Find a safe spot to get started then put together a crafting table, a furnace, and an Engineer's Hammer with 2 sticks, 1 string, and 2 iron ingots

Collect 12 bricks. 12 clay, and 3 sandstone to make 9 Coke Bricks. Stack the bricks to make a 3x3x3 cube and then right-click the center block with the Engineer's Hammer to create the Coke Oven.

Burn coal in the furnace to recieve coal coke. The meter on the right is a measure of creosote oil, this slowly builds up the more coal you burn. Place an empty bucket in the blue square to recieve a bucket of creosote oil in the orange square.

Craft treated planks by placing creosote oil in a crafting table surrounded by wood planks. Then craft an Engineer's Crafting Table with 3 Treated Wood Slabs, 4 Treated Sticks, and a crafting table. Place the Engineer's Crafting Table in a normal crafting table alongside 1 iron ingot, 2 Treated Wood Slabs, and 1 Treated Wood Fence to create an Engineer's Workbench. This is where you edit Immersive Engineering specialty items, edit tools, and use blueprints.

Purchase 12 nether bricks from the trader and then combine that with 12 bricks and 3 magma blocks to create 9 Blast Bricks. Place them in a 3x3x3 cube and then right-click the middle block with an Engineer's Hammer to create a Crude Blast Furnace. This is where you smelt ingots into specialty ingots, like turning iron into steel. The Crude Blast Furnace uses Coal Coke.

Combine 4 sandstone and 4 bricks in a crafting table to create 4 Kiln Bricks. Place these in a 2x2x2 cube then right-click the top right block with an Engineer's Hammer to create an Alloy Kiln. This is where you mix ingots to create alloys, for example mixing copper and nickel to create Constantan