Space Balls 2: The Search for More Rubber

As I said in the last entry, I made a couple tree taps and brought my bronze armor (30% stronger than iron armor if I'm informed correctly) and compass out to find me some more rubber trees. A friend had lambasted me up and down for not just looking for a swamp biome, but I swore to him that the only biomes nearby were tundra, desert and hills/mountains. Well, apparently I was wrong.

My Emerald Axe Thirsts for Sticky Resin

Right on the other side of the hills to the east was a swamp biome. Within maybe four hundred blocks of my home village. I swept into the marshes like a fat kid hits the buffet table. Every mushroom I found (both brown and a few red), every rubber tree I found, I'd suck any showing resin out of the trunk and fell it with my trusty axe.

Cue Chorus Music

Night began to fall, and I figured I had found a decent crop. Twelve new saplings and a good amount of both rubber logs and resin. I decided to check out a little indentation in a hill and noticed something strange: a one-block tall path leading away under some stone. Out came the drill and I investigated a little further. The tiny channel opened up again into a dish between mountains, at the top of which were five more rubber trees.

Entrance to an Interesting Little Cave

Black Gold. Texas Tea

I spent the next two MineCraft days and nights in that swamp gathering every last thing I could. Eventually I ran out of rubber trees in the nearby area and inventory space to hold anything more, and decided to head home.

While following my compass I came across an interesting-looking cave hollowed out below a mountain. Though there wasn't much to be had as far as ore or monster-fighting, it's still something I may wish to use in the future. Maybe it could be the site of an eventual nuclear reactor?

The trip back home continued, finding a rather large oil geyser as well. As far as I know, oil is part of the BuildCraft mod, of which I haven't really touched beyond the collection of almost a chestful of Nikolite. Some day I'll get to it, though, don't worry.

The Spoils of Operation: Rubber-Find

When I finally got home I set to work putting things away. A new chest specifically for food items (as I had also killed 51 steaks worth of cow, criminy) now holds over a stack of brown mushrooms and the eight meager reds I had found. Then came time to extract some rubber so I could continue work on the solar panels!

That's when I came across an interesting problem. Having replaced my two electric furnaces with induction furnaces as well as replacing my macerator with a rotary version meant that keeping them running took an awful lot more energy. Running a single induction furnace while extracting rubber alone was sucking more energy out of my MFE than burning charcoal could put into it! One of the induction furnaces was removed for a new electric model. I kept one induction furnace in place for when I need to cook a lot of something in a hurry, but otherwise I think I'll stick to electric. Plus, now I have an induction furnace waiting in case something terrible or explosive happens in the future!

I Didn't Built it to Look Phallic, I Swear

And with that I was able to finally build the last of the fifty electronic circuits I needed to craft twenty-five solar panels. I grabbed my wrench and pillared my way up the back of the waiting solar tower being as careful as I could to place them all in the correct formation. Down came a line of copper cables from my original battery box, straight into the MFE.

Solar Tower Maintenance Tunnel: No Admittance!

Now, I was expecting there to be at least a trickle of energy coming in from the panels. The more cable there is between your energy input (the solar panels) and the energy output (to the MFE) the more energy is lost simply from the distance it takes. And there was a good 20-30 cables or so of distance as it went down the tower, underground and across the street.

So I wasn't prepared for just how much energy cranked into my MFE while I was busy trying to make trap doors and compress sand into sandstone. Before I was having trouble keeping over 10k energy in the MFE's 600k reserves. While my back was turned cleaning up the tunnel and making it look professional the energy rocketed up to 230k and climbing. I shouldn't have to collect logs to burn as charcoal any more outside of some sort of disaster or late-night crafting spree. An unforeseen bonus is that I can tell what time of day it is while working in the basement simply by checking the MFE - if the numbers are climbing, that means it's daylight.

I'm not sure what my next project will be. Maybe I'll clear some land out to set up a more realistic-looking rubber tree farm. I still have a few buildings to shift or rebuild in the village as well as plans to make that rail yard and storage warehouse. I'm not sure I like all of my valuables kept so close to machines that may explode if I screw something up!