ShneekeyTheLost

At some point along the thread, it was stated that they're not going to be implementing the chisel microblock system because Chisels n Bits already does this mechanic, in a far superior manner. Then I started thinking... hey, there's a few other mechanics that are already done by mods out there, so these are things to maybe not focus on, as an adequate solution already exists.

Hydration can already be implemented through the use of Tough As Nails, which has the capability of being configured so that fresh water will grant hydration and salt water will not, because the block ID's will be different.

How saturated your various food types are can be easily handled by the mod Nutrition. Fully customizable with JSON.

The mod Wild Crops permits crops to grow out in the wild. Combine with something like Pams (disable gardens and maybe their fruit trees if you want to use your own) to have random crops spread out during worldgen. Has a fairly good JSON pattern for generating crops. While probably not a 'final cut' solution, it can push crops back on the TODO list to the back, so they can focus on more important aspects.

The mod Heat and Climate does exactly what it says on the tin, although it has some modules that will need to be disabled as it has unwanted additional functionality. Pair with Serene Seasonals to complete the changing seasons and complete the weather of TFC.

By simply using these mods, it permits the team to focus their efforts on other aspects of TFC.

Tamahagane is actually not a particularly good steel, nor is it a single steel type.

Once Tamahagane is formed, using almost exactly the same process that every other people have done by melting ore, draining the slag, and beating the resulting metal into submission, it is sorted into Shingane (soul-steel, a mild low-carbon steel with high ductility), and Hagane (blade-steel, which is the high-carbon steel). Hagane is forged in almost exactly the same manner as wootz steel. The trick that Katana makers use, and the reason they have the slight curve, is that they will fold the Shingane around the back of the Hagane (much like folding a taco, actually) to reinforce it. You see, the high carbon steel can hold a very fine edge, but it can be brittle. The low carbon steel is able to absorb the impacts without fracturing.

tl;dr: Just use Wootz to represent Tamahagane, it's almost exactly the same methodology to produce. They both use a blend of high and low carbon steel to offset each other's weaknesses. To effect this mechanically in TFC, instead of welding two identical types of steel to form the billet to make the blade, weld one high carbon steel to one low carbon steel.

On 6/21/2017 at 2:25 PM, Another Guy said:

I can't find any Sphalerite or Gabbro on this seed.

One of the images in the OP has Sphalerite listed at the northeast corner of the continent at coordinates -106, 173, -12,407

Gabbro is found in the same area.

2 hours ago, TonyLiberatto said:

I still think you are over complicating the whole thing.

What use is a water source if you can only fill tfc buckets? It would take 10 buckets to fill a barrel. To do any kind of actual work with alcohol, vinegar, and pickling you need a lot of barrels of water.

How about just creating a structure that the mod would scan for and fill with 4 real water source blocks, so the player can fill the barrels? 

It should be mid game, requiring the use of a saw, maybe using wood blocks?

This way it would give the player access to an actual water source that can be used in any way he needs, but not as versatile as the use of a red bucket.

You could even require for the multiblock structure to resemble the wells in the vanilla minecraft villages. 

What else are you going to fill barrels with, if not buckets?

1 hour ago, Stroam said:

It makes sense if it works like the quern in TFC. I'm not sure what you are balancing against. As soon as you get a saw with anywhere that rains drinking water is never an issue. Again I assuming this is not for crops because in three years of agriculture research I've never seen a farm use a well for crop use. Irrigation canals sure, but wells no.

I've never seen the type of well that we are describing in real life. Only wells with mechanical pumps which generally refill at least 5 Gallons Per Minute. Which is why I think the well will refill quicker than your draw using a bucket. But I guess if your well isn't deep enough then you may have a refill rate slower than that. 

If you want the draw rate to change upon depth I would either directly tie it to a Y value or if you want to be more complex, look at the world gen that Bioxx uses to generate the 3 levels and then use that in a function so you know the depth of the rock layers at coordinates X,Z and base the draw rate off of that.

Where, precisely, do you think the water in the irrigation channel came from? Water comes up from a well. These days, you use an electric pump. Back in the frontier era, it was hand-pumped, or perhaps windmill-pumped. If you ever find yourself in central Texas, I'll show you the system my family has been using for over a century, back when Texas was still part of Mexico, before it became an independent nation, much less before it joined the US. Original system was a hand-pump. That was probably rather tiring for the crops area, the one out by the horse stables is a pain to pump, but perfectly functional for refilling water troughs. Then someone got the bright idea to stick a windmill and something that looks rather like a pumpjack you'd find on an oil well to get water moving along at a steady clip. Best guess is that one was installed back in the days of Spindletop. But both of those require a lot more technical knowledge than Steve, in vanilla TFC, has.

What we are doing here is called a 'deliberate anachronism', one that probably hasn't been used since the 1600's or so.  The sort of thing that Timmy keeps falling down. Basically, we're talking about being a one-man bucket brigade, either manually filling the cistern that feeds the irrigation system manually or just hauling up one bucket at a time from the well to fill barrels. Again, we are talking verisimilitude, not realism.

The mod's intent is NOT to replace something like the Aqueous Accumulator, or the BC Pump over a water source. If that is what you are looking for, there are many other mods that fill that niche. It is intended to be able to provide a water source in areas far away from natural fresh water sources (islands and mountains being two good areas) that produces a slow but consistent supply of water.

10 hours ago, Stroam said:

I don't see point on putting a water limit on the well. Yah it's a good thought but at the rate a bucket drawn well removes water, the aquifer going dry is more due to environment than pulling out water by the bucket.

Have you actually ever used a well in real life? It takes time to haul the bucket down, haul it back up. The delay is simply representing physically hauling the water up and down the actual well itself. Plus as a matter of game balance.

1 hour ago, Peffern said:

I think this is similar to what I had in mind. A simple multi block, where you but a bucket in and get a water bucket out, once every x time frame. At this point, I want to to determine x from the environment - i.e. rock type, EVT, etc. Any ideas?

Why not base it on average rainfall? It's already a variable used in determining which animals can spawn, and it would make sense. The less average rainfall in the area, the smaller and less productive the aquifer. Granted, it's not precisely accurate from a geological perspective, there are areas with low annual rainfall totals that get most of it in one season, then the entire flora and fauna biome literally depend on the aquifer for the rest of the year to live on, but it at least makes sense from a verisimilitude perspective.

Perhaps also have a modifier based on y-level of the multiblock structure? So if water level is x, then at x+50 there's a .75 multiplier on refresh time, at x+100 it drops down to .5 or something like that. After all, it's going to take longer, and require more muscle power, to haul a water bucket a hundred meters up than it would only a couple dozen.

Therefore, if your base is high in the mountains in a region with very low rainfall, your well isn't going to be nearly as productive as if it were closer to water level in a more humid climate. This not only lends verisimilitude, but also game balance. The more humid and lower the region is, the more likely you're going to have natural spawning of fresh water sources. So, the further away you get from that, the more scarce naturally occurring fresh water is, so the longer it will take the well to produce water for you. It balances itself, the more you absolutely need a well, the less productive it is going to be. Maybe also give it a minimum distance, say 25 squares, between wells for them to be effective? Or how about any wells within 25 blocks of each other share the same cooldown timer? Again, not entirely realistic, but lends itself to verisimilitude and game balance by preventing the player from spamming wells in a tight area to make up the volume.

And if the player wants to try to cheese it by digging down, THEN putting their multi-block structure for their well, they are welcome to do so. Because now the player has to haul that water up and down whatever pit they dug, which is going to impose its own 'refresh rate' as it will take time for the player to get up and down.

With these two modifiers, there's no need to put in a geome-based modifier

Here's another idea...

Are you familiar with Agricraft? It's got a water cistern and wooden piping and sprinkler system that can be used for irrigation. More importantly, it accepts rainwater. Now, in Agricraft, the sprinkler speeds up growth ticks. Obviously, that's not going to be relevant in TFC, but it also hydrates the area, which IS of importance here. Basically, as long as the sprinkler is sprinkling, you don't need a water source block. This sort of system could be used for a TFC compatible irrigation system. It would be rain-dependent, but possible.

Now then, back on topic, a well. I think a couple of folks here have it right in that you only need to drill down to sea level for a well to work, assuming you don't hit an artesian spring on the way down. However, instead of needing to craft a block, I would take a slightly different tack. I would have the well be a multiblock structure, a 3 x 3 x 3 to be precise. To create the base, you need stone bricks of any type with the center hollow. The second level are wooden vertical supports on two sides. The top layer are horizontal supports connecting them. Then you right, click the middle horizontal support with your bucket, which consumes the bucket in the process, to make your Well. As long as the hole in the middle of the well goes down to sea level, it will enable you to withdraw one bucket's worth of water (simple GUI, put bucket in, get water out) every x time frame. Slow, but it works.

Combining these two does give you a chance to keep a hydrated field going, but it is going to require an awful lot of being a one-Steve bucket brigade. Having some water barrels lying around would not be a bad idea. How often it will need to be refilled will depend on how frequently it rains, and how big it is.

First off, an image with the seed so I don't screw it up:

So that's: -3066559145316214044

You want a newbie-friendly area which has everything you need to skip copper tools and go straight to Bronze, with exposed Kaolinite, cliff faces with Copper, Bismuth, and Gold veins exposed to the surface, and with virtually every surface ore represented? Oh, how about some food while we're at it, like Bell Peppers, Green Beans, Tomatoes, a couple of Fruit Trees, and even a few berry bushes. Grains are also represented with Wheat, Barley and Rice. Then let's talk native animals. Granted, YMMV whenever we talk about animals, but I personally found Cows, Sheep, Pigs, and Horses in the explored areas. There's also several fresh water lakes, and there's also plenty of coastline as well. I also ran across Jute in my travels, although some of it was inaccessible on a cliff face.

As far as Geome, a large part of it is Dacite, although in the central part of the continent along the northern coast there's an area where Gneiss extrudes to the surface in some truly exquisite formations, and also some Gabbro as well, which gives you the Sphalerite needed to start your Bismuth Bronze production up and running.  As you go to the south and west, you'll encounter Conglomerate as it smooths out into plains, then south of that it will (eventually) become Marble! I didn't see any surface Graphite, however there's Marble and Gneiss both present, so hopefully there will be some below ground in that region. And of course, Marble is a flux stone. There's also several places where you can find surface Hematite, which means it's probably underground somewhere under there. Which means you've got everything showing, except Nickel and Graphite, necessary to boost you all the way to Steel. And since there is Gabbro present in a couple of places, odds are pretty good that you could find some Nickel somewhere.

Since I've hit my data limit here with that one image, I'm gonna go ahead and link the album that has various points of interest

A Finely Crafted Link

This area seems to be too cold to house chickens, unfortunately, and you'll likely have to travel some distance to the north to find them. However, all the other husbandry animals are present, at least I found them in my experience, and there's plenty of Pheasants in the woods to get feathers from in the short-term.

In short, you've got everything you need to kick-start yourself in surprisingly short order to at least the Iron age, if not pushing all the way to steel. This would be an excellent starting map for the newbie who is still trying to get used to all the many and varied changes that TFC has to offer. It doesn't hurt you for food or fresh water, it's got plentiful ores, it should have sufficient animals to tame... it really has it all.

Some ideas for this awesome concept:

* Instead of a 'magic block' for your electric furnace and improvement, perhaps you could just make an 'electric heating element' that attaches to the existing Forge or Blast Furnace. Then the GUI for the electric heating element lets you regulate your temperature more precisely, and runs on RF. This takes advantage of, rather than replaces, current mechanics, and increases verisimilitude. The advanced electric heating element can let you set your 'work' or 'melt' temperatures as hotkeys in the GUI instead of just manually setting the temperature for ease of use, and runs faster. Immersive Engineering has such a block which will heat Furnaces adjacent to it.

* For the Fridge, seeing the troubles the Cellar Mod had with this mechanic, your probably only way of doing this is as you have done it, which I suppose has a fair bit of verisimilitude built in. An ice box has been used for quite some time to keep stuff cold, long before electricity, and most electrical cooling devices that people interact with are going to be 1x1 or 1x2 or 2x1 meters, roughly. I do like the idea. How about a one-block that stores as much as a chest, and a two-block (horizontal or vertical) to store as much as a double chest? Or maybe even a full-on multiblock that takes the number of 'fridge' or 'freezer' blocks, and uses that to calculate RF requirements and capacity.

* Electric Quern. Honestly? 'Electric Motor', put adjacent (or under) the Quern to automate it. Again, this brings verisimilitude, using an electrical motor rather than hand-power to turn your quern. But if you prefer, you can also take an existing quern, and craft it with the electrical components to come up with the electric quern. Since the Quern is a single block, in effect, it won't break verisimilitude to keep it that way.

* Baking of clay goods. The mod Automated Bellows mod also has a Kiln which is used to bake clay goods. You can do something like that, then use the Electric Heating Element to regulate it and make it run off of RF. So again, the Electric Heating Element is doing a lot of these things itself, meaning fewer blocks for you to add and code, and an easier time overall. This also gives the player an intermediate clay hardening system between 'dig a pit and fill it with straw' and 'full electric automation' that I feel is missing in the core TFC experience (which is probably the sole reason I use the Automated Bellows mod).

I strongly support this idea, and I hope you are able to flesh it out.

You know, I've been doing quite a bit in MC 1.10.2, and I must say, the boat mechanics have been VASTLY improved. They no longer have all the buggy glitchiness that the boats used to have, even on multiplayer servers. Since Mojang finally fixed their boats, it may well be that this topic might need to get revisited.

Now, if you still want to do the island-hopping thing with conquering an island before going on to the next, and some sort of tiered progression of loot involved, that's absolutely great. However, needing a teleport mechanic just because boat mechanics suck is definitely going to need to be revisited, because the boat mechanics don't suck anymore. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the new boats are quite a lot of fun to play around with, as a means of personal conveyance across water.

And I will also go so far as to include another reason to revisit the topic of teleports versus boats, and it's the same reason WoW uses flight paths for the new players to go from location to location instead of a teleport system. First, it gives players scope. If it takes time to get from area to area, it gives the player a sense of just how big the world is. Second, it gives the player a break from having to worry if they're going to get spontaneously jumped by something. You just get to sit sit back and relax for a bit. Third, you don't have to code in teleport from position to position code, which is just going to feel tacked on and immersion-breaking. Remember that TFC is largely about Verisimilitude. How are you going to keep that while having 'click to teleport' world-interaction items? It makes much more sense from an in-world position to have to make a boat and float your way to the next island. Of course, then we get to the old problem of trying to keep them on the right path. You may need buoys or something to mark paths to keep the player from getting lost, or have other identifiable terrain features that the player can go 'aha! that's x, so if I keep going to the left of that, I'll get to where I'm going'. Actually, identifiable terrain features work for several reasons, including something pretty to look at. Of course, then you get into the problem of Minecraft being an openly procedurally generated world versus being a scripted and pre-defined world.

I think I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll cut myself off before the torch-and-pitchfork crowd catch up to me.

tl;dr version: We may wish to revisit the idea of boats being non-viable with the vanilla boats actually having been fixed to not suck.

You do realize that Tetrahedrite is copper right? So if you found that, then you found surface copper.

Just FYI, you can totally find cows near that latitude. Sheep will be further.

Seed: 1798798586

 

And the seed screenshot

 

A more complete map with Bismuthite shown

 

You start off close enough to the equator that you've got a plethora of food. I passed by tons of chickens and pigs in the plains as I explored. Unfortunately, the geome is Quartzite so while I found a couple of Tetrahedrite and even a Sphalerite deposit, there was no surface copper to be found. Also marked on the map is a Hot Springs which is also conveniently located near a fresh water pond.

The mountain to the south had some caves and it turned into Slate, so that might be more promising to prospect in. However, I suspect your first copper is going to come from (pun intended) pan-handling.

Plenty of fruit trees which blossom in different seasons, some berry bushes, tons of Jute, several different types of cereal grains to select from, soybeans near spawn just inside the plains area, lots of clay deposits, several vegetables to pick from... in all, you aren't going hungry here, even if it will be challenging to break out of the stone age. Once you get do, however, chickens and nest boxes are going to provide a renewable supply of protein so the soybeans are going to be less important, and you have enough pigs in the area for pigsplosion and starting up a tannery.

The only biological resources you may have to journey for are sheep and cows, which are going to be several thousand blocks away since you are so close to the equator.

EDIT:

There's Tetrahedrite (copper), Sphalerite (Zinc) and now I found a source of Bismuthite to make Bismuth Bronze with. Also, on the peninsula to the far east (2747,-6976) the eastern coast all the way half way down the continent on the shoreline is all Chalk, so you have abundant flux as well. In other words, an excellent starting seed that will take you into the Bronze Age before needing to expand your horizons.

I got it! The perfect suggestion! It's obviously the best suggestion ever and I don't even need to read anything to know that it is easily implemented and should be done immediately! You ready for this?

Everyone knows rotten flesh currently has no use. Well, you can just set up a drying system to turn it into leather. Only you don't need to go through all the hassle with the barrels and stuff, that's too complex, no one wants to do that, so you just craft it with a knife to cut off all the rotten parts and hang it on a drying rack and wait. To balance it, you might need to wait a while, oh I dunno, maybe 8 in game hours or so.

You see? I demand that this be implemented in the next patch or else I won't donate!

(let's see... did I miss any buttons?)

I find the standard bow to be quite useful, even if you need a chicken farm to keep yourself supplied with arrows. The only thing you really shouldn't be shooting at are skeletons because they are immune to piercing. Since there are no Crushing ranged weapons in the game, you simply cannot engage in a ranged duel with a skeleton, you have to close with it. Other than that, a bow is one of my early targets once I have sheep (or get lucky enough for a few spider kills).

Gunpowder weapons break verisimilitude for TFC. Don't expect that suggestion to be very popular.

There is a mod around here that adds sinew and longbows you may wish to look into.

Note that large vessels exist and should also be in the first-month inventory. And probably make some, as you can process leather on stone age.

You probably aren't doing a whole lot of hunting in the stone age unless you are killing animals you probably want to be breeding later on instead. By the time you get animals familiarized enough for breeding and the babies have fully matured, you're probably already in the bronze age unless you have been horribly land mulligan'd.

Well, hello there. I'm assuming that the fact that you are reading this guide means you've probably figured out that there are a *LOT* of differences between vanilla Minecraft and TerraFirmaCraft. Perhaps you've tried once or twice and found yourself frustrated by some of the differences, or perhaps you've seen someone do a Let's Play and realized just how fundamentally different it is before actually trying to play. Either way, TFC is not very forgiving of ignorance, and the last guide I'm aware of was written several versions ago. So I thought I'd take a stab at it and help you survive and thrive in TerraFirmaCraft!

Before we begin, I will be linking extensively to the amazingly designed and updated wiki. I would strongly suggest browsing it before starting your serious playing in TFC. There's just too much information that is valuable that I simply can't cram into a single guide!

Day 1: Scrounging and Shelter

First and foremost, punching trees is no longer effective, so to make your first tools, you will need to pick up sticks and stones. Now, once you have a small pile of rocks, right click with the rocks in hand, and it brings up the Knapping interface. You are going to want the following:

* Axe. This is actually the most critical first-tool to make, because it is necessary to chop down trees. Your axes will wear down pretty fast, so you will want at least a couple.

* Knife. This is used to cut tall grass into straw. It CAN be used to make Thatch, however it isn't nearly as useful as a building material any more since things can walk through it, so it isn't absolutely critical on your first day, but is probably an early tool to use. If you are clever, you can get two knife blades out of a single knapping if you know how.

* Shovel. Your bare hands might be able to break dirt, but that doesn't mean it is the most effective use of your time. This is also needed for Clay, which we will get into at the moment.

These are your beginner's tools that you will be using for the immediate future.

Now, one of the major differences between TFC and Vanilla is that most blocks are now affected by gravity, so you can't just build yourself a dirt hut any more, and a 9 x 9 out of cobblestone will simply not work. So your best early-shack material to use is simply logs. Which means you need to get to chopping!

Punching leaves is also a potential source of sticks as well as saplings, so you probably want to do that as well.

Chopping down a tree is also very different. First off, you chop the bottom of the tree, and the whole tree comes down. The time it takes and the durability damage your axe takes depends on the size of the tree you are cutting down. Some trees, notablly Sequoias, are so large that you can consume an entire axe trying to chop one down and only make a dent in it, causing a rain of as many logs as your axe could get before expiring. However, when you do so, the leaves immediately vanish with no chance of dropping saplings or sticks, so punch those leaves before chopping down the tree unless you care more about the logs than about sticks and saplings.

You will also notice a pair of bars at the bottom of your screen. One is for food, the other is for fresh water. You can drink water with your hand by right-clicking FRESH water (the water with cattails, not the one you find seaweed in) and you can generally find some kind of edible things around somewhere, typically in the form of Crops. Now, breaking crops before they are fully mature only returns the seeds which, while valuable for sustainability, are not immediately edible.

You may also, in the course of picking up stones, find some kind of nuggets of ore. The ones you are immediately wanting are: Native Copper, Malachite, Tetrahedrite (all yielding Copper), Bismuthite (for Bismuth in the making of bronze), Cassiterite (Tin for making bronze), and Sphalerite (Zinc for making bronze). If you find a plethora of silver and gold,  you CAN make a bronze with it, but you probably won't want to right out of the gate because silver is fairly rare and the black bronze it makes is used in steel production later on down the line. Still... it's an option.

Ores that are completely worthless include: Galena (lead), Gypsum, Jet, Pitchblende, and Platinum. If you see any of these, just chuck them (unless you have additional mods that make use of them).

Ores that you need a lot of tech to work with (not immediately useful, but store and note the locations of) include: Hematite, Limonite, Magnetite (all iron-bearing ores), the aforementioned gold and silver, and Garnierite (Nickel, although I don't believe it will ever be found on the surface). If you find Graphite or Kaolinite, it is not immediately valuable to you but is going to be absolutely critical later on.

If you find a collection of a certain type of nugget, you may wish to mark that spot (either use F3 and jot down the coordinates yourself or use one of several minimap tools that permit waypoints) because odds are good that somewhere below the surface is a vein of that particular ore. Also mark any exposed veins of minerals you might encounter.

While you are running around, you might or might not actually see clay. Grass now grows on clay blocks, and it spawns inland as long as there is enough rainfall in the area. You can now recognize a patch of clay by the Goldenrod flowers. You're going to want to make note of any you see, because this will be a very important resource for you in the near future.

If you see any animals, mark their location, but you aren't ready to do much with them just yet unless you want to kill them for food. Keep in mind that domesticatable animals DO NOT RESPAWN, so killing all the cows now means no milk for you later.

You probably want to overnight near a place with fresh water if possible, because your water bar runs dry pretty fast.

You do *NOT* want to go playing with the mobs. Combat has changed significantly from vanilla. I don't care if you were able to take down a wither bare-handed and unarmored in vanilla, you still do not want to engage in combat at this stage of the game, so you will need to build some kind of shelter for yourself before true night falls. Not only has damage values changed significantly, but there are now three damage types. Note that skeletons are now IMMUNE to piercing (such as Javelins and Knives, which are your typical first-day weapons) and resistant to cutting (from an axe), so you don't have any weapons that are likely to do more than inconvenience them. There are dark skeletons that somewhat resemble wither skeletons that spawn. While they don't cause the Wither effect, they DO throw javelins at you, which do even more damage than the arrows from the regular skeleton bows, making them exceedingly dangerous. Creeper explosions are pretty much a guaranteed kill.

So, to recap:

* Pick up sticks and stones from the ground

* Punch leaves to get both sticks and saplings for re-planting

* Punch any fully mature crops for eating on the go

* Use Knapping to make an axe and chop down trees

* Build your first hut out of dirt (first level) and logs, preferably butted up against a cliff face to reduce your material consumption and hopefully near fresh water.

* Pick up any copper, bismuth, tin, or zinc you find as nuggets lying around.

* Make note of any sources of Clay (easily recognizable by the Goldenrod flowers growing on them)

* Make note of any animals you see.

* Make note of any places that have lots of surface ore, and what that ore type is.

* Don't go playing with mobs, you'll put your eye out

Well, that's pretty much your first day there. Best get busy, you've got a full day ahead!

Don't be surprised if your first randomly generated seed ends up killing you on the first day. Depending on your spawn, you can get really unlucky. Nip on over to the forums and check out the Seeds forum for a good starter seed if you are getting tired of such things as being dumped on an ocean-locked island with no fresh water or stuck in an arid place that has no clay. TFC can be pretty cruel about not providing you all the resources you need if you are unlucky. Just remember, if you aren't having !FUN! (in the Dwarf Fortress usage of the word), you haven't had the full TFC experience!

Stone Age

So, this is going to be largely more of the same, except that you already have some kind of shelter, so as long as you don't wander too far, you don't have to worry about having enough time to cut down enough trees to make one. You've probably already noticed that you can't make planks yet, that won't come for a bit. Now we are going to introduce you to a few new mechanics you're going to become familiar with.

First, is that Clay is used much like Knapping called Clay Forming. Keep in mind that this consumes 5 clay per attempt, including failed attempts, so you're going to need a good bit of clay now. Make a shovel, and find some Goldenrods, you're probably going to want about a stack to start off with.

The things you will immediately want:

* Small Vessel. This is able to store four small items including seeds and fruits and veggies and sticks and saplings. You particularly want to store your food in small vessels because it gives them a reduction in Decay. You're going to be using these throughout your career.

* Water Jug. They do break, so keep a spare on you, but they let you carry around water so you can wander further from home.

* Ceramic Molds. These will be used to usher you in to the bronze age, so their use is going to be tied to how much copper and other resources you have found so far.

* Stone Bowls. These are used in making a Gold Pan if you are having trouble finding enough copper. If you have found plenty of copper, you can skip these.

Now, making the clay items doesn't mean they are immediately useful, you need to fire them in a Pit Kiln first, which takes straw and logs and time.

The next mechanic I wish to introduce you to is the Firepit. If you have killed anything, you will need to cook your meat here. Just don't forget about it, if you burn it then it will become inedible. This is also how you make torches, at least to begin with. You can right-click a stick on a lit torch to make a single torch, or you can put a stick in a fireplace to get two. Remember that torches now go out after a while and need to be relit by right-clicking with a lit torch. Rain will immediately put out torches and firepits. Firepits also need wood on the left to burn.

Your general goals at this stage of the game are:

* Find and secure various food sources. Store the seeds for the next planting time. If you encounter any fruit trees, an axe can be used on the branch to have a chance of getting a fruit tree sapling. These take some time to grow, but are an excellent long-term renewable supply of food. Likewise with berry bushes. Watch out for Decay.

- Don't kill any cows, pigs, sheep, or chickens yet. These all have uses down the road, but do make note of where they are. You can pen them in if you like, and you can shuck grains with a knife to make refined grains that will cause them to follow you like the vanilla wheat mechanic, and if you feed them, you can start the process of Familiarization.

* Secure a store of copper and either tin (Casseterite) or both zinc (Sphaelerite) and bismuth. You are going to need LOTS of these. it takes 10 nuggets of material to make one ingot.

* Make clay vessels and a couple of water jugs for quality of life and early storage.

* If you find any Jute, don't harvest it until it is mature. This will be needed to make rope for leads for moving animals around.

* If you can't find enough copper around, you can try panning, but it is going to be a slow and tedious process.

* Improve upon your shelter as necessary for quality of life. Just don't forget that both the firepit and the pit kiln WILL set your log cabin on fire, so they should probably not be inside.

* Take note of any Flux stone you might find.

* Don't play with the mobs. Seriously.

Run around and explore your area, hide from the mobs, and build up your resources.

Entering the Bronze Age

You technically can craft tools out of copper, but I highly advise against it. Bronze (or Bismuth Bronze) requires no additional work to get started with, produces a superior tool, and will stretch out your copper (you will eventually need 16 copper ingots for your first metal anvil, so economizing on copper even at this stage will be important).

Your first tools are going to be done using a casting method, by putting a specific number of nuggets into your small vessel and putting the filled vessel into a pit kiln. You can fire some of the molds at the same time. I would advise, for your first tools, the following:

* Saw. If not the very first, then most likely the second tool you want. This is enormous for quality of life and advancing beyond your hovel stage.

* Pick. Since one cannot be made of stone. Mining is VERY dangerous. I would strongly advise reading up on Support Beams and the cave-in mechanics before starting to mine.

* Prospector's Pick. This is used to help you find ore veins. Your best bet is to look around until you find the borders around where you are finding the ore, then start roughly in the middle of that area, but this requires a guide all to itself.

* Chisel. This is required to make smooth stone which is required for grain processing for for bread. It is also useful in making bricks and carving into blocks. This will be after you get a Saw and Pick.

If you absolutely insist on making a weapon, I suggest a Mace, not a sword. If you go back to Damage Types, you will notice that if you have a piercing and a crushing, you are going to have a nice day against just about everything. More importantly, skeletons are a major threat, and are immune to piercing and strong against cutting, so a crushing weapon is going to be handy. Hammers CAN work as a crushing weapon, but they take double durability from being used in such a fashion, and are best kept to stone hammers used for an anvil. A hammer generally does less damage than a mace of the same material would do, all other variables being equal. I wouldn't exactly suggest making a weapon at this early stage of the game yet, but if you are itching to get your combat on, a Mace makes a very good compliment to the weapons you already have (stone javelins). Just remember that you are pathetically weak and easily killed without access to armor you can't make yet.

The Saw is one of the single most important tools you will make because it does so much for you. First off, with a saw, you can finally make Lumber and Planks and then you can make your Crafting Table so you have access to all nine crafting slots. This also nets you access to Barrels, Chests (and you can put vessels in chests to further maximize storage capacity), and all of the crafting recipes you couldn't do in your piddly 2x 2 crafting square. As far as quality of life goes, this is huge. However, if you are starving for metals, you may wish to make a pick first so you can get the metal to make the saw.

Barrels means you can soak jute fiber to make rope so you can now start leading animals around and putting them in pens more efficiently. Barrels also can be opened to catch rainwater, can be used to make tannin and limewater for leather production, booze, and... well, go take a look. It's pretty important for you.

Buckets are also useful for liquids. Keep in mind that a wooden bucket will not permit you to move source blocks, but can be used to fill barrels and use various other liquids. It is also used to milk cows that have become domesticated through familiarization.

The Chisel is probably going to come after both the saw and the pick, and probably after the prospector's pick as well. This enables you to make the Quern which is used to make flower for bread and making sandwiches. In addition, the chisel is also used to do microblock shaping of blocks for aesthetics. It is also used to turn stones into bricks to make brick blocks for building. Now you can make a building that is fireproof to bring your pit kiln and firepit indoors!

Now is also when you probably want to work on your Forge, which also probably means you'll want to make a Charcoal Pit at this point.

In conclusion

So, by now, you are able to get livestock going (once you find them) and crops going, hopefully you've found a few fruit trees to start an orchard, and also have a tree farm going for sustainable living. Sounds to me like you're no longer needing my assistance. Go on, have fun, explore everything TFC has to offer. Read up on other guides for more detailed information on mining and prospecting and other useful skills, read up on the changes to Agriculture and Food Preparation. Once you have enough materials, you can start learning the basics of Metalworking. Enjoy yourself!

Actually, I really like the pottery kiln idea. It makes little sense that an individual who has progressed to furnaces and even blast furnaces still has to dig a pit, fill it with straw, and stack logs atop it to make a pit kiln to fire clay items just like he did back in the stone age. This is just about ideal.

From a game designer's perspective, there can be quite a lot of good in actually making your player travel between islands.

Let's look at the single most profitable game of all time: WoW. The flight routes were 'shortcuts' to get from one place to the other, but also the devs deliberately made it take time, not just to immerse yourself in the game but also to give you a bit of a break where you can be assured that nothing is really going to kill you.

Automated boat routes that run on a script is probably going to be a heck of a lot easier on the game than the way boats currently are. You can set up docks that you can launch the boats from that follow predetermined routes to the next island.

There can also be interesting things that can happen on routes as well. See also: Legend of Zelda: Windwaker. Part of the ocean is narrative distance, part of it is huge expanses that do have small pieces of treasure if you have the charts to point you to it. After all, you've got all that space to play around in, it would be a shame if it was never utilized.

I'll work on getting a dev environment together once I get the next update for terramisc out.

 

I'm also doing some more research into other metal options, platinium has a very low ability to conduct electricity, lower than copper, silver would be a good option.

Silver is already going to be used in electrum for the medium voltage wires and applications, plus used in steel manufacturing in regular TFC, so there's going to already be a high demand for silver.

Gold is also used in making electrum and also used in Rose Gold for red steel, otherwise it would be nearly ideal.

Platinum has close to the same resistivity as iron does. Not great, but not horrible. And is otherwise unused in the mod. It beats out Mild Steel by quite a bit for conductivity, which is what IC2 uses.

I would want to keep this within TFC's time frame, alcohol and steam power can be made to fit (this is still very advanced, windmill and waterwheel would be the basis), vegetable oil was too hard to come by and crude oil refining is very advanced in terms of tech for TFC.

 

And aluminium is out of the question because aluminium refining into useable material is other some what advance and expensive process so that's why I suggested silver.

The ancient Greeks were producing Olive Oil in quantity, then the Romans, always trying to improve things, used pneumatic-driven presses to take it up to surprising levels of output for a preindustrial society. So vegetable oil is perfectly within the time frame cited.

Crude oil was used... crudely by the Greeks and Romans. It was used as an alternative to Turpentine for waterproofing ships, and at least one of the more popular theories about 'Greek Fire' is Naptha, which is fairly easy to crack. At the least, they did demonstrate the basic knowledge of cracking by leaving it in sealed jars out in the sun. Granted, they had nothing like modern petroleum products, but they at least had tar, naptha, and probably some of the more liquid (at room temperature) carbon chains. Still, I don't really think it is appropriate for this particular project. IE doesn't have oil, neither does TFC, so probably outside the scope of this project.

As far as power-consumers, we have as follows:

Crusher (powered quern)

electric heating element for furnaces (I had an idea about being able to regulate the power to the electric heating elements to more precisely monitor the temperature for those finicky alloys that like to go poof on you two plusses after being weldable).

Core Sampling Drill (non-mobile version of a ProPick that will drill all the way down and will give you somewhat more precise measurements of what you can expect in the area).

Maybe electric lighting (since other options tend to stop after a while unless you have red steel lamps filled with lava)

The electric heating element is going to require a steady draw of power when not in use, and a significant draw of power while in use, or you let it cool completely and have stupid amount of power requirements to spin it back up. The Mining Drill eats up a huge amount of power so it will likely run very slowly without the biofuel generator. Electric lighting is going to be low-level constant power draw.

In all, not having biofuel is probably not going to kill the conversion. The only block that needs that kind of peak power output is going to be the drill, which will simply run slower without it and maybe the electric heating element if you're doing a run of high-temperature alloy welding.

Actually... that obviates the need for an Aluminium replacement as well, because you will never need HV capacity wires, which is the only use for aluminium in the mod. We can just chop the top tier off the mod as a whole.

Agreed Ray I like the sound of this too, maybe we can work together or something idk.

 

Most of the ideas here I find acceptable, the platinum instead of aluminium is a bit far off I would need to do research but I'm fairly sure we have a metal that's closer to the properties of aluminium.

 

Great post!

If adding in aluminium is not a major task, then by all means. I haven't had a chance to dig into the API to see how easy/hard it is to add new metals. The platinum use is a 'quick fix' using an already existing material which already has the conductive properties which are needed and is otherwise unused in the mod.

I'd think using the existing Olive oil press would be the easiest route. 

I... was not aware an olive oil press existed. However, this still presents a problem as you will need a consistent supply if you are running a biodiesel generator, and one harvest of olives is not going to provide enough for a year's supply by any means. I guess this means you could simply use it for 'on demand' peak output, and really the only excuses for that much energy are machines which will likely be removed (the auto-miner which won't work due to how TFC works and the arc furnace, which won't work because of how TFC handles the smelting system). Maybe it is less a problem than I think.

Thanks for the support, I'll see what I can do in my supposedly free time. But if anyone wants to take a stab at this, by all means, feel free.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I had an idea, and a basic plan of action, and decided to share with the class and see if anyone else likes this idea.

Basically, I really like TFC (although you can get land-mulligan'd pretty easily, but that's another set of tweaks for another day), but I wanted to add some sort of steampunk-ish tech to it. Technofirmacraft does this fairly well, but there's some things about it that didn't really quite sit well with me. So I saw Immersive Engineering, and thought to myself that it probably wouldn't be all that hard to implement cross-compatibility.

It should also be fairly balanced since getting any power generation up is going to require being in the Iron Age at a minimum.

The Plan:

'cause everyone's gotta have a plan, right?

* Ore compatibility is actually pretty good. This also gives players a viable use for lead (outside of Udary's mod) and a bigger use for silver and gold.

  - No aluminium, and I'd rather not get into trying to add it

  + Use Platinum. It's not really used for anything else, and the only things aluminium is used for in IE is the HV capacity stuff, like three recipes. Add in OreDict compatibility should be easy

 No need for aluminium replacement because there's no need for high voltage capacity since we got rid of the high peak machines

* Hemp

  - Use Jute instead, OreDict and done.

* Plant Oil

  - This is going to be a tough one. Probably going to have to set up pressing recipes for various veggies to press into plant oil (soybeans and corn come to mind) based on a weight to mB ratio to be determined. However, IE is balanced on plant oil being extremely easy to obtain, and TFC much more harshly restricts this, whatever I do. Also, that requires a heck of a change to how the Presser works that probably won't actually work.

+ Barrel recipe? Would have to watch out for conflicts. Also possibly stretching verisimilitude to the point of incredulity.

 I was unaware but olive oil is already implemented in TFC. Done.

* Ethanol

  - Use Alcohol types and done.

* Crafting table recipes (a couple of recipes use crafting tables)

  - New block used to replace it that does nothing but be a component for these recipes. Probably four treated planks.

 Implemented crafting tables in plain TFC already.

* Blast Blocks require magma cream

  - Not needed, blast furnace already exists and implemented in TFC. Use existing methods of making steel.

* Core Sample Drill would be awesome as an energy-based semi-non-mobile ProPick. Not sure if it is possible, though.

* Arc Furnace, while an interesting idea, is probably not needed. Some method of using energy to fuel a furnace would be nice, though.

* Crusher - probably going to just end up as a powered quern that doesn't need the stone replaced every so often since ore refining is handled completely differently

* Pottery Kiln? Would REALLY like something other than a pit kiln that can be used to fire clay products.

Balances And Tweaks

* Anvil recipe to make wire, which requires a Draw at the end. 

* External Heater being able to provide heat to various furnaces is going to probably be impossible, but worth a shot.

* Electrum being an alloy done in a crucible/vessel requiring 50% each of silver and copper. Not sure how easy this is.

* Treated Sticks being made with creosote surrounded by sticks, since sticks are no longer created with two planks. Alternately, barrel dipping recipe for both sticks and planks.

* Lantern will be removed in favor of an already amazing mod doing a much better version Possibly doing an electric lamp which consumes power continuously to produce light.

* Pistol will be removed because modifying the damage to comply with TFC damage numbers will likely be impossible, although at least all the resources required to make bullets makes it fairly balanced.

* Drill will be removed for obvious reasons.

Not certain how viable all of these ideas are, but I think this might be a really interesting way to get some steampunk tech into a TFC world without going completely overpowered.