Applied Energistics 2 Guide

What is Applied Energistics 2?

Applied Energistics 2 (AE2) is a storage and automation mod for Forge, NeoForge, and Fabric. It stores items and fluids as data in an ME network (Matter Energy), so a single terminal gives searchable access to everything you own. On top of storage, AE2 provides one of the deepest autocrafting systems in modded Minecraft: encode a recipe once and the network crafts it on demand, including multi-step recipes with intermediate ingredients.

AE2 has a deliberate progression curve built around meteorites, crystal growth, and the channel system. The payoff is a network that scales from one chest replacement to a base-wide nervous system.

Getting Started: Meteorites and Presses

1. Find a meteorite. Meteorites leave large craters of Sky Stone on the surface (some bury themselves underground). Craft a Meteorite Compass to point at the nearest one.
2. Open the Mysterious Cube. At the meteorite's center, this block contains all four Inscriber Presses: Calculation, Logic, Engineering, and Silicon. Every processor recipe depends on them.
3. Grow Certus Quartz. Meteorites contain Budding Certus blocks that sprout quartz clusters over time, like amethyst. Place Growth Accelerators beside a budding block to speed it up dramatically.
4. Charge and combine. A Charger turns Certus Quartz into Charged Certus. Drop Charged Certus, Nether Quartz, and Redstone into water to craft Fluix Crystals, the material behind cables and network gear.
5. Build Inscribers. Inscribers stamp printed circuits and assemble Logic, Calculation, and Engineering Processors, the crafting components used by nearly every network device.

Building Your First ME Network

A minimal working network needs four things:

• Energy Acceptor – feeds the network from any FE power source.
• ME Drive – holds up to ten storage cells (1k through 256k bytes).
• ME Terminal or Crafting Terminal – search, deposit, and withdraw items; the crafting variant embeds a crafting grid.
• ME Glass Cable – connects everything.

That setup already outperforms a chest wall. From there, common additions include the Import Bus (pull items from a furnace or machine into storage), Export Bus (push items out), and Storage Bus (map an external inventory, like a drawer wall, into the network).

Channels structure larger networks: a standard cable carries 8 device channels and dense cable carries 32, while an ME Controller anchors big systems. Channel planning is the main skill gap between small and large AE2 builds; P2P tunnels and sub-networks are the standard tools for scaling past the first controller.

Autocrafting Explained

AE2 autocrafting has three moving parts:

1. Patterns. Encode recipes in the Pattern Encoding Terminal, either as crafting patterns (crafting table recipes) or processing patterns (any machine input/output).
2. Pattern Providers + Molecular Assemblers. A Pattern Provider pushes ingredients to adjacent machines; a Molecular Assembler executes crafting-table patterns. Providers facing a Mekanism or Thermal machine automate that machine through the same interface.
3. Crafting CPUs. Multiblocks of Crafting Storage, Co-Processing Units, and Crafting Monitors that schedule jobs. More co-processors means more parallel ingredient crafting.

Request an item from any terminal and the network resolves the whole dependency tree, crafting intermediates as needed. Level Emitters and Export Buses with crafting cards keep stock levels topped up automatically.