All The Mods 9 To The Sky

To begin gathering sievable materials, you'll first need a Hammer. Craft one by combining two sticks and two cobblestones. Once crafted, place a cobblestone block on the ground and use the hammer to break it down into Gravel. Gravel is your primary sieving material early on. Right-click the sieve repeatedly to process the gravel and reveal items.

To improve your sieve's efficiency, upgrade to a Flint Mesh. Craft this by combining a String Mesh with four pieces of flint. This upgrade increases your chances of obtaining valuable ore chunks. Once you have enough resources, I highly recommend progressing to Iron Meshes and eventually Golden Meshes. Golden Meshes significantly boost your odds of receiving rare drops like Diamonds and Emeralds when sieving Gravel.

Once you've established a basic power setup, you can automate this process using a Cobblestone Generator, Flux Hammer, and Flux Sieve. This system allows you to passively generate sieved resources while focusing on other parts of your base. For full automation, you'll want to integrate a Tier 3 Crafter (RFTools Utility), a Mechanical Squeezer for ore doubling, a Furnace (see below), and upgraded storage such as a Gold Chest, or a Gold Barrel with item collection.

Tip: I recommend upgrading your furnace early — a Gold Furnace or Diamond Furnace will dramatically speed up your smelting rates and keep up with automated input.

In the early stages of ATM9 To The Sky, setting up a basic power system is crucial for beginning automation. Mekanism offers the Heat Generator, which runs on lava and is easy to set up using your early crucible setup. Alternatively, RFTools Power provides the Coal Generator, which uses burnable fuel like coal or charcoal. Both are compact and effective starter options.

Once you've placed your generator, you can power nearby machines directly or use basic cables to distribute energy more efficiently. Universal Cables (Mekanism) and Energy Pipes (Pipez) are easy to craft and ideal for connecting machines like Flux Hammers, Sieves, or even early Iron Furnaces.

A strong upgrade from there is the Wind Generator from Mekanism. It provides a steady and renewable energy source that performs best at higher altitudes (Y > 128 is ideal). Wind Generators are a great long-term solution for powering multiple early automation blocks.

In the setup shown, nine Wind Generators are used to fully power a suite of machines — including Flux Hammers, Flux Sieves, a Tier 3 Crafter (RFTools Utility), a Mechanical Squeezer, and a Furnace with a Factory Upgrade. However, for simple gravel sieving, even one Wind Generator is often enough to get started.

To prevent power loss during automation, consider using two Thermo Generators from Powah, each producing a stable power output. Connect both to an Ender Cell, which acts as a remote energy storage and transfer system. From there, you can link the Ender Cell to your power network using Basic Universal Cables (Mekanism) or Energy Pipes (Pipez). This ensures that your machines remain powered even if one generator goes offline or you expand your system later.

Craft a Cobblestone Generator (Tier 1) using six wooden logs, one bucket of water, one bucket of lava, and a glass block. Once placed, it will passively generate cobblestone and automatically insert it into an inventory placed directly on top. A Storage Drawer is ideal here — it holds 2,048 cobblestone by default, and its capacity can be upgraded later with Storage Upgrades.

To get water early, place an Oak Barrel outdoors and let it fill when it rains. Once it rains,create an infinite water source by digging a 2x2 hole and filling opposite corners with water. This ensures you always have access to a renewable water supply.

To produce lava, you'll need a Porcelain Crucible placed over a heat source — a torch works, but using a Campfire or Magma Block will significantly speed up the melting rate. Feed the crucible with cobblestone until it accumulates 1,000 mB of lava, then extract it using a bucket. This lava is essential for crafting your cobble generator or powering early Heat Generators from Mekanism.

Early resource generation is built around Sieving and Mystical Agriculture. Once you've gathered enough Inferium Essence from mob drops, you can craft Inferium Seeds and plant them in regular farmland. These seeds passively produce Inferium, which you'll use to progress through the mystical essence tiers.

To fully automate essence crafting, combine LaserIO (Laser Node + Item Cards), Basic Item Collector, Storage Drawers or Barrels, Item Pipes, and a Crafter Tier 3 from RFTools Utility. This setup can automatically convert lower-tier essences into higher ones, eventually giving you access to Supremium Essence and beyond.

A functional Mob Tower is key before entering mid-game. Many advanced recipes rely on mob drops, especially for essence farming. Using Mob Grinding Utils, you can build a reliable, compact system using Fans to push mobs and an Absorption Hopper to collect drops and XP. You don't need Dreadful Dirt at this stage.

To obtain Soul Sand early, drop Sand into a barrel of Witch Water. To make Witch Water, you'll need Mycelium — acquired by sieving dirt to find Mycelium Spores. Right-click a dirt block with spores to start the spread. ❗Tip: Mycelium spreads fast, so isolate it from your grass or dirt-based farms.

Place an Oak Barrel on top of a Mycelium block, then fill it with water. Wait for the water to transform into Witch Water, then right-click with sand to convert it into Soul Sand. Once you've got your first block, you can automate this process using the Create mod.

For Create-based automation, set up a Water Wheel or other rotational source, connect it to an Encased Fan facing a Depot, and place Soul Fire (Soul Sand + Flint & Steel) between the fan and depot. Drop sand on the depot and let the fan convert it into Soul Sand over time. This loop is entirely passive and great for scaling later mystical farming or Nether Quartz generation.

Xycraft's Extractor allows you to create valuable blocks like Blackstone, Deepslate, End Stone, Moss, and Mud. These blocks can be processed further to obtain unique resources through sieving and hammering chains.

Most of these materials — like Blackstone and End Stone — can be piped directly into a Flux Hammer to be crushed into their respective fragments, which are then sent into a Flux Sieve for processing. Moss doesn't need to be hammered and can be piped straight into a sieve.

Mud, however, requires a different approach. First, pipe the mud into a Mechanical Squeezer (or standard Squeezer if you're doing it manually) to convert it into Dirt. That dirt can then be sieved for various early-game items like seeds, mycelium spores, and more.

For standard materials like Gravel, Sand, and Dust, you can automate production using Cobble For Days generators. Pipe cobblestone into a Flux Hammer to get gravel, then into a second hammer to get sand, and finally into a third hammer to produce dust — each stage requiring its own Flux Hammer. From there, send the processed material into the corresponding sieve.

You can also fully automate Soul Sand production using Create. Start by hammering cobblestone down to sand, then pipe it onto a Create Depot. To the side of the depot, place a block of Soul Fire (Soul Sand lit with Flint and Steel), and have a Fan blow over it to convert the sand into Soul Sand. Once transformed, use a Mechanical Belt or chute to carry the Soul Sand into a barrel or directly into a sieve.