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Tired of toiling in the dirt attempting to eek out resources from the ground? Why not make someone else, or some thing else do it for you? Below we'll discover some of the many ways of generating ores without getting your hands dirty.
Perhaps one of the earliest available automated resources generators, bees represent a simple way to obtain most metals and many pre-made alloys. Many are found simply through exploring and spawn in specific biomes. Others are bred or made through mutations.
Like Vanilla Bees, Resourceful bees can be automated with simple tools such as a Dispenser, a Redstone Clock, and Shears. The Shears can be replaced with a Scraper for an even more durable tool. They are delicate little friends, however, so be sure to keep them safe in some sort of enclosure so stray arrows and lightning strikes don't harm them.
Processing honey combs does require a Centrifuge, of which there are four types ranging from a small manual one to a massive multiblock.
The Orechid and it's cousin the Orechid Ignem represent Botania's solution to generating ore. These use a fair amount of mana to convert nearby blocks, stone and netherrack respectively, to ores. They cover a pretty large area, about an 11 block cube. So don't be surprised if they don't appear to be doing much at first. There's a good chance they're converting blocks out of sight first.
Conversion is a common theme among magically oriented mods and Astral is no different. In this case, the Mineralis ritual will convert nearby stone into random ores. As with any Astral Sorcery Ritual, this too can be enhanced by including Enhanced Celestial Collector Crystal structures nearby and beaming in more Starlight. Take care in choosing the attributes on the crystals involved, however. A larger area isn't always desireable.
Powder of the Bountiful Core acts very similarly to the previous options mentioned, again converting Stone into ores. However, other than raw stone to convert, it also needs a Lush Aura field. These don't exist naturally and must be created by adding a Creational Catalyst under your Aura Generator block of choice and running it the Aura overflows. This can be seen with an Environmental Ocular:
The process uses Aura, to be sure, and so automating production to remain in this zone is important.
Unlike previous options, controlling the area effected by the dust is quite simple. When placing the dust in world, it doesn't just place one piece, but rather the entire held stack. The number of dusts in the area indicates how big the radius is. Three dust, for instance, will effect a 5x5x5 area. Each dust increases the radius by one block. Using a smaller area is recommended to simplify collection of ores and replacement of stone.
This effect powder also works in the Nether by converting Netherrack.
The Laser Drill is ostensibly drilling for ore under bedrock. Thematically, at least. In reality it's simply creating random ores periodically at the cost of FE. The ores are stored in the central Ore Laser Base and each Laser Drill connected to the base increases the rate at which ores are obtained.
Unlike prior versions of this setup, more than four lasers can be used. A lot more than four. The Base simply needs to be anywhere in a 3x3x3 cube in front of the Drills. The drills do not need line of sight and may be placed in any orientation. Considering all this, so long as you can find a way to power each individual Laser Drill, they can be packed in quite tight.
Occultism takes the approach of "Make this someone else's problem" by convincing friendly demons from the Otherworld to mine ores for you. For this, a Dimensional Mineshaft and an Ore Miner Djinni are required.
The Mineshaft itself is simply a container to hold the Djinn's lamp and the ores it provides to you. The ore can be extracted from the bottom and the lamp can be extracted from the top. Since the lamp will slowly degrade with use, extracting it on occasion to repair it would be an excellent idea, as well as enchanting it with Unbreaking.
The Excavator is a large multiblock that extracts ores from mineral deposits that generate with the world. These are not visible and cannot be interacted with except via the Excavator. To locate a Mineral Deposit, you'll need some tools.
Begin with some Mineral Survey Tools. To use them, hold them in your main hand and Right-Click + Hold on most stone blocks. The tools will be drawn back like a bow and finally release on their own. When they release, a message should display above your toolbar telling you roughly what's in the area and point you towards the center of the node.
The Survey Tools are good for getting in the rough area of a Mineral Node, but to narrow in on the center some Core Samples will be needed. For that, place down a Core Sample Drill, supply power, and Right-Click the machine. It'll play a short drilling animation before the machine can be Right-Clicked again to pull out the Core Sample. When a core sample comes up with nearly 100% Saturation, this is where you'll want to set up the Excavator. The Saturation level effectively indicates how likely the Excavator is to pull up minerals per operation, so seeking out a high saturation level is worth it for faster operation.
Once the Mineral Node has been depleted, no more blocks will be extracted. The Excavator, however, will keep running and consuming FE at a pretty steep rate.
Note: The Excavator, like many Immersive Engineering machines, will dump it's output into the world if there's not a valid inventory at the output hole. Be sure to bring a big inventory or some way of wirelessly sending things back to base.
Programmable Drones can do most anything. Given a tool and some time, they can dig an enormous hole. Of course, they also prove a bit of finesse in that they can be programmed to do exactly what the task requires. For instance, digging up only ores while replacing Stone for the various ore generation methods that create in world.
The Digital Miner is great for a quickly mining up the ores in an area, however it's limited by two key factors. First, it only covers an area of about 32 blocks. Second, it cannot automatically re-scan and re-mine an area: it must be turned back on by a player. This means that while it's great for getting what's already in the ground, it's less useful for automation.
The Build is a multi-purpose block with various shape cards to help, well... Build. But it can also clear the blocks in a rather substantial area with a Quarry Card. Combined with a filter and it's ability to repeatedly scan an area makes it ideal for automation as well. One could be used to, for instance, place a cube of Stone and another could be used to mine out any ores, both repeating endlessly.
The Pedestals Quarry Upgrade can also be filtered to mine up only specific blocks, and even though it's area is somewhat limited, it's large enough for automation.
Two of these in a line will create a beam of focused Aura between them that can break blocks, making it a great tool for easily picking up the spoils of your magical ore generator. They are Redstone reactive, so a simple automated setup could have them off by default and enabled periodically to break whatever has been generated. This combined with an Imperceptible Builder to re-place Stone and a Hopper Enhancement to pick up the ore could create quite a nice little farm.
Placing a Silk Touch or Fortune Pickaxe in an item frame on one of the Aura Field Creators will also cause it to use those enchants while breaking.
The Weight Mana Lens causes any blocks to be struck by the Mana Burst to fall as if it were sand. This means that any block can be easily picked up for processing by letting it fall onto a carpet over a hopper. Quite useful for pickup up gems to process them through a machine for a better yield.
What can't these things do? Really, they're an incredibly versatile block. In this case, a Projectile > Break > Extract > Item Pickup spell on a Turret next to a chest would be a fantastic way to gather materials that have been generated. Every block it breaks would be automatically pushed into the chest.
These two rituals combine quite nicely to handle the ores from the various generators above. With the Ritual of Magnetism, any ore below it is drawn up into the ritual area. The Ritual of the Crusher, which fits nicely in the same space, can then break those ores, even gaining bonuses depending on the Will infused in the area.