Today, we ventured to Age 3. I immediately found out that the Coal Engine we made in Age 2 isn't of much use yet. The Advancements told us to get to the Nether by finding a pre-generated portal, which ZeZe went and did. He took kinda long since it was far away.
Fake News!
Well, it turned out that you CAN make a portal normally. Oops.
Meanwhile, TehPiyoNoob and I went for a resource run in the Twilight. Since the surface level is much lower down, it is much easier to dig for ores there. We grabbed a good load of every ore so that it will last us longer.
This required us to wander around the Twilight Forest a little bit so I took some screenshots of this good old land.
After our resource run, we jumped into the Nether to collect some resources. We needed to build a Blast Furnace from Immersive Engineering which required Blast Bricks, which required Nether Brick, which demanded a really dang long chain of crafting. We had a collection checklist:
Netherrack
Soul Sand
Nether Wart
Nether Quartz
Blaze Powder
Glowstone
The list wasn't that long so we managed to grab the stuff quickly. SevTech: Ages includes the NetherEx mod which adds all kinds of biomes into the Nether which have different kinds of Netherrack, like Fiery Netherrack and Gloomy Netherrack. This meant that gathering normal Netherrack for certain crafting recipes was kind of a pain in the butt. TehPiyoNoob managed to find some, anyway.
Fiery Present
TehPiyoNoob hand-carried a Blaze Spawner back from the Nether Fortress.
When interviewed, he said that it was a tough job but worth it in the end. This is our new supply of Blaze Powder and is hidden beneath the Village, where any Blaze spawns will hurt absolutely nobody.
Pressing Matters
I took a little break from the game, and when I came back, ZeZe had made a good load of progress, which I was impressed by.
He built up the Metal Press so that we can make a Blaze Rod, as instructed by the Advancements. We haven't found out what they wanted us to use it for yet.
Blast Furnace
Say hello to the Blast Furnace! It looks dark and stupid but it takes a lot of effort to make so I must love it.
Also, in the back you can see some blue fire which was annoying for ZeZe to make. Also, rock on the left for scale.
I love heavy machinery and good textures so I painstakingly whacked together a Mixer from Immersive Engineering to mix up some liquids. Well, it's actually to make some Blue Slime to make Blue Slime Crystals to emboss my awesome Knightmetal Pickaxe, but I suppose the base will always look better (and laggier) with more machines. Well, TehPiyoNoob also loves making huge machines for no reason so he went ahead and made a dang Crusher, whose ore-doubling output we still cannot use because, for some reason, we cannot melt down any of that grit that it makes using methods we have. The images below absolutely do not include a Realms Mapmaker Cape flex.
I embossed my pickaxe with paper so that it gains the Writable tool trait which gives it an additional modifier to work with. I then added the OreExcavation modifier and named my pickaxe VeinMiner. (Psst. Did you know we have VeinMiner???) Now, instead of digging ores the legitimate way, I hold down a button and the entire vein disappears into my inventory. From a game balance stand point, I actually have no dang idea why they included this mod since it's so dang overpowered.