Yes, there were 3 stages, I think. Stage 3 was with some binaries throw in there. Stage 1 required recompiling the compiler at some point.

Oh shit, I remember the stages now, not much about them though. Did you really install Gentoo if you didn't compile the compiler you used to compile the rest of the system from the ground up though?

I'm not sure if this is possible anymore, but for a while, there was a way to copy over the compiled base system from the disk instead of compiling it all from scratch. Running your first emerge -vaDu world might end up recompiling everything anyway, depending on the age of the ISO, but you didn't have to do any compiling to get a base system deployed.

i was going to comment. I think even genkernel is compiled, not that i touch the stuff.