Best material to start mining Cobalt? (TiC in DW20 1.10)

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MikW

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Hey, I was wondering how to start mining some cobalt (and ardite) for my TiC tools. Any suggestions on good materials for mining cobalt and ardite?
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Get yourself a pick with an iron head. Yes, Iron. Yes, I know it can't mine cobalt, not yet at least. Get some obsidian, shouldn't be too hard, make a sharpening kit. Combine the obsidian sharpening kit, the pick, and a piece of flint. Voila! You have an iron pickaxe that can mine cobalt!

Mind you, I don't think Cobalt is really the end-all-be-all of picks anymore. Without a way to repair, which would be expensive, it might not be suitable for a long-term tool to use. But if you want to mine cobalt, that's probably the easiest way.
 
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MikW

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Get yourself a pick with an iron head. Yes, Iron. Yes, I know it can't mine cobalt, not yet at least. Get some obsidian, shouldn't be too hard, make a sharpening kit. Combine the obsidian sharpening kit, the pick, and a piece of flint. Voila! You have an iron pickaxe that can mine cobalt!

Mind you, I don't think Cobalt is really the end-all-be-all of picks anymore. Without a way to repair, which would be expensive, it might not be suitable for a long-term tool to use. But if you want to mine cobalt, that's probably the easiest way.
Okay, thanks dude! I have a bronze pickaxe. Might do that sharpening stuff, but one more question, can steel be used to mine cobalt and ardite?
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Okay, thanks dude! I have a bronze pickaxe. Might do that sharpening stuff, but one more question, can steel be used to mine cobalt and ardite?
I don't have the option to make a head out of steel in my pack, you'll have to figure it out yourself. Check the book, it should tell you.
 
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MikW

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I don't have the option to make a head out of steel in my pack, you'll have to figure it out yourself. Check the book, it should tell you.

I think some mods in my pack like Railcraft and Immersive Engineering adds steel to TiC.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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I think some mods in my pack like Railcraft and Immersive Engineering adds steel to TiC.
Doing some poking around, looks like steel won't mine cobalt. The only thing I can see that can mine cobalt other than cobalt, ardite, or many... is obsidian. So since obsidian largely sucks as a tool material in general, sharpen with obsidian on whatever head you prefer.

Again, though... I think you'll find yourself quite underwhelmed with cobalt pick head.
 
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MikW

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Doing some poking around, looks like steel won't mine cobalt. The only thing I can see that can mine cobalt other than cobalt, ardite, or many... is obsidian. So since obsidian largely sucks as a tool material in general, sharpen with obsidian on whatever head you prefer.

Again, though... I think you'll find yourself quite underwhelmed with cobalt pick head.

What's better than cobalt for a pick head? I think manyullyn has better durability and damage but is slower.
 

sgbros1

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What's better than cobalt for a pick head? I think manyullyn has better durability and damage but is slower.
Knightslime is usually pretty good, allows you to only hold that pick in your hotbar
 
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Viperion

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Cobalt is faster and has about the same durability as Knightslime IIRC
 

sgbros1

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How do you get knightslime?
Purple slime, iron, and stone. Look around for slime islands with purple trees / purple slime islands.

Cobalt is faster and has about the same durability as Knightslime IIRC
I know, but normally I don't focus too much on speed on pickaxes; that's for hammers. But a knightslime pick allows me not to carry a shovel
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Speed alone does not a tool make. The properties of the materials should also be taken into consideration. For example, I actually stuck with an iron pickaxe for the magnetic property. There is no worse time than finding diamonds only to have them fall into lava instead of your pocket.

For a hammer, I actually like to use regular green slime for the head, because I don't want it to go through ores. I'm just using it to clear out space. I'll come back later with my pick (which has silk touch) to clean up all the ores. In fact, I've been known to use both a height and width upgrade on the hammer to make a circular hole with a five block radius. The advantage of slime is that it has stupid durability and occasionally produces slimes that you kill to get slimeballs to make slime crystals to repair the hammer with. So it's something of a perpetual tool.
 

KingTriaxx

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The trick to Cobalt is Momentum. As you mine, it goes faster and faster. Either use a very high multiplier handle, and high durability binding, with the Cobalt head, or use multiple modifiers and make it invincible. Either way, eventually it picks up enough momentum to be instant breaking. (Maybe a bit slower with the hammer, but still very fast.

I'm not sure why you'd want to silk touch the ores, though in my case it's because my hammer has Fortune 3. I toss on one lapis, and then let it level as I mine cobble and blocks that see no benefit from Fortune.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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The trick to Cobalt is Momentum. As you mine, it goes faster and faster. Either use a very high multiplier handle, and high durability binding, with the Cobalt head, or use multiple modifiers and make it invincible. Either way, eventually it picks up enough momentum to be instant breaking. (Maybe a bit slower with the hammer, but still very fast.
Problem is that durability only delays the problem and you cannot make it invincible and still have Momentum. So you're going to be spending Cobalt, which is fairly uncommon, to keep repairing the tool.

In 1.7.10, we had the Fluxed property that pretty much eliminated this issue. However, we don't have anything remotely close to that in 1.10.2. Using an Ardite handle for Petramour isn't a bad idea, but again, limited results. Eventually, you're going to have to repair that thing out of a very limited resource. I just don't think it is worth it.

Alternately, you can just do something like an Immersive Engineering drill. Sure, the drill head has to be replaced, but that's just steel, which is processed iron. Once you get the steel infrastructure built, the actual costs involved in steel aren't much more than iron and a bit of coal. Which, unlike even a Knightslime hammer, does punch through dirt, gravel, sand, and clay. Which goes extremely fast. And it runs on biodiesel which can be made out of melons.

I'm not sure why you'd want to silk touch the ores, though in my case it's because my hammer has Fortune 3. I toss on one lapis, and then let it level as I mine cobble and blocks that see no benefit from Fortune.
You get significantly more yield from processing redstone or lapis ore than even from Fortune 3. Plus some mods like Thermal Expansion also give you nifty things like Cinnabar for even more ore multiplication for doing so. Plus nether ores NOT blowing up in your face is a Good Thing(tm).
 
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WTFFFS

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I'd say that the 'best' non TiC tool would be the Actually Additions drill simply for the flexibility.
If you prefer hand mining over running a quarry, which I do sometimes, having a 5x5 AA drill with silk touch or fortune depending on which module you have installed (or having silk touch\fortune on another drill for single high value ores) works quite well.
But as far as the best material to mine cobalt? Anything you want to make your tools out of for ease of repair\ speed of use or whatever other reason. A soon as you have even a rudimentary TiC smeltery and a bucket you can mine cobalt, make an obsidian sharpening kit. Done. I had a stone pick on my second MC day that I could mine cobalt with. Beyond, so tool leveling and replaceable parts, I'm still using that pick but it now has a cobalt head\knightslime binding\blood infused iron tool rod with maximum haste and fortune 3 but I've been quarrying and haven't mined by hand in quite a while now probably should retire it and make something else to use around the base.
 
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KingTriaxx

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Isn't part replacement a vanilla TiCon feature? So you can make a Paper Hammer, then make it invincible and then put on a cobalt head? I thought I'd seen that without the leveling mod.

Been so long since I used Thermal Expansion, that I forgot all about Cinnabar.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Isn't part replacement a vanilla TiCon feature? So you can make a Paper Hammer, then make it invincible and then put on a cobalt head? I thought I'd seen that without the leveling mod.
Normally yes, but you can't replace a paper component unless you have the spare modifier slots.

Been so long since I used Thermal Expansion, that I forgot all about Cinnabar.
Running redstone ore through the SAG Mill also gives you silicon in addition to like 12 redstone.
 
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sgbros1

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Problem is that durability only delays the problem and you cannot make it invincible and still have Momentum. So you're going to be spending Cobalt, which is fairly uncommon, to keep repairing the tool.
There's actually a way to get the best of both worlds.

If you use a hammer, the plates also give the same modifiers as the head. So that means a cobalt plate also gives Momentum.

So you can have a green slime head (or whatever head you want) and a cobalt plate which mines fast without using cobalt to repair
 

KingTriaxx

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Do they? I thought they gave up Lightweight when they were plates?

The latest version of TiCon now has embossed, which allows you to add on a modifier, but I see your point.
 

sgbros1

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Do they? I thought they gave up Lightweight when they were plates?
It does (from testing), but Lightweight just speeds up the tool. It's not like there's other options to speed it up, and Momentum catches up to that speed after you mine a while