Minecraft: Here’s What ME Systems Is (& How To Create One)

If you’ve ever played a sandbox game other than Minecraft, you’ll be familiar with the concept they are all based on: complete freedom to choose what you’re going to do and make. What expands this freedom further is the use of mods. It’s the code you apply to the game to change how it functions. There are plenty of excellent mods made by the wonderful community members, but the ones that stand out the most originate from the Feed The Beast team. This is where you’ll find your average ME system, but what is it, and how do you create one?

How to build an ME system

You’ll first need to download the Applied Energetics 2 mod pack on the official Feed The Beast website to build an ME system. The site should be entirely safe for use, and the mod pack shouldn’t contain any viruses, either. Many people use this mod pack already and haven’t had problems with it. To be safe, you could scan the folder you downloaded with paid antivirus software. If you’ve already done that, follow these steps to build a simple ME system:

1. Find an ME Controller in your inventory and place it where you intend your ME System to be.
2. Find an ME Drive block in your inventory and place it next to the controller.
3. Then, take an Energy Cell block and place it on the opposite side of the ME Drive block you placed next to the ME controller. The Me controller should light up and start emitting color now.
4. Then, find a ME Glass Cable – Fluix blocks and place it on top of the ME controller.
5. On top of the glass cable, place a ME Terminal block.
6. Now, open your ME Drive by right-clicking on it and place a 1k ME Storage in one of the slots.
7. Stack up on the item you want to store and place and then open the ME Terminal.
8. Now, you can stack more than 64 blocks in one slot.

So how do you make sense of this tutorial? Everything in Minecraft usually makes sense but this is a bit more complicated. The 1k ME Storage determines how many items you can place in one single slot. So, if it’s a 1k storage drive, you can place 1024 items. Once you’ve used up all the space, you’ll need to place a new 1k ME Storage drive to save. You can take these blocks out of the drive, and they’ll be stored safely inside nonetheless.

You won’t be able to access these files without an ME System, but they will be safely stored, that’s for sure. This is the most basic ME System with the smallest Storage available, but some storage goes up to 64k, allowing you to store up to 64000 items.

This all sounds simple and easy, but what if you wanted to craft or have to craft all of these items to create one such system? How would you approach doing that?

I’ll list all the items you need to craft these blocks and then provide pictures for you to see how you should arrange them in the Crafting Table:

1. ME Controller – 4 Sky Stone Blocks, 4 Pure Fluix Crystals, Engineering Processor
2. ME Drive – 4 Iron Ingots, 2 ME Basic Processors, 2 Glass
3. 1k ME Storage – 2 Quartz Glass, 3 Redstone Dust variations (any), 3 Iron Ingots, 1k ME Storage Component
4. ME Glass Cable – 1 Quartz Fiber, 2 Fluix Crystals
5. ME Terminal – Illuminated Panel, Formation Core, Annihilation Core, Logic Processor

It’s evident from these crafting recipes that Applied Energetics 2 is an extensive mod pack with a ton of new blocks to learn about. It’ll be like learning to play Minecraft all over again. You’re required to download Feed The Beast’s custom Minecraft Launcher if you plan on running any of the mod packs available.

Feed The Beast

I’ve mentioned Feed The Beast several times, but what exactly is it? Well, it started as a map that players could join to play with many different items. Once the interest in the map grew and the team realized it would be tiresome to constantly share the download folders with people interested in trying it out, they made their own custom launcher supporting the mods.

Nowadays, Feed The Beast is a brand that provides you with what are likely the best mods in Minecraft. Not all mods are related to hard-to-understand technology. Some are related to magic; some are designed to be incredibly difficult. Each mod pack you download will be like learning the game anew, which will be great if you are getting tired of Vanilla Minecraft.

How to connect Ender Chest to the ME system?

You can use an import bus that will suck items from the Ender chest or the ME System and into the ME System or Ender Chest. You only need to connect the basic ME import bus to the interface block with the Ender Chest. Then, you should ensure that all the color codes on the Ender Chest are the same as the one you want to link the ME System to.

Then, place a regular chest next to the other Ender Chest and put an item duct between them. Power the Item Duct using a Redstone torch, and your Ender Chest should now be linked to your ME System.

How to connect two ME systems in Minecraft?

You would imagine that not a lot has to be done to connect two ME systems so that each is separate, but you can access both. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t true. You can only have 1 ME Controller per ME network, so connecting the two is impossible. You can make multiple access points for a single ME System, and whatever you change in one terminal will also change in the other.

You need to connect the two terminals with ME Glass Cables and put another ME system component at the end to close off the circuit. You can place as many Terminals as you’d like along the way.

How to learn Applied Energetics 2?

If all of the things I mentioned are nuclear science, you should first take your time learning a more straightforward mod and then move on to more advanced mods like Applied Energetics 2. The best mod pack for newbies would be the DireWolf20 pack. It is much smaller, which is perfect for beginners. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you can move on to the bigger mod that AE2. You’ll have to learn it slowly, taking advantage of wikis, crafting recipes, and many tutorials.

One of the reasons why the DireWolf20 pack is so good for newcomers is that its creator also made tutorials on how to work with it. To use the Applied Energetics 2 mod, you’ll need to download the main FTB modpack called FTB: the Monster, consisting of numerous mods, Applied Energetics 2 is just one of them and relates to the crafting of an ME System or Network.

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