Tools & armor, where do steel/thaumium/ironwood/steeleaf/fiery stand?

[Skyqula]

Right, so ive been playing some FTB magic pack and am starting to wonder what the order of the modded tools/armor is. Sofar ive basicly followed my vanilla instinct and gone wood/stone/iron/diamond/enchanted diamond. But now i am starting to explore the mods and am wondering if anny if those tools/armor is worth getting.

So my questions regarding tools: Where do the new tools stand? How much uses do they have? How fast are they? How is the enchantability? Is it expensive level wise to repair in the anvil?

And my questions regarding armor: Where does the new armor stand? How much uses does it have? How much protection does it offer? How is the enchantability? Is it expensive level wise to repair in the anvil?

I would google it, but there is just nothing to find about it. IE: Railcraft wiki mentions steel tools in the update logs but nowhere else on the wiki or Twilight forest that has this "tools and armor section" wich doesnt tell annything about them but rather how to make the ingots...

So annyone able to help me out?

 

[Omicron]

I can't help you with steel, I'd like to know myself. It obviously has more durability but I know nothing beyond that.

Thaumium should be much like iron (same or minimally higher durability, same armor effect, weapon damage and tool speed). However, its enchantability is set to maximum, i.e. comparable to gold tools.

Bronze has more durability than iron, but the tools are slower. No idea about the weapon damage. Armor is described as beaing weaker as well, but the exact opposite seems to be true - a set of bronze armor fills up your armor bar much like diamond armor does. No idea if that's just visual or the actual effect. Also no idea about enchantability, but none of my experiments yielded anything particularly awesome.

Nanosuits used to be really good in .97, got nerfed hard in .103, and are getting buffed again in .110... all in all I have no idea where they stand. They cannot be enchanted.

Quantum Suit, well, that still grants effective invulnerability from anything but nanosabers. It uses up its energy a little quicker nowadays, but still nothing to worry about. The Gravity Chestplate upgrade is pretty much the same except that it integrates an ultimate lappack to keep your tools charged, and allows you to fly. Neither can be enchanted.

The nanosaber is still the best weapon in the game, period, but cannot be enchanted and tends to drain its energy fast unless combined with a batpack of some kind.

The power tools are still good as good as ever, even if slightly more expensive through GregTech. Chainsaw is a better weapon than a diamond sword, but cannot be enchanted, and an enchanted diamond sword is better than a chainsaw (but can't chop wood or shear sheep). Efficiency IV/V pickaxes/shovels are better than the diamond drill, anything else is worse.

 

[ThyMrMan]

I'm pretty sure Steel is long lasting, but has the damage/speed of iron. The Twilight Forest ones I think are ,midway between iron and diamond.

 

[raiju]

Ironbark appears to be same as iron but with auto-enchant

Steeleaf/nagascale appear to just have stronger enchants by default. Maybe stealeaf is higher armor value? Hard to tell.

Fiery is bad for armor and pick. It definitely isn't diamond. The sword is stronger than iron though and the auto fire aspect is good.

I did a write up on diamond enchanted armor vs other pieces in another thread, but the general logic was - Longfall boots are extremely strong (honestly they need to be more expensive), diamond enchanted is all around best if you are using longfall boots/lappack/jetpack/other nonquantum piece. Gravitation suit + ultimate solar helmet + remains of quantum will win over everything else, but you won't see it for a long time.

Nanosaber is not the best weapon ingame, unless you are against quantum/nano armor. Both enchanted diamond swords can be enchanted to proc over 10 damage (7.5-12.5 for sharpness, i think 10-15 for mob procs), and the vajra hits 15 base as I recall.

Diamonds tools also get fortune/looting/silktouch, that the chainsaw and drill do not get. The rockcutter is painfully slow when mining things like iridium. I would stick to diamond for all these tools except a mining laser for general purpose, having a silk touch pick, a fortune pick (2.5 diamonds avg> 2 from a macerator). Mining laser is hard to beat in terms of raw power, though.

If I was up in the tech tree enough right now I'd probably be using the whole gravitation set with a vajra instead of a fortune pick. The diamonds would be useless and it can insta break any block except bedrock (if you are breaking anything manually that point in the game ^_^)

 

[Skyqula]

Ok so the general idea is that the modpack tools/armor is basicly iron. With thaumium being better for enchanting, ironwood/stealeaf comes enchanted, fiery has unique enchants to it and steel having high durability. Now if i recall correctly the redpower tools are basicly diamond with lower durability. Resulting in diamond still being the best. Mmm ok, a little disapointing but thankfully nothing gamebreakingly crazy

As for all the nano suit things etc, remember i am playing the magic pack. So i dont have those <3 They kinda sound broken annyway

 

[raiju]

Sorry I skimread through and missed that bit Yeah you aren't getting anything OP.

Ironwood is very easy to get even early game. The moment you get it you can make all your iron armor ironwood with little cost assuming you can get the gold nuggets. It effectively doubles the amount of iron you had for the stuff it makes too since 2 ironwood is made from 1 iron + gold nugget + lifetroot.
Stealeaf I've never found a good source for, personally. Seems to mostly be from chests but has strong enchants.
Fiery pick may be good if you don't have machines, as it does autosmelt. The armor is generally weak but it looks good. The weapon is strong, even if it doesnt hit as much as diamond flame aspect enchants are rare and as I recall it gives you a flame aspect 2 (you could probably combine them on an anvil too)
Redpower tools aren't that strong, actually. Ruby/sapphire/diamond in redpower are very easy to find though, and they are much more durable then iron which makes them very good for that.

Just remember anything with enchants will probably be extremely powerful. Each level of sharpness gives 0.5-1.5 damage per hit, meaning a diamond sword unenchanted hits 7 while an ironwood sword enchanted with sharpness V hits 8.5-13.5, as I recall

 

[potter]

Another thing to note, survivalist pickaxe and thaumium pickaxe can mine obsidian.
Thaumium gear in TC2 supposedly had high enchanting success, so that might be something to test out.
Steeleaf boots and pickaxe ( self-crafted ) sound decent if you go on an early twilight forest visit.

 

[Jay Cee]

Steeleaf has the durability of Gold though, if I read the wiki correctly.

 

[danidas]

Steeleaf has the durability of Gold though, if I read the wiki correctly.

But is as strong as diamond so their is little point in it other then the enchants.

 

[EternalDensity]

With picks, for practicality, I use Survivalist's pickaxes because I can carton and stack them, plus an iron pickaxe for various blocks they can't handle. No diamond because I have no need to dig obsidian (thanks, TE) and plenty of other things to use diamonds on (thanks, Soul Shards and TE). I also use an enchanted Thaumium axe and sword, but I didn't craft those. They're pretty easy to obtain in TC3 dungeons, thanks to Mystcraft.

 

[raiju]

Is the idea to combine 2 nanosabers into one to "remove" the charge so you can enchant over it? I can give it a go later probably, but im not sure if it'll work - Never seen a non-durability item work as a crafting table repair, might be possible with anvil, whatever I will try a few things

 

[raiju]

I just tried it with 2 pristine nanos, (energy crystal no bar, sabers no bar). I wasn't able to get any enchants on them. I was able to rename it, but I wasn't even able to combine 2.

Not sure what the bug is though, if I knew what I was doing I could try to replicate it better. Regardless as long as we are talking about nano - The Vajra will be better than a diamond sword enchanted if my maths is right (other than the looting aspect)

 

[MarrusQ]

Practically the best tool for minig is a Portal- or Gravity Gun and a torch. You just grab the ore with the gun and drop it onto the torch (or mushroom or flower or ladder or...). But that's a somewhat cheaty way and will probably get nerfed, just because this setup has infinite uses (except you run outta torches) and does Silk Touch on everything, even on ice.
I discovered this in my creative mode testworld while shooting blocks around. One of them just landed on a torch and dropped itself as an item.

Sincerely
Marrus with a Q

PS: I know the thread is somewhat dead.

 

[CodaPDX]

Steeleaf pickaxes are a nice guaranteed way to get a fortune enchant on a pickaxe, until you can get a more durable solution.

One thing to note about the thaumium tools is that the upgraded elemental tools have diamond as their base stat instead of iron, and have unique abilities on top of that. The sword of the zephyr is a mob-mulching machine with its high damage and AOE, and can have the repair enchant so it never needs maintenance. The pickaxe of the core (with appropriate enchants) is faster than an advanced diamond drill, and never needs repair. The only downsides are that it can't deal with dirt and gravel as fast as the drill, and the native ore clusters need special treatment in your ore processing. When it comes to branch mining, though, I don't think anything beats a mining laser in speed.

 

[danidas]

With the portal/gravi gun trick you can even turn any spawner into a pig spawner that you can place where ever you want. Also with the thaumium tools even th un-upgraded plain tools are equal to diamond tools in what they can mine as you can mine obsidian with them.

 

[MarrusQ]

I'm just wondering now: Are steel tools/armor just more durable Iron tools or do they have any benefits other then that?

Sincerely,
Marrus with a Q