After having some good fun with decorating the base, it's time to work on some progress. There are some monsters that I had to take down, some of which I hadn't looked up yet:
Energy Generation (Water Wheels?)
Energy Transfer (LV Wire?)
Arc Furnace
Pumpjack
Distillation Tower
Solar Tower
Modular Machinery Mod
Astral Sorcery Starlight Infuser
Astral Sorcery Attunement Altar
I built another two sets of Immersive Engineering Water Wheels which were definitely insufficient, but would have to do as those are extremely space-consuming.
Triple Triple Wheel
I expanded to the other side of the base. I decided to build up a steampunk-style environment for our area since separate buildings are easier to build than one gigantic one.
It looked like my block palette has already been settled, but I am an adventurous builder and prepared a huge sample of my favorite Treated Wood Planks from Immersive Engineering and Red Rock Bricks from Traverse, which I thought looked quite good and steampunk-ish.
I built up the frame and now TehPiyoNoob has space to build the Arc Furnace! He is fast and builds it quickly. The screenshots after the first two are actually from quite long after it was built, but it's the same building so I'll include them. I like the depth which I was able to add, all thanks to the wonderful Chisels & Bits mod. The steampunk is shaping up nicely!
Now that the Arc Furnace exists, we can use it... right? Nah, we actually need Graphite Electrodes. Oh well, no biggie, just gotta build another machine for that - another simple 3x3 Industrial Squeezer. Not much to see, I just nicely asked TehPiyoNoob to settle that part.
Energy Gobbler
Well, it takes 512 IF/t to run and we make about 250. Maybe that's why this is so, so, so slow.
Having had enough of technology, I decided it was time to do a little bit of magic. Well, more like I wanted this modpack to last a little longer than the others that we have played so I decided to procrastinate on the main progress a little and work on "other progress".
A bit of a rainy mood, but I managed to build one of the most annoying structures in Astral Sorcery - The Starlight Infuser! I was even more annoyed when I found out that the Liquid Starlight on the floor gets consumed when I perform operations using the Starlight Infuser, AND it invalidates the structure so I need to replace the Liquid Starlight once it gets depleted. Dang. I heard there's a future solution to this, though, so I'm hopeful.
Finally, we have "easy" Stardust! Now, onto the Attunement Altar:
Turns out it's just a bunch of flashy particles... Still super pretty to look at, though. Reminds me of the Arcane Infusion from Thaumcraft 4, which was the first mod I ever played with in survival. Using the Attunement Altar, we can attune ourselves to a particular constellation and try to grow a Skill Tree. TehPiyoNoob and ZeZe have already done that, but I was too busy dealing with other things so didn't find time to do it.
After this well-deserved break from Immersive Engineering, it's time to attack the long crafting and processing sequence which will get us plastic for the next age!
Indoors Oil Pump
Well, not really. ZeZe actually made the Pumpjack quite long ago but found out that we had no way to process the oil. As you can see, it's placed on some strange position since it's supposed to be temporary.
We got the oil from the Pumpjack (which has a really good operation animation) and got stumped when we saw this:
Well, they told me it's my job to build this thing. Dang.
All is well. I proceeded to prepare the materials, which were thankfully not too terrible due to the amazing infrastructure we came up with for making steel in a non-automated way because hoppers are too annoying to get.
Project Chest
This is the biggest multi-block machine I have made from Immersive Engineering, ever.
Using the Immersive Engineering Projector for the first time since the machine is so huge, I quickly built up the monster.
To power it, I used Thermoelectric Generators from Immersive Engineering. I think the concept is quite cool for a passive power generation, but I suppose it's kinda annoying to set up. Also, wires are annoying.
Next: either a Solar Tower or a Boiler for some steam. We chose to do the Solar Tower since it's passive. TehPiyoNoob quickly got the thing running.
Solar Steam
It's a pretty-looking multi-block which has a really good steampunk feel to it. Well, I suppose it creates steam, so it's steampunk.
With the naphtha from distilling oil and steam from the Solar Tower, I can mix them up in a chemical mixer to obtain - get this - molten propene. If you look up this dang compound on Wikipedia, you see this:
![73186c_5ca5aaca01d64214818fe6da4ee83aba~mv2[1].png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5db63f8262d0152e8e460880/1572262227815-RT844YVW0XW6X2D2DWT3/73186c_5ca5aaca01d64214818fe6da4ee83aba%7Emv2%5B1%5D.png)
And this thing looks like lava, and burns you. Cool! Okay, time to make it.
Modular Machinery
Found a good spot with a spare Windmill to power the Modular Machine.
As I understood the Modular Machinery mod, I realized it's the mother of all multi-block structures. Modpack creators can pull whatever dang machine they want out of their butt and it turns into a real thing. I was quite traumatized when crafting the components to make the machines since they are really annoying to make.
Magic GUI Mod
Turns out it's just an uninteresting bunch of user interfaces and doesn't even have a nice texture to go with it. Disappointing.
After the Chemical Mixer, it's the Liquid Processor - which is just another load of bull from this mod. As I walked into the base for some intense crafting, I realized I could just reuse the blocks from the Chemical Mixer. So I did.
More Magic GUI
Funny how the Liquid Processor looks and functions exactly like a Chemical Mixer.
Well, the next step was a Plastic Molder, which is just the same dang crap again. Oh well, time for the Liquid Processor to turn into something else.
Micro-Management
ZeZe and I are busy micro-managing the fluid inputs and item outputs of things.
Finally, we got it! The dang plastic.
I heard Age 5 is not fun so I'm going to stay in Age 4 for a good long time. We actually did quite a bunch of things in between, but I'll include that in a separate blog post instead.