Blue/red steel insanely hard and time-taking to get?

[likeyeyey 0]

So, in my SP world i finally finished making a batch of 20 blacksteel ingots, 14 for the anvil, 3 for shovel, axe, pick, and 3 leftover. It took me ~5 days to get the blastfurnace going, I never found graphite (i searched for hours and hours then gaveupandcheateditin :/ ) then it took me ~3 days to get 20 blacksteel. so 3 days to get 20 blacksteel, then blueandred steel. Let's see: 

Bluesteel:

Bismuth Bronze,

Sterling Silver,

Steel,

Black steel.

so lets say we want to make 20 blue steel ingots, 14 for the anvil.

Bismuth, Copper, and Sphalerite are relatively easy to find.

Silver, not so easy to find at least from my experience, copper is easy.

Steel is pig iron.

Black steel is steel, nickel, black bronze, nickel may or may not be hard to find and again silver. Gold is relatively common. = Weak steel, + Weld with pig iron + work again = 1 blacksteel. Yeah.

So we want to use the least amount of black steel and steel, because they are the most time taking and annoying to get while making 20 ingots. Therefore, 

4 steel ingots,

10 black steel ingots,

3 bismuth bronze and

3 sterling silver.

Seriously. ~3 days to get 20 black steel = 1.5 days to get 10 black steel. Each day I played a LOT. 4 steel probably would take 30 minutes, the rest like 30 minutes.

Therefore,

20 Blue Steel Ingots would take like 1.65 days (estimate) to make, when playing a lot a day. I mean, it may be the top tier, but seriously, this is kinda extreme. Then boom, 14 of those are gone making an anvil, 6 left. I just want to hear some opinions, is it too time-taking and hard to get. BTW, I've seen people mine for months trying to find nickel.

 

[Kittychanley 1,002]

TFC is balanced for multiplayer, not for a singleplayer world. Obviously things are going to take you a lot longer to complete because you are the only person working on it. While it took you 3 days to get black steel, a few people working together on a server would maybe take only half a day.

[Visitor 36]

I actually don't mind it at all and probably wouldn't complain too much if it would be made even more rare. Aside from the factor of luck in acquiring the ore, it's not really that important (unless you really need a special bucket, but you don't need to much to make one) as usually by the time you acquire it, you really don't really have much of a reason to make red/blue steel equipment.

There's also that multiplayer aspect mentioned, where few folks can gather plenty of blue/red steel in relatively short time.

Other than that, I'd simply like for non-necessary, rare, good stuff to remain rare which brings me back to my earlier statement - I wouldn't want red/blue steel to be more common. Graphite, however, I saw quite a few people complaining about and I'd like to see either more of that resource around typical TFC world or have a decent substitute for it.

[Moress 27]

The point of terrafirmacraft is that its hard to progress to the end. In fact, only taking a few days to get to blue steel alone is still too quick for me.

[Terex 108]

Also in SP, took me a good month in real life to go from scratch to Blue/Red steel and only enough for a full set of armour, the buckets, and two pieces for most tools. Protection is a little better, mining is a little faster but on the whole I'm not convinced I would grind this hard again or have the patience

 

A breakdown of what I did to get what I got:

-6 and a half crucibles of iron ore (each 4x20 rich ore)

-Roughly half of that amount is going to be steel, and the other half pig iron.

-Alloy weak black steel and weld with the pig iron to get about 100 black steel. Keep 16 steel.

-Alloy 48 black steel with the 16 steel and 8 amounts of other alloys to make weak red/blue steel,

-Weld with another 48 black steel to get 48 Red or Blue steel ingots (which ever you went for) with some black steel to spare (e.g. for tuyere)

[kaldskryke 27]

I've made full blue/red steel armour and tools in single-player, and I agree it takes a lot of work. Right now, TFC doesn't really have a lot of end-game content that would benefit from end-game tools, so making red/blue steel is not really "worth" the time. Then again, I enjoyed the challenge of making it so it was time well spent IMO.

 

I don't know what Bioxx and Dunk have planned for the long-term future of TFC, but I hope there's a big focus on challenge progression. I hope it includes tougher subterranean enemies and more reasons to go caving. Right now you can find every mineral - except for sulphur - in the top world layer. I'd be pleased to see garnierite spawn in more rock types, but only deep underground, which would make finding nickel less frustrating and more challenging. Perhaps that's not very realistic, but TFC is game and right now it lacks end-game fun.

[Tsuarok 47]

I don't know that simply making nickel rarer will do much for a game focused on survival, at least by itself.  You can already do more or less everything you need with your wrought iron tool, weapons, and armor.  I think it could be fun if you had nickel spawn in caves in the lower levels, and fill them up with tough mobs.  Or something.  IDK, just more than very slight efficacy increases.

[Bioxx 796]

I have to make this point regularly, Iron/Steel is endgame as far as I'm concerned. The colored metals exist to add challenge but I have always considered iron/steel to be the endpoint of metal progression for the majority of players. Beyond those they become a luxury which is why the reward of those metals don't always feel like they justify the time spent.

[kaldskryke 27]

Thanks for the clarification, Bioxx

[TonyLiberatto 364]

I agree with making graphite a bit easier to find but keeping it rare.

The thing that bothers me more on the whole steel thing is to have to continuously pump the bellows for smelting pig iron.

I think thats when mechanical power should kick in as a further development on the technology tree.

So before having any mechanical power you should need to have blue an red steel as a prerequisite.

But please for all the trouble that red and blue steel is the tools should have a lot more efficiency.

mining should be a lot faster with a red steel pick.

the same should apply to cutting down a tree with with a blue axe.

[lordbufu 7]

I wouldn't want red/blue steel to be more common. Graphite, however, I saw quite a few people complaining about and I'd like to see either more of that resource around typical TFC world or have a decent substitute for it.

 

+1, although come to think about it it might unballance SMP ? havnt played on servers yet so cant really tell.

Maybe a good solution would be to make some config options for stone layers in the worldgen for SMP players, it seems to be the same kind of problem people have with things like rocksalt. Some seeds you just need to travel miles to find any, my best world im getting around 7k blocks by boat and 3/4k by land by now and still no graphite nor rocksalt ... i dont mind being kept busy though, ill find it eventually atleast the travels got me some redstone pieces to drewl at

[Kittychanley 1,002]

+1, although come to think about it it might unballance SMP ? havnt played on servers yet so cant really tell.

Maybe a good solution would be to make some config options for stone layers in the worldgen for SMP players, it seems to be the same kind of problem people have with things like rocksalt. Some seeds you just need to travel miles to find any, my best world im getting around 7k blocks by boat and 3/4k by land by now and still no graphite nor rocksalt ... i dont mind being kept busy though, ill find it eventually atleast the travels got me some redstone pieces to drewl at

 

You can already configure how ore spawns. If you feel like graphite isn't common enough in your world, you can turn down the rarity value in TFCOres.cfg

 

However, if you change the config on an existing world, the change will only be applied to newly generated chunks.

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Configuration

 

As for specific stone types like rock salt, they're supposed to be super rare. Once you find a layer, you will have more than you will ever need for that world save, so the balancing point is finding it in the first place.

 

When hunting for specific ores you really need to be smart about it. The ore is only going to spawn in certain stone types, and those stone types are only going to spawn in certain layers. So if you're looking for graphite, which spawns in most metamorphic stones, you should be checking both the surface and middle layers. Don't bother with the bottom layer because meta stone doesn't spawn there. So what you should do is run around on the surface until the rock layer changes, then run a little bit more to make it more likely that the middle layer changed too, then dig straight down to the middle layer for a core sample. If neither the surface nor the middle layer is a stone type that can spawn graphite, climb back up and start exploring on the surface again for a new surface stone layer because there is no chance that any graphite is in that area.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

 

When hunting for specific ores you really need to be smart about it. The ore is only going to spawn in certain stone types, and those stone types are only going to spawn in certain layers. So if you're looking for graphite, which spawns in most metamorphic stones, you should be checking both the surface and middle layers. Don't bother with the bottom layer because meta stone doesn't spawn there. So what you should do is run around on the surface until the rock layer changes, then run a little bit more to make it more likely that the middle layer changed too, then dig straight down to the middle layer for a core sample. If neither the surface nor the middle layer is a stone type that can spawn graphite, climb back up and start exploring on the surface again for a new surface stone layer because there is no chance that any graphite is in that area.

Thanks for the tip. somehow I always have a hard time finding graphite. maybe it will be less hard now.

[lordbufu 7]

As for specific stone types like rock salt, they're supposed to be super rare. Once you find a layer, you will have more than you will ever need for that world save, so the balancing point is finding it in the first place.

 

Well its not like im really looking for either atm myself, its just an observation i made while traveling that much. Its not always the case obviously, but to me it seems like you can get very nasty luck even more so if your base turns out to be on a largehuge ocean island.

My island is so huge i dint even notice it was an island untill i was ready to advance to the iron age, personally i think it makes things more intresting, but i can see how it can be frustrating depending on how much time you can spend on the game.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

Blue/red steel insanely hard and time-taking to get?

I just don't agree with the idea that red/blue steel is to be the purpose of the game. 

Like is the end.

We have to remember that the mod is in beta and there is a lot of content being added.

Right now it looks kind empty to work that hard just to move water source blocks.

By the time we finally got to that point The base is all done and the only thing we do with the water source is a fountain to show off.

I just wanted the tools especially the pick to even faster. That would be a better reward. And when we add more content that requires red/blue steel a lot more usefull.

resuming I want a very, very fast red steel Pickax.