Surviving with Mekanism: Early Game Guide | Jangro.com

Welcome to the first post in our in-depth series on surviving with the Mekanism mod! Mekanism offers an incredible tech progression system, taking you from small-scale machines to massive industrial complexes. In this guide, we’ll start with the early game essentials: generating power, crafting your first machines, and setting the stage for automation.

You can install this mod directly yourself using Curseforge, Prism, etc., but the best way is to play it on a Mod Pack. I'm playing this right now on Valhelsia 6 on Minecraft 1.20.1. You can play it on Craftoria, ATM10, and many more. I actually covered some of the Mekanism basics in my recent Craftoria series on YouTube. Episode 1 starts right in on Mekanism, and I'll be doing a dedicated series of videos along with these blog posts. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to be alerted!

Before You Begin Gather These Resources

Before you start crafting machines, take some time to gather the basics:

Iron: Essential for almost every Mekanism recipe.
Coal: Needed for power generation and crafting steel.
Redstone: Used in circuits and the Metallurgic Infuser.
Glass: Required for crafting most machines and pipes.
Osmium: A key material and crafting ingredient for nearly all Mekanism machinery and tools.
Gold: Required for Energy Tablets, which are used in most power-centric machines. You need less gold than Iron and Osmium for sure.

Trust me, it’s worth the extra prep! Get yourself a one or two stacks of each if you can (you don't need quite that much gold). You can be stingy and short-change the prep, but you’ll find yourself constantly running back to mine “just a few more pieces of Redstone and iron”.

Tip for Ore Gathering and Multiplication

Mekanism will allow you to multiply your ores early in the game:

Processing ores with Mekanism machines yields 3x the output early game. This goes up to 5x.
Processing raw ores gives only 2x the output, but it's better than 1x, and you may find that other mods and fortune make this a better option than the 3x you get from ores. For example with fortune III you can get better than 2x on the raw ores. Then that's 4x.

If possible, mine ores with Silk Touch or Fortune to maximize your gains when you set up ore processing later. We're going to set up a factory line of machines that will eventually look like this!

Mekanism advanced ore processing factory setup with multiple machines and automation

With that, let’s jump in!

Step 1: Powering Up with the Heat Generator

Your first step in Mekanism is generating power, and the Heat Generator is it. It's the only source of power that doesn't require progression into the mod.

Recipe: Iron, osmium, wood planks, furnace, and copper

Mekanism Heat Generator crafting recipe using iron, osmium, wood planks, furnace, and copper

How It Works: The heat generator converts coal, charcoal, or lava into energy. You can put burnable items into the heat generator and it burns them like a furnace. But don't do that! you can get passive power with lava.

Setup Tips: Place the Heat Generator directly in lava pool for passive energy production. The more sides that touch lava, the more energy production you get. It's possible to get 7 "sides". You can lava-log the cable in front as well as the machine itself for 6 sides plus the "inside" to get a total of 7 touch points. This will give you maximum power output... which still isn't much, but it'll get you going.

Use Basic Universal Cables (crafted with steel and Redstone) to connect the generator to your machines. You can't get cables without one machine, so you can just place that machine touching the front of the generator until you get two steel ingots to craft the cables.

Mekanism Basic Universal Cable crafting recipe with steel and redstone for power connections

Let's make some steel!

Step 2: Metallurgic Infuser - Your First Machine

The Metallurgic Infuser is your gateway to progression. It infuses materials like Redstone or carbon (Coal) into metals, creating the components needed for more advanced machines.

Crafting Recipe: Requires iron, redstone, furnaces, and osmium.

Mekanism Metallurgic Infuser crafting recipe requiring iron, redstone, furnaces, and osmium

First Tasks:

Insert Coal into the Metallurgic infuser as carbon. Note that one coal will give you a small amount of carbon. We can improve our efficiency pretty soon, so don't put all your coal in!
Infuse iron ingots with Carbon into enriched iron.
Infuse enriched iron again with Carbon to create steel dust.
Smelt steel dust in a furnace to get steel ingots

For the next steps, we'll also need to Enrich Iron into Infused Alloy and Osmium into Basic Control Circuits with Redstone in a Metallurgic Infuser. We'll want a dedicated infuser for each material. And if you have enough resources, set up two Infusers to make your Steel production line.

Mekanism infused alloy crafting process using metallurgic infuser with redstone and iron

Step 3: Enrichment Chamber - Boost Your Efficiency

The Enrichment Chamber is your next priority. This machine drastically improves resource efficiency.

Crafting Recipe: Requires steel, Redstone, Steel Casing, and Basic control circuits.

Mekanism Enrichment Chamber crafting recipe with steel, redstone, steel casing, and basic control circuits

And get used to that Steel Casing in the middle. That's more osmium, glass, and steel. That's the basis for all machines.

Mekanism Steel Casing crafting recipe with osmium, glass, and steel ingots for machine construction

How It Helps:

Turns Coal into Enriched Coal for use in the Metallurgic Infuser, for 8x efficiency.
Converts Redstone into Enriched Redstone, again, saving tons of materials.
Processes ores into dust, doubling your yield even before advanced ore multiplication. It will multiply 3 Raw Ores into 4 Dusts, which you can smelt into the ingot to get 1.333x ore multiplication. That's not so great, but it's something. If you have the ore blocks, you can get 2x processing on those.
Contains hundreds of other useful crafting recipes, like flowers into dyes, weather copper, and more. Check JEI for all the optoins.

Mekanism Enrichment Chamber ore processing showing doubled ore yields and enriched materials

At the very least, always run Coal and Redstone through the Enrichment Chamber before using them in the Metallurgic Infuser to maximize your resources. Later, we'll be enriching Diamonds and Obsidian for advanced materials.

Step 4: Expanding Power with Solar and Wind Generators

Once you have steel and cables and the ability to make, it’s time to move to a much better free source of energy, wind and solar.

Note that It's very possible to skip this step if you want to just make do with Heat Generators, but wind generators are way better!

Mekanism Wind Generator setup showing optimal height placement for maximum energy efficiency

Solar Generator: Works during the day, requires a view of the sky. It requires Solar Panels, Energy Tablet, Osmium, Iron, and Infused Alloy (Redstone enriched Iron).

Mekanism Solar Generator crafting recipe requiring solar panels, energy tablet, osmium, iron, and infused alloy

The Solar Panels require more Osmium and Infused Alloy

Mekanism Solar Panel crafting recipe with osmium and infused alloy for renewable energy

The Energy Tablet is used in lots of power-focused machines and requires gold in addition to some more infused Alloy

Mekanism Energy Tablet crafting recipe using gold and infused alloy for power-focused machines

Advanced Solar Generator: If you're going Solar, take the extra steps to get the Advanced Solar Generator!

Mekanism Advanced Solar Generator crafting recipe for improved solar power generation

Wind Generator: Generates energy based on height. The higher you place it, the more efficient it becomes. It doesn't actually need to be outside though. Wind Generators require two energy tablets, A basic control circuit (Redstone enriched Osmium), Osmium, and Infused Alloy. For the value, I always go with like 5 Wind Generators. Placing them higher really helps, even if you just tower up and make an ugly platform. You will need to run the Universal Cables down to your base though.

Mekanism Wind Generator crafting recipe with energy tablets, basic control circuit, osmium, and infused alloy

Combine renewable generators with the Heat Generator for a steady energy supply day and night.

A Basic Setup

Here’s the summary of a simple layout for your early game:

Place the Heat Generator surrounded on all sides with lava. Lava-log the machine and the cable in front of it. This will require three buckets of lava. If you place them strategically, you can share lava between several heat generators.
Connect Metallurgic Infusers to the Heat Generator with Basic Universal Cables.
Use the infusers to craft steel, basic control circuits, and infused alloy for your machines.
Craft and connect an Enrichment Chamber to improve material efficiency and get some good cratfing.
Add a Solar Generator and/or Wind Generator to supplement power. Or keep expanding with heat generators until you get to better power (Gas Burning Generator).

What’s Next?

With a functioning power system and your first machines, you’re ready to tackle more complex tasks. In the next post, we’ll explore:

Doubling and tripling ore yields with basic machines.
Getting the earliest flight available in most mod packs with the Jet Pack and Free Runners (to avoid the inevitable ground-hitting death from the first flight)
Automating resource handling with logistical pipes.

Stay tuned, and let us know how your Mekanism setup is progressing! Join our Discord!

Read Part 2

Surviving with Mekanism: Ore Doubling and Early Automation

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