Newcomer Questions

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Sounds neat! I also noticed the relatively temperate winters already and wondered, but I figured temperature was simply biome-based... the updates look interesting, though there should probably be a balancing factor in the crop suitability of warm climates. After all, too warm and too little rain isn't going to be ideal either. The best farmland is traditionall found in the middle between arctic and equatorial regions.

In the meantime, by the way, I've fallen to my death in a bout of careless impatience and remembered too late that the world was set to hardcore... oh well

I started a new world, and boy, what a difference. The game is all "shut up and take my metal" no matter where I go. I've had multiple instances of running out of rocks to mark surface ore sites. It's impossible to not find metal. I had three stacks of small cassiterite and one stack of native copper nuggets before I even built a roof over my head. The native copper vein below my house (which I discovered after building said house) is so massive that I get "very large" prospector pick results for 60 blocks or more in all cardinal directions, including down. Instead of lousy sedimentary rock everywhere, I got rhyolite, basalt, rhyolite, granite and some more rhyolite. Man, basalt is so awesome to build with.

The only roadblock, ironically, was the complete and utter lack of anything flux-like (which was the only thing my first world had an infinite amount of). And without flux, you can't progress past tier 0, no matter how much copper you have. I dug so many shafts in search of it, so very many... and ultimately had to boat over two thousand blocks of ocean to find a completely different geological makeup. But hey, I learned a lot about how TFC generates terrain in the meantime And now I am decked out in excessive amounts of pretty green bismuth bronze.

that's the thing though. The tier-0 ores spawn more in ingeous rocks than flux bearing rocks.

[Omicron 62]

Definitely looks like it - though the old world didn't have any tier 1+ ores either

The next order of business will be finding iron, which I'm kind of at a loss of how to do it... I'll probably go back to all those shafts I dug and make branch tunnel networks every 25 y-levels. The wiki says that all stones can have terahedrite and my dominant stones types have additional other iron ores, so eventually I should run into something. Though I'm kind of surprised there don't seem to be any advanced prospecting strategies beyond mastering the propick and learning what ore to expect in what stone.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Definitely looks like it - though the old world didn't have any tier 1+ ores either

The next order of business will be finding iron, which I'm kind of at a loss of how to do it... I'll probably go back to all those shafts I dug and make branch tunnel networks every 25 y-levels. The wiki says that all stones can have terahedrite and my dominant stones types have additional other iron ores, so eventually I should run into something. Though I'm kind of surprised there don't seem to be any advanced prospecting strategies beyond mastering the propick and learning what ore to expect in what stone.

Wait really? You're already at tier 3? Nice. Iron doesn't spawn in the top layer of rock, so look deeper.

[Eleazzar 33]

Is there a limit to the number of sluices that can work in an area? I built a bunch in an area, because i couldn't find any other metal. Most of the jam up -- they still have soil, but the progress arrow stops.

I can break them and replace them, but only a few will stay active at a time.

[Omicron 62]

In my first world when I had absolutely zero surface metals anywhere, I built five sluices in parallel, in the same chunk. They all ran fine. I have not built more than five, though.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

more sluices does not break anything

[Omicron 62]

Wait really? You're already at tier 3? Nice. Iron doesn't spawn in the top layer of rock, so look deeper.

Well, I'm having a weird corner case here. Either my first and second layer of stone are identical, or I do not have a second layer at all. Basically it's all rhyolite from sea level down to 55, and diorite from then on down to bedrock lava. In other regions I am seeing three layers of stone, but not in my "home mine", so to speak.

Oh, and question: I have random blocks of dirt slowly turning into other types of dirt. Like, when the world was fresh there was none of it, but after almost a week or so of playing in it, a cliff face shows five or 6 of a lighter colored dirt type. It doesn't stack with the regular dirt I have. Why does it do that?

[Eleazzar 33]

more sluices does not break anything

So what's with the sluices that freeze when they still have soil? A known issue? Something i'm doing wrong?

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Well, I'm having a weird corner case here. Either my first and second layer of stone are identical, or I do not have a second layer at all. Basically it's all rhyolite from sea level down to 55, and diorite from then on down to bedrock lava. In other regions I am seeing three layers of stone, but not in my "home mine", so to speak.

Oh, and question: I have random blocks of dirt slowly turning into other types of dirt. Like, when the world was fresh there was none of it, but after almost a week or so of playing in it, a cliff face shows five or 6 of a lighter colored dirt type. It doesn't stack with the regular dirt I have. Why does it do that?

Yeah, double layers is possible. I've never heard of that dirt bug though.

So what's with the sluices that freeze when they still have soil? A known issue? Something i'm doing wrong?

I think sluice freezing can happen if the chunk unloads

[Omicron 62]

Yeah, double layers is possible. I've never heard of that dirt bug though.

Here's a screenshot. The darker color is my normal dirt (ID 190:13), the lighter color is slowly but surely popping up in random places (ID 190:7).

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Here's a screenshot. The darker color is my normal dirt (ID 190:13), the lighter color is slowly but surely popping up in random places (ID 190:7).

interesting. When we get the chance, we'll see what could be causing it

[transcengopher 349]

Probably dirt change caused by the growth of trees. I saw other kinds of dirt under the trees I chopped down. You might want to plant a couple or two to check that.

[Omicron 62]

Probably dirt change caused by the growth of trees. I saw other kinds of dirt under the trees I chopped down. You might want to plant a couple or two to check that.

It's happening in places where there are no trees growing as well, I'm afraid. But eh, I'm not too bothered, since I checked the nutrient values of the soil types and both are identical.

In the meantime, I haven't had as much time to play as I'd like to, but I got a few nice digging sessions in. Have not found any iron yet.

But on the other hand, I have learned a lot about ore generation. TFC appears to really reward pattern recognition and player experience in prospecting. It's gotten to the point where I can dig a shaft down in any random place you point me to, and almost guarantee you a reading on the propick within the first 20-30 blocks of branch mining. I won't be able to guarantee you a specific ore, but I can reliably find something no problem. The sheer mineral wealth of my double rhyolite layer helps, of course, but the pattern is pretty straightforward. So far I have identified three possible locations where ore is allowed to spawn, and based on pattern extrapolation, there is probably a fourth (but I have not yet have time to test that hypothesis).

So far I have found, all within 10 chunks of my house:

- six "very large" bismuthinite deposits

- five "very large" cassiterite deposits

- four "very large" native copper deposits

- one "medium" and one "small" native gold deposit

- one "very large" cinnabar deposit

- traces of a galena deposit, which appears to be fairly large based on the spread of the readings, but I haven't gotten around to pin it down yet

The complete absence of anything iron-related bothers me a bit, but only because it stalls my progression. I don't think I'll ever manage to run out of bismuth bronze at this rate <__<

And because this thread originally was about newcomer questions, here's another one:

The wiki states that every levelup, you gain +25 HP. But what is the player's base HP count?

[Zerren 75]

If I'm not mistaken (I might be), the base HP is 500 (250 'vanilla hearts' as it would) and it caps out at 1000 (500)..?

I could be spouting nonsense right now, but I remember those numbers in a changelog somewhere. It's funny though, give yourself a vanilla diamond sword and try to kill a skeleton with it. Not happening.

[Omicron 62]

Can I mix and match ore sizes in the bloomery? I.e. when smelting native copper, can I throw in both the big chunks from underground veins and the small nuggets you get from surface rocks at the same time? (I know that the latter takes the same amount of charcoal for less output, but I want to know if I can combine them in a single smelting.)

[Eleazzar 33]

I think sluice freezing can happen if the chunk unloads

I'm pretty sure some of my sluices froze without a chunk unload. However I have seen them UNfreeze when their chunk gets loaded and unloaded.

[Zerren 75]

Can I mix and match ore sizes in the bloomery? I.e. when smelting native copper, can I throw in both the big chunks from underground veins and the small nuggets you get from surface rocks at the same time? (I know that the latter takes the same amount of charcoal for less output, but I want to know if I can combine them in a single smelting.)

Yes you can.

[Blaze8798 0]

Alright. "Operation: Cassiterite" was a rousing success, and I now have more ore than you can shake a stick at. Here are some questions that occured to me while preparing to process it:

- There seems to be a bit of a bug in the firepit, where excess liquid metal will overflow into a second empty mold only if that second mold is sitting in the right side of the two slots. But it won't overflow (and therefore waste all excess metal) when the second empty mold is in the left slot. Is this a known issue, or should I write Dunk a proper bug report for it?

- When you have a bloomery, and all the ore finishes processing and is ready to be removed with molds... what happens if you don't remove it all? Will it be lost the moment the bloomery cools down, or will it return to the unprocessed ore gauge, or will it remain ready for removal forever?

- If I have an ore like galena, which can yield two different metals, what happens if I throw it into a bloomery? Will I somehow get both metals, and if yes, how does that work? The bloomery only has a single finished product gauge, after all. And if it doesn't give you both, how is it decided which one you get? And what should I do if I wanted both?

For the issue with the firepit it is unfortunatly a feature in tfc and they haven't gotten around to fixing it; it fills molds from left to right with the overflow being right

[Omicron 62]

Actually, I bug reported this back then, and just today in B76 H6, this bug was fixed