Using all the Useless

[Auburn Crow 9]

This is kinda my little snippit of somthing I'd been thinking that could be added, they're simple things, and after seeing the Beta 76 build it gave me some ideas for new stuff that could be thrown in. Also I've played the game for close to a year, and its by far the funniest mod I've installed that doesn't look like some thrown together mod, but mainly I'd like to throw ideas out for things that are already there that could be upgraded, and things that are not of any use yet that COULD be upgraded.

1. Tinder - When you make a firepit I actually make firepits with my friends every other weekend in the woods. (It's controlled don't worry) and with TFC I though the implementing of 'Tinder' like substances. Gathered in a way such as - when you break grass it has a 1/x chance of giving you some wet tinder, which you can 'dry' somehow. Or when you gather logs simply taking a knife and peeling the bark, which would leave you with a peeled log that could now could be used still for firewood, but you could take the bark and use it to light up the fire more easily.

2. Flint and Steel...which I have a issue with since its so hard for starting players to get it, and if they're able to, they could gather some surface flint & chert putting them together to make a flint & chert striker, or with granite, ect.

Also a little unrelated to Flint and steel I'd like to address the Fire pit. From your humble begginings as a strange naked explorer in the wild, to a metal age smith making weapons to slay the overpopulance of pigs, I'd wonder if a higher tier of firepit could be added?

In simple, I'd think it would only be a single upgrade to a larger scale furnace, (A wood stove) which would NOT look like the vanilla furnace. It would appear to be smaller than a cube, on four pixel legs, (think of a thin cauldron.) and a pipe running out its side. The stove itself would be made of Wrought Iron. (seven wrought iron in a cauldron shape, w/ a ceramic mold at the top, and a fire starter in its middle). Its only use would be the burning of Logs AND Planks as fuel, to cook and heat food. NOT to heat ore. There would be four slots, each draining into a 2x3 slot area where the food would fall. This idea came from many, many, MANY hours of sitting at the stove in-game while I waited for several firepits to cook my harvest of bread, meat, and fish. I think it would not only be more economical, but would also *little wink to the mod makers* make players want to excel to the point of Wrought iron for a stove to cook their food in, as well as a nice strong sword.

3. Environmental Stuff

I got this idea mainly from when I used to jump into the F3 to look at my FPS. (it was laggy) and I saw Tempurture and rainfall. I'm not sure if they have plans for it in the future but I thought it would be a good idea to make certain tempurtures cause certain effects. (Such as heat stroke in hot weather or frostbite in colder areas), as well as ways to combat these effects, such as wearing wool cloths or fur's.

I'd also like to ask if such a thing as stated above were implemented a system could be made to combat it. Such as wood stoves for heating player made homes.

(see.6)

4. A little more plants

Now I know TFC brought in a ton of different crops, but I though what would the world look like, with the amount of diversity among the trees, and pretty much everything. (Notoriously dirt...) why not a diverse amount of plant life? I'm not saying a complete revamp of the plant spawning, having a hundred different kinds of grass's, but simple things, like smaller grass's and bushs', to larger flower bush's, or tall grass. (much taller than the vanilla grass). They'd tend to grow together and outward, and a little more flowers and some herbs. (I've explored the TFC files and I remember seeing a lot of unimplemented plants that looked like herbs.)

5. More to wear.

Even with its massivly diverse armors, and with the dyed colors of leather, I found after a while it got kind of repettative, and besides skinning you character some fancy new suit, or a survivalists skin. With the new wool cloth that was mentioned in the build 76 video I though a similar way how leather was worked (like knapping also from Build 76) that we could use it too make Wool clothing.

eg.

Wool Tunic, Wool Leggings, Wool cap, Wool Boots - and more complicated things, such as a medium beetween Wool "armor" and Leather armor, would be Leather Strapped. (Not sure how you would implement this but I think just replacing some of the armor's recipe to use wool and leather would do...)

6. The Useless

I mean this in a sense of they have no use outside of a few individual crafting recipes, and and just end up being thrown into your lava pit or placed in some chest in the darkest corner of your house.

-Graphite

TFC : No use.

In TFC graphite might be able to be the clay-replacer. (it's modern use) This would be a "Graphite Mold" ---> to a Graphite Cruicible when cooked.

-Gypsum

TFC: No use

I though a good idea for what Gypsum COULD be used for is in two main things, the first of which I'll state here the second I'll mention later. (see. Book Writing) The biggest thing I could think of that was real world use, is as fertilizer, (since bonemeal doesn't work...) Though it would only increase the total amount of Nutrients A B & C by a small amount. (perhaps a full stack before a empty nutrient quad is full again)

-Jet

TFC: No use

see. Gemstones

Petrified Wood

TFC: No use

My thoughts on perhaps using the wood as a carving surface. Taking four individual pieces to make a Petrified wood block, that would be a unique color and such and more of a idea for decorative purposes than actual in-game survival.

-Satinspar

TFC: No use

I had a idea about possibly using it through carving. (see. Gemstones)

-Sylvite

TFC: No use

As it is commonly used as fertilizer, I thought that implementing it as another fertilizer resource would be invaluable.

7. Book Writing

With the way the Scribing Table was used to write in Build 76, I though about the enchanted books from vanilla minecraft. A harder way to gain these said enchantments, would be through the use of making gold foil, which would be then written on with certain symbols to create the book's. (The power of which would be determined by the amount of XP you put into it when it's finished.)

How this would work is starting with a gold ingot which also contains very little use at of now, and hammering it into a sheet of gold foil. This requires a Wrought Iron Hammer, and a crafting table. By placing the hammer w/ the gold ingot you will receive 16 pieces of gold foil, which are then grafted to the paper with Gasso (Made from Gypsum Powder with water) After this you'll enter the Scribing Table, and you'll apply the Ink spots to the gold foil in certain patterns. With a collection of the same patterns you create the enchanted book similar to a normal book, but the finished product will then drain the amount of XP set and can be used to enchant your tools. (A nice way of re-implementing it huh.)

Now I know with TFC it's all about survival, not being able to get to many resources, that's why the book when used is destroyed, however you are returned with a Book (Gold paper). The gold papered book may be taken apart with a pair of shears, w/ loss of the leather but regaining the gold foil. To make stronger enchantments it's similar to how maps are made. Drawing 8 seperate images of the specified enchantment, and then condensing them into a single new gold paper. This gives you a new tier II enchantment. and so on so forth until you reach the maximum of that enchantments level.

8. Gemstones

Another thing that's been urking me is the sheer uselessness of the massive hoardes of Gemstones I seem to aquire when I go mining in TFC. (I'm not kidding a have a whole SHED devoted to keeping those things together) I know they are used in jewlery, and such and was wondering if it would be possible to implement jewlery? Other things such as Gypsum and Olivine could be 'carved' into gemstones at a jewelers table. (The Jewlers table would be made with five pieces of smooth stone and a single Gemstone.)

The jewelers table would have a slot for a chisel, where players could chisel the gemstone to its next tier of perfection. However doing so would require plans, the simplest would be a Gemstone plan (Would up the tier of the gemstone until it was Exquisite) However players would perhaps need to carve the gemstone into a ring-piece, or pummel. (The pummel would then be needed for all swords so cheap rock pummels would be possible)

Jewelry made would use chains made from silver, sterling silver, or gold. Made with a anvil and a chain plan. The Jewlery could be equipped via a side-slot. (The side slot thing is a completely out there idea I really don't expect it to be made.) which is next to the players armor slots that slides out to have jewelry placed in it. (Or just placed on the armor as a static addition similar to how dyes work.)

9. Storage Solutions (yep stole that title. xD )

When making things, I always noticed my chest's would run out of room, as well as my own pockets. I concluded that we. need. sacks. They'd be simple really, made in certain sizes with certain materials to hold a certain size item. (Said certain a lot didn't I?)

Small - Wool / Leather Sacks.

-For the wool sacks you'd need 3 pieces of Wool Fabric and a string, the capacity would be 6 slots. For leather you'd need a single leather and string. (The wool one is made similar to a bucket, just put the string in the middle.)

Medium- Wool/Leather

-These would be made with 6 wool cloth, in the shape you would use to make a wooden bucket, with a string at the top and at the sides. They would hold 8 slots at a max of medium in size.

Leather would use the same but with only one string in the middle.

Large- Large sacks would need Thick Wool Cloth, made by placing six pieces of wool cloth in the crafting table. Using six of these in a similar way to the Medium Sack. Leather would use a chest design with a single string in the middle. They would hold 10 slots of large items. (With the exception of Sluices.)

10. Trading & Transport.

-I'll state now that with a high amount of certainty, I know that this is probably not going to be included anytime soon, but I would be honored if my ideas were taken into account for possible NPCs, transport, and trade.-

Transport

Transport would involve simpler midevil things, such as carts or boats. The vanilla minecraft boat would be made with TFC planks, but a larger boat (ship if you wanna get Technicall) would be made of three boats, a fence post, three pieces of wool cloth. (In a boat kind of pattern, three boats on bottom, fence in the middle and wool all on one side.) It would travel at a MUCH slower speed than a boat and would be about 3x as big, being 2x4 blocks in size. (width and length), and being about 2 blocks in height, with a larger portion being underwater, meaning it would need a deeper river or canal to to through. Its inventory would contain a double chest size worth of storage room, so you can transport all that hard earned pork.

The other method is land based, and works with Wagons. The two sizes of wagonss would be small and large, each would need wooden planks, and unlike the boat above which is placed in the water YOU would need to build it. It would require you take the following steps.

Small Wagon - You'll need two blocks of wooden planks placed together in a open area, A chisel & hammer, and a Cart Plan. By right clicking on the wood blocks with the plan it opens a gui. Before you can make it you'll need four wagon wheels. (Made from four planks around a center log) You then place the four wheels into the bottom four slots. You'll then need some clay (x2) and four more planks. After which when they're all in the slots, you click Create. The final product creates the cart right in front of you. It moves like a minecart and the smaller one can be pushed. Its inventory can hold 12 SACKS. I need to make this clear. SACKS. you can place the sacks here and the sacks appear in the back, per every 3 sacks you put in.

Large Wagon- You'll simply need double the amount of items than in the small one. With the number of wooden plank blocks being 6 in a 2x3 pattern.

Both have a front section of two rods sticking out which would need a animal to pull it, aka a horse or if unimplemented a cow. Placing them in the front would require some string (x3) to make a rope which once you right click the animal forces it to follow you. Then right click the Wagon which places it in front allowing you to control its movements and thus the carts. They go UP stairs, slabs, and single block high slopes, like pigs.)

Trading

Now for trading, I'm not saying to re-implement the squidward villagers to give me things for gemstones. It would be more along the lines of real human npcs, who would need to eat, sleep, and work. Each villager would perform his or her job, and fill in for a job if too many are present for their current job or too many. (Aka 50 farmers and only 1 smith some will convert and vice versa)

NPC's would trade with coins, and seeing as the valued metals of Silver and Gold they would be the coin currency. Which can only be obtained from npcs. (So no coin creating on massive scales) Npc's would trade for common things in thier chat gui such as wood, planks, sand, dirt, tools, or coin for such items. They would also come to respect or hate the player with a factor zone of -100 to +100.

Good actions such as defending a villager from a monster, trading, and building homes for NPCS would gain you respect. While vandalism, attacking villagers, or theft would lose respect.

I'm not sure how their housing would be implemented, due to the fact that in Minecraft the villagers tended to just walk into anywhere with a door. But, I think a bed system would work. Each NPC needs a BED to have a house. Npcs could have multiple beds within one home, and after a certain period NPC children would leave their homes taking their bed to build a new home in the village or away on their own. The system would work to keep NPCs from expanding to the point of being parasites, but enough so that a zombie siege wouldn't kill them in a single night. (they can defend themselves they'll use knifes, swords or punch!)

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Well that's all I wanted to say. Just ideas of which SHOULD be implemented but I'm not saying I'm expecting them too. Either way comment or give new ideas to break or build the ones I threw out please.

[Seil 2]

I've only recently started playing TFC, and really one of my biggest gripes is the immense number of useless materials. It's great to have so many things that can be given a use in the future, but on the other hand it's annoying having a lot of stuff that literally just takes up space.

Generally in games, coming across a new material is reason to rejoice - even if it's something you need to progress further to make use of, there is a reason to be happy you found it.

In TFC, there are times where I've found myself feeling disappointed because I found a vein of, for instance, olivine. Now I have very large vein of olivine pinging my pro pick, making it more difficult to pinpoint something else I've noticed nearby. In the end, I get a full chest or more of an entirely pointless material and a feeling of frustration. And then there's the chests upon chests of gems x.x

On the upgraded firepit note, isn't that essentially what the Forge is? Sure, it burns coal/charcoal instead of wood like your example, and can heat metal(but not melt ore), but it's still an upgrade to the firepit. Upon getting a forge and having decent charcoal production, I use it for cooking as well as re-heating metal etc. The extra slots take away much of the tedium of using a number of firepits for cooking. And at that point, due to bloomeries etc, I would rather be using most of my wood supply for charcoal production anyway.

[Auburn Crow 9]

@-Seil

I agree with what you mean, about the useless ores, twas why I made this.

But as for the Wood stove I was more thinking of it along the lines as a survival tool for when people get along to building bigger houses. Like if TFC integrates environmental stuff such as tempurture, and negative effects in cold or warm weather. As for the forge, I don't think you can cook things in it, and even then it seems kind of wasteful to use hard to make charcoal or coal just to power a forge to make a umpteenth amount of eggs and chicken when you could stuff it in your wood stove and cook it with cheaper to find and use resources such as Wooden planks instead of logs, or even sticks. But I do understand how most people after they'd built their base's would use all their wood for charcoal and going up in metal tiers.

[Seil 2]

@-Seil

I agree with what you mean, about the useless ores, twas why I made this.

But as for the Wood stove I was more thinking of it along the lines as a survival tool for when people get along to building bigger houses. Like if TFC integrates environmental stuff such as tempurture, and negative effects in cold or warm weather. As for the forge, I don't think you can cook things in it, and even then it seems kind of wasteful to use hard to make charcoal or coal just to power a forge to make a umpteenth amount of eggs and chicken when you could stuff it in your wood stove and cook it with cheaper to find and use resources such as Wooden planks instead of logs, or even sticks. But I do understand how most people after they'd built their base's would use all their wood for charcoal and going up in metal tiers.

The only thing you can't heat in the forge is ores. You can use the forge for food, melting ingots, heating unshaped metal, molds, etc. The temperature and ability to have five items going at once makes cooking fast and easier to manage. Usually when I make metal, I do it in batches and mix the alloys etc and store the liquid metal, or store it at a workable temperature(at least right now, I'm only a couple tiers in). So I use the forge more often for non metal related things. I also prefer stone bricks etc to wood for building, and start on charcoal production, bloomeries and a forge before establishing a base =p I just sleep through the night haha.

[Zerren 75]

I really agree with almost all of these suggestions fully. Here are my thoughts on your list, and what I might add in my opinion:

1. A little known fact is that you can actually use paper in the making of a firepit/forge. Adding a piece of paper greatly increases the chances of catching a flame. A nice change that would make sense would to REQUIRE a piece of paper for making a forge. It's nearly impossible to light coal/charcoal with just two sticks..

2. I would agree with a higher tier firepit. Cooking food in a forge, at least to me, doesn't make much sense. I propose a method similar to Railcraft's boilers: A clay brick/stone brick/pig iron firebox on the bottom, and a heating chamber placed on top. Logs are placed into the firebox, which heats a cooking chamber directly above it, which can cook 4 items at a time, slightly faster than a firepit.

3. I think this is already in the works, after reading one of Dunk's recent comments. I can't remember where though..

4. A great aesthetic, if not functional idea. There is a post of the discussion forums that caught dunk's interest regarding more plant types and already had texture files for them. (lilies, cat tails)

5. Everybody loves variety. I would like a maroon fur lined leather coat, please..

6a. This is a great idea, and honestly would be an interesting gap to make skipping wrought iron harder. (Currently there is almost no reason to not skip wrought). Maybe make it so anything with a higher melting point, or higher tier, than wrought iron requires one of these graphite crucibles/molds for holding such hot metals and not cracking instantly.

6b. Gypsum would be an interesting alternative (not replacement!) to the current mortar planned for b76, in addition to your suggestion. There is also no way currently to revitalize soil, short of planting something else. It seems leaving them fallow doesn't even work.

6c-f. I have no good comments or suggestions regarding these four, but any use is better than no use. I have no ideas.

7. I'm not a fan of the enchantment system in any form in TFC, to be honest. The farthest I would like to see it go is a 'Sharpness 1-5' bonus on swords if you hone them at a new block, the Grindstone. This takes away a good portion of their durability, though. (1/10 for each level)

8. 100% agree, I love gems and want to see them get a use. Gemming pommels, encrusting armor, or placing them in world would make me happy.

To put a gem into a wall, you would first have to chisel the block to the detailing mode, and carve out a 1x1(pixel), 2x2, etc. slot into the block, and can place a gem into this chiseled 'slot'.

This could add personality to any armor set or weapon, and isn't even demaning code wise (from my coding knowledge/understanding). Just a sprite sheet with the gems that overlays itself onto the armor part of choice.

9. More storage is always nice, as long as it makes sense. Currently almost all of the 'huge' items that you can't store, can be placed in the world. Any item that isn't able to be placed in the world, or put into a chest or on a tool rack, needs a method of storage though.

10. Half and half here. I love the transport methods, (the elegant punt mod does this wonderfully), but I greatly dislike any human, or even squidward npcs, in my game. TFC gives an air of a virgin land, where you're the first human to step foot and make a name for yourself. Villages of any sort eliminate that feeling imo, as theres already someone living there.

These are obviously my opinions, take them as such, but you've got some good ideas here that I agree with.

I'm especially a fan of the graphite crucibles making steel harder to get to, and the gems.

[killster550 401]

now, i didnt read EVERYTHING because its just TL:DR material but as for the flint and steel, i wonder how many of you know that the ORIGINAL flame was made by twirling a stick on a bark until it got hot, until we started banging flint and pyrite together at the right angle, (yes im talking caveman style)

to have either, or both of these functions implemented as a tier-progression in anything fire-related would, IMO work out pretty well

[Krski 36]

I agree with this one , gems uh..... there are no real uses for gems except diamond saws in IRL so i cannot find any good excuses......

I think the boats could be made out of anything really , just place some planks and it will float ! I think we could have a "make boat block" that could be placed anywhere on the makeshift raft if the wood is on the water and connect to every other block of wood or anything placed by a player (im thinking of some kind of zepelins mod the yogscast had that worked a similar way (it was cool as heck) ) , in that way we could have custom boats and poor mans rafts !

[Auburn Crow 9]

Thanks Zerren for the feedback! But about the NPCs themselves I'm not 100% on them kind like what you said about the virgin world. But after a while it just seemed too empty, and I'd think of NPCS as being more of an option (toggalable in the options menu if you will) But anyways thanks for your feedback. I hadn't though of the crucibles as a kind of opsticle for the Wrought Iron stage, but the idea makes sense so I'll take in into account.

@Krski That's actually a pretty good idea. if they could find a way to integrate floating into the game with wood planks, so nice idea!