Owktree

You can still use brown coal or black coal to fire the cementation furnace. You just need to use charcoal or coke in the coffin with the iron ingots. (Was working that way when I built my current furnace in 1.18.6. Updated to 1.18.13 and it seems to still work that way.)

Of course the scythe is a real deal then given the size of the blade you're getting from that one ingot.

A soft ingot in a mold isn't of a uniform temp. The outside could well be hard while the center is still molten and liquid - the latter being something you don't want to be trying to smith with since the metal states are so varied across the ingot and the desired matrix possibly not even established yet. Instead of this being modeled at great expense the solution is to let it harden and then require the necessary uniform forge heating before forging it into something. Which also grants a slight advantage to the otherwise more difficult to work with iron in that a recently formed iron ingot can immediately be worked with since it is generally already uniformly hot and in a proper metallic state since the bloomery did the smelting part.

Their distribution, odd marketing choices, and periodic "resupply" from some mysterious location and method almost implies they have an ulterior motive to be spread across the world and that their "trading" is just a cover for some other purpose.

Yes you can repair armor. Materials needed vary by the armor type. If you are not going deep into caves a Tier 2 armor can do if don't expect to fight many or high-level foes. I personally am a fan of the cloth gambeson armor (preferably the tailored version) since it has low penalties for wearing it, can be repaired with cloth, and is not that hard to make. For deeper runs where some of the nastier drifter types and locusts can appear than I'd say a good Tier 3 armor might be appropriate. The Blackguard Armor takes a decent amount of iron smithing to repair if you find or trade for the pieces but is a pretty good set.

That will take a while depending on how much you dug out. The traders demand for peat is not that massive and it can take a while for it to reset as well. I have been going through peat and firewood simply firing bricks, shingles, and other clay products to use in the various buildings.

I concur with that. I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of the place. I thought overall it was well worth the experience.

Do you open up any chests or boxes to see what was inside of them? Or examine any of the machinery closely in case it said something interesting about the objects? There is actually quite a bit of stuff you can pick up or interact with down there. Whether or not a particular object would be of value to you might be a matter of opinion depending on what your interests are regarding different items.

In my current SP run I turned them off. I find the surface drifters as mainly an annoyance and I was also doing a lot of building construction at night and simply did not want to have to deal with the constant interruptions. They are still in/near the caves and appear during temporal storms which is where I feel it proper for them to be dealt with.

I've seen constructs that are pretty safe from them. Ideal is cutting down of height for them to spawn into and putting stones down on surfaces. (Or use something that prevents spawning on that surface.) I say "pretty safe" because I have seen a drifter spawn inside the area I had, but it has been rare. Like 2-3 times over at least a dozen temporal storms.

They are non-functional and just sort of decorative if you want to have a junk room or cluttered attic. My presumption is that the stone rubble is slightly bugged. It's also a "decorative" type block as well. Ruins and underground ruins can also provide useful items and are generally worth looking into. I presume you've already found the cracked vessels and such in the aboveground ruins. Plus you can break them down for the building materials if you want. I've often built part of my initial base/house from cobblestone or blocks taken from a nearby ruin.

Wolves and Bears along with the other wildlife respect fences.

The icon of what he is buying will also show how many items of that sort constitute the stack he is looking for. So, for instance, if a trader will buy peat the peat icon will have a "16" on it indicating that the offer is what the trader will pay for a 16-peat stack.

And be aware that if the top strata rock is basalt or a sedimentary rock (claystone, shale, etc.) there can be other sedimentary rock layers between the top rock strata and the igneous bedrock in the area. (For example near my current base the usual layers are basalt, shale, slate, andesite.)

Running around sand/gravel areas is also a good way to spot lead and some other minerals sulfur, coal, alum, etc. if the sand/gravel is sedimentary in nature; e.g. shale, claystone, etc. since those minerals can leave surface bits. There are also rare times you can find silver or gold bits on the surface as well.

Speaking of Bear Butte. Just northwest of my main base. Peak of four up there at once. I think it's back down to one currently.

I just sort of viewed that work as the equivalent to Coppicing. Or doing the topping and other work you generally want to do before felling the tree. Specific handling to "get" specific products. And "sticks" are a pretty broad thing given all the items the substitute for.

World likes having mountains or ridge with huge lake undercuts. Have even found one where the undercut extends completely through the mountain range. Often seems to be a peridotite layer that has been eroded in most cases.

Have definitely see slate as a surface rock. Including gravel/sand deserts of it. More often as a layer rock between a sedimentary rock and an igneous rock. (Usually between shale and andesite in my current world.) The marble I've found on that world has been relatively high on cliffs in slate (and marble) above an andesite layer and below what appears to be eroded mountains that were granite; e.g. this particular area is very vertical in nature. Image might actually be some chalk I found in the same region. But the marble was situated in a similar manner right above and mixed in with slate.

Vertical slabs on the outer edge (see image). Reaching dead drifters at the outer edges is hard/impossible until after the storm. (And dangerous if another appears while you are trying to do it.) Since the ones you are attacking usually die in the narrow part they are fairly easy to reach and harvest. As well as retrieving thrown spears. As for drifters spawning inside I have had limited issues with it. I've adjusted things a few times to restrict what I think are the eligible spaces. All floor spaces have stones placed on them, ceiling is minimal height (except for one spot where I place a lantern before the storm starts) Most of the walls have tool racks or a basket on them (which I think blocks the square.) Over the dozen plus storms I've used it I think I've had maybe three drifters spawn inside.

It is a temporal storm shelter. Their are slabs in the corners allowing for a narrow access to the outer parts. The drifters climb in and cannot climb out. They do not fit through the narrow gap into the center due to the slabs. Seraph in middle can toss spears at drifters in the opening and harvest (carefully) ones killed there. Low ceiling and stones laid in the interior to minimalize chance of a drifter spawning inside. Haven't done pit kilns in the corners to cook them yet. (General design is something I borrowed from one of Kurazarrh's videos.)

Chickens do this sort of super-hop thing like rabbits do. I've seen them get over fences and higher walls than you expect them to. Most of my fence testing with bears was 1.16 and early 1.17. They definitely were not getting over them (did not check whether snow helped them). A generic animal trap that worked for me by essentially having some dirt blocks higher than the fence. They go from the dirt block to the top of the fence and then climb down into a shallow pit from there. Fences prevent them climbing back out and fences are 2-high on the corners so that the animals if on top of the fence don't simply walk down the fence line. The bear version was just a bit larger and had a pillar in the center for the seraph to jump to since the "bait" the bears were after is usually the seraph. Have an image of the creative mode test version.

From my limited testing the key is the fence. Bears have a very high climb ability compared to wolves, etc. But fences stop everything. However, animals can attack over/through fences. So full barns are probably best for keeping livestock in.

Another option is to turn the temporal rifts off while leaving the storms on when you set a world up. From my experience surface drifters still turn up from nearby caves now and then, but not in large numbers and not every night. And the drifters are there in number if you start exploring caves and during the temporal storms.

Another option in the bear json file is remove "player" as one of their food sources. If you get close they will still attack you, but they don't see you as something to chase and try to eat. (Your livestock might still be out of luck.)