Getting Through the Stone Age - belathus/Wanderlust-Renewed GitHub Wiki
In order to get through the stone age, you'll need some basics: tools, food, and some method to process ores.
Acquiring Hardware
You cannot chop down a tree without an axe. Well, you can, but you will not get any logs by punching a tree. In order to harvest wood, you're going to need a flint hatchet. You can find flint the usual way, by digging gravel, but you can also get flint when digging dirt or sand. I recommend sand if gravel isn't available, as digging dirt has some inherent danger until you have a shovel.
The flint hatchet requires you to flake the flint. This is done by punching the gravel against a hard block, like stone. Just punch once, then wait a half-second before trying again. You'll hear a distinct sound when it is done correctly. It may not succeed the first time, so if you fail, just try again. Sometimes, you do destroy the flint with nothing to show for it.
Once you have the flaked flint, you'll need plant twine. You can get this from grass, either digging up grassy dirt blocks or by cutting the grass on top. You'll get lots and lots of this stuff; fortunately, it can be used as fuel. More on that later. For the moment, just craft the plant fiber into twine; three fiber gives one twine.
The last thing you need are sticks. You can't chop down a tree yet, so you cannot get sticks the traditional way. Instead, you'll have to break a tree's leaves. They'll frequently give you sticks. Once you acquire a stick, the chipped flint, twine, and stick can be combined to make a hatchet. Now you'll be able to chop down those trees.
Once you have wood, you'll be able to make yourself a crafting table. A slightly cheaper crafting table is made using the hatchet on the log in a crafting grid. Due to a reduced return on planks when crafting without a saw, the normal crafting table will require two logs. Once you have a crafting table, you can make tools such as the flint saw, which gives you 3 planks, as well as a flint axe, work blade, and other such flint tools. One thing to note about flint tools: they can be repaired in the crafting grid; no anvil required! Furthermore, when you do repair them in your crafting grid, they'll retain any enchantments that have been placed on them.
Acquiring Ore
- (See Ore Generation for a lot more detail about this modpack's ore generation)
The ore distribution is likely going to be completely different than you're used to. There are clusters, veins, clouds, pipes, and geodes of ore, and different ores can be found in different types of distributions. For the purpose of escaping the stone age, you're going to want to find copper, zinc, and tin.
Clusters are usually a small group of a specific type of ore. Generally, a cluster will be roughly spherical in shape and only contain a handful of similar ores.
Veins consist of a motherlode with two or three long branches of ore. If you find a branch, you'll usually be able to follow the branch all the way to the motherlode, which might be very lucrative. The branches tend to be long, sometimes over hundreds of blocks long.
Clouds are a huge but sparse distribution of ore over a very large area. When you find a cloud, you'll often only find a handful of ores at a time, but as you keep digging in an area, you'll find that there is a ton of that particular ore in the area. Clouds often have "hints" near the surface, sometimes called a "hint vein." Hint veins often replace dirt, gravel, and sand, but they do not replace grass. Biomes where the top layer is sand, dirt, stone, or gravel are often the easiest places to find clouds, since the ore can be seen without doing any digging. Clouds are often the most lucrative types of ore distribution, but they are also the rarest and require immense amounts of digging to get all of the ore. These are usually good candidates for machines such as the Digital Miner or the Twilight Forest's mining tree.
Pipe veins usually consist of a shell of ore with something filling the center. They're usually only found in the overworld, and they are mostly used for diamond and emerald ore.
Geodes consist of a roughly spherical mundane stone outer shell with ore lining the inside. Usually, they are filled with fluid in the center. Geodes found in the overworld often contain magical fluids, though those found in the nether are often filled with horrible fluids. They tend to be very useful sources of ore, when you find them.
Finally, there is the vertical vein. Ores found as vertical veins usually start at or near bedrock, and shoot upwards, often all the way to the surface. Only redstone and lapis are found as vertical veins, but this does mean that you can find these two ores near the surface. These veins often encourage the miner to dig down. Never dig straight down.
Copper
Copper is found in many types of formations. It is one of the more common ores you'll find, second to iron. You'll find it as veins, clusters, and clouds. It can be found at a huge variety of heights, due to how the veins and clouds work, but the clusters are most common at around 12 meters below sea level.
Tin and Zinc
Both tin and zinc are found in very similar distributions. They have the same frequency, and they both spawn as veins and clouds. Unlike copper, neither of these ores are found as clusters.
You'll need to find tin to make bronze, and zinc to make brass.
Redstone and Lapis
Redstone and lapis are found as tall vertical veins. These veins usually originate near bedrock and can extend almost all the way up to the surface. This means that you can find bits of lapis and redstone on the surface, and when you do, it is a hint that there is more underneath.
The vertical veins encourage you to dig down. Never dig straight down.
Lapis ore's vertical veins are nearly identical to redstone veins, but there are a few minor differences. Lapis veins are found about half as frequently as redstone, and the origin of the vein is slightly higher, meaning you are more likely to find it on the surface.
Processing Ore
Ore processing is a bit different in this world than what you might be used to. For one, the furnace is not easy to craft. Neither is the smeltery, for that matter. Very important note: THE SMELTERY DOES NOT DOUBLE ORE. Another very important note: NEITHER THE SMELTERY, THE QUARTZ GRINDSTONE, NOR THE FURNACE CAN PROCESS IRON ORE OF ANY TYPE.
The Furnace
Please note: you cannot easily make a furnace! The recipe for the furnace is now quite a bit different than it used to be, as it requires dried clay bricks and at least one piece of charcoal to make. You could find furnaces in villages and in some other structures as well.
Drying Rack
In order to dry clay, you'll need a drying rack. These can be made with various types of wood, but you'll need a flint saw at the very least. Place the clumps of clay on the drying rack and just wait for a while. Drying racks aren't fast, by any means, but they will be a bit faster if exposed to the sun. (TIP: you can craft a dirt stick and use it to right-click on a drying rack to give yourself an idea as to how long it will take to dry the clay.)
In order to gain charcoal without first making a furnace, you'll need to make a charcoal pit. This guide has a bit more detail, as well as some useful images. First, you'll need to strip a log of wood with a work blade (place the log down, and shift-right-click it with a work blade). Once stripped, you then use an axe to split the logs. You then craft the split logs into log stacks. Then, partially bury the log stack under dirt. You'll need to light the log stack on fire with a fire bow, and once it is lit, finish burying the log stack. If you do not bury the log stack, it will burn into ash rather than charcoal, which can be a useful method of gathering ash when you need it. You can bury multiple log stacks together, and the fire will spread to multiple stacks, so you don't have to bury each stack individually nor light each stack individually.
Once you have a furnace, you'll be able to turn copper ore, tin ore, and zinc ore into ingots. Now that you have copper, you could make a copper saw, which will allow you to get 4 planks from a log. You'll need a gallagher to make the copper plates required.
Making Alloys
The next step to escaping the stone age is to turn copper, tin, and zinc into an alloy. There are a few ways to do this.
The Smeltery
The first is the smeltery, and to build a smeltery, you'll need to make grout. Grout requires you to find a variety of materials, and you'll need a mortar. The materials you need are listed below:
- Limestone Slack Limestone is commonly found nearly anywhere, but if limestone itself is lacking, you can use ferrocalcite as well, which is a dark stone commonly found in the nether.
- Mud This material is incredibly common in swamps, but you can also make it from digging up moist farmland.
- Ash You'll sometimes get ash by cooking on a hibachi or using a firebow to light torches. However, you're probably going to need a lot of ash, and the best way to get lots of ash would by lighting log piles on fire. This works similarly to making charcoal, listed above, except you do not bury the log stacks. Left to burn in the open air will cause the log stacks to eventually burn into a pile of ash.
- Silty Dirt
This special type of dirt is incredibly common in certain biomes (NOTE: if you are not playing a Biomes o' Plenty world type, the silty dirt instead generates as large clumps underground. As such, none of the advice about biomes will apply.) The best way to find these biomes is by making or finding a Nature's Compass. This compass can be used to direct you to the nearest biome you specify. Look for the following biomes to find silty dirt:
- Cherry blossom grove
- Lavender fields
- Prairie
- Snowy forest
- Tundra
- Binder Composite This is a mixture of gravel, clay, and sand.
- Bone Meal You gather this the usual way: by killing skeletons. Incidentally, other creatures may also drop bones, making gathering this particular ingredient relatively simple. Furthermore, you can also find bone structures in the world, which can be broken down into bone meal.
- Clay, terraclay, cinisclay, or muck All of the above materials are a form of clay. Cinisclay is far more common in the nether than in the overworld, though it can be found in both. Muck is more commonly found in swamps.
- Earthwax - This is a relatively rare clump that can sometimes be found on or near the surface. Once you find earthwax, you usually find a lot of it. Be sure to bring a bag.
Life and Death
If your health drops to zero, you die. So avoid that. In the event that you fail to do that, you'll leave behind a corpse along with all of your gear. Your next incarnation will able to return to your corpse to reacquire your gear, so at least there is that. Thankfully, this is a game, so death isn't permanent. But it is rather inconvenient.