Managing your sprawling base and mountains of items in modded Minecraft can be a huge challenge. Thankfully, there are three powerful tech mods designed to help you organize, automate, and keep track of everything: Applied Energistics 2, Refined Storage, and Integrated Dynamics. While Applied Energistics 2 is a classic, I haven’t really used it much lately (and it’s changed a lot since I last did!), so we won’t be diving into that today. Instead, I’ll be comparing and contrasting Refined Storage and Integrated Dynamics in Minecraft 1.20.1, highlighting their unique strengths and weaknesses based on my own experiences.

To give you a clear picture, I’ll be comparing both Refined Storage and Integrated Dynamics based on the following key parameters:

• Core Requirements: What exactly does each mod need to be installed and operational to function as a unified item interface?
• Learning & Documentation: How easy is it to learn and get started with each mod, and what in-game resources do they offer?
• Material Requirements: What are the primary resources needed to build and scale up each system?

• Overall Power & Automation: How capable is each mod at performing tasks efficiently, especially when it comes to automation and crafting?
• Power Consumption: What are the energy demands for each system to run effectively?
• Storage Handling: How does each mod manage and integrate with your existing storage solutions?
• External Machine Control: How well can each mod interact with and control other machinery in your base?

Based on these points, I’ll then conclude today’s post and empower you, my dear reader, to determine which mod (or combination!) is best suited for your specific Minecraft 1.20.1 factory.

Let’s start with their core requirements. Refined Storage is remarkably simple: you only need the mod itself to get started. While you can certainly install extra add-ons for more powerful crafters or specialized cables, the base mod functions perfectly fine on its own. Integrated Dynamics, however, is a different beast. To act as the central brain of your factory and give you a visual overview of your inventory, you’ll need at least Integrated Dynamics, Integrated Crafting, Integrated Tunnels, and Integrated Terminals. Beyond these essentials, you can extend its capabilities further with mods for improved scripting, REST API integration, and NBT extraction, but those initial four are crucial for building your core factory control system.

One significant difference between these two mods lies in their in-game documentation and learning support. Integrated Dynamics stands out by providing an excellent in-game manual, often referred to as “On the Dynamics of Integration.” This comprehensive book not only explains the mod’s mechanics but also features interactive tutorials and challenges that reward you for completing them, making the learning process engaging and rewarding. Refined Storage, on the other hand, does not include an in-game tutorial system. While its simpler nature means it’s often easier to pick up by intuition, new users will need to rely on external wikis or online video guides to fully understand its capabilities and advanced features.

The initial material investment for each mod presents a notable contrast. To get a basic Refined Storage network up and running, you’ll primarily need Quartz-Enriched Iron and Glass. While Refined Storage uses a lot of Quartz and Redstone in its components, both of these are typically cheap and abundantly available in most modpacks these days. Scaling up your storage disks will quickly demand Gold and especially Diamonds for higher-tier processors and larger storage capacities. While these are common late-game resources, acquiring them in significant quantities can still be a bottleneck for early-game automation.

Integrated Dynamics, on the other hand, introduces its own unique resource: Menril. To get started, you’ll need to locate and harvest Menril Logs from Menril Trees, found in specific biomes. These logs are then processed into Menril Chunks and eventually Menril Glass, which forms the foundation of many of Integrated Dynamics’ components, including its cables. Importantly, Redstone is also a core ingredient for its cabling and many other components, though like with Refined Storage, it’s generally an accessible resource. This means you’ll need to establish a dedicated Menril supply chain early on, either by finding existing Menril trees or, ideally, setting up an automated Menril sapling farm. While it introduces a unique resource, it often avoids heavy demands on traditional valuable ores like diamonds in its early stages.

Now, let’s delve into overall power and automation.

Refined Storage offers a highly precise level of control. It allows you to configure detectors to emit a redstone signal only when an item count is exactly equal to, above, or below a specific threshold. This precision is fantastic for starting or stopping machines based on exact inventory levels. Its crafters enable on-demand automation, capable of sending items to external inventories for processing and awaiting their return to complete the craft. While individual crafters are typically limited to nine recipes, they can be chained together to expand recipe capacity. The main drawback I’ve found with Refined Storage, however, is its stability in larger networks; these precise controls sometimes fail, requiring a network reset to get them functioning again.

Integrated Dynamics handles automation differently, especially concerning direct external machine control. While the mod’s documentation suggests it can interact with external inventories and machines, I personally haven’t used it for that exact purpose. Instead, for external machine activation based on item levels, I’ve found it safer and easier to integrate with Create’s threshold switches and wireless links, even if it sacrifices some of the exact numerical precision of Refined Storage for percentage-based detection. Where Integrated Dynamics truly shines is in its robust auto-crafting. It can send items to external processing machines and diligently wait for the finished products to return, marking the craft complete. Like Refined Storage, each crafter interface typically handles up to nine different item recipes. A word of caution: while it’s technically possible to attach multiple crafting interfaces to a single block, I strongly advise against it to prevent resource overflow and chaotic processing. The significant advantage of Integrated Dynamics is its network stability; unlike Refined Storage, it doesn’t break down with larger setups, allowing you to focus on building rather than troubleshooting.

Now, let’s examine power consumption for each mod.

Refined Storage exclusively uses Forge Energy (FE) for its operations, and there’s no in-game option to disable this requirement. With a moderately sized network and upgrades applied to importers and exporters, your power demands can escalate quite rapidly. For instance, when fully automating a large Create mod setup with Refined Storage, a Creative Controller alone was consuming over 500 FE per tick in my experience, and Refined Storage itself offers no internal means of generating this power.

Integrated Dynamics, on the other hand, provides much more flexibility. While it can use power, you have the valuable option to disable this requirement entirely within its mod configuration, with the exception of the Mechanical Squeezer and Mechanical Dryer, which naturally require energy for their processing tasks. If you do choose to enable power for Integrated Dynamics, you’re in luck: unlike Refined Storage, ID includes its own basic power generator. This generator can be fully automated using Integrated Dynamics components, providing a convenient internal power source until you establish a more robust energy production system.

Now let’s examine how each mod handles storage.

Refined Storage inherently excels here, as it is a dedicated storage mod from its core. Its primary storage mechanism involves storage disks that slot into storage drives, though you can also use storage blocks if you prefer a simpler method. To access your vast inventory, you simply need a Grid. Upgrading this to a Crafting Grid conveniently allows you to craft directly with your stored items. For more advanced tasks like creating crafting patterns or monitoring active crafts, specialized grids like the Pattern Grid or Crafting Monitor are essential. You can also connect external inventories (like chests or barrels) to your Refined Storage network, but note that these external connections are type-specific, handling either items or fluids, but not both simultaneously. To visualize your fluid reserves, a separate Fluid Grid is required.

Integrated Dynamics takes a modular approach to storage, heavily relying on its companion addons. To access items, fluids, or energy within any connected container (be it a chest, barrel, tank, or battery), you’ll need the appropriate Interface from Integrated Tunnels for that specific type. Similarly, Importers and Exporters from Integrated Tunnels are used for automating the movement of items, fluids, or energy into and out of these storage units, with each component dedicated to a single type. To view your entire inventory or check fluid and energy levels, you’ll utilize a Storage Terminal from Integrated Terminals. Unlike Refined Storage, Integrated Dynamics doesn’t provide its own storage blocks; it acts as an intelligent layer over your existing Minecraft storage.

Finally, let’s examine how each mod handles external machine control.

Refined Storage primarily relies on its Detectors to emit redstone signals, which, when combined with external redstone settings or components like Create’s Clutches, can control whether external machines are active or inactive. While its crafters can effectively send items for processing by external machines (even in large batches as mentioned earlier), these redstone-based toggles largely define the extent of Refined Storage’s direct external machine control. A downside here is that if the Refined Storage network experiences its known instability, the state of these controlled machines might become unreliable.

Integrated Dynamics is designed with powerful logic capabilities that suggest it should excel at direct machine control, but I must admit I haven’t personally leveraged it for this purpose. As I touched on before, I’ve opted for a hybrid approach in my latest factory: Integrated Dynamics handles all the intricate item logic, ensuring items are correctly exported, imported, and moved to storage. Meanwhile, Create’s precise threshold switches and wireless links take on the responsibility of controlling the production output of individual machines. Despite not using it for direct external control, I can certainly attest to Integrated Dynamics’ impressive speed and efficiency when it comes to general autocrafting, particularly for large batch operations using simple crafting tables.

In conclusion, both Refined Storage and Integrated Dynamics (with its necessary addons) offer robust solutions for automating your Minecraft 1.20.1 world, but they approach the task from fundamentally different angles. Refined Storage excels as a direct, resource-intensive (especially for diamonds) storage and item management system, providing intuitive control over item counts and a quicker learning curve, though it sometimes struggles with large-scale network stability. Integrated Dynamics, on the other hand, shines in its highly stable, configurable logic and automation, introducing a unique Menril-based material economy and offering an exceptional in-game tutorial system. While it requires more initial setup and a modular mindset, its synergy with Create for external machine control is incredibly powerful. Ultimately, the best choice depends on your factory’s specific needs, your desired level of precision, and your willingness to dive into complexity.