Morning came around officially starting the 3rd day of the game and it is the to start smelting iron from the dirt I have gathered a long process that will probably take a few days. Once I have the tools needed next time will be much easier as I'll have raw iron from the cavern once I start to actually dig into a vein I found there while small it's still enough for a while.
Walking to the forge I start to clean out the ash and save it for farming later. after I finish cleaning out the fuel chamber I start filling it with charcoal and lite it closing the chamber and letting it warm up. While it's doing that I start to fill the other chamber with dirt about halfway before sealing that chamber up as well.
Grabbing the crank blower I made I align it with the forced induction pipe I made for the forge and start to crank it at a steady pace. Instantly you can feel the heat intensify to the point I'm sweating and you can see the forge glowing red hot on the inside. Keeping this up for an hour I decide to check my progress on the dirt carefully opening the forge door being blasted by intense heat I can see near the bottom of the dirt pile slag of iron forming. closing the door back up I continue the process for five hours I finally finished the first amount of dirt getting around 5 pounds of iron slag not even nothing to remove the slag I take out the excess dirt and throw more into the hot forge filling it once again. going back and continuing heating the forge.
I repeated the process for 2 days before I ran out of dirt and finally I had just over 100 pounds of iron slag built up in the forge allowing it cool enough to solidify a bit I pull out the hot slag from the forge using stone pick I made on a long branch and dragged it to the water letting it rapidly cool. causing it to be brittle so I can break it into smaller pieces later for smelting.
finally finished with my job walk to the cavern to pass out for some much-needed sleep after two days of nonstop work. hands sore muscle screaming and starving. I barely made it inside before falling over exhausted passed out.
Waking up the following morning feeling refreshed but starving I hurt up and eat some fish before heading out to start casting my newest tools. grabbing my now cooled iron slag I smash it with stones breaking it into smaller pieces to fit in the crucible. I wish I knew how to make steel but I have to do research on that later on. for now, cast iron will have to do it will allow getting more iron easier in the future.
placing charcoal into the smaller forge I lite it. Filling the crucible with my iron slag once again using the crank blower to rapidly heat the small forge I keep at it till I see the slag slowly liquefy and add more slag to the crucible tell almost full of liquid iron taking two sticks I tied together to make makeshift tongs I grab the crucible and fill the ax head mold until the holes indicating it's full are overflowing. repeating this process again for the pickaxe, now I just wait for them to cool enough to dip them in water.
After I completed my first metal tools I finished melting all the iron and turned them into ingots having a total of 15 five pounds ingots or iron. looking over my tools I'm excited to finally start actually building myself a home. storing away my iron ingots into the cavern I decide to explore the area to look for more resources I need limestone for concrete to build a better forge as well as a good structure in the future I also need to make something to haul materials with like a wheelbarrow. but that would need more iron then I have as I would need an anvil and a hammer to forge steel. next on my list though is a bed as it's the only way to respawn here if I die somehow so ill gather materials while I'm out for that but I need animal furs and feathers of birds as well as to cut down some trees for proper wood.
So much to do by myself I'm sure I'm behind some people if they have friends to work with I tend to not be social. Shaking my head of those thoughts I continue in search of limestone. walking about half a mile around the edge of the lake I spot another cave in a cliffside. curious I decide to enter, at first sight, the cave isn't all that much but it does go back pretty far I head farther in wondering what I could find until I spotted something reflected what little light there was. walking over I noticed a copper vein and it was a rather large one as well. if there was copper here that means other metal may be as well. too bad it's too dark to see any further ill have to craft some torches in the future and come back. turning to leave I also spotted out of the corner of my eye a rather large deposit of limestone in the cave wall, good that means I can make concrete in the future a much-needed material. deciding to head back and get started on the bed making project I start gathering materials to make a large amount of rope I'm going to need it not only for the bed but also to make traps for animals.
once I reach the cave I start making large amounts of rope spending a few hours on it. once finished I grab some of the entrails and fish heads from the past few meals and start to head into the forest. once there I start setting up traps to snag wild animals using the entrails as bait. once setting up 10 total traps throughout the forest I head back to the edge of the forest grab my new ax and start to cut down one of the trees.
notching out the bottom to control the direction it falls it takes about 20 minutes to fully cut the tree down. continuing this process another 3 times for a total of 4 trees I start to cut them to specific lengths to make a bed frame out of the logs and some rope. then weaving a type of net as a mattress I bring it to the cavern and start to assemble it. seeing as it was almost dark again I decided to call it early and head to bed hoping my traps catch some prey.
Waking up in the morning once again sore from the hard ground I hurriedly went to my fist trap. "woohoo" I couldn't help but shout seeing a bear stuck in my first trap thrashing violently. carefully approaching the trapped bear with my spear I aim for its eyes as it stares me down snarling at me. if it wasn't trapped id definitely not want to be anywhere near this thing. with a quick thrust, I aim for its eyes only for it to turn it's head at the last second slamming its forehead into the spear and throwing it out of my hand.
"Wow, you're a fighter I didn't expect you to be so powerful even when immobilized." walking over to my spear I pick it up and try again after a few failed attempts the bear finally was killed without damaging the fur to much. the only reason I was even able to kill that thing was cause it tired itself out from trying to get free all night.
dragging the bear back struggling heavily with the massive weight of the thing lucky for me my strength is improving rather quickly from what I can tell. all parameters are hidden after character creation but I do notice that I'm a lot stronger then I was when I first entered the game. even the player body is much more toned making me want to work out in real life cause I look good. ahem anyway once I drop the bear off I go check the other traps finding 2 deer and a wolf killing them and dragging them back I can start the skinning processes.