Applied Energistics 2: Getting Started with Certus Quartz

guide

Applied Energistics 2 is a digital-storage and automation mod, and everything begins with its quartz. This guide covers the early materials that lead into an ME network.

Certus Quartz and charging

Certus Quartz Crystal is the foundational material. Place one in a Charger to make a Charged Certus Quartz Crystal, the reactive form used to grow more crystals and craft Fluix.

Growing crystals and Fluix

AE2 lets you grow quartz rather than only mining it. Using a Charged Certus Quartz Crystal in a transform recipe converts Certus Quartz Dust back into two crystals, and turns a Certus Quartz Block through the budding stages (Damaged, Chipped, Flawed Budding Certus Quartz). Combining a Charged Certus Quartz Crystal with Fluix Dust, or with Redstone Dust and Nether Quartz, produces Fluix Crystal — the mod's signature material.

Silicon and sky stone

Smelting Certus Quartz Dust yields Silicon, needed for processors, and meteorite-hunting turns up Sky Stone; craft a Meteorite Compass in the Charger to help locate the meteorites that hold AE2's early presses. With charged quartz, Fluix and silicon in hand, you are ready to build processors and your first storage network.

Meteorites are the entry point, and they are common

The mod places exactly one structure: the Meteorite, generated as a top-layer modification at spacing 32 with a separation of 8. That is dense enough that you will meet meteorites while exploring normally rather than needing a dedicated search.

Since the mod's starting material comes from them, finding one is the actual first step regardless of what a recipe list suggests.

The scale of what follows

AE2 carries 332 crafting recipes on 1.21.1 across 262 items and 102 blocks, which is why it reads as intimidating. The specialised machine categories are far smaller and are the ones worth learning by name:

Inscriber — 15 recipes, the processor line
Transform — 8
Stonecutting — 39, mostly the quartz building blocks
Charger — 3, Entropy — 2, Smithing Transform — 5

What to build first

Certus quartz and the charger come before anything else, then the inscriber, then storage. The inscriber is the gate on the whole mod, since processors feed nearly every component above the basic tier.

Version differences are tiny

Unlike most mods this size, the two builds are nearly identical: one crafting recipe differs, and Quartz Cutting exists only on 1.21.1 with a single recipe.

Charged Certus Quartz Crystal