Choose the right tool
Pickaxes speed up stone, ores and many hard building materials. Hatchets speed wood; spades speed earth, sand, clay, snow and related ground. Hoes till grass and earth for farming. Spears and blades are melee weapons. Better tools last longer and work faster on their intended material; a mismatched tool is much slower.
Tool families include wooden, stone, iron and steel pickaxes, hatchets, spades, spears, blades and hoes. A copper pickaxe also exists as an earlier progression item. The inventory library shows the exact shape and material needed for each.
| Grade | Durability for ordinary tool families | Matching mining speed multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 80 uses | 2.5× |
| Stone | 180 uses | 4.5× |
| Copper/iron pickaxe tier | 420 uses | 6.8× |
| Steel | 850 uses | 9× |
These are base values for the shared grade-based tool system, not a guarantee that every special weapon uses the same durability. A tool loses durability as it is used; a worn tool stays worn when moved between slots.
Ores and metals
Stone drops cobble. Coal ore drops coal. Copper, iron, titanium and gold ore are processed into their matching ingots in a kiln. Diamond ore yields diamonds and graphite ore yields graphite. Rarer materials occur deeper underground in fresh worlds.
Titanium and diamond ore require a pickaxe at the game's grade-2 tier or higher. Copper, iron and steel pickaxes qualify in the current implementation, even though the failure message names only iron and steel. A stone pickaxe does not qualify.
Steel is a second kiln process: smelt an iron ingot while using coal, charcoal or carbon as fuel. Logs and planks cannot make steel. One charcoal can be crafted into two carbon in a grid.
The advanced benches
The chemical workbench uses steel, iron, glass, copper and a diamond. It enables Kevlar weave, which combines plant fiber, resin, carbon and copper. Plant fiber comes from flax; resin can drop when mining logs.
The refined chemistry bench upgrades a chemical bench with steel, glass, graphite and diamond. Graphene sheets require this refined station and use graphite, carbon, copper and a diamond. These are game crafting abstractions.
Armor and shields progress through leather, iron, steel, Kevlar and graphene. Titanium and gold ingots also have building uses; not every metal has a complete tool family.
Six useful crafting shapes
- Pickaxe: three material across the top; a stick below the center and another below that.
- Hatchet: a 2×2 corner of three material, with two sticks down its handle.
- Spade: one material above two vertical sticks.
- Blade: two material vertically above one stick.
- Hoe: two material across the top, then two sticks down one side.
- Arrows: cobble above a stick above a feather, yielding eight.
Use the recipe entry for spears and special weapons rather than treating their silhouettes as interchangeable recipes.