Things I wish I had known...

[Zandramas]

Flint Spears have slightly higher damage than most other spears made of stone and will oneshot rabbits instead of let them running away (if you can manage to hit them )

[freelikegnu]

Some early game tips:
Find clay deposits before settling anywhere and mark any you find in your travels, it is such an important resource.  Make pots and bowls to make much better use of food and make a water-proof oil lamp from animal fat and a bowl!   

Collect as many saplings as possible from shrubs and trees before cutting them and always replant them!  You can turn a scrub land to a (less wolfy) forest with such a small effort.  Consider doing this right as you are leaving spawn for the first time as you may likely return to the spawn area and can now harvest much needed materials.

On the coldest nights without warm clothing you can put yourself in a cellar (even a 2x2x2 hole sealed with dirt) to keep from freezing to death.  If you make your base of 7x7x7 rooms or smaller, they can all act as cellars provided that you give them proper solid doors.

You can use solid trapdoors as insulating windows for cellar rooms without needing glass.

Learn to prospect (check for density no closer than about every hundred or so blocks when starting to get an idea of whats around) that you can make use of a prospecting pick when crafting your first copper tools.  Pick, hammer and prospecting pick. You need a lot of copper for your first anvil and then the saw should be your next tool to make boards for so many useful items.

If you don't yet have a bucket, make use of ponds and lakes to provide water for vertical shaft mining. Deep lakes can also reveal layers of rock types and sometimes valuable mineral veins without being as dangerous as caves.

 

    

[Thorfinn]

On 4/5/2025 at 8:34 AM, freelikegnu said:

If you don't yet have a bucket, make use of ponds and lakes to provide water for vertical shaft mining.

What does this mean?

[Krougal]

16 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

What does this mean?

He means to dig your mineshaft underwater.

That's how I mine; I don't use ladders, I carry a bucket of water always. Granted this relies on buckets able to create source blocks.

[Thorfinn]

How do you avoid drowning? Dig air spaces to the side every once in a while, like you do in Terraria? Is that really better than ladders?

[Krougal]

Just now, Thorfinn said:

How do you avoid drowning? Dig air spaces to the side every once in a while, like you do in Terraria? Is that really better than ladders?

Dig like your life depends upon it, but yes, airspaces as needed. Terraria! I haven't played Terraria in forever, ahh, used to love that game. I haven't done a rigorous analysis of it, so just "muh feelz" I'm going to say yes.

Collecting wood is a constant chore, there is no getting around it in this game, but if I can do less of it by doing something else, then yeah, it reduces the general monotony of the game. I can always use that wood for something else.

Besides, you still have to dig, and digging that airspace and sitting there a minute gives your fingers a break.

Time to collect wood to make ladders + time to make ladders vs Time to dig air spaces. Also Inventory spaces consumed by ladders could be a factor. Unless you know how deep you have to go beforehand, too few and you're in trouble, too many and you can't carry as much metal back. How many stacks of ladders do you need to carry? Then compare RSI costs of both activities.

[Thorfinn]

I'll have to give it a shot. At least in places where I want to make test shafts where there happens to be water nearby.

BTW, 2 stacks of ladders is enough for pretty much everywhere. Which, once you get the saw and shears, is no big deal. Three, maybe four trees. But used like that, they are consumables.

If you are enterprising, you can make it so you never need more than about a dozen ladders and a couple dozen rope ladders and some time, but it costs you nothing more to have a stack of each.

[Maelstrom]

Some more things I wish I'd known...

• To identify grass from crops - grass grows in crosses, crops grow in a grid.
• To keep the screen still when knapping, forging, etc. - press alt or open an inventory screen, like pressing the "C" key.
• The fastest way to make compost is to let dough rot.  Dough converts to rot 1 to 1 ratio unlike most other rot-able foods.

[V1ncent]

I will add my bits of knowledge here:

• Though the combat is RT, you can actually switch your weapon/manage your inventury/identify the situation while the handbook is open and time paused. An easy way to restore yourself from being ambushed by wolves/bears/shivers while focusing on other matters. Also works in the early game when you want to save more daylight time to work towards your target.
• Timingly jump when you are about to hit the ground after falling will negate the momentum and avoid damage. Not an easy trick to master, but can save from death occationally.

[LoveWyrm]

When customizing a world, you can control +c copy the current settings and then control +v them into a text file.

Then, when you make a new world, you can control +c copy the settings from the text file, and control +v paste them into an open world customization dialog.

[Tom Cantine]

On 5/4/2025 at 11:03 PM, Maelstrom said:

The fastest way to make compost is to let dough rot.  Dough converts to rot 1 to 1 ratio unlike most other rot-able foods.

Is that so? I have never tried dough, but if you've made a fruit press, the dry mash left over from making juice rots pretty darned fast. I put a reed basket outside so it wasn't in my cellar, and in only a couple of days I had more than enough to seal up a barrel of rot for compost. And you're still getting calories from the pressed fruit juice.

[Maelstrom]

Granted the rot time for dough is longer, but given the absolutely insane amount of grain you can get from a modest field.  One stack of grain = one stack of rot.

[LoveWyrm]

On 5/5/2025 at 10:02 AM, V1ncent said:

Timingly jump when you are about to hit the ground after falling will negate the momentum and avoid damage.

Haaa...that's some "Jump at the last moment before a falling plane/elevator hits the ground to save yourself!" shenanigans right there.

[Michael Gates]

8 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

Is that so? I have never tried dough, but if you've made a fruit press, the dry mash left over from making juice rots pretty darned fast. I put a reed basket outside so it wasn't in my cellar, and in only a couple of days I had more than enough to seal up a barrel of rot for compost. And you're still getting calories from the pressed fruit juice.

One of the good things about rotting \dough is that you can use flax. It's only half the food, but it gives you the full amount of ick!

My things:

Don't make a copper anvil. The time between Baby's First Pickax and Toddler's First Bronze is less than a week, doing a SECOND molded anvil is half a night all in itself, and the copper anvil stops being useful much sooner than the bronze one.

Bronze spears are the best weapon vs. nearly every surface creature, drifters, bears, whatever. Use one for a while and you'll understand why there is no iron or steel spear.

You can use a metal plate as the starter material for forging. It is the BEST way to make chain or nails & strips (use the 8-piece recipe).

When processing blooms with a helve, use a hand anvil and hammer to knock the big chunks of slag off before you put it in the machine. Since you can knock off 4-6 lumps of slag with one hit, the total operation goes about three times as fast. Also, keep two or three forges going to heat blooms

[Oofishy]

On 3/21/2025 at 2:59 PM, -Glue- said:

You can fill a bowl from a crock in your inventory without having to place the crock. Good for when doing story locations, where you can't place items

Thank you so much

 

one useful tip I learned is that if you grew way too much grain during the summer and your now stuck with nothing else for the winter you don’t have to make the grain into bread and you can instead put 12 grain into a cooking pot to make porridge 

[LoveWyrm]

19 hours ago, Michael Gates said:

Don't make a copper anvil. The time between Baby's First Pickax and Toddler's First Bronze is less than a week, doing a SECOND molded anvil is half a night all in itself, and the copper anvil stops being useful much sooner than the bronze one.

You are not wrong, but sometimes it's what ya gotta do...plus, you can always recoup the anvil for a small fee of one copper ingot...

....by virtue of making a chisel, and using that chisel to break the anvil back into copper chunks...but the chisel needs to be at full durability for that (unless that has changed).

I have been struck in the copper age for a while in at least two games, hell, the current one is kind of stingy with the resources, and I play on more or less 'harder' world settings.

I actually am closer to bronze panning boney soil ( I think one more gold nugget) than my immediate surroundings. ...I do have a bronze pickaxe tho, bought it for 11 gears at a trader, lol.

 

Anyway, I for sure have a copper anvil ...gotta have those shears and saw.