Arriving back at base, it was not a smooth landing, but that was a given. Seeing as I had no more land based locomotion, it made the most sense to land directly on top of my base. Coming to a stop from that speed with a rough underside was not pretty. I got a lot of traction sure, but maybe a bit too much, as almost immediately my plane caught on the ground and flipped, scattering my precious Ignite everywhere.
One cleanup session later, and everything was back in order. The warplane was broken back down for parts, all the heavily damaged blocks were put into a pile off to the side, and every piece of Ignite was recovered, with one being completely shattered in the process. It was annoying, but at least I had a bunch of other chunks to decide what to do with.
First things first, power. Since I had one solar panel already, it would make sense to use nine Ignite to make another nine for an even ten. Then my base would get a steady influx of power during the day, with enough battery storage to last the night.
Anything past that though, was a little off limits. The Ignite in itself was useful, very much so, but without Erudite and Celestite to compliment it, I couldn’t go much further than grade one blocks.
It was always the crystals. They were pretty much every major roadblock I’ve encountered so far, except for Titanite of course. First it was Luxite, then Ignite and Celestite, and now Erudite. I was glad enough to figure out how to start producing Luxite on my own, but the other crystals were…
Hold on a second. What’s stopping me from growing the other crystals as well?
Well, for one, I don’t know what they needed to grow. Replicating their environment would be the first step, but sustaining rapid growth would be the next. Ignite was similar to Luxite, or at least it looked similar enough. They both breached the surface, and they both actively grew over time, meaning something was causing them to grow. For Luxite, it was light or some sort of solar radiation. Growing it was as simple as increasing the total light intake and keeping the soil saturated. I didn’t know exactly what minerals it needed, but for now I could just move the growing chambers to more ‘fertile’ areas once the previous ones dried up.
Given where Ignite usually grows, the catalyst for its reaction was pretty obvious. Something about the intense heat of the desert allowed the crystal to grow, and the mineral content of the sand was what supplied it. The sand was easy enough to get, especially once the tunnel reached the desert. The only problem was heat, the area around me was on the higher end of that spectrum, but it definitely wasn’t enough to get any worthwhile results. Putting it back in the desert would help, but that would leave the crystals unmonitored, and more importantly unguarded for the immediate future.
I still had to speed the process up as well, and there were two ways I could do that at the moment. One, heat it up electrically, either by using heating coils or just putting the whole setup in a furnace. It would require a lot of power, but shouldn’t need a lot of maintenance to grow a lot of crystals. The other method was a lot more crude, just surround the Ignite chunk with flammable materials and light it up.
Of course I wouldn’t leave it as just that, it would be much too inefficient. By insulating it, I could create a kiln of sorts, and with proper fuel management, I could reduce the total amount needed to grow another chunk.
At least in theory, as I still needed to test everything.
To start, I needed sand. The only issue was how I was going to bring that much from the desert to my base with only a plane. Sand wasn’t an easy material to work with, it’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, and I would need a great deal of it to get started. Unlike Luxite, which grew upwards, Ignite grew in both directions, though it tended to lean in the downwards direction, most of the time you would actually find more Ignite below the initial outcropping than the outcropping itself. Of course it was harder to access, but an Autominer could usually get the job done.
There was absolutely no way I was going to set one up in the desert, it would be destroyed before I even finished anchoring it to the ground. No, I was going to get more Ignite at my base instead, so I needed enough sand to create a suitable environment for active crystal growth, with enough space for a couple of chunks worth of Ignite to fit. Going off the size of the Luxite Growing Chambers, filling one to the brim would be…
A lot of sand. Too much for the plane or even the warplane to get in a single trip. It was a similar situation to getting water earlier, I just couldn’t ferry enough efficiently with what I had. Thankfully a drill would reach the desert soon enough, but even then the tunnels will still have to be cleared.
The tunnels! They needed to be cleared, and one cleaner tech was nowhere near enough to finish the job. While I had already devised a partial solution to this, I had yet to actually enact it, and the drill in the North was still sitting where it stopped, untouched.
I hastily reconstructed the plane, hightailing it Northwards so I could recover the A.I. cabin stuck up there. There wasn’t anything new on the flight over or back, but it did give me time to think.
If collectors wouldn’t suffice for gathering sand, then I would have to use something more physical. Weight would certainly become an issue, but I wasn’t too worried about it when I had already fabricated the thrust needed for the warplane, and now with a bunch of extra Ignite, I could tack on even more. The real problem came with carrying the sand, as simply piling it into a recess in my tech wouldn’t work. With the amount of time I would spend flying, there wouldn’t be any left by the time I got back to base. Covering it wouldn’t help either, because although connected blocks were solid, they were not airtight.
I would need to create a special storage compartment to gather a Luxite Growing Chamber’s worth of sand.
Why not just use a Luxite Growing Chamber?
They weren’t exactly airtight either, but they could be if I entered their design into the fabricator. I could also add a few attachment points, allowing me to easily mass produce and transport them in the future. The only problem was that the fabricator couldn’t polish the interior, making it just a Plumbite tube with a lens on one end. It would actually be better to forgo the lens entirely in that regard, and instead have it as a secondary accessory, that way I didn’t have to worry about finding a proper silicate for it yet.
I would still have to find a way to sand the interior though if I wanted to make more Luxite Growing Chambers.
Wait a minute…
Sand…
I had access to sand, water, decent rotational power, and a cylinder in need of polishing. I had an idea, but that was for later, right now I just needed the sand, and I had the storage for it.
With another trip down South, I had scooped up a good amount of it. Instead of getting it all from one place though, I decided to do a small test; taking samples from both the upper and lower regions of the desert. If the Ignite grew better in one area over the other, and it wasn’t just due to overharvesting, I needed to know.
So with everything in place, I began work on designing an Ignite Growing Chamber. Starting with a sand-filled cylinder, I built up a kiln around it, using a selection of stone blocks and concrete for better insulation. Once that was done, I hooked up a small pipeline around the base for the fuel. Since I didn’t have access to any flammable gases, Oleite was the next best thing, especially compared to Carbite.
Still, it wasn’t the best, and the refined version was more useful as a material than a fuel. There were other methods of refinement that could yield better alternatives, but regular refineries weren’t calibrated with that in mind, so I would have to construct my own from the ground up.
That was a project for later though, as I placed a couple chunks of Ignite in the sand at the top of the cylinders, then lit the burners below. It didn’t take long for the Plumbite casing to turn orange, but it didn’t go much further than that, and I knew it would never get hot enough for the sand to turn to glass.
Only time would tell if the Ignite grew at all, and as faint wisps of smoke began to trail out of the vents, I began looking towards another project of mine.
Getting another unpolished cylinder, I filled it up partially with some sand and water, then capped it off. Attaching it to a motor, I set it to start spinning slowly. This would also take some time, but if it worked then I might be able to grow Luxite even faster in the future.
To Be Continued…