Tinkers Construct 2 (1.10+) Tool and Material discussion

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Tinker's Construct 2: Tools and Materials - use and abuse​

Since there seems to be interest about discussion on this topic, I thought it best to get the ball rolling in a less confrontational manner.

As a Caveat: This information is being compiled from the latest 1.12.2 release of TiCon2, there may be some differences based on various bugfixes or balance tweaks that have been released before or since. Also note that some mod packs, particularly those branding themselves 'hardcore' or 'expert', will alter or modify these traits, and in some cases the changes are quite drastic. Please consult with your pack developer to see if this guide is right for you!

Overview​

Tinker's Construct has been an amazing mod for many years, first introduced back in the 1.4 era, it quietly slipped under the radar until the Forgecraft crew picked it up, and from there its popularity has only grown!

In brief, Tinker's Construct completely overhauls the idea of making tools. Instead of simply crafting a couple of sticks and three pieces of cobblestone together in a crafting grid, you can make tool parts out of a wide variety of materials, each with unique and interesting properties which are then bestowed upon the tool once it is finally assembled.

Tinker's Construct 2 originally released for Minecraft 1.10 and was a complete overhaul of the mod, taking the same basic mechanics and innovative tool construction concepts, and bringing in a more balanced and comprehensively interesting material property list. It also let the various tinker's stations form a multiblock structure together with a more useful GUI so you didn't need to keep switching back and forth so often.

The original Tinker's Construct had a very definitive progression of materials that were subsequently superior to the previous, however Tinker's Construct 2 has broadened things out, making any one material less 'mandatory' than before, and giving us a wide variety of options to make tools with.

Presented for your edification and education is a treatise on the various materials, modifiers, and finally the tools themselves which you can make using this mod. I encourage viewers to make their own contributions to the thread, offering things they have done in their instances that have proven useful to them.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Materials​

Before going over the tools, let's go over what materials we can craft from. I'll be listing some other materials with (*) that might show up if you have various other mods in your pack, and I'll denote them when I get to them. These don't require any addons or compatibility mods to function.

Wood: It's one of the starting materials, and has some uses, even into the end-game.

• Durability: Head: 35, Handle: 25, Extra: 15
• Handle Modifier: 1x
  
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 2
• Attack damage: 2
  
• Tool Material Property: Ecological - Unlike the Mending modifier, this will (VERY slowly) repair the tool over time as long as it is in your hotbar.

*Overview: Probably your best early-game tool handle, and quite a useful one for lesser-used tools such as a weapon or mattock. Less useful into the mid to late game for tools that are heavily used.
​

(*) Treated Wood: If you have Immersive Engineering, this becomes available as a material.

• Durability: Head: 25, Handle: 35, Extra: 20
• Handle Modifier: 1x
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 2
• Attack damage: 2
• Tool Material Property: Ecological - Unlike the Mending modifier, this will (VERY slowly) repair the tool over time as long as it is in your hotbar.

* Overview. Slightly better durability on the Handle and Extra slots, slightly less on tool head. But then, who uses wood for a tool head? Strictly an upgrade over regular Wood for tool handles and other non-head components but retains the Ecological trait.
​

Stone: Another entry-level material, but doesn't have long-term utility

• Durability: Head: 120, Handle: -50, Extra: 20
• Handle Modifier: 0.5X
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed: 4
• Attack: 3
• Head Material Property: Cheapskate - overall percentage penalty to max durability.
  
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Cheap - increases amount of durability repaired when repairing tool.

* Overview: Not a particularly impressive material. Between the durability penalty and negative handle modifier (halving durability overall) and the detrimental Cheapskate property on the tool head, this makes for one of the worst tool materials around. Skip it in favor of just about anything else, if possible​

Flint: Strictly better early-game material than Stone

• Durability: Head: 150, Handle: -60, Extra: 40
• Handle Modifier: 0.6x
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed: 5
• Attack: 2.9
• Head Material Property: Crude II - An improved version over Crude, which increases damage against unarmored targets
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Crude - Improves damage against unarmored targets

* Overview: Excellent starting material for tool heads, although you still don't want to use it for a handle. Makes an okay sword blade due to Crude II. You will eventually grow out of this.
​

Cactus: Extremely useful if you start in a desert biome

• Durability: Head: 210, Handle: 20, Extra: 50
• Handle Modifier: 0.8x
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed: 4
• Attack: 3.4
• Head Material Property: Prickly - This treat decreases effectiveness of armor against attacks
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Spiky - Much like the Thorns enchantment, it deals damage to attackers when hit, even if you blocked the attack.

* Overview: Excellent head or Extra component, and not the worst material for a Battlesign handle either. I personally prefer Cactus to Flint for weapon blade because of the higher base damage and armor penetration, however Flint will still do more damage against unarmored targets, of which there are many.​

Bone: Kill a skeleton, or let them die in the sun, and it has some useful early-game tool properties

• Durability: Head: 200, Handle: 50, Extra: 65
• Handle Modifier: 1.1x
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed: 5.09
• Attack: 2.5
• Head Material Property: Splintering - successive attacks do slightly more damage
• Tool/Extra Material Property: Fractured - straight up damage increase

* Overview: This is the first material you have ready access to which gives a bonus handle multiplier to tool durability. Useful for your first sword handle, but I'd prefer Cactus or Flint for a sword blade due to the lower base attack. It is a very good pick head, with the highest mining speed of any of the mining level: iron tools covered so far.​

Paper: Find some reeds, make some paper

• Durability: Head: 12, Handle: 5, Extra: 15
• Handle Modifier: 0.1x
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 0.51
• Attack: 0.05
• Tool Material Property: Writable - +1 Modifiers

* Overview: Use it as a tool binding or crossguard to get an extra modifier. One of the more useful properties in the game​

Green Slime: Find a green slime, kill a green slime, craft four slimeballs, a dirt, and a sand into slimy mud, then bake in an oven until it forms a Slimy Crystal

• Durability: Head: 1,000, Handle: 0, Extra: 350
• Handle Modifier: 0.7x
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 4.24
• Attack: 1.8
• Tool Material Property: Slimy - occasionally causes a small green slime to spawn when tool is used.

* Overview: Because the tool property will generate more than enough slime to keep this tool repaired, and the insane base durability, this is a fantastic material for any 'tunnel bore' style hammer. Note the negative handle multiplier, though, so it works best as a tool head. If you *really* want to mine higher level things with it, use a Sharpening Kit.
​

Blue Slime: Same as green slime, but for blue slimes. Typically found around slime islands.

• Durability: Head: 780, Handle: -50, Extra: 200
• Handle Modifier: 1.3x
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 4.03
• Attack: 1.8
• Tool Material Property: Slimy - occasionally causes a small blue slime to spawn when tool is used.

* Overview: with a 1.3x handle modifier, it could significantly increase the overall durability of the tool when used as a handle, despite the negative base durability when used as such. Otherwise, strictly inferior to green slime.​

Iron: Delve into the earth and obtain her bounty

• Durability: Head: 204, Handle: 60, Extra: 50
• Handle Modifier: 0.85x
  
• Mining Level: Diamond
• Mining Speed: 6
• Attack: 4
• Head Material Property: Magnetic II - An improvement over Magnetic, it draws items mined to you from further away
• Handle/Extra Property: Magnetic - Draws items you have mined to you in a short range around you

* Overview: Decent mining speed, very common material, and the property makes an excellent pick or hammer head, especially when mining over lava pits so the fruits of your mining don't fall into oblivion.​

(*) Copper: TiCon doesn't add this anymore, so you'll need Thermal Foundation or another mod which includes this in worldgen.

• Durability: Head: 210, Handle: 30, Extra: 100
• Handle Modifier: 1.05x
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed: 5.3
• Attack: 3
• Tool Material Property: Well-Established - bonus xp on using the tool.

* Overview: With the slight bonus to handle durability multiplier and the material property, this has found a lot of popularity as a handle for hammers as a way to grind xp while digging tunnels.​

(*) Bronze: As with Copper, you'll need to include a mod which adds both Copper and Tin to make this alloy

• Durability: Head: 430, Handle: 70, Extra: 80
• Handle Modifier: 1.1x
• Mining Level: Diamond
• Mining Speed: 6.8
• Attack: 3.5
• Tool Material Property: Dense - As durability goes down, the odds of it using durability on use also goes down. However, due to how it is calculated, while it can approach unbreakable, it can never quite reach it.

* Overview: An interesting material. It does mine faster than iron and has a better handle modifier as well, and much better durability overall, but I consider it a side-grade to Iron, because of the usefulness of the Magnetic II property.​

(*) Electrum: Gold plus Silver, so it will need another mod adding in Silver to make it.

• Durability: Head: 50, Handle: -25, Extra: 250
• Handle Modifier: 1.1x
• Mining Level: Iron
• Mining Speed 12!
• Attack: 3
• Tool Material Property: Shocking - as you run or mine, you build up a charge. If you attack an enemy at full charge, you release the charge to do more damage for that one hit. If you mine a block at full charge, you get a brief mining speed boost.

* Overview: Potentially even faster than Cobalt due to the tool material property, but durability is abysmal.​

(*) Steel: You'll need a mod to include this, like Immersive Engineering

• Durability: Head: 540, Handle: 150, Extra: 25
• Handle Modifier: 0.9x
• Mining Level: Obsidian
• Mining Speed: 7
• Attack 6
• Head material property: Sharp - damage over time on hit, like poison but counts as a physical attack
• Handle/extra material property: Stiff - Blocking reduces damage taken even more

* Overview: Makes an excellent sword blade due to the high base Attack rating and the tool head material property. However, a Guardian's thorn effect WILL proc on the bleed damage ticks.​

Obsidian: Water + Lava. You can pour them separately into the Smeltery and they'll mix properly.

• Durability: Head: 139, Handle: -100, Extra: 90
• Handle Modifier: 0.9x
• Mining Level: Cobalt
• Mining Speed: 7.07
• Attack: 4.2
• Tool Material Property: Duritae - Effectively a level of Reinforced modifier.

* Overview: In 1.10 versions of this mod, Obsidian's Duritae stacked with Reinforced modifiers, however in 1.12 versions, it does *NOT*. This means the only way to get Unbreakable in 1.12 is by Embossing paper head with a paper Extra and putting 5x Reinforced Plates on it. It's still universally useful as an early-access source of Cobalt mining level when used to Fortify.​

Knightslime: This is an unusual alloy of Iron, Stone, and the rare Purple Slime

• Durability: Head: 850, Handle: 500, Extra: 125
• Handle Modifier: 0.5x
• Mining Level: Obsidian
• Mining Speed: 5.8
• Attack: 5.1
• Head Material Property: Crumbling - can break soft materials faster, but does NOT make it count as the 'proper' tool. See below
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Unnatural - the difference between the tool's mining level and the mining level required for the block being broken is factored into a speed multiplier bonus

*Overview: Because Crumbling does *NOT* make a hammer an 'appropriate tool', it still won't mine out an area of gravel or dirt like a drill would, making it useless for this purpose. However, the Unnatural property can be quite useful, and makes an excellent 'Extra' material component. Generally speaking, however, purple slime is difficult enough to find that this material is easily overlooked.​

Magma Slime: Travel through the nether is dangerous, you might encounter an island in the lava where it has congealed into slime.

• Durability: Head: 600, Handle: -200, Extra: 150
• Handle Modifier: 0.85x
• Mining Level: Stone
• Mining Speed: 2.1
• Attack: 7
• Head Material Property: Superheat - Deals bonus damage to enemies already on fire
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Flammable - Blocking can also block fire damage, and will set enemies on fire if you block their melee physical attack

* Overview: With an even higher base attack than Steel, this can become a very viable sword blade with a material that is easy to farm, even though you'll almost never take advantage of the material property. While it has a stiff handle durability penalty, and a handle modifier reduction as well, it can be used to block Blaze shots if used as the handle on a Battlesign.​

Cobalt: While mining in the Nether is a risky proposition, between the denizens hostility and surprise lava pockets, the rewards are well worth the risk and effort

• Durability: Head: 780, Handle: 100, Extra: 300
• Handle Modifier: 0.9
• Mining Level: Cobalt
• Mining Speed: 12!
• Attack: 4.1
• Head Material Property: Momentum - Each successive block mined adds a small bonus to mining speed, up to a cap roughly equal to one level of Haste
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Lightweight - An effective level of Haste

* Overview: Long seen as one of the best pick or hammer head materials, but in this version it can be quite difficult to keep repaired. It makes an extra binding or other Extra component, however.​

Ardite: As with Cobalt, this rare ore can be quite valuable. Due to its coloration, however, it can be harder to spot at a distance, due to a lack of contrasting color with the surrounding netherrack.

• Durability: Head: 990, Handle: -200, Extra: 450
• Handle Modifier: 1.3x
• Mining Level: Cobalt
• Mining Speed: 3.5
• Attack: 3.6
• Head Material Property: Stonebound - As durability decreases, speed increases
• Handle/Extra Material property: Petramor - Consumes stone to keep itself repaired, similar in concept to Mending but it uses cobblestone mined instead of xp.

* Overview: Not as good as it looks on paper, unfortunately. Stonebound's increase in speed as durability goes down does not offset the abysmal base mining speed it has. Petramor can be used to extend the lifespan of your tool for branch mining, however it only likes to eat cobblestone, not smooth stone, so silk touch will negate this property. Furthermore, this trait will only work when it is actively mining, you can't just toss a stack of cobble on the ground to repair it.​

Manyullyn: Cobalt + Ardite = good times.

• Durability: Head: 820, Handle: 250, Extra: 50
• Handle Modifier: 0.5x
• Mining Level: Cobalt
• Attack: 8.72
• Head Material Property: Insatiable - successive attacks do progressively more damage but also consume progressively more durability
• Handle/Extra Material Property: Cold-Blooded - Deals more damage to a target at full health

* Personally? Not worth the investment, and too difficult to keep repaired, even if it does have the highest base damage in the mod. The tool head material property is pointless because nothing is going to survive more than two hits with this thing anyway. Some use for a sword handguard due to the Cold Blooded property, assuming you don't want to use Paper for more Sharpness.​

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Modifiers​

Ever got tired of the RNG of the vanilla enchantment system? Yea, me too. One of the greatest innovations of Tinker's Construct, carried over to Tinker's Construct 2, is the concept of a Modifier.

Each tool starts off with a base of three modifiers you can add to the tool. In the core mod, the ONLY way to get an extra modifier is by using the otherwise weak Paper to get a flat +1, which does not stack with other instances of using paper, for an absolute hard-cap of 4 modifiers.

In addition to the modifiers, there are two other things that can be done to a tool to augment it.

The first is Reinforcement. You will need a Sharpening Kit of the material you want to use, a flint, and your tool. It will fiat give the tool the mining level of the material used in the Sharpening Kit. This WILL reduce the mining level if appropriate.

The second is Embossment. This requires a tool part for the tool being modified, A Slime Crystal, Blue Slime Crystal, Magma Slime Crystal, and a block of Gold. Like Reinforcement, only instead of adding the mining level, it adds the tool material property of the part used. Keep in mind that the material property bestowed by the embossment is dependent on the tool component being used to emboss, so embossing a Cobalt Tough Rod to a Hammer will give it the Lightweight trait, while embossing a Cobalt Hammer Head to the same Hammer will give it Momentum instead. Also as a friendly reminder, you may only emboss a given weapon *ONCE EVER*, so choose wisely, as it can never be undone or replaced.

List of Modifiers​

Haste: 50 redstone per level. Makes the tool mine faster, or the weapon's cooldown faster. Extremely useful on Hammers and such.

Lucky: 60 Lapis per level. On mining tools, it gives a Fortune effect, on weapons it gives a Looting effect.

Sharpness: 72 Nether Quartz per level. Increases the damage the weapon does, modified by the weapon (but not tool material property) multiplier

Diamond: 1 Diamond. Increases mining level to Obsidian, gives a flat bonus to durability, and a very minor bonus to mining speed.

Emerald: 1 Emerald. As above, but has a percentage bonus to durability, rather than a flat bonus, so more useful on tools with more base durability.

Silk Touch: 1 Silky Jewel. Incompatible with Lucky. Gives the Silk Touch property, allowing you to mine Redstone, Diamond, and Coal Ore as blocks, among other things.

Reinforced: 1 Reinforced Plate. Gives a 20% chance of not consuming durability. Stacks with itself and Obsidian's material property. Getting 5 ranks nets you Unbreakable instead. A Reinforced Plate is crafted in a crafting table by taking a base cast (by pouring two ingots worth of molten gold into an otherwise empty casting table), then surrounding it with eight obsidian.

Beheading: 1 Ender Pearl + 1 Obsidian. Increases the drop chance for heads. Useful for farming wither skeletons for wither farms. Stacks with bonus from the Cleaver.

Necrotic: 1 Necrotic Bone. As you damage enemies, you heal a small amount of life. Multiple levels stack to provide more healing.

Soulbound: 1 Nether Star. Even if you die, this item will remain in your inventory

Height: 1 Expander (Vertical). increases the area of effect of the tool when mining by one block up and down

Width: 1 Expander (Horizontal). Same thing, on the x coordinate plane instead of the y.'

Mending Moss: 1 Mending Moss. Mending enchantment, absorbs experience orbs dropped to repair itself. Must be equipped in hand to perform this.

Fins: 2 fish. Just for arrows and bolts, it lets them ignore the drag normally experienced when an object goes through water. Because logic, and fish.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Tools of the Trade

All right, now that we've gone over the materials, and the modifiers, let's put it all together to come up with some useful tools, both for the early and late game!

Before we do, however, I want to mention something that seems to have largely flown under the radar, and that is off-handed mining. In brief, if you have a tool in your offhand and a tool in your primary hand, mining a block will use whichever tool Tinker's Construct considers 'appropriate' for the block. So, for example, if you have a Hammer in one hand, and an Excavator in the other, then if you mine stone, it will use the hammer, and if you mine dirt or gravel, it will use the Excavator. This can be used to great advantage to increase the speed of branch mining, and also incidentally obviates the only advantage Knightslime had for the tool head material modifier.

There are three types of components: Head, Handle, and Extra, as you might have seen in the Tool Materials List above. I will be indicating which components count as the Head, which as the Handle, and which serves as Extra, as it is not always intuitive.

Initial Tools
​

These will be the tools you can make at the beginning of the game, without needing a Tool Forge.

Pickaxe
​

Used to mine stone and ores, this tool will be a mainstay of your career.

Head: Pickaxe Head​

Suggested Materials:​

• Early game: Flint is probably going to be your best starter material, or Cactus if you happen to spawn in a Desert.
• Mid game: You'll want to upgrade to Iron as soon as you get your Smeltery up and running, the Magnetic property is really useful in obtaining that redstone or diamond perched precariously over a lava pool. If you want something sturdier, and have Thermal Foundation or another mod which provides Copper and Tin, you can try Bronze.
  
• Late game: This will probably become a utility tool after you get access to the Tool Forge and can craft a Hammer, so the need to use a rare material for a pickaxe head is far less critical. There's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving it as Iron the whole game through. I honestly would not suggest Many or Cobalt here.

Handle: Tool Rod​

Suggested Materials:​

• Wood will almost inevitably be your first handle material, although upgrading to Treated Wood (if you have Immersive Engineering) wouldn't be a bad idea. Using a bone tool rod would increase durability overall, but would lose the favorable Ecological trait.
  
• Once your smeltery is up and running, try using Copper. It'll give a slight improvement in overall tool durability, and the extra xp can't hurt. If you're really worried about tool durability, try something like Bronze which brings the Dense modifier. Electrum isn't bad either. Shocking gives you a mining speed boost, and it does have a 1.1x tool handle multiplier.

Extra: Binding​

Suggested Materials:​

• Paper makes for an excellent binding for almost any tool, and Picks are no exception. +1 Modifier is pretty huge in this version of the mod.
  
• Honestly, there's not much need to get a better binding, although I suppose if you want to go with Cobalt, it won't change the repair material but will give it the Lightweight property for faster mining speed.

Reinforcement: Since every tool can have a Reinforcement for free, there's no point in not doing it. I suggest Obsidian, since you can obtain it once you get Iron, and it can mine everything in Tinker's Construct 2. Because of this, you don't need to worry about Mining Level once you get to this point, and you can settle for a softer material with better properties.

Embossment: There's several things you could emboss here that would all be useful. Embossing Paper for the +1 Modifier is never a bad choice. Embossing Cobalt Pickaxe Head would give you Momentum, although that's less helpful here than on your hammer. Embossing Cobalt Handle or Binding would give it the Lightweight trait, which is no bad thing to have. Embossing Obsidian can get you one step closer to Unbreaking, if you want to go that route. Embossing a Sponge part will give you Silk Touch without spending a modifier. Or you could just emboss Paper and put a silky gem on, either way. If you have chosen to go Bronze for your pickaxe head, embossing Iron Pickaxe Head might not be bad either for the Magnetic II property.

Suggested Modifiers: Haste, Silk Touch, maybe Mending. If you use the hammer as your primary mining implement, then using silk touch on the pickaxe to cherry-pick the ores it is relevant on can be useful. Other than that, more faster is more better.

Examples:

Steve's First Pickaxe: Flint Head, Paper Binding, Wooden Tool Rod. This is almost always going to be your first pickaxe, with materials obtainable without needing to craft any previous tools. This will get you into the iron age in relatively short order.

The Infinity Pick: Cobalt Head, Paper Binding, Sponge Tool Rod. Paper Pickaxe Head Embossment. Five Reinforced Plates. Literally unbreakable. Should the world end in nuclear fire, the only things left will be the roaches, the Deathclaws, and this pickaxe. Thanks to the Sponge tool rod, also comes with Silk Touch. Using Cobalt as the head doesn't matter because it will *never* need to be repaired.

Shovel​

Used to harvest dirt, sand, and gravel. With much the same logic as the pickaxe, and a lower need for speed since these materials are typically much faster to dig through.

Head: Shovel Head

Suggested Materials:

• Flint or Cactus to begin with. Honestly, there's not much pressure to push advances like there is for the Pickaxe because everything shovels work on have the same mining level of 'anything'. And since it will become mostly obsolete when the Excevator comes online with your Tool Forge, it's perfectly fine to stay with these low level materials throughout the whole game.

Handle: Tool Rod

Suggested Materials:

• Wood will likely be your first, and your last, tool rod. There's simply no point in spending resources to make a shovel better when you get the Excavator.

Extra: Binding

Suggested Materials:

• Honestly, wood would be just fine, for the extra auto-repair, since you'll be using it so infrequently that it doesn't really matter after the early-game.

Reinforcement: There's no point to reinforcing a shovel because there's no materials a shovel is effective on with a higher mining level.

Embossment: I suppose you could, although why you would want to is beyond me. Eh, Paper Shovel Head to make an unbreakable shovel, I suppose?

Suggested Modifiers: You'll probably never actually put modifiers on your shovel. But if you do, it's probably either going to be Reinforced Plates to make an Infinity Shovel (combined with paper binding and Paper Shovel Head embossment) or a Cobalt Binding to Go Faster. Maybe a Copper Tool Rod for more experience? Up to you.

Hatchet​

The Mattock's awkward kid step-brother that always tries to tag along despite always being in the way. The Hatchet does have the unique property of being able to knock a shield aside, but since there are no shield-wielding mobs, this distinction is pointless. Oh, and you can also chew through leaves with it for no durability loss. Because that's important somehow.

I honestly cannot suggest ever making one of these. However, in the interests of completionism, here you go.

Head: Axe Head

Handle: Tool Rod

Extra: Binding

If you do make one, it'll probably be flint axe head, wooden tool rod, and either wooden or paper binding. However, the Mattock actually does more damage per swing than the Hatchet, so just make the Mattock

Mattock​

What do you get when you cross a hoe with an axe? This is the result. Unfortunately, it outshines the Hatchet, but them's the breaks.

Head: Axe Head *and* Shovel Head

Suggested Materials

• Initially, you'll probably want to use Flint or Cactus, depending on your starting location. You really won't need to upgrade the Shovel head beyond that, because it only affects how fast it will pick up dirt and only dirt. However, you CAN make a mattock with a paper shovel head and save yourself the cost of embossing paper later for an infinity mattock.
• If you are going Unbreakable, you might as well make a Cobalt axe head, as an end-game resource. Odds are low you'll be getting much use out of it, but it's as much for swag points as anything else.

Handle: Tool Rod

Suggested Materials

• You'll almost certainly start off with a wooden tool rod.
  
• From there, if you want an unbreakable mattock, get a paper tool rod for the five modifiers. Alternately, get a copper tool rod for the xp gain and emboss paper tool rod onto it so you can have your cake and eat it too.

Extra: none

Reinforcement: Unnecessary. Like the Shovel, the Mattock doesn't care about mining levels.

Embossment: If you don't want a paper shovel head, you can use a cobalt shovel head and axe with a paper axe/shovel head embossment and still get your five modifiers of Reinforced to get Unbreakable. Or you can go with a tool that has a Cobalt axe head, Paper shovel head, paper tool rod, and emboss cobalt onto the tool rod. Or have a cobalt tool rod and emboss paper tool rod. At this point, we're mostly playing musical chairs with how you put modifiers on, it all ends up the same in the end. But in most cases, it's a case of putting silver braiding on a horse blanket. While an invaluable tool in the early game, both for chopping wood and for tilling the land to plant crops for food, its utility will wane as you progress to automated tree farms and automated greenhouses.

Kama​

Honestly, I didn't even know this tool existed until I started writing this guide. And I, for one, am glad that I did! It's a set of shears that also harvests a small area of crops and also replants in that same small area. Granted, with Pam's Harvestcraft being so ubiquitous, this second function is largely unneeded, but it DOES give you access to day one shearing of sheep without needing iron.

Head: Kama Head

Suggested Materials:

• Yet again, you're looking at Flint for a solid first-day tool. And there's really no need for anything more, considering the two uses it has, harvesting crops and shearing animals, aren't affected by the tool head. So here's a tool you can safely go with paper on and not need embossment to get infinite durability
• If you want to show off your bling, I suppose you could go with cobalt. There's no mechanical purpose or reason to do so, other than looks. You'll also need to Emboss a Paper Kama Head to get your five modifiers.

Handle: Tool Rod

Suggested Materials:

• Wood to start off with. And probably to end with. Maybe eventually upgrade to Copper if you want to gain xp while shearing sheep.

Extra: Binding

Suggested Materials:

• Paper. Really, it's the first, last, and only binding you need on this tool. If you want an infinity tool, it's the only significant option.

Reinforcement: Unnecessary. Sheep and crops do not care about mining levels.

Embossment: Some combination thereof to get five modifiers for Unbreaking.

Advanced Tools​

These are tools you will need the Tool Forge for in order to craft. These typically also require four tool components instead of three, and also typically require more expensive components.

Hammer​

Stop! Hammah time! But seriously, this is a really useful tool that will stand you in good stead, assuming you don't have a mod like Actually Additions that has a drill which replaces both the hammer and excavator. And even then, there's a few things you *can* do with TiCon2 that you can't do elsewhere. It will hammer down a 3x3 area.

Head: Hammer Head *AND* 2x Large Plates

With three Head materials, it takes the average of the stats for mining speed and durability, the highest mining level of them all. Here's some ideas for the materials:

• Since the Hammer gets the speed divided sharply and it averages out the speed before it divides, the speed difference is not so significant anymore. The difference between Cobalt Head and 2x Cobalt Plates and Cobalt Head, Cobalt Plate, and Paper Plate is 4.8 to 3.65, so the majority of the speed is getting tacked on later with modifiers. Which means we're really looking material properties for our options.
• The other key thing to note is it can be repaired with *ANY* of the materials found within the head. So if you have a cobalt head, an iron plate, and a paper plate, it can be repaired with cobalt, iron, OR paper! So if you included a Slime Large Plate, you would get the Slimy trait and pick up enough slimeballs to keep repairing while still having the traits of the other two materials!
  
• Before you have access to substantial quantities of Cobalt, you can go with a mixture of Iron and Bronze and do just fine. However, I would strongly suggest one cobalt part at some point once you have the material available for the Momentum trait.
• Electrum has the same mining speed as Cobalt, and occasionally grants a Mining Haste boost.

Handle: Tough Tool Rod

Suggested Materials:

• Blue Slime has a 1.3x modifier on durability, which might be really useful to you. Ardite actually has a 1.4x modifier, and Petramour, if you prefer. Paper is going to be needed to hit 5 modifiers if you want an Unbreakable hammer. Copper will net you stupid amounts of xp.

Reinforcement: You *probably* won't need reinforcement because you'll have a Cobalt part in the head, which has the highest mining level. But at least to start off with, using Obsidian Reinforcement will let an Iron/Bronze hammer mine everything.

Embossment: Depends on what you are going for, really. There's many options to choose from, which one will depend on what you want your hammer to do. If you want an Infinity Hammer with maximum speed, then you're going to need to emboss a Paper Large Plate or Paper Hammer Head for the extra modifier while having Cobalt/Electrum in the head for maximum speed. However, if you want to Go Fast, but still have loads of (but not infinite) durability, you may wish to Emboss a Paper Tough Tool Rod into a hammer with an Ardite Tough Tool Rod, Cobalt Head, Iron Large Plate, and Slime Large Plate, then cram as much Redstone as the thing will take into it.

Examples:

* Moljnir. Paper tough tool rod, cobalt hammer head, electrum large plate, Iron Plate. Emboss with Cobalt Tough Tool Rod. Put in five Reinforced Plates. You have an Unbreakable hammer which shocks people.

* Baka Mallet: Cobalt Head, Slime Large Plate, Iron Large Plate, Sponge tough Tool Rod. Emboss Paper Tough Tool Rod or Plate. Your choice of 4x Haste or 2x Haste, 1x Vertical Extend, 1x Horizontal Extend. The former gets up to a base mining speed of 10.87, the latter has 7.91 and mines a 5x5 area instead of a 3x3. While not infinite durability, it does have a durability of 2,697 and is repairable with slime which should spawn regularly enough to keep you topped off. Of course, it won't do any real damage to anything when you hit them with it, but that's the whole joke. If you don't mind repairing with Iron instead, you can swap out the Slime Plate with another Cobalt piece for more speed

Excavator​

The shovel equivalent of the hammer. It digs out a 3x3. Hammer in one hand, this baby in the other, and nothing will bar your path. However, as mining speed is less important here, you can simply go for Unbreakable.

Head: 1 Excavator Head *AND* 1 Large Plate

Suggested Materials:

• Probably start off with iron/bronze. Cobalt goes fastest, as does Electrum. Cobalt excavator head and Electrom large plate ought to do the trick.

Handle: Tough Tool Rod

Suggested Materials:

• Can't really go wrong with Copper for mega xp. Alternately, Cobalt for the speed boost from the material trait. Do NOT bother with paper.

Extra: Tough Binding

Suggested Materials:

• Paper. No, really, there's no downside to it here. And really no other option to consider.

Reinforcement: Unnecessary since dirt and gravel care not for your mining level

Embossment: Paper either large Plate or Excavator Head so you can get 5x modifiers for Unbreaking. Since the stuff this thing goes through break a lot faster than ores, you really don't need speed, so this should easily suffice for your needs.

What's not to like? Dual-wielding unbreakable hammer and excavator means unlimited branch mining. Enjoy!

Lumber Axe​

Not the most useful tool in the kit, simply because by the time you can make one, you should probably have already been automating your tree farms. But hey, if you want something you can Paul Bunyon on with, here ya go. Note that it will need leaves to be considered a tree, so some 'trees' won't be able to be recognized by this axe and need to be felled manually.

Head: 1 Broad Axe Head *AND* 1 Large Plate

Suggested Materials:

• Probably start off with iron/bronze. Cobalt goes fastest, as does Electrum. Cobalt broad axe head and Electrom large plate ought to do the trick.

Handle: Tough Tool Rod

Suggested Materials:

• Can't really go wrong with Copper for mega xp. Alternately, Cobalt for the speed boost from the material trait. Do NOT bother with paper.

Extra: Tough Binding

Suggested Materials:

• Paper. No, really, there's no downside to it here. And really no other option to consider.

Reinforcement: Unnecessary since wood cares not for your mining level

Embossment: Paper either large Plate or Broad Axe Head so you can get 5x modifiers for Unbreaking. Since trees fall pretty fast, you really don't need speed, so this should easily suffice for your needs.

Scythe​

You may be a king or a lonely street sweeper, but sooner or later you'll dance with the reaper. Unfortunately, this tool has no use whatsoever in a pack with Pam's Harvestcraft because the only relevant thing it does is harvest in a 3x3 area, but the Pam's mechanic largely overwrites this since it uses right-click to do this. The damage it does is on par with the Rapier, so even though it has an area effect attack, it is largely useless as a weapon.

In the event you wish to build one, it would depend what you are attempting to do with it. If you are wanting it to harvest (say you're in a pack without Pams), it literally doesn't matter, as it doesn't cost durability to do the AoE harvest and replant. If you are using it as a weapon, using a steel head would give you the best effective damage. Use a paper tough binding, and emboss with paper large plate for Unbreaking.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Weapons​

Weapons are also tools, so we will also be covering them here.

Broadsword​

Broadswords are a classic staple of any hack-and-slash adventure. This is the closest in functionality to the vanilla sword. With a base 1.6 swing speed, and a roughly 2x multiplier on the head damage trait, it's not a bad blade to have. It has the same sweeping attack that the vanilla sword has, and almost as important, because it doesn't have a right-click effect, you can do something like put a shield or battlesign in your offhand and go sword-and-board combat style. Easily the most defensive setups.

Head: Sword Blade

Material Suggestions:

• If you start in or near a desert, a Cactus sword blade is awesome, with a damage of 6.9, which is about on par with a vanilla Diamond Sword. Otherwise, get a Flint blade, which only has 6.4 damage, but has a 10% bonus against unarmored enemies.
  
• Iron will bring your sword's damage up to 7.5 base. Steel up to 9.5, and has the sharp trait that causes opponents to bleed. Magma Slime blades do 10.5 damage, repaired with magma slime crystals, and do 35% bonus damage to enemies already on fire (such as undead at dawn?). Manyullyn blades have a base damage of 12.22, but can be difficult to repair.

Handle: Tool Rod

Material Suggestions:

• While your first will probably be wood, you're actually going to want bone as soon as you can kill a skeleton without getting murdered. In addition to a bonus to durability, it also grants a bonus to damage. Because of that bonus to damage, there really isn't a better handle for your sword. The only other thing I might consider is Cobalt for the Lightweight trait to make swinging faster.

Extra: Wide Guard

This is what makes the difference between the three entry-level blades. The Broadsword has the Wide Guard. Here's some material suggestions:

• Paper. An extra modifier for more quartz. What's not to like? Seriously.

Embossment: Paper Blade is really a no-brainer here. It's an extra modifier for more damage.

Examples:

It's dangerous to go alone, take this: Cactus blade, paper wide guard, bone tool rod. Right off the bat, you're doing the same damage as a vanilla diamond sword. What's not to like?

Flametongue: Magma Slime blade, Paper Wide Guard, Bone Tool Rod. Emboss with paper blade. Five modifiers of Sharpness. Deals 19.1 base damage. Using a Manyllun blade brings this up to 20.16, which is enough to one-shot creepers, skeletons, blazes, and zombies.

Longsword​

It deals more damage than the Broadsword, but swings a bit slower. Has a right-click hold to charge leap attack.

Head: Sword Blade

Material Suggestions:

• If you start in or near a desert, a Cactus sword blade is awesome, with a damage of 6.94, which is about on par with a vanilla Diamond Sword. Otherwise, get a Flint blade, which only has 6.39 damage, but has a 10% bonus against unarmored enemies.
  
• Iron will bring your sword's damage up to 7.6 base. Steel up to 9.8, and has the sharp trait that causes opponents to bleed. Magma Slime blades do 10.9 damage, repaired with magma slime crystals, and do 35% bonus damage to enemies already on fire (such as undead at dawn?). Manyullyn blades have a base damage of 12.79, but can be difficult to repair.

Handle: Tool Rod

Material Suggestions:

• While your first will probably be wood, you're actually going to want bone as soon as you can kill a skeleton without getting murdered. In addition to a bonus to durability, it also grants a bonus to damage. Because of that bonus to damage, there really isn't a better handle for your sword. The only other thing I might consider is Cobalt for the Lightweight trait to make swinging faster.

Extra: Hand Guard

This is what makes the difference between the three entry-level blades. The Longsword has the Hand Guard. Here's some material suggestions:

• Paper. An extra modifier for more quartz. What's not to like? Seriously.

Embossment: Paper Blade is really a no-brainer here. It's an extra modifier for more damage.

Examples:
Entry level blade: Cactus blade, paper wide guard, bone tool rod. Right off the bat, you're doing the same damage as a vanilla diamond sword. What's not to like?

End-game blade: Magma Slime blade, Paper Wide Guard, Bone Tool Rod. Emboss with paper blade. Five modifiers of Sharpness. Deals 20.6 base damage, which is enough to one-shot creepers, skeletons, blazes, and zombies without the need for wasting Manyullyn. For this reason, it is my preferred weapon of choice.

Rapier​

Less useful than its counterparts since far fewer enemies actually wear armor, the Rapier trades off damage for faster attacks and 50% armor penetration. Unfortunately, it's not really worth the trade-off.

Head: Sword Blade

Material Suggestions:

• Cactus, obviously, is going to be the optimal early-game blade, with Flint being the runner up. But you know how the other two swords were doing 6.9 and 6.94 respectively? This does 3.7. Womp womp. Iron pushes it up to 4.03, Steel up to 5.12, Magma Slime up to 5.68 and Many up to 6.62. So roughly *half* damage. Ugh.

Extra: Cross Guard

Like with the other two, this is what defines a Rapier.

• Paper. Just like the other two. For the same reason.

Handle: Tool Rod

Material suggestions:

• Bone, for the same reason as above.

Emboss with paper blade. However, even with 5 modifiers of Sharpness, with a Magma blade it only goes up to 10.65, which is half of what the others are doing.

Battlesign​

What originally started out as an obscure Ziesteau joke from the Super Hostile days has turned into a surprisingly useful piece of equipment. While it *can* be used to attack with, it's real purpose is a Shield, blocking incoming attacks and damage.

Head: Sign Plate

Material suggestions:

• Since you aren't going to be worrying about damage, you're looking for durability. So to start off with, look for Cactus or Flint.
  
• Bronze makes a good sturdy shield once you get your Smeltery up and running.
  
• After you get situated, switch it to a paper sign plate, and set up an Unbreakable shield.

Handle: Tool Rod

Material Suggestions:

• You actually *really* want cactus for this in the early game, because it returns damage back to whoever bounced off of your shield.
  
• Once you hit the nether, you *really* want magma slime, so you can deflect blaze shots with it.

Embossment: Paper Tool Rod, on a Paper Sign Plate and Magma Slime tool rod. Yes, this has precisely one durability. No, that doesn't matter. Because you have an UNBREAKABLE shield! Pairs well with a Broadsword.

Cleaver

This is a two-handed weapon, meaning you cannot have anything in your offhand while wielding it. It also swings slow as heck. And it reminds you of a certain yellow spiky-haired punk. And you're going to get 'compensation' jokes. And then you cut their head off in one swing, and people stop making fun of you.

Head: Large Sword Blade *AND* Large Plate

Material Suggestions:

• Obviously, we're not going to be playing around with entry-level materials if we already have our Tool Forge set up, so let's get down to some brass tacks. Base Iron, assuming at least one bone handle, is 12.64. Steel blade pushes that up to 14.2. With both the blade and the plate Magma Slime, that shoots up to 17.32 base damage. And if we replace one of those two magma slime pieces with a Many piece, that brings it up to 18.66. And with both Many pieces, that's a flat 20 damage. Base. The same damage the Longsword did with five modifiers of Sharpness. Yea, it's kinda like that.

Handle: 2x Tough Tool Rods

Material Suggestions:

• Obviously, one is going to be Bone, that's not even a question. But since they average out the durability and handle multiplier, we can afford to sandbag a bit and use a Paper tough tool rod for the other one. This gives us an extra modifier, at the cost of slightly less durability.

Embossment: Paper either large sword blade or large plate, obviously. More damage is more better. Although, this time, since you're already doing more than enough damage to one-shot kill any non-boss in the game (except Enderman, which is now in two-shot range), we might be able to afford to do less damage and simply go with something like Cobalt Tough Tool Rod for slightly faster swings.

Examples:

Decapitator: Many blade, Magma Slime large plate, Bone Rod, Paper Rod. Emboss with Paper Blade. Lucky, Beheading x 1, Haste x 2, Sharpness x 1. 30% greater chance to drop heads. Greater chance for better drops period. And not quite so slow. And does over 20 base damage. And is repaired with Magma Slime crystals instead of Many.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ranged Weapons are their own kind of thing and go here

So, there's three main types of ranged weapons: Shortbows, Longbows, and Crossbows. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. However, material properties work... very differently with ranged weapons, so pretty much completely ignore that whole section when dealing with any of these weapons.

Okay, so there's three main properties of bow limbs that you need to be cognizant of:

Drawspeed: Best I can figure, this is a multiplier on the base draw speed of the ranged weapon.
Bonus Damage: As close as I can tell, this is a flat addition to the damage of the arrow being launched.
Range Multiplier: How far it'll shoot straight before starting to arc.

So let's look at some of the bow limb materials, shall we?

Wood

What can I say? It's a classic bow limb. I use it to get the 'base' stats off of the ranged weapons.

• Drawspeed: 1x
• Bonus Damage: 0
• Range Multiplier: 1

While not your best, it's not actually the worst. Suffice to say, anything mechanically inferior to Wood I won't be bothering to include.

Iron

It'd take a pretty strong arm to pull it, but hey... let's go with it.

• Drawspeed: 2x
• Bonus Damage: 7
• Range Multiplier: 1.5x

As you can see, it can really pack a punch, takes longer to draw, though.

Steel

Spring steel maybe?

• Draw speed: 2.5x
• Bonus Damage: 9
• Range Multiplier: 2x

Highest bonus damage and range multiplier of any material. Draw speed multiplier kinda sucks, though

Electrum

Really?

• Draw Speed: 0.67x!
• Bonus Damage: 4
• Range Multiplier: 1

This is the fastest draw speed multiplier with a positive bonus damage. Durability's gonna suck, though.

Pig Iron

I'm assuming you aren't talking about Tamahagane here...

• Draw Speed: 1.67x
• Bonus Damage: 7
• Range Multiplier: 1.4x

Mechanically superior to Iron for a very relatively heavy hitting bow.

Arrows

There's been a huge revision in how arrows work in Tinker's Construct 2. Now there are only a very few arrow shaft types, and the arrowheads have been rebalanced.

Shafts

The material of the shaft will determine the stack size (durability) of the arrows produced, as well as provide a material property which, in some cases, is VERY different from the one used in other tools and weapons. There's Durability Modifier, which is a multiplier, then there's a flat ammo bonus, which is factored in after the durability modifier is multiplied by the base durability of the arrowhead.

Wood​

I suppose we have to start somewhere...

• Durability Modifier: 1.0x
• Bonus Ammo: 0
• Modifier: Ecological - just like with normal tools.

(*) Treated Wood

If wood is good, then treated wood must be better, right? Break out that Coke Oven...

• Durability Modifier: 1.2x
• Bonus Ammo: 0
• Modifier: Ecological - just like with normal tools

More arrows per stack sounds like more better to me!

Bone​

Crafted from the bones of your fallen enemies...

• Durability Modifier: 0.9x
• Bonus Ammo: 5
• Modifier: Splitting - Two arrows for the price of one!

Pretty awesome modifier for short-ranged combat.

Blaze Rod​

Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'Fire!'

• Durability: 0.8
• Bonus Ammo: 3
• Modifier: Hovering - Basically, it goes further before it starts to arc down

Reeds​

Cheap, but plentiful

• Durability: 1.5x
• Bonus Ammo: 20
• Modifier: Breakable - you aren't going to be recovering any arrows that missed

Highest stack size of any of the arrow shafts, but you won't be able to recover misses.

Ice​

Ice arrow shafts? Uhh... okay

• Durability: 0.95x
• Bonus Ammo: 0
• Modifier: Freezing - slowness effect on target, multiple hits have a sort-of-stacking effect.

Well, if you want to keep the other guy far away from you, making him slower can help

End Rod​

And by End Rods, we mean the actual End Rods found in the dungeons in The End or made with a Blaze Rod and Popped Chorus Fruit, not Endstone shaped into a rod.

• Durability: 0.7x
• Bonus Ammo: 1
• Modifier: Endspeed - Hitscan targeting.

When it absolutely, positively has to hit right where you are aiming.

Arrowheads

The point you try to get across when engaging in a long-distance un-relationship. Also apparently can grant both the properties of the head and the properties of the handle at the same time. Not sure if this is a bug or not. Damage and durability numbers seem to match up nicely with the chart above for the 'head' category, so we won't be covering that again. Thankfully.

Fletching

Not much variance, actually. This will affect stack size and accuracy. And by accuracy, I mean 'spread'.

Feather

A classic material

• Durability modifier: 1x
• Accuracy: 100%

Most accurate fletching.

Slimeleaf

Yea, this'll work... trust me.

• Durability modifier: 1.25x
• Accuracy: 80%

Bigger stack size, but not as accurate. These numbers are identical for all colors of slimeleaf.

Leaf

O...kay?

• Durability Modifier: 1.5x
• Accuracy: 50%

So arrows fletched with leaves aren't very accurate. Who knew?

Examples:

This seems familiar...: Flint arrowhead, wooden shaft, feather fletching. Creates arrows with Damage of 5.9, with Crude III and Ecological properties, Accuracy of 100%, but a stack size of only 15

A better arrow: Steel arrowhead, treated wood shaft, feather fletching. Damage of 9, stack size 64, Accuracy 100%, Ecological, Sharp, and Stiff properties. Swapping out the steel arrowhead for a Magma Slime one increases Damage to 10 and Ammo to 72, plus gives it Superheated and Flammable properties instead of Sharp and Stiff. Giving it a Many head gives it a damage of 11.72 and a stack size of 98, plus gives it the Insatiable and Instigating Cold-Blood traits

Swapping the treated wood shaft for a bone shaft generally reduces stack size somewhat, but the splitting property makes for a powerful force multiplier. Steel heads have a stack size of 53, Magma Slime has a stack size of 59, and Many heads have a stack size of 78.

Using an End Rod shaft reduces durability still further. Steel heads drop stack size down to 38, Magma Slime heads stack size goes down to 43, and Many stack size down to 58. But hey, hitscan projectiles. You shouldn't be missing with these.

Bolts

Bolts are like arrows, only you have to pour the material for the 'head' over the arrow shaft on a casting table. So the only materials you can make bolts out of are the previously mentioned arrow shafts, and things that melt in the smeltery, mostly metals. Then you put fletching, as described above, onto it.

Oh, because you make a bolt by pouring the head material over the arrow shaft on the casting table, you can't simply replace tool rod or head materials like you can with arrows. Bolts also apparently only get the Head material trait, not both Head and Handle like arrowheads do (again, not sure if this is a bug or intended), so the same materials come out slightly differently. For all of these experiments, I use feather fletching.

Treated Wood shaft + steel: Ammo: 51, Damage: 7
Treated Wood shaft + Many: Ammo: 78, Damage: 9.72
Bone shaft + Steel head: Ammo: 42, Damage 7
Bone Shaft + Many head: Ammo: 63, Damage: 9.72
End Rod shaft + Steel head: Ammo: 31, Damage 7
End Rod shaft + Many head: Ammo: 46, Damage 9.72

Bows

Now let's put it together and build some bows and shoot some arrows with them!

Short Bow

Can be made right out of the gate, but while it is relatively rapid-firing, it has trouble competing with the vanilla bow for damage. It takes two Limbs and a Bowstring. Since all bowstrings (including Hemp) have the same stats, I'm going to ignore them in favor of the bow limbs.

2x Wooden Bow Limbs

• Durability: 35
• Draw Speed: 0.6
• Range Multiplier: 1.0
• Bonus Damage: 0

While rapid firing, it would require Magma Slime arrowheads to match the vanilla bow's damage output. Also seems very fragile

2x Iron Bow Limbs

• Durability: 204
• Draw Speed: 1.2
• Range Multiplier: 1.5
• Bonus Damage: 7

Much more durable than wood, marginally slower than the vanilla bow, but you can hit 17 damage with this and magma slime tipped arrows. Possibly more with sharpened arrowheads (which still get three modifiers)

2x Pig Iron limbs

• Durability: 380
• Draw Speed: 1.0
• Range Multiplier: 1.4
• Bonus Damage: 7

While an unusual alloy to say the least, it has exactly the same draw speed as a vanilla bow, and depending on your arrows, it can hit harder.

2x Electrum Limbs

• Durability: 50
• Draw Speed: 0.4
• Range Multiplier: 1
• Bonus Damage: 4

Fastest firing bow you'll ever find. Pew-Pew.

Longbow

The Short Bow's bigger brother. Little bit slower on the draw, lot more punch. Requires 2x Bow Limbs, 1x Large Plate, and 1x Bowstring. Plate counts as 'Extra' for modifier and durability purposes. Again, going to ignore the bowstring since it has no mechanical impact.

Now, the very interesting thing is I made a wooden Longbow with paper plate, and shot a flint-tipped arrow. I would normally assume that it would do around 6 damage. However, when I shot a horse, it did 13 damage. So the Longbow has some sort of damage multiplier built into it. The draw speed, however, was 1.5 for double-wood, which means it takes longer to draw.

When I swapped both limbs out for Electrum, which has a +4 damage for the bow limb, it did a total of 20 damage! That means it took the base 6, plus 4 for 10, THEN doubled it. Very interesting...

This means that with a Magma Slime tipped arrow, and an Electrum bow, it should be doing (10+4=14*2=) 28 damage? Wow. That's pretty strong.

Now let's try a crossbow out.

Basic no-frills crossbow with a wooden bow limb, wooden tough rod, paper tough binding, and bowstring has a draw speed of 2.25. So right off the bat, this thing is obviously going to be slower than a Longbow. We can use a Cobalt tough rod to drop that down to 1.86 without changing the damage modifier. Let's see how this works.

Firing a steel-tipped bolt at a horse resulted in a damage of 13, despite the bolt having a listed damage of 7. So like the longbow, roughly double.

Swapping out the wooden bow limb for an Electrum one resulted in something interesting. The draw speed went down to 1.24 as expected, but the damage modifier, instead of 4, is 6. Swapping out an Iron limb shows a draw speed of 3.72 but a damage modifier of 10.5 instead of 7. So not only is the damage doubled, but the bonus damage is increased by 50%.

Right, but we've got modifiers to play with. Let's start doing that.

Now, since modifiers on the bow don't really affect the damage you deal with them, you've got a couple of options. Electrum-limbed weapons are notoriously low durability. But if we Emboss with a paper limb, we get the Writing 2 property! Now we're talkin' baby.

So, the Crossbow. Since the limb embossment gives us Writing 2, we can put Cobalt Tough Binding on, to further drop the draw speed, and retain the 5x modifiers. That drops the base down to 1.69 with wooden limb. With an Electrum limb, that nets a draw speed of 1.13. Now, the durability is 415 because of the Cobalt parts, so we can actually afford some redstone on this baby. With 5x redstone modifiers, the draw speed goes all the way down to 0.75 with an Electrum limb.

If we toss on an Iron bow limb with 5x redstone modifiers and Cobalt Tough Binding and Tough Tool Rod, we get a draw speed of 2.25 and a Bonus Damage of 10.5. Pig Iron drops it down to 1.88 for the same bonus damage. Steel limb unfortunately goes all the way up to 2.82, even with two Cobalt parts and 5x Redstone modifiers, but does have a damage bonus of 13.5.

We can do the same thing with the Longbow, swapping out the paper large plate for a Cobalt Plate, and embossing with a paper limb. With two Electrum bow limbs, this nets us a durability of 490, which really isn't that bad. So let's redstone this bad boy up. With 5x Redstone modifiers, we can reach a draw speed of 0.61. We can replace one of the electrum limbs with Steel, which puts the draw speed back up to 0.96 but brings the bonus damage up to 6.5.

So with either the Crossbow or the Longbow, you can reliably hit 20 damage with a draw speed under 1. And that's without Sharpness on the ammunition.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Don't forget steel as a Battlesign Tool Rod Option. Stiff makes it more effective as a shield against non-fire mobs. Iron is also magnetic in any slot, so adding it as the binding of a Pick or Shovel, means that before you get magnets you're getting material's pulled to you more readily than with other tool components. Silver's also a useful material to add to the various weapons, with it's holy adding bonus damage versus undead, such as Skeletons and the everpresent Zombies. A Bone/Silver/Steel Longsword is very strong versus most enemies.

Is Demon Metal no longer a valid material option?

Steel Tipped, Bone Shaft, Feather Arrows will do tremendous damage to targets at close ranges, and will hit two targets at longer ranges if they're close together. End Rod makes them hit scan, but does less damage close in.

I've never used the crossbows, but when it comes to the actual bows, you want to balance draw speed and arrow speed, which adds a damage bonus I don't quite understand to the arrows.

 

[SevenMass]

From my experience with TiC v2 so far:
For the mid-game tools: a stone tool-binding decreases repair cost. And you usually don't use up all modifier slots right from the start. So use that for as long as possible.
For the mid-game pick: A knightslime tool-handle is actually a great upgrade.
---yes it halves the tool-head durability, but then it adds 500 durability. Even for endgame materials such a cobalt it adds more than it takes away.

For a mid-game mattock: Because it has two tool-heads, you can make the axe part out of bronze and the shovel part out of iron. Get some of the benefit from bronze and still get magnetic.
And a little bit later on, make a the axe part out of Manyullyn, since you can still repair with iron because of the shovel part, there are no downsides to doing so.
I should add that I use the mattock as my main weapon, so that extra damage is very much a must have.

I've found that fortify doesn't do anything on a mattock, this might be a bug. You do want to increase the mining level of your axe/mattock because the mod "natura," which is often (almost always) paired with TiC, adds trees that need it.


As for bows:
A long bow does bonus damage based on range. From my experience, once I have steel arrow heads, it can one shot most enemies. So I choose materials that have a faster draw speed and more durability, like slime.

For early game, my arrows use flint arrow head and reed shaft. The extra arrows from reeds are a must and auto repair is to slow. Once I have steel, I switch to (treated) wood shaft. The auto repair is fast enough because my consumption goes down, also, steel gives more arrows than flint anyway.

 

[Renton Terrace]

Ecological will repair tools if they are anywhere in your inventory not just in your hotbar

 

[KingTriaxx]

Don't forget Prismarine is a valid material for arrow heads. Similar damage to Steel, but Aquadynamic means you can also hit things under the water, such as Squid or Guardians.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Don't forget Prismarine is a valid material for arrow heads. Similar damage to Steel, but Aquadynamic means you can also hit things under the water, such as Squid or Guardians.

Aquadynamic doesn't work on arrows like that, you need to modify it with a couple of fish for the Fins modifier for that.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Yes it does? I just shot a squid underwater.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

I have a feeling there are version differences going on here. I think the fins thing is very new!

 

[KingTriaxx]

I just used the Direwolf20 pack 1.12 version and it killed the underwater Squid. Perhaps it only works when above water going into it.

Also, Fins have been around since 1.10's Tinkers.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Derp - I stand corrected in that case, sorry guys

 

[KingTriaxx]

No worries. I just happened to have played Beyond and so I remembered it.

 

[frog_24]

I think using manyullyn is just fine as it isn't really hard to obtain once you have a good pickaxe. If you have the tinkers tool leveling mod you may try mending moss as modifiers are gain by using the tool more.

 

[JustAWeeb]

Guys since certain ores dont spawn naturally anymore, what mods does TiC2 support that adds these ores into the world gen? Personally I dont really like technology mods like applied energetics but are there any substitutes? Thanks in advance

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Just to check @JustAWeeb - what pack are you playing? That will affect which ores span or not. And which ores do you mean?

 

[LordPINE]

They probably mean stuff like tin, copper and such, because TiCon removed its own oregen in 1.12. And the easiest way is to add something like base metals, I'd say (https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/base-metals). It's very configurable, so you can remove all the extra metals it adds. But it purely adds metals, which is probably best for your purposes.