Difference between revisions of "Stone-Age Guide"

From TerraFirmaCraft Plus Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
(Pottery)
m (Hunter & Gatherer: Added right click to drink water)
Line 115: Line 115:
 
Gather meat, feathers and wild crops to get started. If you happen upon any sugarcane you should get a few of those.
 
Gather meat, feathers and wild crops to get started. If you happen upon any sugarcane you should get a few of those.
  
Don't forget to keep an eye on your thirst bar. If your thirst gets too low, it will be a very slow walk until you are able to find some fresh water and eventually you will start to take damage.
+
Don't forget to keep an eye on your thirst bar. If your thirst gets too low, it will be a very slow walk until you are able to find some fresh water and eventually you will start to take damage. To drink water hold right-click on any fresh water source block.
  
 
You'll also want to watch out for [[Land#Clay|Clay]] and gather a bunch of it for later. Keep an eye out for [[Land#Peat|Peat]] as well, since it makes for an easily acquired, long-burning fuel for [[Firepit|firepits]].
 
You'll also want to watch out for [[Land#Clay|Clay]] and gather a bunch of it for later. Keep an eye out for [[Land#Peat|Peat]] as well, since it makes for an easily acquired, long-burning fuel for [[Firepit|firepits]].

Revision as of 01:10, 6 November 2014

Starting Out

As you find yourself in the world tool-less the first step is to gain the basic tools to create your first shelter as well as getting food for the first few days. The new blue bar on the bottom right indicates your thirst; jump into some fresh water whenever it starts to get low. Note: Fresh water will have cattails growing in it, salt water will have seaweed.

As you look around you should see rocks of various colors on the ground. Hit them with your fist and collect the stone. If you are lucky you might find small ore nuggets. Hit some leaves of the nearby trees to gather up some sticks and saplings. If you are in an area without many trees, check along beach and river biomes for sticks on the ground.

It may be wise to mark the location if you pick up an ore, so you can return later with a pickaxe to find more!

Knapping

Select a stack of the rocks you picked up while collecting stone and ore (there must be at least two rocks in the stack) and right click with it. That will bring up the knapping interface.

terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title=
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01

Click inside the square to remove small flakes of stone, chipping the rock into the desired shape. Care is important when knapping as there is no way to put back a flake of stone once it has been removed. Whether you achieve the desired shape or not, one of your rocks will be consumed in the process.

You need only a few tools to start out in the "stone-age" of TFC: the axe, the knife, and the shovel. Here you can see how these tools are made.

title= terraRock 01 title= title= title= Stone Axe Head
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
title= terraRock 01 title= title=
Stone Axe Head Stone Axe
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick
terraRock 01 title= terraRock 01 title= Stone Knife Blade2
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01
Stone Knife Head Stone Knife
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick
title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= title= Stone Shovel Head
title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title=
title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title=
title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title=
title= title= terraRock 01 title= title=
Stone Shovel Head Stone Shovel
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick

With these tools you can collect logs from trees in the area, collect that important first clay and create your primary building blocks. Knives are particularly important as they can serve as an early melee weapon, a method to gather straw, and are used in food preparation and decay management.

In your inventory you should have some stone and sticks left. If not, collect some before proceeding. It is now time to tame the wild element of fire by creating a firepit.

Firepit

In the crafting square place two sticks diagonally to create a firestarter.

Stick Firestarter
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick

With a firestarter in your hotbar you should now throw three sticks on the ground, making sure that they all land on the same block. Fewer than three sticks won't work and more than three will make no difference. Right-click on the sticks with your firestarter. After some tries you should get a firepit going, if needed you can use two additional sticks from your inventory to make a second firestarter. If you have a problem getting all three sticks in the same place try tossing them against a block or dig a pit for the fire.

TIP 1: To help in the creation of a fire pit, you may add one piece of paper to use as tinder, the paper is however used up in the process.

TIP 2: Rain falling on a firepit will prevent you from lighting it and will eventually put a lit firepit out. To avoid this, make your firepit below some tree-branches or a stone outcropping, where it will be protected from the rain.,

With a lit firepit you can now light some torches. Right-click on the firepit with anything but the firestarter and you will open the firepit GUI.

Grid layout None (small).png FirePit Temp.png
Stick
Grid layout None d (small).png
FirePit Arrows.png
Grid layout None d (small).png
Torch2
Grid layout None d (small).png


Place a stick in the cooking slot (upper middle) or just shift-click it in from your inventory. After a few seconds your one stick is now lit into two torches that can be placed just like vanilla torches and they burn forever.

A firepit can also be used to cook food and warm up meals.

To keep a lit firepit going, fuel in the form of logs or peat must be added to the top fuel slot at the left side of the gui.

Defending Yourself Against Mobs

Run away! Hide! If you find yourself cornered a stone axe will do more damage than a stone knife and both will do more damage than your fists. If you happen to be cornered by a skeleton, you'll need a stone hammer to do any damage to it at all. But it doesn't really matter as you'll probably be dead by the time you read this.

Stone Age

Hunter & Gatherer

Now that you have some light sources and some tools it's time to make your first weapons to gather some food and clothing.

Gather meat, feathers and wild crops to get started. If you happen upon any sugarcane you should get a few of those.

Don't forget to keep an eye on your thirst bar. If your thirst gets too low, it will be a very slow walk until you are able to find some fresh water and eventually you will start to take damage. To drink water hold right-click on any fresh water source block.

You'll also want to watch out for Clay and gather a bunch of it for later. Keep an eye out for Peat as well, since it makes for an easily acquired, long-burning fuel for firepits.

Agriculture
If you plan on making farming one of your main food-sources you might want to keep your eyes peeled for wild growing crops: the ripe ones can provide an early food source and even the unripe ones are a source of seeds.
Animal Husbandry
Once you have a good farm setup you might want to start breeding animals for food and other resources. Killing all the nearby ones of might prove bad for you in the long run.
Starting an Orchard
Start your collection of Fruit Trees by taking an axe to any fruit trees branches, not leaves, while out gathering resources.

The Javelin

By knapping a javelin head and placing that on top of a stick in your crafting square you get a throw-able melee weapon. This is the only ranged weapon available to you until you have gathered sufficient resources to build a bow and some arrows.

terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title= Javelin Head (Stone)
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
title= terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 title=
title= title= terraRock 01 title= title=
Javelin Head (Stone) Javelin
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick

TIP: Keep at least 4 javelins on your hotbar, it can be dangerous out there in the wild.

The Hammer

Hammers are the only available stone age "weapon" that will do decent damage against skeletons.

title= title= title= title= title= title= Stone Hammer Head
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01 terraRock 01
title= title= terraRock 01 title= title=
title= title= title= title= title=
Stone Hammer Head Stone Hammer
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Stick

Making a House

With the survival supplies gathered it's time to start thinking of where to take shelter for the night. Since you cannot break stone, aka mine, at this stage you need to either find a cave or build a primitive shelter. Putting up some cobblestone blocks as the base of temporary walls might be a good extra protection in the early days, just remember that once you've placed a block of cobblestone you won't be able to break it until you have metals tools, so place them only where you need them (building near a cliff-face or on a hill may help you in designing early defenses). Note: Cobblestone falls sideways just like dirt, so it can't be used to make tall, 1 thick walls without proper support.

Tip: Remember that you cannot make a firepit on top of a burnable block, such as a log, log-pile or planks-block.

Log Cabin

When you chop down trees you get wood in the form of logs. You can use these logs to create both walls and roof on a log cabin, however if you later decide to remove the placed logs it will take you as long to chop up each one as it did the original tree. You can also stack logs into log-piles and use those for walls. That has the advantage that you can easily remove the log piles later on, but note that you must fill a log pile before being able to place another log pile on top of it, so it may take quite a few logs.

To place a log-block merely right-click, to place a log-pile use shift-right-click.

Thatch

Thatch can also be used as a primitive building block. It is made out of straw, which is gathered by breaking tall grass with a knife.

Straw Straw Thatch
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Straw Straw

Industry

The stone age is where most or a good portion of gameplay will be. How you go about it all depends on where you spawned and your world-seed.

So you have your firepit and have made a small shelter, right? To help your survivability you need to get into ore prospecting, charcoal production, and pottery.

Stone-Age Ore Prospecting (aka Getting Metals)

There are currently two stone-age methods of gathering ore, running around and looking for them as items on the surface, or by using a Gold Pan.

To make a single metal tool head you will need to collect 10 pieces of small, copper-bearing ore:

Copper Ore
Grid Native Copper (Small).png Native Copper Grid Tetrahedrite (Small).png Tetrahedrite Grid Malachite (Small).png Malachite Grid Chalcocite (Small).png Chalcocite Grid Chalcopyrite (Small).png Chalcopyrite

Charcoal and the Charcoal Pit

In order to work with more powerful metals you need to get started on producing charcoal at a somewhat early stage, this is because gathering the amount of wood needed and the 18 hour operation cycle, in-game time not real-life time, of charcoal takes up a good chunk of time.

When a charcoal-pit finishes you are left with something that looks like piles of dark sheets, harvest these with a shovel to collect the charcoal.

Pottery

After you have gathered enough clay, you can start some basic storage and thirst management with Ceramic Vessels and Ceramic Jugs.

First, right click with at least 5 clay in your hand to open the clay-forming interface.

CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL title=
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL

Then mold the clay into one of the following patterns:

Clay Jug Clay Vessel
CFD CFL CFD CFD CFD title= Clay Jug
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFD
CFL CFL CFL CFD CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFD
CFL CFL CFL CFD CFD
CFD CFL CFL CFL CFD title= Clay Vessel
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFL CFL CFL CFL CFL
CFD CFL CFL CFL CFD

You will now have an unfinished clay item that needs to be fired in a Pit Kiln. Once the firing is complete, your ceramic items are ready to use!

A Ceramic Jug can be filled with water by right-clicking it into a block of standing fresh water, and then you can later drink from it in the same way as you would a vanilla potion. There is a chance that the jug will break upon use.

A Ceramic Vessel can be used to store up to four stacks of items. The items must have a size of small, very small or tiny

Defending Yourself Against Mobs

For all mobs except skeletons, start by using your ranged weapons before the mobs can close on you. Likely that will mean throwing javelins, unless you lucked into a skeleton dropping a bow. If you find yourself in melee the axe is still your weapon of choice, followed by the knife. But really, once you're out of javelins you should just run away and hide. Javelins and knives are useless against skeletons, so the only real way to kill them while in the stone age is to melee with a hammer.

Leaving the Stone Age

Once your basic needs are taken care of, you may choose to leave the stone age and enter the copper/bronze age through the use of Ceramic Vessels, Ceramic Molds and casting into Ceramic Tool and Weapon Molds.