Ore quintupling with boomsticks and silk touch!

Minecraft & Mods GregTech 6
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GT ores when broken with a regular pick return a broken ore (gt.meta.ore.broken):

You can instead make a silk touch pick (ie: Steel with Amber tips), and use that only on ores. Real power players use a Jackhammer in no-ore mode to remove stone and leave ore behind.

Using the silk touch pick, you get whole ores (gt.meta.ore.normal):

When you return to your base with your whole ores, instead of using the Crusher on them immediately like you do the broken ores, instead use a boomstick or dynamite on them.

Boomsticks break the ores open with Fortune 3, while dynamite has Fortune 5!

I make a 3x3x3 cube of ore, with the center hollow for the boomstick. I leave one block out so I can access the hole. Then I insert the boomstick, ignite the boomstick, and rapidly place an ore block to cover it. The blast is exactly 3x3x3 so there’s little danger standing outside it.

BOOM

I turned 26 whole Galena ore into 51 raw galena ore.

Crushing 26 broken Galena ore (not silk/boom) with the crusher yields only 52 crushed galena ore to be washed and smelted. That’s just doubled from the crusher.

Crushing the 51 raw Galena ore resulting from the silk touch and boomstick process results in 102 crushed galena ore. That’s doubled, but the fortune 3 already multiplied our raw ore from 26 to 51!

TLDR: Use a silk touch pick to break out GT ores, then use dynamite to double them before doubling again in the Crusher.

EDIT: I was just testing in creative now, and got 68 raw galena ore from a boomstick on the 26 ore. Clearly there’s a variable rate of return, but that will become 136 crushed galena ore!

I did the same with dynamite, and got 98 on my first try. Dynamite has fortune 5, so the output will vary.

I couldn’t find any solid docs on Fortune 3 vs Fortune 5 in % return. Perhaps someone can share.

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Minecraft documents Fortune here: Fortune – Minecraft Wiki

According to that math, Fortune 3 is 1/(3+2) + (3+1)/2 = 2.2x ore.

Then Fortune 5 is 1/(5+2) + (5+1)/2 = 3.14x ore.

To summarize, boomsticks give roughly 2x the ore and dynamite give roughly 3x the ore before doubling in the crusher.

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Business… is booming.

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You won’t believe me: a day ago I wanted to make the same thread about how I found “an abuse” of dynamite, but then thought that everyone but me knows it already.

And what the jackhammer does exactly?

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Jackhammer I believe has a really high mining speed

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I got it: the jackhammer’s no-ore mode is just a safeguard because of its high mining speed.

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I learned this method from an anchor I followed a few months ago, and then I also used this method to increase a lot of ores. I don’t know who first proposed this method.

I use a knightmetal pickaxe with Silk Touch found in the twilight forest and a remote activator, so that there is no need to leave a gap for ignition and block it with ore immediately.

PS: don’t try to multipling enriched naquadah ore with this method, it will cause explosion!

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Oh wow, I completely forgot explosive Ores exist. Good to know that Dynamite causes a huge explosion then. XD

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I also get to know for the first time that dynamites can detonate explosive ores.
By the way, do Fortune pickaxes work on ore blocks mined with Silk Touch and placed again?

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If Silk Touched then yes they do work with Fortune. Just remember to have Silk Touch otherwise you end up with “broken” Ores.

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Very very very very important which I just confirmed while digging out under my base.

A Buildcraft Quarry only produces broken ores.

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Buildcraft really doesn’t use the proper harvest functions on the block? Really? >.>

Why is that not surprising though…

ASM fix maybe?

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No, I think that’s fine. A silk touch quarry would be OP as hell and I’d have to nerf it. Broken ores as in same ores with a pickaxe, you can’t explode them. Only throw them in the crusher for 2x.

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Oh, that kind of ore! Yeah that makes sense.

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