User:McClaw: Difference between revisions

I thought I'd share some of my strategies, tactics, and opinions here so I'm not tempted to put them in the regular articles.

** When my active blockhead grows too tired (or tired enough to be put to sleep), I activate a meditating one before putting the tired blockhead to bed. Once it awakens, I set it to meditating.

* When just starting a new world:

** Use the machete to get a bunch of sticks more efficiently for making a campfire and a spare spade (the first will go fast).

** With inventory space to spare (and more flint), make your first pickaxe.

** Dig down and use the pickaxe to mine all the stone it can (sixteen), ignoring limestone and anything else. (There's always stone in a column below the Portal.)

** A campfire will do for an initial source of light and heat, but it's not difficult to bypass torches and go straight to a kiln and press to start making oil lanterns. When you have those, the campfire can actually be more of a hazard than a help.

* Pine trees are an excellent source of sticks and wood, and getting rid of one removes the chance it will spawn a dropbear. (Very important if it's near your starting shelter.)

* A ridden donkey can jump a 2-3 high barrier, so you can make a corral surrounded by doors and planted with carrots. You'll probably have a donkey available when you want to ride.

* Want another strategy tip? How about bypassing bronze tools? It's not that hard, and mostly needs just a little luck.

** They can be made with limited materials (portal, gold coin, and 100 time crystals).

** You can dump unwanted materials "into" them for more coins. Finally, a reason to keep that over-producing farm in operation!

** A level 3 trade portal has gold nuggets available, so you could buy three and upgrade your furnace to level 3 to start crafting steel and gold (and gold coins).

** A level 5 trade portal sells titanium ore. It's expensive, but it means you don't have to go mining to be able to make a jet pack.

* I like to organize my tools in baskets along with at least one of each of their common harvesting products or commonly useful items. (Spade with dirt, flint, and clay; machete with stick, trapdoor; axe with wood, ladder, and gem pickaxe; pickaxe with stone, coal, and gold pickaxe.) These are swapped in and out from a basket at the bottom of the inventory into the two slots above. Other items / special combo baskets are stored in the next basket up, while the upper inventory is used for special tasks and random pick-up.

* There's a tip above that can help you keep your blockhead's inventory organized: If you expect it to pick up an item, place at least one in the desired slot before going harvesting. And if you expect to pick up more than one stack of something (such as stone when mining with a steel pickaxe), "seed" more than one inventory slot with said item.

* Diagonal tunnels are highly efficient for travel. A blockhead travels horizontally about as fast as it does on a level surface, and vertically probably faster than on a ladder. It's also not difficult to make cross- or side-tunnels with a minimum of disruption -- and no trapdoors, just short ladders! They're even better using stairs, as they're faster than walking and replace blocks when crossing caves.

* Digging a (mostly) horizontal tunnel through the dirt across the top of the bedrock makes for a good way to find most of the clay (more valuable than flint in the long run) and buried golden chests. It also leaves a travel route to go from shelter to shelter without risking bad environments or dropbears.

* One of my habits when circumnavigating is to carry some reinforced platforms and use these to build the floor for small, aerial shelters at the top of the poles. Ladders up the pole, a trapdoor at the top, at least three platforms to either side, simple walls and roof (and trapdoor in the center for roof access, another of my preferences) with a lantern inside and there's space for setting out a bed or chests -- or crafting surfaces for resupply. (Note you can build like this almost anywhere by creating a column and removing the blocks below the top one. Just be sure to not remove that top block until you have something above it.)

** Another is to have a stash of useful things in that carried chest I mentioned above. Ladders, lanterns, wood, crafting surfaces (or at least a Workbench)... I've heard some players load a full set of crafting surfaces and stay mobile.

* When a blockhead is traveling, one of the things I like it to carry is a bed, usually the best available. Set out a few blocks for safety/shelter, a lantern for environment, and the bed will quickly restore a blockhead's energy.

* Speaking of which, a golden bed is almost as good as coffee. It's incredibly quick and requires preparation only once for repeated uses. Coffee is faster and gives a temporary action boost, but has to be recreated for each use. That said, I prefer coffee to revive a tired blockhead when it can take advantage of any "midnight sun."

* Electricity is a game-changer, but it's also a resource-intensive start-up. And you'll need steel (and therefore gold nuggets) to do it.

** You really need to start with a steam generator and electric furnace, the former for power and the latter for "cheap" iron. These two alone require 1 black sand, 3 tin ingots, 9 copper ingots, 22 iron ingots, 50 coal, and the use of both a lvl. 3 furnace and a lvl. 2 metalwork bench -- all made with non-electric crafting surfaces.

** It takes 25 sand and black sand (each) to make a silicon crystal, but the production of wafers doesn't match their consumption (that's 5:3). Fortunately, five solar panels provide good power. (Ten is significantly better.) Unfortunately, that's 75 of each type of sand needed.

** Solar panels are nearly useless without a flywheel, preferably more than one. Flywheels can also serve as a segment of copper wire, so don't skimp.

** Go ahead and put a roof over your solar panels if you want, but make it glass and leave at least a one-block gap between them.

* For the advanced "single player" player, use portal chests to shuffle materials between worlds. This opens up the possibility of creating a world specifically for "stripping."

** To strip (as in strip mine but not literally) a world, make sure you can supply at least 520 time crystals and then create a new world. The world name and blockhead details aren't too important, as you'll eventually delete it when its usefulness is done.

** When you complete the circumnavigation, pack up everything of value in nested chests and baskets (strip the blockhead, too), put it into the portal chest, switch to the receiving world and remove it, then go back and delete the stripped world.

** Yes, it's a lot of effort, but I've used the above method to equip all five blockheads of a world with the "unique" clothing and deliver piles of rare materials and thousands of time crystal points.

* Want to try a different approach to playing the game? Try being a non-miner.

** The goal here is to not go tunneling through rock to find things.

** Until you have that gold coin (or 100 copper coins to exchange at a portal) from either meditation or golden chests (under sand or in caves), you're mostly preparing things for later. Once you have a trade portal, though, start generating renewable items that can be sold for more coins to buy what you want/need.

** Digging a tunnel along the top of the bedrock will be one of the things you find yourself doing (and why I didn't call this the "farmer" approach). It lets you find golden chests under sand/beaches as well as buried cave mouths. Oh, and creating a quarry for stone (and maybe some ores) doesn't break the "rules" here, especially if it's out of exposed bedrock.

** If you can find a ruby but not a diamond, don't panic, just go flying. A lvl. 5 trade portal has titanium ore available, so it's possible to build a jetpack and look for a gem tree growing diamonds.

** Including the craft bench upgrade, you'll need to start with about 1,000 units of oil, 300 coal, and nine titanium ingots.

** If you're relying on solar for your electricity, you'll need a lot of solar panels to keep that refinery running. A faster way is to set up that steam generator you stopped using and keep it fueled, probably into your flywheel(s).

** Most of the prep work is done at the refinery. Most of the assembly is done at the craft bench. But you'll have to make your jet engines at an electric metalwork bench.

** So why bother? Because somewhere on the floating islands you can't see above you are gem trees. Yes, trees that produce gems like fruit. And if you don't fly, you'll have to climb -- on ladders. A whole lot of ladders.