Methods to generate various common items

Generating Basic Resources

The following lists are methods to generate basic resources, such as dirt and cobblestone. The list attempts to describe methods as to how to generate materials from scratch, though it may stop short if a material that is already listed elsewhere in this list is mentioned as a required ingredient.

This list focuses on methods that are relatively easy to automate, and as such, ignores methods like using Reliquary's tome of alkahestry.

Vanilla

Dirt

• Forestry's Peat Bog -- This method can be manually done or automated using Forestry's Multifarm. Essentially, one crafts Bog Earth (a recipe that requires a bucket of water, 4 sand, and 4 dirt; this produces 6 bog earth) then places it within two blocks of a water source block. Over time, the bog earth turns a dark color, which can be broken for one block of dirt and one peat ingot. Overall, it produces more dirt than it consumes, and it generates fuel.
• Cooking Biomes O' Plenty's Mud -- This method takes advantage of the quicksand/water or poison/water fluid interactions from BoP. This takes some power (or fuel for the furnaces), but the mud itself can be collected with a RandomThings block breaker, which requires no power. Incidentally, mud and mud bricks can make for a decent building block.
• Mechanica's Metallurgic Infuser -- One can infuse biofuel into sand to create dirt. Biofuel is made by processing plant matter in a crusher. Sand, incidentally, can also be created in a crusher from gravel (which can be made from cobblestone in the same machine).
• Botania's Livingwood Avatar equipped with a Rod of the Lands -- this only requires mana (from a mana spreader). The avatar places a dirt block in front of it, which could then be collected with a block breaker.

Sand

• Forestry's Multifarm -- Multifarms require dirt, fertilizer, and water as an input, and output sand as a byproduct of running the farm. While fertilizer is generally difficult to obtain renewably, it is incredibly abundant and a small amount usually goes a long way. Rarely will a multifarm be used exclusively to generate sand, as it requires a more difficult resource, dirt, to produce sand.
• Crusher/SAG mill/hammer/etc. -- various ore processing machines can break gravel and cobblestone down into sand. They also frequently produce other useful byproducts.
• Liquid Starlight/Lava fluid interaction -- Astral Sorcery's liquid starlight turns into sand when it is touched by lava. Incidentally, the fluid interaction sometimes produces aquamarine shale instead of sand, making this also useful for the production of aquamarine. A warning: this method of sand production is very fast, and can frequently bring a server to its knees if a method of overflow protection isn't used. Make sure you use a fast method to trash excess sand/aquamarine (such as running a conveyor into a pit full of lava, such as the lava you're using to produce this fluid interaction) or automate a reliable method to turn off the block breaker used when the output chests are full.

Redstone

• Botania's Conjuration Catalyst -- redstone can be duplicated by tossing it in a mana pool with a conjuration catalyst underneath. This costs 5000 mana.
• Botania's Alchemy Catalyst -- glowstone can be converted to redstone. This costs 300 mana.
• Witch mob spawner -- Minecraft's witches, when killed, sometimes drop redstone, glowstone, and a few other potion ingredients. They can be spawned with mob spawners such as the Powered Spawner from EnderIO, or their drops can be generated using a Spirit Furnace from EvilCraft.
• Evilcraft's Dull Dust in a Blood Infuser -- dull dust is crafted with 7 sugar and 2 gunpowder, giving 4 dull dust. The dull dust can be then converted to redstone in a tier 2 blood infuser. Without upgrades, this recipe costs 500mb of blood.

Glowstone

• Botania's Conjuration Catalyst -- glowstone can be duplicated by tossing it in a mana pool with a conjuration catalyst underneath. This costs 5000 mana.
• Botania's Alchemy Catalyst -- redstone can be converted to glowstone. This costs 300 mana.
• Witch mob spawner -- Minecraft's witches, when killed, sometimes drop glowstone, redstone, and a few other potion ingredients. They can be spawned with mob spawners such as the Powered Spawner from EnderIO, or their drops can be generated using a Spirit Furnace from EvilCraft.
• Reliquary's Altar of Light -- the altar of light converts 3 redstone to a block of glowstone. It will only do so during the day and if the altar is exposed to the sky. The process can take anywhere from 3 to 24 minutes, making this process exceptionally slow.

Blaze Rod

• Blaze mob spawner -- Minecraft's blazes, when killed, sometimes drop blaze rods. They can be spawned with mob spawners such as the Powered Spawner from EnderIO, or their drops can be generated using a Spirit Furnace from EvilCraft.
• Bones in Evilcraft's Blood Infuser -- a tier 3 blood infuser can convert bones into blaze rods. Without upgrades, this process will cost 2500mb of blood.