SGS1E3

Spotter's Guide: S1E3 - Home Sweet Home!

I start out this video by just prioritizing materials to take with me when we go to look for a home. Unfortunately it will be a bit harder to point out the key parts of this video as about half of it is me wandering around and explaining what I am looking for in a place to set up home.

Cassiterite and Basalt video video

This will have a few video selections where I touch on these two materials that are what I am looking for. Cassiterite is up first and is probably one of the most important materials. It will help get us out of the stone age and into the bronze age and then continue its importance all the way up to steel. The second part of exiting the stone age is to get an anvil made out of a hard stone. In this particular case I am looking for Basalt as its a fairly identifiable material, and I tend to have good luck with finding it on the surface.

Horsies! video

Again, not part of TFCraft, but these are the horses from the Simply Horses mod I was not able to show off with out seeing them. Moving right along

Stone Spotting video

I reveal the secrets of how to tell what type of rock is under your feet with out constantly having to dig down to figure it out. This is from the hints that the environment gives us in the different dirt colors and flint colors. The color of the dirt will loosely match the colors of the stone below. They have a bit of bleed over but are a good initial indication. The color of the flint rocks however match the color of the first rock layer beneath your feet. So as we are looking for Granite and Basalt, I am looking for light colored pieces of flint and very dark colored pieces of flint. This helps you make better educated guesses as to what type of resources you are around.

Lava and Sulfur video

I do not hop down into it but you can see the sulfur that will now line lava pools. There was soo much loose sand I was standing on that it would have fallen and been pointless to show more of it. It is just good to note that if you see sulfur, even if you can not directly see the lava, you are only a block or two away from it!

Elevation video

I quickly cover that elevation can affect the natural burning temperature of your fires, forges and bloomeries. It is not a critical heat difference but it can make your materials a bit more effecient. Since this mod does add in quite a bit of complexity to the game it is worth taking advantage of anything you can in my opinion!

Rivers video

I had almost forgotten about this! In the tail end I point out that we lucked out more than I thought and are near two rivers. This allows us to potentially pan for materials as well as set up a sluice as well. This is a way of sifting through sediment, either the dirt or sand or clay that may be found near by, and shake loose things of interest from them, like gems, gold and even bits of iron. I will get more into these topics in a future episode but it is something to be aware of when settling if you are interested in those activities.

Farm video

Ah yes, wheat is still important and farming is a bit harder when you can not do it where you want to. We have no buckets so a water source is important when choosing a location to set up a home so that we can make a farm. I dig just a simple irrigation channel and then till the soil around it. A quick little fence and we are good for wheat!