Ex Nihilo - Your best friend. Sometimes.

Discussion in 'Tutorials, Tips and Tricks' started by F4lconwings, Jun 27, 2016.

  1. F4lconwings

    F4lconwings Well-Known Member

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    This Thread is not done yet! Still some things to be added.

    Feel free to post some comments with additions!


    I took some time out of my busy life to write down some tutorial-ish stuff about Ex Nihilo, an interesting mod designed for skyblock and numerous other rimworlds.

    The following MyM-Modpacks contain Ex Nihilo:

    - Agrarian Skies
    - Agrarian Skies+
    - Agrarian Skies 2
    - Crash Landing
    - Galactic Science
    - Infinity Skyblock
    - Project Ozone
    - Skyfactory 2.5
    I have provided all of the new things with links to their wiki-entry.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Basically, the mod allows the creation of things from nothing.
    Here is its exact hierarchy of stuff, from leaves to diamonds:

    First things first: In the beginning of every of the listed above packs you start with at least one tree.
    Chop it down you think? Wait, listen:
    On those packs, if you lose your sapling by being too quick with your hand, you can already give up...
    Mine two logs, and craft them to planks. From the first four planks you craft a crafting table, place it down and continue crafting:
    four stick in the following grid, and you get: A Crook.

    [​IMG]

    This lovely piece allows you breaking leaves with an increased chance of saplings and gives you the chance of getting Silkworms. But to them i'll come back later.

    If you craft a Wood Barrel with the following recipe,

    [​IMG]

    it will allow you to catch raindrops for water when it rains, and, most importantly: to compost.
    Therefore simply rightclick with any organic material (early game this is mainly going to be Saplings)
    on the barrel. When it is full, it will compost a while until you get a block of Dirt.

    Set five of those up, and let them fill with rain. Later you will see why.

    You probably know, that dirt is following much more uses on those modpacks than in vanilla or other overworld-based modpacks. But first get back to the silkworms.

    Silkworms are your source of string, when you dont have a mobfarm yet. They can be set on leaves with a rightclick, and they'll slowly start infesting them and spreading around.
    If you break fully infested leaves with a crook, there is a good chance for string to drop, and it may eventually even drop more silkworms.

    Silk is used to craft Silk Mesh, which is used to craft a Sieve.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    The sieve is your doorway to cobblestone and ores. By holding rightclick on a sieve with dirt in your hand you slowly sift it through, getting little stones and eventually seeds.
    I know, these stones look cute, but you shall not throw them on your island members yet.

    If you have collected enough stones, you may craft them in a 2x2 grid to obtain your first cobblestone.

    Now comes the hammering part:
    craft a wooden Hammer.

    [​IMG]

    The hammer can be used to break cobblestone into gravel, which can be hammered down into sand, which can be crushed into dust. If you filled five barrels with water through rain, you put one dust in each of three water-filled barrels. They will turn into clay blocks, which you place, and break to obtain 12 clay in total. Seven of these you mix together with bonemeal in the crafting window, and you get: Porcellian Clay. Now, porcellian clay can be used to get an Unfired Cruicible.

    [​IMG]

    Simply fire it up in a Slab Furnace, made with the same grid like a normal furnace, just with cobblestone slabs. So you will save two cobblestone's.

    When you place the Crucible down over a torch, and fill it with 4 cobblestone's per rightclick, it will turn them slowly into lava.

    Meanwhile you can use three spare clay to craft an Unfired Clay Bucket, in the same grid as a normal bucket.

    Firstly, take the unfired bucket to your furnace, and let it smelt up to a Clay Bucket. Use it to make an infinite water source out of the 2 filled barrels. Then set up a cobble generator, but make sure to place the lava last, as the bucket gets destroyed after placing lava.

    When you have your cobblegen set up, and it is (hopefully) working, you can spend time hammering the cobble into gravel, and then sieving this for broken ores. These can be crafted to (Ore) gravel in a 2x2 grid.

    You can smelt them in a furnace to obtain the related Ingot.
    However this is mostly a hard work of grinding, as the chance for drops of broken ores are low.

    There are several other ways to improve / automate your sieving and hammering.
    Some Ex-Nihilo additions bring powered autosieve's and autohammerer's with them, which use power to do that job.
    These can be upgraded with several upgrades, like for the sieve:
    speed or luck.

    Mixing time!

    Ex Nihilo allows you to create blocks like sand, gravel, netherrack etc. with simple mixing in barrels!
    Keep in mind that some of the recipes (eg. The ones made with lava) require a Stone barrel.
    Crafted like that:
    :[​IMG]

    By mixing things you are able to create the following:

    Liquid + Ingredient = End product
    Water* + Dust = Clay
    Witch Water** + Sand = Soul Sand
    Lava + Redstone = Netherrack
    Lava + Glowstone = Endstone
    Water + Milkbucket = Slime ball

    * Water is obtainable earlygame by letting it rain in a barrel.
    ** Witch Water is generated by leaving water in a barrel a short time over some mycelium.

    Summoning time!

    Just as with the new blocks, the mod adds a feature to spawn in mobs with doll's.

    You may ask how to craft them, young padawan? Donut Dont worry, Endo has some images!
    (Copied out of their forum page, as always :( )

    Doll

    [​IMG]

    Angry Doll

    [​IMG]

    Creepy Doll
    [​IMG]

    So, heres what you can do with them:

    You can spawn a Blaze by rightclicking with an angry doll on a stonebarrel filled with lava.
    (No worries, you can obtain blazepowder for the crafting by sieving dust)

    As well as you are able to spawn an Enderman upon rightclicking with a creepy doll on a barrel filled with Witch Water.

    Thread is still WIP, I'll go and see what I can add.

    Tap this to get to my beginner's guide to Crash Landing!

    Once again, thanks for reading through that wall of text (Hey, I even added pictures).
    I hope you could obtain some knowledge about that mod I am in love with.
    Endorian.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2016
  2. Timkoo

    Timkoo Well-Known Member

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    Thanks! (Reserved)
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2016
  3. Sandstroem

    Sandstroem Well-Known Member

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    Pretty sure that Regrowth does not contain Ex Nihilo ;-)

    edit: Besides from that, looks nice. Depending on the pack of course there might be variations.
     
  4. profrags

    profrags Well-Known Member

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    You forgot to add agrarian skies 2 to the list.
     
  5. natnif36

    natnif36 Active Member

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    Really important point you glossed over - the slab furnace can NOT smelt the unfired clay bucket into a clay bucket, or at least not in SF2.5

    Therefore, the two cobble you may save for using a slab furnace is not worth doing, as you need a regular furnace anyways.


    I would suggest including a full section on Ex Compressium - such as the compressed crook being faster and having more durability, the compressed hammer can hammer compressed cobble/gravel/sand, and the compressed sieve being able to sieve these compressed versions.

    Edit - Removed Information that no longer seems to be correct, though I do believe this was so in an earlier version.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2016
  6. F4lconwings

    F4lconwings Well-Known Member

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    Edited, thanks.

    Did not have much experience with ex compressum yet, but im gonna see what i can learn.
     
  7. Tokoshoran

    Tokoshoran Well-Known Member

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    Important note: Do not sieve your first dirts! It's more worthwhile to get several trees growing so that you get saplings faster.

    With Ex Compressum, it's worth pointing out that the compressed crook only has about 2x durability, but costs 4 crooks. It's worthwhile for saving inventory space, though, especially since wood is easily renewable.
     
  8. F4lconwings

    F4lconwings Well-Known Member

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    - Added summoning and mixing part.

    A whole much more complex sieving part should follow soon.​
     
  9. Zippity_Doodah

    Zippity_Doodah Well-Known Member

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    Ex Compressum is a great companion to Ex Nihilo... It allows for faster manual processing of materials like cobble to gravel, gravel to sand, sand to dust by adding a feature that allows you to use compressed versions of cobble, gravel, sand, and dust... Along with the compressed tools such as the various material type hammer's turned into compressed variants in order to process those items faster... There is even a Heavy version of the Sieve to sieve those compressed versions of materials... And even more so, there are powered machine variants as well...

    It's as simple as placing 9 of the material (i.e. cobble, gravel, etc) in a standard crafting grid to make 1 compressed version that when processed will give you 9 of the next variant (i.e. one compressed gravel = 9 sand when processed)... In essence reducing the time involved processing the materials...

    Yes, the tools for this mod require more materials than their normal variants, but you reap a much larger reward in the long run with less time processing materials in packs where both Ex Nihilo and Ex Compressum are installed...

    And some of the machines themselves just look cool... The auto heavy sieve machine looks like a little player sieving the materials inside a box, and you can even feed him to make him process faster for a short bit... The auto hammer variant machines look like little boxes with an animated tool processing the items...

    As to the compressed crook, it may take 4 times the materials at only 2 times the durability of a normal crook, but it crooks way faster than a normal one, almost if not as fast as when you use sheers on leaves... Once again, cutting down on the processing time...

    I first used Ex Compressum in the Sky Factory 2.5 mod, and I just loved it...

    Zip
     
  10. tyler489

    tyler489 Well-Known Member

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    Protip summoning enderman/blaze while raining caused the server to crash dont know if it still does
     

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