BuildCraft is a mod with amazing potential and power. It focuses around the transport and collection of items, from sticks to diamonds, using a seemingly complex but actually rather simple system of pipes, engines and machines. From sorting your chests to mining out an enormous amount of resources with the almighty Quarry and the infamous Combustion Engine, the possibilites are endless! This page will help you get started in Tekkit using BuildCraft, and hopefully give you plenty of ideas on how to go beyond it.
New World[]
When your world generates, you will need a few things. Many BuildCraft machines require a significant resource investment, especially a Quarry, so it is your best interest to gather lots of resources. You will need plenty of Iron, Gold, Redstone, Cobblestone, Sand, and Cactus in order to build and utilise the majority of BuildCraft machinery. You'll also need a few diamonds, but who doesn't?
Basic BuildCraft[]
Let's start with the very basics! Before we can start building complex machines, we need to be able to manipulate them! The Wrench is the perfect tool to do so, allowing you to rotate and adjust your array of machines!
Next, in order to power all of our machines, we'll need an Engine to make some power. The cheapest type of engine is the Redstone Engine :
The Redstone Engine is very cost-efficient; not only is it cheap, but it requires no fuel to operate. Just give it a redstone signal, and it'll start producing MJ! You can hook up a Redstone Engine to many different contraptions, including pipes, pumps and quarries. Unlike other engines, the Redstone Engine will require some time to warm up and run at peak efficiency. The color of the engine shows its power output. There are three stages: Blue, meaning either that it's off or producing low power; Green, meaning that it's at medium efficiency; and Yellow or flashing yellow/red, which is the peak power production of 1 MJ per second. It takes up to 10 minutes to reach this peak efficiency. Also, a small note: if the engine is connected to nothing, it can blow up when it reaches flashing yellow/red! Be careful, and manage your engines!
For a Redstone Engine to power something, the blue cube must be pointing towards the thing that it is powering. You can use a BuildCraft Wrench to adjust the Engine.
You'll also notice that we used a Wood Gear in the Redstone Engine. Gears are a big crafting component for a lot of BuildCraft machines, and you'll be seeing more and more of them later on.
Now, let's connect that Engine to something! One of the things that BuildCraft is good at is item transporting. To move items around, we use pipes. For now, we'll use two basic types of pipes: wooden, and cobblestone!
Wooden Transport Pipes are special: you need to put one of these beside the source of the items, such as a Chest, Furnace, or Automatic Crafting Table. You only need a few of these, but they're very important. In most setups, you'll need to hook up your engine to the Wooden Pipe. The Wooden Pipe, when provided with power, will start withdrawing items from your source! They'll pull anything they can out of the inventory, and send them on their way. Wooden pipes won't connect together if placed side by side. If they don't extract to any connected pipe, it'll just spit the items on the ground, while if it's connected to another inventory, it'll simply transfer the items. Wooden pipes have a direction that they extract from: the solid side of the pipe is the side it'll take items from.
Cobblestone Pipes serve a very basic purpose: they allow items to flow through them. Connecting several cobblestone pipes to a wooden pipe will let items flow through the pipeline, towards its destination. These are the most common type of pipe, and you'll need a lot of them. Cobblestone pipes also transfer items to inventories: if one is connected to a Chest, it'll dump the items into the chest. If they aren't connected to any other pipes, it'll spit the items on the ground.
Pipe systems are very useful! One of the most common examples of piping is an automated furnace removal system. In order to make one, first place a Wooden Pipe on the side of the Furnace. Adjust it with the Wrench if you need to, so the pipe draws from the Furnace. Then, place a chest on another side of the pipe. Finally, smack a Redstone Engine on the Wooden pipe, make sure that the engine is facing the right way, and give it a Redstone signal! Bam! Your pipe will now pull smelted items out of the Furnace, into the Chest. You can even add Cobblestone piping to lengthen the pathway! Wooden pipes can also be used to extract from chests; try setting up a similar system to put items into the top of the furnace, and Coal into the bottom. Now, you have an automatic refilling Furnace too!
Plenty of other items work with these transport pipes, and the possibilities are limitless!
Now, let's say we want more power, or to transport more items? How would we do that?
Intermediate BuildCraft [WIP][]
Intermediate Buildcraft is just that; the transition from basic pipes and engines to full automation and Quarries. This tier of items includes the parts necessary to establish a power network and fuel refinery, along with Steam Engines, more Pipes, and the Mining Well.
First, new pipes. We have Gold, Redstone, and Obsidian pipes. Gold pipes, when given a redstone signal, cause items to move much faster through other pipes, gradually slowing down until they return to normal speed. Stone loses speed at half the rate of cobblestone. Gold pipes are also usable for Waterproof and Conductive pipes, having greater capacity and less energy loss per pipe, respectively. Redstone pipes put out a redstone signal when there is an item inside; pair them with Golden pipes or some kind of logic circuitry. Obsidian pipes suck items into a pipe network; power them with engines for greater range.
In order to access the power of the Combustion Engine, you are going to need Fuel. Fuel is a liquid only found through the process of refining Oil found in geysers around the world. To gather oil, you will need either a ton of Buckets or a Pump (I recommend the latter), Waterproof Pipes and some Tanks. Gather some Cactus for a farm, and smelt the rest into Cactus Green. This is crafted into Pipe Waterproof, which you then add to normal pipes in the crafting grid; use it to make some Wooden Waterproof Pipes and some Cobblestone/Stone Waterproof Pipes. Then make some tanks from glass, and another couple of Redstone Engines.
For the Pump, you will need a Mining Well, a machine that digs straight down to bedrock or when it hits Lava. This is useful for probing for a lava pump or prospecting, but is otherwise best used in a pump. Place a Tank in the grid with a Mining Well to make a pump. Pumps can suck up liquids: water, lava, and Oil from the world and transport them in Waterproof pipes. They require engine power to run, for which you need either 4 redstone engines or the Steam Engine. These little guys run on coal, and produce a significantly higher amount of power. Make one, and use 4 redstone engines for the pump; you'll need it for the refinery. Refineries are rather expensive; you will need several diamonds to make one, but they are absolutely worth the investment.
Place the pump over the oil geyser (or other liquid) and attach the engines to it, then connect the top of the pump to a Tank using the waterproof pipes. Stack Tanks on top of each other to make them count as one big tank. Now, connect the Wooden waterproof pipe to the tank and power it. Connect this to the Refinery from the back (the double tank side) and hook up the Steam Engine. This will take a while, and lots of coal, to refine fuel, so it's a good idea to hook up more than one. For that, you can use Conductive Pipes, made by combining a Wooden, Stone (NOT Cobblestone), or Golden pipe with redstone. Put a Wooden Conductive Pipe on the front of an engine, and connect it to the machine using either Stone or Gold. Now set up some tanks for fuel and turn the engines on!
Advanced BuildCraft [WIP][]
Now we get to the good stuff. This is where Buildcraft really comes into its own, with the Diamond pipe, Combustion engine, and Quarry ready to roll off the crafting table.
First, the Combustion Engine. This is one of the most infamous items in Tekkit: powerful, but highly prone to explosions. It can run off of Lava, Oil, and Fuel, with Fuel being your best bet. Unless you have a farily advanced IC2 setup, you'll want to make these for power. When you place them, attach them to your Fuel tanks and also set up a similar system for water (DON'T run it through a refinery), and place them into your power network.
Next, the pipes. We have the Diamond, Distribution and Teleport pipes. The distribution pipes... (TBC)
Moving Forward[]
Now it's time to grow. Take a look into the Builder, Filler, and the other construction machines. Expand and refine your systems: use the Quarry to find more diamonds, make more machinery, refine more fuel, and build the greatest tangle of piping known to man or miner.
Buildcraft is at its strongest when combined with other mods such as IndustrialCraft 2, Equivalent Exchange, and RailCraft. Combining the abilities of the Macerator, Energy Condenser, and the Quarry to produce a truly enormous amount of stuff for you is one of the most satisfying things in Tekkit, and I encourage you to give it a try! Check out the other Getting Started pages here to take a look at these other mods:
Getting Started: Railcraft (WIP)
Now, it's up to you to decide what you are going to do. The possibilities with Tekkit are endless! Good luck, and happy mining!