Lanceleoghauni Posted February 6, 2025 Report Posted February 6, 2025 I've been slow-rolling my cozy farmstead lifestyle for awhile now, but I've finally started mining in earnest. In the copper age everything feels so tenuous. your tools break instantly and metal is scarce, even exploratory mining feels dangerously extravagant until you have a good stockpile saved up. Bronze alleviates this a little bit, but the increased complexity does not pay out as much in durability as you'd like. It still feels knife's edge until you manage to find deep deposits of bronze alloying metals. But iron. Oh man. I've finally hit iron. Is this what true stability feels like? There's so much of it. It's so durable. Even processing blooms feels pleasant and rewarding. My charcoal stockpiles are weeping but I can delete more forest soon. Fewer places for the wolves to hide anyways. I love you iron. Maybe I will finally be able to afford real armor... Once I can make leather. Borax and Chalk are in short supply... 3
Space6011 Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 I think bronze is a suitable upgrade to copper. If you find a tin vein then you can use it to make a lot of bronze. But there is no doubt that iron pays off better once you get fire clay going. 2
Chuckerton Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 I do just wish there was more cassiterite. I would stay in the bronze age longer but i feel forced to go straight to iron due to difficulty in making bronze. But really i wish that there was more ways to get mechanical power. Hammering out blooms gets really repetitive for how much i find myself having to do it, and it always seems like you need at least 2 windmills to have consistent helvehammer power. I wish i could use oxen or large creatures to turn axles for mechanical power. But yeah, once you hit iron, the game gets a lot easier because you have tools that actually last. Ive never gotten steel, because of the reason mentioned above, iron is tedious enough as is. 2
Space6011 Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 4 hours ago, Chuckerton said: But yeah, once you hit iron, the game gets a lot easier because you have tools that actually last. Ive never gotten steel, because of the reason mentioned above, iron is tedious enough as is. The biggest thing for steel is getting the required components for the steel furnace. Once you have that up and running, actually making the steel is mostly passive. The furnace just needs to be refueled every so often, and repaired between batches. Once you get the blister steel you have to process it like iron bloom except it's already ingot shaped and it has way less impurities so it's actually pretty easy. One helve hammer will process blister steel no problem. That being said, I got to steel on a multiplayer server so I was able to focus on smithing and mining exclusively, and it still took me 2 in game years. Now that I have experience I could probably make it much sooner. I would say making steel for tools is worth it as you don't have to process as much iron due to the huge durability boost. 4 hours ago, Chuckerton said: But really i wish that there was more ways to get mechanical power. Hammering out blooms gets really repetitive for how much i find myself having to do it, and it always seems like you need at least 2 windmills to have consistent helvehammer power. I wish i could use oxen or large creatures to turn axles for mechanical power. Agreed, hopefully there are rivers soon so you can use a water wheel. Windmills wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for needing so much flax. 4 hours ago, Chuckerton said: I do just wish there was more cassiterite. I would stay in the bronze age longer but i feel forced to go straight to iron due to difficulty in making bronze. I like bronze because it is much easier to process than iron. The metals that bronze uses can be a bit hard to find but you don't need to get a bunch of fire clay for the bloomery. Of course the durability of iron makes up the difference in complexity.
Tinkirus Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 1 hour ago, Chuckerton said: I do just wish there was more cassiterite. I would stay in the bronze age longer but i feel forced to go straight to iron due to difficulty in making bronze. Honestly, I turned up the spawning of surface cassiterite to make up for the low veins of cassiterite. In my next save, I might turn up the spawn rate a bit higher, as I don't want to feel pressured to find hematite (that can be processed into iron). My main priority is getting my farming and other industries going before worrying about hunting down some iron with a prospecting pick. If the devs buffed the spawn rate of cassiterite, without needing to adjust world settings, I would also appreciate it!
jtr99 Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 Sounds fun: I look forward to my own iron age! Can I just ask, OP, when you are deleting those forests to make all the necessary charcoal, what kind of axe are you using to chop down the trees? Are you so rich in iron now that you can afford an iron axe? Presumably they're faster as well as more durable? I saw some discussion from long-term players suggesting that one should use a metal axe for tree-chopping but switch to an old-fashioned flint axe for the splitting-logs-into-firewood step as speed doesn't matter for that crafting step. Do you do this, or are you so extravagant that you use the new iron axes for everything?
Robulon Posted February 7, 2025 Report Posted February 7, 2025 8 hours ago, jtr99 said: Sounds fun: I look forward to my own iron age! Can I just ask, OP, when you are deleting those forests to make all the necessary charcoal, what kind of axe are you using to chop down the trees? Are you so rich in iron now that you can afford an iron axe? Presumably they're faster as well as more durable? I saw some discussion from long-term players suggesting that one should use a metal axe for tree-chopping but switch to an old-fashioned flint axe for the splitting-logs-into-firewood step as speed doesn't matter for that crafting step. Do you do this, or are you so extravagant that you use the new iron axes for everything? Not OP but recently made it to the iron age for the first time. At first I was trying to conserve metals and do what you suggested but then laziness got the best of me and I'm using at least bronze for everything. I usually leave my almost broken bronze/iron axes at home to finish breaking making firewood, if only to save inventory space when going out lumberjacking. Sort of related but after you've got iron picks you can also make meteoric iron. At first I thought it would be relatively rare but I keep finding it everywhere. If I see a weird depression in an otherwise flat area I dig out the middle and like 50% of the time there's iron there. My picks, shovels, hammers, and swords are now all made out of space rock and I've got like 30 ingots to spare. It's just so much easier to refine than iron ore and lasts a bit longer as well! 2
Lanceleoghauni Posted February 8, 2025 Author Report Posted February 8, 2025 (edited) 22 hours ago, jtr99 said: Sounds fun: I look forward to my own iron age! Can I just ask, OP, when you are deleting those forests to make all the necessary charcoal, what kind of axe are you using to chop down the trees? Are you so rich in iron now that you can afford an iron axe? Presumably they're faster as well as more durable? I saw some discussion from long-term players suggesting that one should use a metal axe for tree-chopping but switch to an old-fashioned flint axe for the splitting-logs-into-firewood step as speed doesn't matter for that crafting step. Do you do this, or are you so extravagant that you use the new iron axes for everything? I am currently so flush with peridotite from mining the bronze and iron that I am desperately trying to get rid of it. Stone axes save a lot of durability on the iron once it's down and ready for firewood, but the speed and inventory space saved by using iron to fell the trees is NOTABLE. However, I really can't emphasize enough that deep iron deposits are VAST. If you get lucky like me and have a bountiful vein on top of that... well. There's very little reason to avoid using iron for something beyond "I don't want to have to hammer or go back down into the hole" I tend to keep my mining trips brief, because even fully lit, and constantly braced, the mine's dangerous. It's deep enough that my sanity is constantly draining like it's in a temporal storm. Edited February 8, 2025 by Lanceleoghauni
Zane Mordien Posted February 10, 2025 Report Posted February 10, 2025 I still use the flint axes for firewood, but I long ago lost my love of making iron. It's fun, but it becomes tedious for me. I usually push hard to get the iron anvil and then switch over all my tools to meteoric iron because it's faster to process. I save my iron for armor and steel after that.
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