Chemistry in Games: Rockhounding mod

Rockhounding: Chemistry was a mod for Minecraft version 1.10.2 which had another solid set of chemical reactions to play with.  I hopped onto my VeeTech2 modpack world to refresh my memory (and notes) about it.

Everything in this mod starts with the uninspected minerals found throughout the world.  You put these into the Mineral Sizer to get a huge range of minerals, but first you need some Lab Ovens to make some of the acids.  These all use composts which are made in the Lab Blender, so let's start there ...


[Lab Blender] 3 S = 8 Sulfur-bearing compost (SComp), or coal blocks or coal coke blocks, there are variants for all of these that make different amounts
[Lab Blender] 3 apatite = 4 fluorite-bearing compost (FComp)
[Lab Blender] 3 salt = 4 NaCl compost (NaClComp)
[Lab Blender] 3 coal = 4 Cracked Coal compost (CCComp)
[Lab Blender] 3 Carbon dust = 2 Carbon compost (CComp)

[Lab Oven] 1000mb H2O + SComp = 500mb H2SO4
[Lab Oven] 500mb H2SO4 + NaClComp = 300mb HCl
[Lab Oven] 500mb H2SO4 + FComp = 300mb HF
[Lab Oven] 500mb H2SO4 + 1000mb H2O + FComp = 400mb H3PO4
Other recipes let you make CH3Cl, syngas, NH3 and more, but we want to get to the mineral sizer machine.

In the Mineral Sizer you set a "communition level" (and use up grinding gears) to get different mineral types cand "gangues", including silicate, sulfate, nitrate, halide, arsenate, carbonate.  Each of those can be split into a whole slew of actual minerals in the Leaching Vat, which uses thse acids: H2SO4, HF, HCl.

For just a taste of what's in this mod, let's look at the arsenate gangue recipes.  I bet you can't name a single actual arsenate mineral -- I know I couldn't and I was reading the classic Dana's Manual of Mineralogy when I was ten.  Anyway, they are:

- agardite: 36% Cu, 22% As, 6% Pb, 5% Dy, 4% Y, 4% Ce, 3% La, 3% Nd, 2% Ca, 1% Eu, 1% Gd, 1% Sm, 1% Si.
- fornacite
- schultenite
- pitticite
- zalesiite
- keyite

They all have those lists of elements, but I'm only showing the first one.  Yes, those are real elements, so from an agardite shard you are getting tiny traces of europium, gadolinium and others.  That is some detailed in-game chemistry.

You put the shards into the Chemical Extractor machine which uses more acids (HNO3, H3PO4, NaCN) and test tubes and graduated cylinders to extract all the elements.  The UI of this machine is a little periodic table where you can watch your tiny amounts add up over time, and each time one of those little bars is full you get one dust of that element.

There are lots of upgrades, which use a mind-boggling array of increasingly advanced alloys, all made in the Metal Alloyer.  At first, I thought these were made up, but no, every one of these alloys appears to be a real-world material.  A few examples:

[Metal Alloyer] 7 Cu: + 2 Be: = CuBe ingot + nugget
[Metal Alloyer] 6 Ni: + 2 Cr: + Fe = nichrome ingot + nugget
[Metal Alloyer] 2 Al: + 2 Sc: = AlSc ingot + nugget
[Metal Alloyer] 6 B: + 2 Al: + Mg: = BAM ingot + nugget
[Metal Alloyer] 4 Y: + 2 Al: + 2 Nd: + 2 Cr: = 9 YAG gems + nugget ... YAG is Yttrium-Aluminum Garnet by the way

Most of these recipes cleverly take a total of 9 dusts to make one new ingot.  So the ratios are a bit off from real-world metallurgy, but wow, there is a huge tech tree here.

ABA/BCB/ABA (crushing gear, iron foil, basic logic chip) = iron speed upgrade
And then each tier up surrounds the previous upgrade with 4 more iron foil and 4 alloy ingots.  Up to Titanium Nitride (TiN) upgrades with multiply machine speeds by 8.  There are a total of 12x41 items for this mod listed in NEI.

It's one of the craziest grinds any mod has put us through, but there are times when I just want to come to my Rockhounding lab and pound out some new things.



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