Tutorial/EMC with Gold Chests

One of the best ways of getting EMC is with the Gold Chest exploit.

How does it work

The exploit is based around the fact that you can craft a Gold Chest with four pieces of Glass, four pieces of Gold and one Silver Chest. The EMC of these items combined is 13,036 EMC^[1] while the resulting Gold Chest has an EMC value of 18,496. This means you make a profit of 5,460 EMC^[2] with a single craft. A filter is able to extract 2.5 Gold Chests/second out of an Automatic Crafting Table MkII, which means each Automatic Crafting Table MkII will be able to produce 13,650 EMC/second^[3].

When automating this process you're able to produce around 13,650 EMC/second^[4] , which is the equivalent of 1.66 Diamonds/second.

How to expand this design

If you want to expand this design further, it is important to know what designs do and don't work on large scales.

What to avoid

It isn't recommended to have the Filters that extract the Gold Ingots, Glass and Silver Chests from Condensers put their items into a Pneumatic Tube, which distribute the items over multiple Automatic Crafting Table MkII's. This is because Filters will overflow the tube with items, which can cause a lot of lag. This is due to the fact that Filters will continuously send more items to the Automatic Crafting Table MkII's until they are filled up, because they don't take items in the tube already heading to the Crafting Table MkII into account. The Pneumatic Tube also seems to be able to transport an unlimited amount of items, which is bad for two reasons. First off, because it means items are stuck in an infinite item loop inside the Pneumatic Tubes, which is a waste of EMC. Second off, Pneumatic Tubes filled with hundreds of item stacks will lag the game, meaning you have to stop expanding your factory sooner.

How to circumvent these problems

The only ways to prevent these problems with the Filter are by: 1. Making sure the Filter doesn't get a pulse very often, but this means you have to carefully calculate how often you give a redstone pulse to your Filters every time you add another Automatic Crafting Table MkII, as you're going to need a faster input of items. 2. Not using any pneumatic tubes at all, by having the Filters dump their items directly into the Automatic Crafting Table MkII. It's the easiest to go with option 2, which is having all Filters point directly into the Automatic Crafting Tables MkII, as shown in the pictures above and below on this page. The output of Gold Chests can be transported through Pneumatic Tubes, as there should always be space in the Diamond Condenser for the overflow of Gold Chests to go to. This means the Pneumatic Tubes should never create an infinite item loop, and it's recommended to use Pneumatic Tubes, as they are cheaper and easier to place than Filters. All you have to do to make this design expandable is to add more Automatic Crafting Tables MkII, and placing 3 new Condensers for every Automatic Crafting Table MkII you place to the left, right and under the Crafting Table MkII for all the input items. This means you have to slightly change the original design so the Gold Ingot Condenser is located under the Automatic Crafting Table MkII.

Material List

4 Energy Condensers, 1 Automatic Crafting Table MkII, 4 Filters, 13 Pneumatic Tubes, 1 Timer, 1 Lever, 1 Screwdriver, a few Diamonds for EMC and 4.5 stacks of Covers of any kind. ^[5] (any 4.5 stacks of items with no EMC value will also do)

Tutorial with Pictures

Clear a 7x5x3 area.

Place four condensers.

Put a Silver Chest in the upper left corner slot and, apart from the first two slots, fill every inventory slot with covers.

Put Glass in the upper left corner slot and, apart from the first two slots, fill every inventory slot with covers.

Put a Gold Ingot in the upper left corner slot and, apart from the first five slots, fill every inventory slot with covers.

Put a Diamond in the upper left corner slot. No covers are needed for this chest.

Place the Automatic Crafting Table MkII and place the items necessary for the recipe in the crafting grid. Fill the 2nd, 3rd and 4th row with covers, except for the first slot in each row.

Put a Filter in between the Condenser and the Crafting Table that contains 1 Silver Chest.

Put a Filter in between the Condenser and the Crafting Table that contains 4 Gold Ingots.

Put a Filter in between the Condenser and the Crafting Table that contains 4 Glass.

Add a Lever and a Timer pointing into the Crafting Table.

Set the Time Interval on 0.2 seconds by opening the timer and clicking '-10s'.

Put a Filter on top of the Crafting Table.

Use a Screwdriver on the Filter on top of the Crafting Table to turn the filter around so the side with the small hole points upwards.

Add 13 Pneumatic Tubes as shown in the picture. The Gold Chests that are being crafted prioritize the closest chest. This means that the Condenser which makes the Diamonds, the profit EMC, will get the excess Gold Chests.

Put some Diamonds inside the Gold, Silver and Glass condensers so you can kickstart your machine. Congratulations on making it all the way through this tutorial! After not too long your chest should look something like the picture included!

Math sources

[1] (1 EMC * 4 + 2048 EMC * 4 + 4840 EMC) = 13,036 EMC

[2] 18,496 EMC - 13,036 EMC = 5460 EMC

[3] 2.5 * 5460 = 13,650 EMC

[4] 5,460 EMC / 0.4 second (lowest interval for filters) = 13,650 EMC/s

[5] 89 in silver condenser + 89 in glass condenser + 86 in gold condenser + 24 in crafting table = 288 items = 4.5 stacks of items with no EMC that go in the condensers and the crafting table to limit their input