Integrated Dynamics is a Minecraft logic and automation mod by kroeser, and it’s built around networks of cables that can read things in the world and react to them. Everything starts from one resource, Menril, which comes from tall blue trees and gets turned into the parts you’ll use for the rest of the mod, using a Squeezer and a Drying Basin.
Once you have a network going, you can read Redstone levels, the contents of Chests, blocks and entities, then do sums and comparisons on those readings with the Logic Programmer and use the result to switch things on and off. It’s a slow mod to start, but this guide walks through the Squeezer and Menril first, since that’s where most people get stuck, and then the logic side.
Getting Started
The first hour of Integrated Dynamics is all about Menril, as nearly every part of the mod is crafted from Crystallized Menril. The steps below take you from finding your first tree to having Logic Cables and Variable Cards in your hands, which is the point where the rest of the mod opens up.
Find a Menril Tree
Tall blue trees with glowing leaves
Menril Trees are tall and blue, and their leaves glow in the dark, so they’re easiest to spot at night. They can turn up in any Overworld biome, but they’re rare outside the Meneglin biome, so collect every 
Menril Sapling you get from the leaves and start a small farm near your base as soon as you can.
Craft a Squeezer and a Drying Basin
Your first two machines
The 
Squeezer is made from four 
Sticks, a 
Block of Iron, two Planks and an Iron Ingot, and the 
Drying Basin from Logs, 
Black Dye and two 
Iron Ingots. You’ll want both placed next to each other, as the Squeezer passes its Resin straight into the Basin.
Neither machine needs any power. You jump on the Squeezer yourself to press it, and the Drying Basin works away on its own once there’s fluid in it, so you can have both set up on your first night in the world.
Squeeze Menril Logs into Resin
Jump on it until it’s flat
Put a 
Menril Log in the Squeezer by right-clicking it, then jump on top of it until the plate is pressed all the way down. Each log gives you a full bucket’s worth of Menril Resin, which the Squeezer pushes into a Drying Basin placed against one of its ends, as long as that end is along the direction you were facing when you placed it.
Dry the Resin into Crystallized Menril
About seven seconds per block
The Drying Basin turns that Resin into a 
Block of Crystallized Menril in around seven and a half seconds. Put the block in a crafting grid to break it into nine 
Crystallized Menril Chunks, which are the actual crafting material you’ll be using for cables, cards and parts.
Craft Logic Cables, Variable Cards and a Logic Programmer
The core of every network
Chunks, Sticks and 
Redstone make 
Logic Cables, eight Chunks around a piece of 
Paper make a stack of 
Variable Cards, and a Block of Crystallized Menril with a 
Crafting Table makes the 
Logic Programmer. Once you have all three, you’re ready to start reading things and building your first network.
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You’ll also want to keep hold of the book, On the Dynamics of Integration, which flies over to you the first time you join a world with the mod. If you lost it, a 
Book and two Chunks will make another, and it has step by step tutorials for everything covered in the rest of this guide.
Menril Trees and the Meneglin Biome
Menril Trees are the only source of Menril, so finding a reliable supply is the first real job in the mod. They can generate in any Overworld biome, but only very rarely, roughly one tree for every hundred chunks, which is why a lot of players wander around for a long time without seeing one.
The Meneglin biome is where they grow thickly, with one or two trees in most chunks, and so much Menril Resin in the air that parts of the landscape take on a blue tint. This biome only generates when TerraBlender is installed though, so if your pack doesn’t have it, you’ll need to rely on the scattered trees and grow the rest yourself from saplings.
Breaking the leaves drops Menril Saplings, Sticks and sometimes Menril Berries, which you can eat. Plant the saplings like any other tree, and a small patch of four or five trees is plenty to keep a Squeezer busy, especially once you start using the Planks as well.
You’ll also come across Enriched Menril Logs mixed into the trees. They break into a normal Menril Log unless you use Silk Touch, so they’re squeezed the same way as any other log, and they smelt into 
Charcoal if you ever have spares you don’t need.
The Squeezer
The Squeezer is one of the first things you’ll make in Integrated Dynamics, and it’s also the one that confuses people the most, as there’s nothing else quite like it in Minecraft. There’s no power and no GUI to it, you put an item in, jump on the Squeezer a few times and it squashes the item into other items, a fluid, or sometimes both.
How to Use the Squeezer
To use the Squeezer, right-click it while holding the item you want to squeeze, and it’ll take one of them. You’re only able to put an item in when the plate on top is all the way up, and if you right-click with an empty hand you’ll get the item back again, which is handy if you put the wrong thing in.
Now you’ll want to jump on it. Every time you land on the Squeezer the plate gets pushed down a little bit more, and jumping from higher up pushes it down further in one go, but the item isn’t squeezed until the plate is right at the bottom. Any items that come out go into a Chest next to it, or pop out onto the floor.
Getting the Liquid Out
This is the bit most people get stuck on, as you can’t just use a Bucket on the Squeezer to get the fluid out. The Squeezer holds onto the fluid and pushes it into a tank or a Drying Basin next to it, but only one placed on either end of it, and which ends count depends on which way you were facing when you placed the Squeezer down.
If there’s nothing on the end to take the fluid, the Squeezer will just keep hold of it, and it won’t squeeze anything else until it’s emptied. So if your Squeezer isn’t working, the first thing to check is that there’s a Drying Basin or tank on one of its ends, and that it’s got room for more.
Resetting the Squeezer
Once you’ve squashed the plate all the way down it doesn’t pop back up by itself, and you can’t put the next item in until it does. To reset the Squeezer you’ll need to give it a Redstone signal from any side, with a Lever or a button being the easiest way, and the plate springs back up, throwing whatever was stood on it into the air.
You’re also able to put a 
Redstone Comparator against the Squeezer, which gives off a stronger signal the further down the plate has been pressed. That’s useful if you’re trying to automate things, as you can use it to tell when the plate is flat, and then send the Redstone signal that resets it.
Automating the Squeezer
It doesn’t have to be a player jumping on the Squeezer either, as any living mob landing on it works too, and that includes 
Armor Stands. That’s why you’ll see people dropping Armor Stands onto their Squeezers and lifting them back up again, as an Armor Stand counts as a living thing but never needs feeding or looking after.
To be honest though, it’s a lot of effort for what it is, and the 
Mechanical Squeezer does the same job on power without anyone having to jump on anything. If you’re wanting to squeeze more than a few logs at a time, you’ll be better off heading straight for the Mechanical Squeezer, which is covered a bit further down.
Squeezer Recipes
Menril Logs are the main thing you’ll be putting in it, but the Squeezer has a fair few vanilla recipes as well, some giving items, some giving a fluid and some both. Just remember that the fluid still needs somewhere to go before the Squeezer takes the next item, so keep a tank or Drying Basin on the end even when you’re not doing Menril.
| Put In | Get Out |
|---|---|
| Menril Log | 1,000 mB Menril Resin |
| Menril Planks | 250 mB Menril Resin |
| Ice or Snow Block | 1,000 mB Water |
| Blaze Powder | 250 mB Lava |
| Blaze Rod | 3-4 Blaze Powder |
| Bone | 6-10 White Dye |
| Flowers | 4 Dye (8 from tall flowers) |
| Cactus | 4-6 Green Dye and 500 mB Water |
| Sugar Cane | 4-6 Sugar |
| Wool | 2-4 String |
| Coal Ore | 4-6 Coal |
| Glass | Sand |
A couple of these are really useful to know about. Squeezing Blaze Powder gives you Lava without needing to go looking for a Lava pool, Cactus gives you Green Dye without a Furnace and some Water on top, and Bones give more White Dye in the Squeezer than they would if you crafted them into Bone Meal.
The Drying Basin
The Drying Basin takes a fluid, or an item, and slowly dries it into something else, with no power needed. Its main job is turning Menril Resin into a Block of Crystallized Menril, which it does in about seven and a half seconds for every thousand mB of Resin, and it holds one bucket’s worth at a time.
You can fill and empty it with a Bucket by hand, and a 
Hopper underneath will pull the finished block out, so a Squeezer feeding into a Drying Basin over a Hopper and a Chest is a simple little Menril line. It also dries plenty of vanilla things, like 
Rotten Flesh into 
Leather, Wet Sponges into Sponges and Kelp into Dried Kelp.
Hot fluids like Lava will set the Drying Basin on fire, and after a few seconds it burns away completely and leaves a Fire block where it was. Keep your Lava Squeezer piping into a proper tank instead, not into a Drying Basin.
The Drying Basin is also how you make Crystallized Chorus, from Liquid Chorus squeezed out of Popped Chorus Fruit, which is used for some of the mod’s decorative blocks. It takes twice as long as Menril does, but it works in exactly the same way, and the finished block drops out for your Hopper to collect.
Mechanical Squeezer and Drying Basin
The Mechanical Squeezer and 
Mechanical Drying Basin are the powered versions of the two machines, and they’re the proper way to automate Menril. They run on Forge Energy, using 80 FE per tick, and they’re much faster, with the Mechanical Squeezer finishing a Menril Log in under a second and the Mechanical Drying Basin a block in about the same.
The Mechanical Squeezer is also a lot more generous. A Menril Log gives the same Resin plus a few Crystallized Menril Chunks on top, and it can squeeze ores too, turning Iron Ore into three to five Raw Iron and Diamond Ore into two or three Diamonds, which the normal Squeezer can’t do at all.
To power them, the mod has its own 
Generator, crafted from an 
Energy Battery and a 
Furnace, which burns normal furnace fuel for 20 FE per tick. That means you’ll need four Generators to keep one machine running flat out, or you can connect the machines to power from another mod’s generators instead.
Energy Batteries store power between your Generators and your machines, and they’re made from Chunks, two Blocks of Crystallized Menril and a 
Block of Redstone. The Mechanical Squeezer also has an option in its screen to push fluid out on its own, which is off by default, so switch it on if the Resin isn’t going anywhere.
Logic Cables and Networks
A network in Integrated Dynamics is just a group of connected Logic Cables, and every reader, writer and display is a part you place on the side of a cable. Cables connect to each other on their own when you place them next to one another, and anything attached to the same connected group of cables is part of the same network.
By default, networks don’t need any power at all, so you can build them straight away. The 
Wrench is the tool for managing them, as right-clicking a cable disconnects that side, and sneaking and right-clicking a cable or part removes it, which is a lot tidier than breaking it by hand.
Facades can be made to look like any block and placed over a cable, so a network can run through your walls without being seen. For longer distances, two 
Mono-Directional Connectors placed in a straight line up to 512 blocks apart link two networks wirelessly, and Omni-Directional Connectors can link several networks, even across dimensions.
Variable Cards and the Logic Programmer
Variable Cards are what you’ll be using to move information around in Integrated Dynamics. Each card holds a value, which could be a number, a true or false, an item or a block, and the parts on your network either write a value onto a card or read the value off one, so pretty much everything in the mod comes down to putting the right card in the right part.
There’s two kinds of card, static and dynamic. A static card holds a set value that you typed into the Logic Programmer, like the number 10, and it’ll never change. A dynamic card holds a live reading or a sum, like how much Redstone a block is giving off or whether a Chest is empty, and it gets updated whenever something asks it for its value.
Using the Logic Programmer
The Logic Programmer is where you’ll make your static cards, and where you combine cards together using operators. You can pick a value type on the left to make a constant, or search for an operator such as Addition, Less Than or And, then put the cards you’re using into the input slots and a blank card into the output slot, which writes the result onto it.
You can also turn the Logic Programmer into a Portable Logic Programmer by putting it in a crafting grid, and swap it back the same way. If you’ve got a 
Labeller in your inventory you’re able to name a card as you write it too, which you’ll be glad of once your network has more than a handful of cards in it.
The Variable Store
This is the rule that catches most people out when they first start using the mod. A dynamic card will only work if every card it uses can be found somewhere on the same network, so if you’ve made a Less Than card from a reading and a constant, that constant card needs to be in the network too, and not sat in your inventory.
The 
Variable Store is the block made for exactly that. Put your constant cards, and any cards used in the middle of a calculation, into a Variable Store that’s connected to the network, and the cards that rely on them will start working. If a Display Panel is showing an error about a variable that can’t be found, a missing card is nearly always the reason why.
A Variable Store is made from Crystallized Menril Chunks, two Blocks of Crystallized Menril and a Chest. Placing one right next to where you use the Logic Programmer keeps all your constant cards in one place, so you always know where to look when a card goes missing.
Readers, Writers and the Display Panel
Readers are parts that read something from the block or area they’re facing and write it onto a Variable Card, and writers do the opposite, taking a card and doing something with it. Each reader has several aspects, which are the different things it can read, and you bind a card to an aspect by putting it in that aspect’s slot.
Readers are crafted around an 
Input Variable Transformer, which uses a 
Sticky Piston, and writers around an 
Output Variable Transformer, which uses a normal 
Piston. The table below covers the readers and writers you’ll use most, and the Display Panel is the part that shows a card’s value on its face so you can check your readings.
| Part | What It Reads or Does |
|---|---|
| Redstone Reader | Redstone level, Comparator level, high or low, Redstone Clock |
| Inventory Reader | Item count, Slots Filled, Fill Ratio, full or empty, the list of Items |
| Block Reader | Whether there’s a block, Light Level, Biome, coordinates |
| Entity Reader | The entities in the space it’s facing |
| Redstone Writer | Outputs a Redstone signal from a true or false or a number card |
| Display Panel | Shows the value of any card on its face |
None of the readers or writers move items, and that includes the Inventory Reader and Inventory Writer, which only read and configure. Moving items, fluids and energy around is done by the Integrated Tunnels add-on, which is covered at the end of this guide, and it’s the part of the setup most players are actually looking for.
Example: Turn on a Machine When a Chest Runs Low
This is a good first build, as it uses a reader, the Logic Programmer and a writer together. The idea is to switch a Redstone signal on whenever a Chest has fewer than a certain number of items in it, which could turn on a Furnace line, a farm or just a 
Redstone Lamp as a warning light.
Read the Chest
Inventory Reader on a cable next to it
Place an 
Inventory Reader on a Logic Cable facing the Chest, open it and put a Variable Card in the Inventory Count aspect. That card now holds a live count of every item in the Chest, which updates as items go in and out.
Put the card in a 
Display Panel on the same network to check it’s reading what you expect before going any further. It’s much easier to fix a reading now than once it’s feeding into a comparison and a writer further down the line.
Make the comparison
Less Than in the Logic Programmer
In the Logic Programmer, make a static Integer card with the number you want as your limit, say 64, and put it in a Variable Store on the network. Then find the Less Than operator, put the count card in the first slot and your 64 card in the second, and write the result onto a fresh card, which will read true whenever the Chest is low.
Write the signal
Redstone Writer facing the machine
Place a 
Redstone Writer on the network facing whatever you want to power, and put your true or false card in its Redstone aspect. It gives a full signal when the card is true and nothing when it’s false, so your machine switches on by itself whenever the Chest drops below 64 items and back off once it fills up.
Once it works, you can point the Redstone Writer at anything that takes a signal. The same pattern of a reader, a comparison and a writer is behind most of what people build with the mod, just with different readings and operators in the middle.
Moving Items, Fluids and Energy
Integrated Dynamics on its own doesn’t move anything, it only reads, calculates and sends signals. The item and fluid pipes, the storage system and autocrafting that a lot of people search for all come from three add-on mods by the same author, kroeser, which plug into the same Logic Cable networks and use the same Variable Cards.
Integrated Tunnels adds the transport parts: the Item Importer, Item Exporter and Item Interface, the Fluid and Energy versions of each, and World importers and exporters that work directly with blocks, items and fluids out in the world. The Item Interface attaches a Chest’s inventory to the network, and importers and exporters pull items in and push them out, with Variable Cards used to control what they move.
Integrated Terminals adds the Storage Terminal, which is the screen for browsing and pulling out everything stored on the network, plus a Portable Storage Terminal. Integrated Crafting adds autocrafting through the Crafting Interface and Crafting Writer, so with all three installed, Integrated Dynamics works as a full storage and crafting system.
Tips
Before you do anything else with your Squeezer, put a Drying Basin or a tank on the end of it. Most of the problems people have with the Squeezer are down to the fluid not having anywhere to go, as it won’t take another item until it’s empty, and the ends it pushes out of are set by which way you were facing when you placed it.
Plant your Menril Saplings as early as you can, even if you’re not sure what you’ll be using them for yet. Menril Trees are rare outside of the Meneglin biome, and you’ll get through a lot of Crystallized Menril once you start building networks, so a little tree farm will save you a lot of searching later on.
Keep a Display Panel on every network you build, as it’s the easiest way of checking what a card is actually reading. When something goes wrong the panel will show an error with the card’s ID in it, which is a lot easier to follow if you’ve been using a Labeller, as it’ll show the name you gave the card instead.
If you’ve got power available, don’t bother automating the normal Squeezer. Armor Stands and piston setups do work, but the Mechanical Squeezer is quicker, gives you extra Chunks from every Menril Log and squeezes ores for bonus Raw Iron and Gold, so it pays for itself pretty quickly once you’ve got a few Generators running.
FAQ
You can’t use a Bucket on the Squeezer. Place a Drying Basin or a tank against one of its two ends, meaning the ends along the direction you were facing when you placed it, and it pushes the fluid in on its own. If nothing takes the fluid, the Squeezer stops accepting new items until it’s empty.
Give the Squeezer a Redstone signal from any side, such as a button or a Lever, and the plate springs back to the top. You can only put a new item in once the plate is fully up. A Redstone Comparator reading the Squeezer shows how far down the plate is, which is useful for resetting it automatically.
The Squeezer reacts to any living entity landing on it, so dropping an Armor Stand or a mob onto it works, with a Redstone signal to reset it. The easier option is the Mechanical Squeezer, which runs on Forge Energy with no jumping, and gives extra Crystallized Menril Chunks from every Menril Log.
Menril Trees are tall blue trees with glowing leaves that can appear in any Overworld biome, but only rarely. They’re common in the Meneglin biome, which only generates when TerraBlender is installed. Collect the Menril Saplings from their leaves and grow your own farm, as one log gives a full bucket of Menril Resin.
