtained at an absurdly low ratio from Rare Earth 3 processing. It's literally thousands of Rare Earth dust per Samarium, and it needs an IV Dehydrator. But this is an option for the truly deranged.
- Cerium is also available from Rare Earth processing, but at a much better rate (only a couple hundred to one).
The Mutatron
In LuV, you unlock the mutatron, which is incredibly strong in a no space playthrough because it is the only way to get the space bees. However, it is very complicated and expensive, especially when considering the rabbit hole required for mutagen. One option is to simply wait until ZPM and make the mutagen producer. The other is a long bacterial vat chain.
The mutatron has a 30% chance to make pristine bees ignoble, and an 80% chance to kill ignoble bees (don't worry this is based on the input bee it cannot happen back to back in the same mutatron operation and randomly kill your pristine princess). Thus the Hibeescus is recommended to convert ignobles back into pristines. This requires making Gaia pylons and killing the Gaia guardian. Remember that you can world accelerate it to make it faster.
To obtain mutagen, you will need an LuV bacterial vat with at least Rhodium Plated Palladium Borosillicate glass, IV+ (LuV recommended) biolab, and high tier distillery, fermenter, brewer, and fluid solifier (recommend an LuV dangote, LuV LPF, and EV brewer). You will also need an LuV+ LCR, and you either need lots of space plant and uum and to make the LCR ZPM, or an LuV recycler (which will be sacrificed to the blood gods).
- Obtain growth catalyst medium. This requires breeding a bacterial culture from Bacteria (fluid) in the bio lab. You can get Bacteria (fluid) from an even deeper bacterial vat/biolab chain, OR you can just craft it in the genetics Incubator (check uses for the incubator in NEI).
- Craft Stemcells. We are interested in the byproduct, bacterial sludge.
- Obtain Mars Stone Dust from meteors
- Breed Mars bacteria in the bio lab. Now you can combine Mars Stone Dust and distilled water in the bacterial vat to get infinite Bacterial Sludge :D. You can craft the spectre key with it, not that it's super useful in a no space playtrough. Bismuth Rods provide enough Sievert for this recipe and Bismuth can be duped using thaumcraft, or you can just use Uranium. I also recommend using Iridium glass even though Rhodium Plated Palladium is sufficient for all the Vat recipes we will be doing because it is cheaper. You will need a Large Processing Factory, but that will basically be required in a couple steps anyway.
- Gather several hundred buckets of Bacterial Sludge. It is distilled to Mutagen 100:1 so we will be breeding the Mutagen bacteria, but this will require a few buckets of Mutagen the expensive way.
- Convert the Bacterial Sludge to Enriched Bacterial Sludge by combining it with Uranium 235 in a Brewing Machine (EV+ recommended). Tip: use the thaumcraft recipe for ic2 Uranium 235 Nuggets as this gets you 7 nuggets of U235 from 1 U238 dust.
- Convert the Enriched Bacterial Sludge into Fermented Bacterial Sludge in a Fermenter (LuV Large Processing Factory recommended) (You can also make General Purpose Fermenting Bacteria and use a Bacterial Vat, but this requires the Transformation Module which is quite expensive, and it's not really faster for the relatively small amount we need).
- Distill the Fermented Bacterial Sludge into Mutagen (LuV Dangote Distillus recommended).
- Finally, to breed the Mutagen Bacteria in the biolab you will need Mysterious Crystal. You can either use Space Plant and UU matter in a ZPM LCR to get tiny amounts very slowly, or you can sacrifice an LuV recycler to the blood gods to get a meteor with hundreds of thousands of Mysterious Crystal.
- Now you can use the Mutagen Bacteria to craft Mutagen out of Distilled Water and Mysterious Crystal in the Bacterial Vat. You will need Uranium Rods and IV+ Glass.
- 5 Buckets of Mutagen are needed per Mutatron operation
- The main space bree breeding chain is
- Space (also breeds Meteoric Iron)
- Moon
- Mars (also breeds Ceres, Deimos, and Phobos)
- Desh
- Jupiter (also breeds Europa, Mercury, Io (Mithril (Mytryl, Venus (Quantium))), and Ganymede)
- Callisto (also breeds Callisto Ice)
- Ledox
- Saturn (also breeds Titan)
- Enceladus (also breeds Mysterious Crystal)
- Trinium
- Uranus (also breeds Miranda)
- Oberon
- Oriharukon
- Neptune (also breeds Proteus and Triton)
- Pluto (also breeds Black Plutonium and Haumea)
- MakeMake (also breeds Centauri, Vega (VegaB) and Tceti (TcetiE (Seaweed)) (the Tceti line also requires Haumea))
- Barnarda (also breeds Barnarda E and Barnarda C (which also requires Americium))
- Barnard F (also requires Neutronium)
- Cosmic Neutronium (mutatron blacklisted) (can only process in DTPF)
- Infinity Catalyst (mutatron blacklisted, needs Infinity Block) (can only produce combs in Mega Apiary)
- also breeds:
- Unknownwater
- Jaegermeister
- Kevlar (mutatron blacklisted, needs UHV replicator)
- a Centauri
- Infinity (mutatron blacklisted, needs infinity chest) (can only process in DTPF)
- Additionally, these bees are gated to LuV or later:
- Naquadria: requires Naquadria or Mutatron
- Americium: requires Fusion Reactor MK2, only produces combs in Mega Apiary
- Neutronium: bred from Americium, only produces combs in Mega Apiary, notably combs make nuggets and molten, not dust
- Dragon Blood: bred from Neutronium
- Lapotron: requires Mutatron
- Infused Gold: requires Mutatron
- Sunnarium: requires Fusion Coil or Mutatron
- Indium: mutatron blacklisted, a new secondary breeding route is possible for no space players but requires a block of Cinobite (Naquadria in ZPM ABS) in the Thaumic Tinkerer Bedrock dimension (have fun kids!)
- Drake: mutatron blacklisted, needs Awakened Draconium Coil. Also, while it can make Draconium Combs anytime, anywhere, Awakened Draconium combs need the Mega Apiary. This is one of the hardest bees to get, because not only do you need to be UV to be able to craft the Awakened Draconium Coil at all, but you also need to centrifuge a huge amount of Vega B dust because this is the ONLY way to get awakened draconium in a no space run before the Drake Bee, and it is a 0.5% chance to get 4 Awakened Draconium dust from 36 Vega B dust in 172.85 seconds in an LuV multiblock centrifuge. At UHV you get 36 parallels and possibly an overclock at least.
Radox
With the space bees and the highest level meteors, you will be able to breeze through LuV and ZPM (...to the extent that anyone can breeze through these tiers). You can make crystal circuits, even skipping the fusion reactor for a time with the Vega B bee if you are so inclined. You can make the mutagen producer at ZPM, unlocking the space bees if you did not bother with the bio vat earlier and allowing you to breed the mutagen bacteria more easily. This will be helpful for the wetware circuits you will have to make. You can even make Bio circuits, but this will REQUIRE the Seaweed bee if you skipped it before. But eventually you may wish to make radox polymer, high tier naquadah fuel, or optical smds, and you would run into a problem: radox was unobtainable because Barnarda C saplings were unobtainable.
Fear not! I have the solution. Now, when you breed a Barnarda C bee, it will have an effect "Treetwister". You can search NEI and figure out how to use this to get Radox
The End of the Journey ... for now!
Thousands of hours into the game, with your mega apiary recieving billions of times more power than you were initially able to generate with your first LV generator, a creative blood orb making any meteors you still care to summon free, your space elevator going into the cold unknown so you never have to, funny PCB factories, nano forges, mega ebfs, compact fusion reactors, and so on, you will be feeling pretty good. So far you were only unable to get one item: the light gray lens to fill out your LPF. But that's ok, its only use is refining the same unobtainable gems it's made out of so you can live with that.
But then, the blood moon will rise, and you will click on a recipe that makes your blood chill and your hairs stand on end. Maybe you were trying to craft a UEV motor. Maybe an optical circuit. Maybe it was even the energy bazooka mk3.
This recipe will contain a repulsive item that despite your hard work still cannot be obtained without going to space. For the UEV motor, it is Tengam, a ridiculous joke material whose name is literally magnet spelled backwards. This lexicographically lazy farce was added for the same reason as (and I apoligize for you having to read this cringy name) magnetohydrodynamically constrained star matter and its ilk the eye of harmony: because not changing the magnetic rod material for motors every couple tiers is too boring. The eoh is pretty redundant with the more interesting space elevator existing, but it at least has a cool render. It is uncertain if tengam will ever be obtainable in a no space playthrough.
For optical circuits, the unobtainable item is a random bartworks ore.