Like many of you, over the past few weeks I've left the glory days of 1.12 behind and have forged into the brave new world of modded 1.16 MC. I've played Enigmatica 6, Valhelsia 3, ATM 6... just give me a mix of mods to attack the new Nether with, and I'm happy. One thing that's become clear through these packs, at least to me, is that Mekanism v10 really lies at the center of them - at most points in the game, it's hard to think of something better to be doing than expanding your Mekanism base. So with that, I want to share some tips and tricks I've uncovered through multiple playthroughs centered around Mekanism v10. Feel free to share your own! (Some of these will be relevant for older versions of Mekanism as well)

- Bronze is an incredible early-game material for armor and tools that's very easy to make, and it's a great use for the Copper and Tin that you'll find in your early mining trips but don't need for machines yet. The Bronze Paxel even mines at diamond strength, so you can harvest obsidian before you find diamonds!

- Enrich all of your infusing materials in the Enrichment Chamber! Doing so before putting it into the Metallurgic Infuser multiplies its infusion yield by 8x! So one coal can infuse one ingot of iron, or an enriched one can infuse eight. You can even enrich Refined Obsidian! Coal, Redstone, Tin, Diamond (!)... when you enrich all of your infusing materials, things like Atomic Alloys and Ultimate Control Circuits are actually much much cheaper than they would be otherwise.

- I personally don't find 5x ore processing to be worth it - 4x is generally sufficient to generate the resources I need, and adding the fifth tier tends to slow down the process greatly, and can sometimes be finicky to configure. The biggest reason, however, is that I generally want all of my Sulfuric Acid to be going towards producing Fissile Fuel to run my Fission Reactor. (Also, having a 1:4 ore/ingot ratio just makes numbers nicer for auto crafting and other things).

- Polonium Pellets are the key that unlocks the late game (including the MekaSuit) in Mekanism v10. These require processing Nuclear Waste from a Fission Reactor, which takes a very long and complicated process to fuel (and an entire separate multi block structure, the turbine, to cool it and harness the energy from it). Much of Mekanism's late game is dedicated to optimizing Polonium production.

- When you do produce your first Polonium Pellet (which will take considerable time and effort), take some time to admire it and appreciate your journey getting there. Then realize you'll need dozens to finish the MekaSuit, hundreds to build the Supercritical Phase Shifter (386 to be exact), and thousands to create Antimatter pellets for endgame crafting. Get to optimizing!

- The Industrial Turbine is pretty much necessary to go along with the Fission Reactor - not just to generate power from it (although it does a pretty fantastic job of that), but mainly to reprocess the steam to pump water back into the Reactor. Otherwise, you'll require dozens of pumps pushing water into the Reactor to keep it cool enough. Build an Industrial Turbine (it's from previous versions of Mek, so there's plenty of documentation online how to build it), but make sure to add several Saturating Condensers to the structure, then hook a Mechanical Pipe (preferably a high-tier one) to *one of your turbine's Vents*, and then feed it back to the Reactor. (That vent part is not at all well-documented or obvious). It will convert the Steam from the Turbine back into water and pump it back into the Reactor. This is pretty much the only viable way to scale the production of the Fission Reactor and keep it cool.

- In general, late-game Mekanism bases don't like night time or thunderstorms. The Solar Neutron Activator, as the name implies, only runs when the sun is out, and it's a key piece of your Polonium production, as well as Tritium for your Fusion Reactor. The worst that could happen with the Fusion Reactor is that it runs out of fuel and shuts off; the Fission reactor, however, will back up with waste and explode, irradiating whatever parts of your base it doesn't destroy. Be sure to sleep regularly, set up buffers (see below), or engineer some other way to shut off your Fission reactor at night, or you're gonna have a bad time.

- You can't put radioactive materials (the types that cause radiation if leaked, like Polonium or Nuclear Waste) into portable containers - presumably this is to prevent griefing and/or getting rid of the waste by voiding it, but it's definitely frustrating in single player. To make buffers for these things, just use long segments of Ultimate Pressurized Tubes - they can hold a lot of gas, so each one added creates a buffer that you otherwise can't make with containers. Doing this is necessary to have your Fission Reactor able to run through the night (assuming you're pumping waste to a Solar Neutron Activator to make Polonium) without waste backing up into your reactor.

- The Electrolytic Separator Unit for the MekaSuit is pretty incredible - it lets you breathe under water, and refills your jetpack with Hydrogen when you're in the water. That's all included in the descriptions. What ISN'T mentioned, is that if you're in the water and holding your Flamethrower, once your jetpack finishes filling, your suit will actually refill the hydrogen in your Flamethrower as well!

This is already pretty long, but I have plenty more to share if anyone's interested. And please share your own! I love this mod, and v10 is a masterpiece, so I hope you're all enjoying it as much as I am!