Build Deep Core

Deep Core Extractor

The Deep Core is a drilling tower that brings up ore blocks from deep below. QuantaWorks adds no ores to the world; the Deep Core brings up the ores your dimension already has – those of every mod too – in the same proportions as the world generator places them.

• Ore table: read from the ore features of the dimension (after the biome changes of the loaders, so mod ores count), weighted by vein size × veins per chunk and averaged over the biomes, and only items in the tag c:ores. Data packs can change the weights, add ores or switch a dimension off (quantaworks/deep_core, see For Mod Developers). Which ore comes next follows a fixed sequence, not a random roll.
• Depth = tower height: a tower of 12 blocks reaches depth 1, each further block one more, up to depth 9 at 20 blocks. Each depth step is lowered once, for 250,000,000 E (at most 16,000,000 E per tick). The deeper, the more power the drill takes (500,000 E/t at depth 1 up to 2,000,000 E/t at depth 9) and the faster it drills.
• Per ore block: 20,000,000 E (server option deepCoreEnergyPerOre), 25 mB Liquid Nitrogen and one use of the Drill Head (a head lasts 2,048 ore blocks). The energy per ore never changes with the depth.
• Reserves: a region of 128 × 128 blocks holds 50,000 ore blocks (server option deepCoreRegionReserve), shared by all extractors in it. An exhausted region stays exhausted – build the next tower further away.
• While it drills, the drill string turns, the wellhead glows and sparks, and the ore cage lifts the last ore up.

The example below is the smallest tower, 7 × 12 × 7, with viewports in the housing: item ports beside the controller, the coolant input on the left, two Energy Hatches on the right.

Rules

• Size: 7 wide, 12 to 20 high, 7 deep.
• Frame (edges and corners): Precision Casing only.
• Walls: Precision Casing, Derrick Frame and Industrial Viewport in any mix, plus the controller and ports. The blueprint puts Precision Casing in the housing (the lowest three layers) and the crown (the top layer), and Derrick Frame between them.
• Ports:
  • Item Input Port: Drill Heads.
  • Item Output Port: ore.
  • Fluid Input Port: Liquid Nitrogen.
  • Energy Hatch (tier 2 – 5): energy in, at most 4.
• Inside: the Wellhead in the middle of the floor, the Rod Bearing in the middle of the layer under the crown, air everywhere else (the drill string between them is drawn by the game).
• Controller: the Deep Core Extractor Controller sits in a wall and faces out; the block right behind it must be inside.

Running it

Put a Drill Head into its slot (or through the input port), pipe Liquid Nitrogen in and connect energy. The screen shows energy, coolant, depth and power ("Depth 3 of 3, 1,000,000 E/t"), the lowering progress and the region reserve.

Common error messages

Message	What to do
Wrong block at (position) (expected: wellhead) / (expected: rod_bearing)	Wellhead in the middle of the floor, Rod Bearing in the middle under the crown.
Wrong block at (position) (expected: air)	Nothing else inside.
Structure too small ((size)) / Structure too large or not closed near (position)	7 wide, 12 – 20 high, 7 deep.
Too many ports of one kind: energy_input:4 allowed	At most 4 Energy Hatches.
"No drill head" / "No liquid nitrogen" / "Not enough power"	Supply what is missing.
"This region is exhausted: build further away"	The reserve of this 128 × 128 region is used up.
"No ores in this dimension"	The dimension has no ore features in c:ores (or a data pack switched it off).

Sight glass

Every wall block that is not on an edge may be Industrial Viewport (or any block a data pack puts into the tag quantaworks:multiblock/glass) instead of the casing. The plant works the same, and through the glass you see what happens inside while it runs. The example below has Industrial Viewport in the housing, at the height of the wellhead.

Step by step

The example below is 7 wide, 12 high and 7 deep. The example forms as shown (checked in the game when the pictures were taken).

Each step shows the plant from the front left after one more layer is placed (from the bottom up), and a top-down map of that layer: the back of the plant at the top, the front with the controller at the bottom. The letters match the parts lists.

All parts of the example:

	Key	Block	Count
	F	Derrick Frame	160
	A	Precision Casing	157
	E	Industrial Viewport	15
	G	Energy Hatch (Tier 2)	2
	C	Deep Core Extractor Controller	1
	H	Fluid Input Port	1
	B	Item Input Port	1
	D	Item Output Port	1
	J	Rod Bearing	1
	I	Wellhead	1

Step 1: Layer 1

Parts in this step: Precision Casing (A) ×49

Step 2: Layer 2

Parts in this step: Deep Core Extractor Controller (C) ×1, Energy Hatch (Tier 2) (G) ×2, Fluid Input Port (H) ×1, Item Input Port (B) ×1, Item Output Port (D) ×1, Precision Casing (A) ×18, Wellhead (I) ×1

Step 3: Layer 3

Parts in this step: Industrial Viewport (E) ×15, Precision Casing (A) ×9

Step 4: Layers 4–10 (identical)

Place this layer 7 times on top of each other.

Parts in this step: Derrick Frame (F) ×140, Precision Casing (A) ×28

Step 5: Layer 11

Parts in this step: Derrick Frame (F) ×20, Precision Casing (A) ×4, Rod Bearing (J) ×1

Step 6: Layer 12

Parts in this step: Precision Casing (A) ×49

Finished

In operation

Tips

• A taller tower costs more once (lowering) but drills faster; the energy per ore stays the same.
• Liquid Nitrogen comes from the Chemical Reactor (liquefaction of nitrogen from the Air Separator).