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Tinker's Construct can seem large and intimidating at first glance.  So many things to make, so many tools, and no crafting recipes for any of them!  It is easy to get lost.  This page should help guide you along your way to becoming a master tinker.

The absolute beginning[]

Just about enough

Not depicted: Your fists after punching all of this wood

If you have just started a new world and want to forego the cheap, easily broken tools you could make, you will need to collect a few things.  The first and foremost among these things, is wood.  You need a bare minimum of 9 logs to build the various tool construction stations you need to create the vast bulk of your tools, while leaving yourself just enough to create a pickaxe.  A much more comfortable number to start with, and the number this guide assumes you collected, is 13 logs.  

 - Your Stations and You[]

Before you go making everything, you should take a moment to familiarize yourself with what you're trying to make.

  • The Crafting Station is an alternative to the vanilla Crafting Table.  You can access the contents of an adjacent Chest or Trapped Chest while using it, and it holds items in place if you close the UI during use.
  • The Stencil Table is a work station that allows you to create the Pattern items used by the Part Builder
  • The Pattern Chest is a special chest whose contents can be accessed while using an adjacent Part Builder , or on its own.  It can only hold non-blank Patterns, or Casts, which we will get onto later.
  • The Part Builder is a work station that allows you to shape raw material into refined tool parts using Patterns made in the Stencil Table
  • The Tool Station is easily one of the, if not the, most important blocks in Tinker's Construct.  This is where you can browse the tools you can make, assemble various parts into functional tools, repair those tools, and eventually modify them to work more to your liking, but we'll get to all that.

 - Building Up[]

Now that you have at least glanced over the list of workstations you're going to need, you should probably get to assembling them.  You'll need to break 12 of your logs down to planks, then 10 of those planks down to sticks.  With these, we can craft the following, in more or less this order:

  1. 9 Blank Patterns (using 2 planks and 2 sticks each)
  2. 2 Crafting Tables (using 4 planks each)
  3. A Crafting Station (using 1 of the Crafting Tables)
  4. A Tool Station (using a Blank Pattern and the other Crafting Table)
  5. Stencil Table (using a Blank Pattern and a plank)
  6. A Part Builder (using a Blank Pattern and the remaining log)


At this point, you should start placing these workstations.  Try to set yourself up such that the Stencil Table and Part Builder are very close together, but otherwise just try to keep it all close enough to be convenient for now.

To finish your first workplace off, craft a Chest (using 8 of the planks), then use it and 1 of the Blank Patterns to craft a Pattern Chest.  Place it in a space adjacent to your Part Builder, and you're ready to start making some tools!

 - Making Standard Tools[]

At this point, you should have 4 planks, 2 sticks, and 5 Blank Patterns left after all that crafting.  It may not seem like much, but it's enough,  The first tool we're going to make is a Pickaxe made out of all Wooden parts.  Open the Tool Station and click the icon that looks like a Pickaxe.  Notice, in the information panel on the right side, that it requires 1 Tool Rod, 1 Tool Binding, and 1 Pickaxe Head.  While you're there, feel free to look at the Shovel and the Axe icons, and note the required parts for those.

Now that you know what parts you need to make, you will need to use your Stencil Table.  Place the 5 Blank Patterns in the slot on the left, and notice that it brings up an output item on the right.  You can scroll through the various output options using the Previous Pattern and Next Pattern buttons, or, in newer versions, with the buttons to the left of the rest of the GUI. For now, though, grab 1 of each of the following:

  1. Tool Rod Pattern (the first one available when you place a Blank Pattern down)
  2. Pickaxe Head Pattern (the Next Pattern from the Tool Rod Pattern)
  3. Shovel Head Pattern (the Next Pattern from the Pickaxe Head Pattern)
  4. Axe Head Pattern (the Next Pattern from the Shovel Head Pattern)
  5. Tool Binding Pattern (5 Next Patterns from the Axe Head, past the Sword Blade Pattern and various guard patterns, shaped like a small "x")

Place each of these designed Patterns into the Pattern Chest, then open your Part Builder.  In here, pull the Tool Binding pattern from the Pattern Chest area on the far left, and put it in one of the Pattern positions shown below.  Use a Plank in the matching Material position, and pick up your Wooden Tool Binding.  This leaves a Stick in the Leftover Material position.  Place that stick in the Material position, and pick up a second Wooden Tool Binding for later.  Put the Tool Binding Pattern back in the chest, and grab the Pickaxe Head pattern.  Use another Plank and craft one Wooden Pickaxe Head.  Put the Pickaxe Head Pattern back in the Pattern Chest, and pull out the Tool Rod Pattern.  Use any combination of the remaining planks and sticks to make 4 Wooden Tool Rods.

Reading the Part Builder

This is hard to put to words alone


 - Putting it All Together[]

Finally, after all the preparation (most of which, thankfully, is entirely reusable for any later tool creation), you have the parts you need.  Open the Tool Station again, and click the Pickaxe icon.  Put the Wooden Pickaxe Head, a Wooden Tool Binding, and a Wooden Tool Rod in the 3 positions, each one in the spot whose background outline matches it.  This should reveal a Pickaxe in the output position.  Pick it up to assemble your very first tinkered tool!  However, it isn't a very -good- tool, is it?  Let's try to fix that.  Dig in somewhere and try to gather 3 Cobblestone.  Use what you have learned here to make a Stone Pickaxe Head, a Stone Shovel Head, and a Stone Axe Head.  Using those parts, and the Wooden Tool Rods and Wooden Tool Binding you have leftover after making your wooden Pickaxe, you will be able to make a full set of basic stone tools for yourself.

Your first smeltery[]

At this point, your next step is going to be the smeltery. The smeltery is the default ore-doubling mechanic in Tinkers' Construct and it can be used to make metal tools. The absolute minimum needed materials to start your own smeltery are 51 blocks of sand, 50 blocks of gravel, 50 pieces of clay and 3 pieces of iron. Preferably, you also know the location of a pool of lava.

- Creating your smeltery[]

In a crafting table, combine the sand, gravel, and clay to make grout. For every piece of sand, clay, and gravel you will make 2 grout blocks. Put these grout blocks into a furnace. The furnace will smelt these grout blocks to seared brick. Combine four of these seared brick to make seared bricks. These will form the foundation of your smeltery. Find a good place for your smeltery next. Know that a smeltery will require at least a 5 by 5 by 2 blocks area. Place down your first seared bricks in a 3 by 3 to create the foundations. Go up one block. At this level you'll want at least one smeltery controller, a seared tank and a smeltery drain, fill the 9 other spots in with any seared bricks or seared glass. To finish it all off, you will need a casting table or a casting basin. I recommend using a casting table at first, moving on to a casting table/casting basin combo later. You CAN use more smeltery drains, seared tanks or other smeltery blocks, but I will assume you chose seared bricks, because I'm talking about the absolute minimum.


When you made your smeltery, add the faucet to the drain and voilà, your first smeltery is ready for its first use.

2014-05-22 16.33

What your smeltery will look like (no lava added yet).







- Using your smeltery[]

When you finished your smeltery, you will want to start smelting and doubling your ores. To do this, however, your smeltery requires a bucket of lava to provide enough heat. By using only the materials I listed previously, you can *just* build the smeltery, leaving no seared bricks left for a piece of seared glass, which can be used as a portable tank (meaning that when you break it, it retains its liquid). Make yourself a bucket and scoop up some lava. Put this in the seared tank by right-clicking it with the bucket to start of the process. Now you can add up to 9 ores, given the size I showed earlier. Every consecutive finished layer will grant you another 9 slots for ores, blocks or even individual ingots to be molten down.

When you have some lava and want to start your smeltery, I recommend smelting 3 aluminum ores and 1 copper ore to create aluminum brass. This is the basic alloy you're going to want to create yourself the casts required for making metal tools. Put any stone parts, made using the part builder, in the casting table and pour out some of the aluminum brass. This makes you a cast of whatever part you put in there. When you right click the faucet to drain the liquid out of the smeltery, the bottom metal/alloy will be drained first. To change what metal/alloy is on the bottom, simply open up the smeltery controller and click the metal/alloy you want/need. This makes the metal/alloy go to the bottom, regardless of how many other metals/alloys are already in there.

Remember: to make a cast, you need aluminum brass (made by smelting 3 aluminum ores/ingots and 1 copper ore/ingots) or gold. One ingot is required for each cast. You can smelt the cast if needed so you can reuse the gold/aluminum brass.

Every tool part can be made using this method.

What next?[]

So, you've built your first tools, gotten some ores, built a smeltery and have it up and running. What can you do next with tinkers' construct? You could make more advanced tools, using a tool forge. You could start playing with alloys. You could also try to make your very own favorite tool. You might have even forgotten to start a farm and are surviving completely on rotten flesh.

A lot of this is already covered in other wiki pages.

- Tool forge[]

At this time of the game, I personally start making myself a tool forge. It's a rather expensive recipe, but the ore cost can be halved by using the smeltery. Requirements for the tool forge: 18 iron ore, 6 sand, 6 gravel, 6 clay and 1 tool station (you can use 2 logs to make this, as shown earlier).

Tool forge recipe

The tool forge works much like the tool station, except for one big difference: it is the only station capable of crafting Hammers, Excavators, Lumber Axes, Scythes, Battleaxes, and Cleavers. These tools can be very handy. The Hammer mines a 3 by 3 (giving you all the stone and ores), the excavator digs a 3 by 3 (giving you dirt, gravel, clay and/or sand), the Lumber Axe fells a complete tree if the leaves are still present (otherwise it chops down a 3 by 3 area), the Scythe reaps your crops in a 3 by 3 by 3 area, the Battleaxe can be used for combat and tree cutting and Cleavers give a higher head drop rate and damage, but they are slow to use (giving you mining fatigue when you chop).

For how to create these tools, I will have to refer you to their respective pages.

- Modifiers[]

Now that you have your basic and more advanced tools, it might be time to look into modifiers. Every tool has a number of modifier slots, depending on materials used and what tool it is. Modifiers can be seen as enchantments you add yourself, but instead of levels, modifiers use materials. Want an auto-smelting pickaxe to smelt all cobblestone directly into smooth stone? No problem, add a lava crystal and there you go! Want silk touch to dig up Redstone ore or even some grass? No problem, add a silky crystal and you'll get them. I suppose you get the drill now. In Materials and You 2 (The red book), you can find all modifiers.

-Weapons and protection[]

TiC provides many means of protection in-game. These weapons can be found on the Recommended Tools page, and strategy can be found on the Combat using Tinker's Construct page.

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