Chapter 20: Tinkers' Frustrations
Mark stared at the Tinkers' Construct manual in Steve's inventory and let out a sigh. Back in the day, when he and his friends had a server, he hadn't appreciated it much. But now, with no way to see crafting recipes, he realized how awesome it was that this mod had its own built-in guide.
Tinkers' Construct was all about making tools and smelting stuff. It added a ton of new ores, metals, and tools to the game.
Every tool in Tinkers' Construct was made up of different parts. A pickaxe, for example, had a pickaxe head, a binding, and a rod.
You could use all kinds of materials to make those parts. Gold for the rod, diamonds for the head, obsidian for the binding. You could even use stuff from other mods, like steel or bronze, or even those crazy metals from the Industrial Age mod.
Almost every material had special traits. Sponge gave you the Silk Touch trait, iron made your tools magnetic so you could pick up items from farther away, and so on.
There were also special alloys that made your weapons super strong, so you could take down most vanilla monsters easily.
Then there were modifiers. These were like enchantments for your tools. Each tool had three slots for modifiers. Lapis lazuli could give you Fortune or Looting, redstone gave you Haste. If you wanted to go all out, you could use diamonds or emeralds. Diamonds made your tools better at mining, more durable, and able to mine obsidian faster. Emeralds made them even more durable.
And unlike regular Minecraft tools, Tinkers' Construct tools could be repaired even after they broke. You just had to stick them in a special forge.
Tinkers' Construct might not have been as complex as those big tech mods, but it was super fun. You could make your own custom tools, exactly the way you wanted them. And with other mods, you could make crazy powerful weapons that got stronger the more monsters you killed. There were even add-ons with Vibranium from the Marvel universe and that Asgardian metal, Uru.
Imagine that scene in Thor: Ragnarok where Hela crushes Thor's hammer. Mark could have made Thor a new axe out of Uru right then and there! That would have been epic.
But right now, the thing Mark was most grateful for was that handy manual.
It had all the info he needed to get started with the mod.
"Okay, time to make some gear and take on the Wither and the Ender Dragon," he said, flipping through the manual.
With a goal in mind, Mark and Steve got to work.
As a seasoned miner, Mark knew his underground base would always have plenty of ores, and this time was no exception. He smelted the ores into ingots and had Steve swap out his worn-out iron sword and shield for new ones.
Those stone pickaxes were way too slow, so he tossed them and made a bunch of iron ones.
He also upgraded Steve's iron armor to a full set of diamond.
Tinkers' Construct had its own armor system, but he hadn't unlocked that part of the mod yet. Diamond armor would have to do for now.
With the new gear ready, Mark sent Steve out to gather sand, clay, and gravel.
He needed those to build a special Tinkers' Construct furnace.
It wasn't like a regular furnace. It was a big multi-block structure that used lava to melt ores.
Since he was still early in the game, he didn't need any fancy materials to build it. Steve came back with stacks of the stuff in no time.
Mark crafted the materials into seared bricks and got to work building the furnace.
He'd never actually built one of these before.
Back on the server, he was the miner and fighter, not the builder.
Thankfully, the manual had clear instructions. After a bit of trial and error, he managed to build the whole thing.
He'd collected a bunch of lava while mining, so he poured it into the furnace.
With a whoosh, the furnace roared to life. He tossed in some ores, and they slowly melted into liquid metal.
"Alright, now for the forge."
He flipped through the manual and started working on the crafting stations.
He needed a stencil table, a part builder, a tool station, all sorts of things. Putting them all together was the tricky part. He spent hours squatting there, fiddling with the pieces.
By the time he was done, it was already the next morning.
"This... is... hard!"
He rubbed his temples, frustrated. "Man, it took less time to mine all that stuff than to build this thing. I need the Equivalent Exchange mod!"
After three failed attempts, he finally managed to make all the molds he needed.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
He'd been mining non-stop for three days. He was exhausted.
Little did he know, the real challenge was just beginning.
He was trying to make bronze, but there was some leftover aluminum in the furnace. Instead of bronze, he ended up with aluminum brass.
"What the heck?!"
He was about to lose it. "This stupid mod! Maybe I should go back to the Marvel world, grab some Infinity Stones, and try to bring my friend Diyo here... Ugh, this is impossible! This mod is broken!"
(TL: Gamer rage moment.)