Distilled Spirit

Depends heavily on your luck. My last playthrough had me spawn 350 meters away from a quartz vein in a huge rock. I could see it from afar and it had plenty of both gold and silver in it. Could be a potential replacement for tin/bismuth, if lucky enough. Other than that, you can reliably sell falx/shovel/pick for 6-7 gears to a treasure hunter - could be very useful if you do not have enough for anything at the start of the game. Just cast 2 black bronze tools, sell them and you can progress the story. Very useful when you can not physically have or sell leather/other bronze/tons of bread/linen yet. Gold can be bought from a luxury trader for about 7-11 gears per 1.5 ingots. You can buy tin bronze pick for 8-13 gears from a survival goods trader, if you do not have any tin nearby. Ultimately, it is down to your luck. Lanterns suck, they look worse that lead-copper alloy, and they are not purple. Mining quartz is unnecessary, just blow it up. Finding the right vein truly is a problem.

You do not get hit by any boulders if you stand under the pipe (or was it a lantern?) next to the door to the library, which will open after you defeat the boss. You can one shot bronze locust with a stone spear (at least, as a hunter). You can spam flint spears at the boss untill it dies - only took ~20 for the whole dungeon. Armor may be needed for your first completion. But you get some heavily damaged bronze armor from the guard room - more than enough to carry you all the way to the boss. Just set your spawn next to the library and spam, spam, spam!

Stilt/Bellhead shivers are. At least considering the amount of loot they drop. Building a mob farm in the caves, near the mantle, is the best way to go. Just collect all you can find in a pit/pits, separate abovementioned shivers, kill them and seal the pit. New ones will spawn. Rinse and repeat. 4 gears on average per shiver and tons of Jonas parts will earn you a ton of gears, both ordinary and temporal, in no time. And you'll get closer to that sweet terminus teleporter. Temporal storms are surprisingly bad as a source of any resources. As for the pit design, it's best to hit enemies from below. Turn the bottom into a fishnet with a chisel, but be wary - mobs do walk through chiseled blocks at times. They can push each other through 2+ block wide solid walls of chiseled blocks. Most noticeable in shivers, so make a pit at least 3x3. I have made a main pit (5x5) and connected it to 4 smaller pits (3x3). You can use fences and gates to lure enemies inside. Just make sure that the cave is no wider that pit width + 1-3 blocks on each side. Helps funnel the shivers inside. Some distant extra pits can be useful to trap bowtorns, if unable to lower the ceiling.