Guide 3: Getting Started with Create

Create is the pack’s flagship tech mod — machines built from spinning shafts, cogwheels, and belts that you can see working. Its core machines have no GUIs at all, and it teaches itself better than any tech mod ever made. This guide gets you from nothing to your first automation.

The one feature you must know: Ponder

Hold W while hovering over any Create item in your inventory or JEI. A 3D animated “Ponder” scene plays showing exactly how that block works, in-world, step by step. Create documents itself better than any wiki. When in doubt: Ponder it. This guide mostly tells you what to Ponder and in what order.

Core concept: rotation

Everything in Create runs on rotational force from a power source, carried through shafts, cogwheels, and belts. Rotation has two properties:

• Speed (RPM) — how fast things spin. Gear up/down with small↔large cogwheel pairs.
• Stress — how much load your power source can carry. Every machine adds stress; every source has a stress budget. If you overload, everything stops (a goggle-wearing glance shows the numbers — craft Engineer’s Goggles early).

Your first hour, in order

Water Wheel	Millstone	Mechanical Press	Encased Fan

1. Andesite Alloy — the gateway material (andesite + iron/zinc nuggets). Almost everything early-game starts here.
2. Water Wheel — your first power source. Place it in flowing water, run a shaft from its axle. (Large Water Wheel = more stress budget, worth the upgrade.)
3. Millstone — your first machine: grinds wheat to flour, cobble to gravel, and more. Power it from your wheel and drop items on top.
4. Mechanical Press — stamps ingots into sheets (needed for many recipes). Put a Depot under it, drop items on the depot, watch it stamp.
5. Mechanical Saw — cuts logs into planks at better yields than hand-crafting. Upright saws also fell trees — though with this pack’s Dynamic Trees changing how trees work, test on one tree before building a farm around the idea.
6. Encased Fan — blow air through fire/water/lava at items to smelt, wash, or haunt them in bulk. Fan + water (“washing”) turns your millstone’s gravel into iron nuggets and flint — this is your first ore-multiplication line: cobble → gravel → washed iron.

Each of these has a Ponder. Watch them.

Your first real build: the cobble-to-iron line

A classic starter that teaches everything: cobblestone generator → Mechanical Drill breaking the cobble → belt carrying it into two Millstones (cobble → gravel) → belt through an Encased Fan washing station (gravel → iron nuggets) → Mechanical Press… you get the idea. Free iron forever, and you now understand belts, machines, and stress.

Moving items around

• Belts (shafts + belt item) carry items horizontally/diagonally; chutes drop them vertically.

• Funnels move items between belts/depots and inventories.

• Mechanical Arms are programmable pick-and-place — select inputs and outputs when placing. The backbone of fancy setups.

  

• Weighted Ejectors, Smart Chutes, Brass Tunnels come later with brass — filtering and splitting.

The tech ladder

Create’s progression is material-gated, not machine-gated:

1. Andesite age — everything above. Power: water wheels, windmills (sail blocks on a rotating bearing — cheap and strong).

2. Brass age — mix copper + zinc in a Mechanical Mixer over a Blaze Burner (capture a blaze with the empty burner). Brass unlocks smart logistics (filters, arms, tunnels, crafters) and the Mechanical Crafter grids.

   

3. Trains — lay Track, build a station, assemble a locomotive on a bogey. Fully custom trains with schedules — on a server, connecting player bases by rail is a beloved megaproject.

   

4. Steam engines — the serious power source once water wheels stop cutting it: boiler + burners + engines, scales enormously.

Addons on this server

• Create Crafts & Additions — bridges Create into electricity (alternators, electric motors, accumulators) so Create power and tech-mod power (Mekanism, Guide 4) can talk to each other.
• Create Enchantment Industry — automate disenchanting and enchanting with liquid XP; pairs absurdly well with Apotheosis gear farming.
• Create: Slice & Dice — automates Farmer’s Delight cooking (Guide 2 meets Guide 3).
• Create: Interiors + Mechanical Companion — furniture and helper blocks.

Starter goals

• Goggles, water wheel, millstone, press, saw
• Washing line: cobble → gravel → iron
• Automated Dynamic Tree farm with a saw
• Reach brass, build your first Mechanical Arm
• (Server flex) A train line to a friend’s base

Sources & further reading

• Ponder (in-game) is Create’s own documentation and the most primary source there is — hold W on any Create item
• createmod.net — the official Create site (downloads, links to official resources)
• Create Wiki on Fandom — the community encyclopedia; deepest block-by-block reference
• Create on CurseForge — official page and changelogs
• Addons: Create Crafts & Additions · Create Enchantment Industry · Create: Slice & Dice

Block renders from the Create Wiki (CC-BY-SA), stored in images/. Keep the images folder next to this file when sharing.