Better Than Wolves Forum

So with the latest round of changes I was curious what other people thoughts were on the first proper iron tool to get. I was a hoe first guy before going over to pickaxe, but now I'm not sure. Here are my thoughts on which ones I'm considering:

Pickaxe:
- Pro: Faster mining, can mine second strata of stone
- Pro: Lasts longer than stone pickaxe (not sure how much longer)
- Pro: Presumably, you can actually mine out the iron blocks in the second stone layer, though I'm not sure on that yet. Makes it more likely to mine out an entire vein
- Con: With stone pickaxes buffed, it's less painful to use those for longer, making iron less of an immediately necessary upgrade

Hoe:
- Pro: Renewable food! Hell yeah!
- Con: With changes to pumpkin, it's more than likely you can only grow hemp at start, making renewable food source much slower to get up and running

Axe:
- Pro: Based on what people have said in posts, sounds like you can pick up blocks like planks and chests with it, that's nice.
- Pro: No hunger penalty for breaking tall grass
- Pro: Can use as a weapon
- Con: Honestly, no immediate cons I can think of, besides the opportunity costs

Personal opinion, I'm thinking iron pick only when I really have to. I might even skip it entirely if I luck out on diamonds.

So I'd say it depends, but there seem to be two viable options for me:

Hoe first:
First get a hoe, save up for an axe while the hemp grows, so you unlock hemp and wood at the same time

Axe first:
Potentially combined with a fishing rod for those that like that. This is probably the easiest start, but you'll be stuck in early game slightly longer.

Overall, I think axe first is the stronger choice, but I like the idea of using the hemp growing downtime to find the iron for the axe. Only way I can see pick viable is if you go for a fast nether.

I used to always go pick first, but with stone picks being buffed I agree that it's no longer necessary.

On my last playthrough of 4.AAAAAAHHHH I went axe first and it worked quite well. Having a chest and crafting table meant I no longer had to wait for day to craft and no longer had to worry about inventory management. I died before I got any further but I would have gone pick since it was a HC respawn, but on a new world I'd have gone hoe after that.

Caevin wrote: Pickaxe:
- Con: With stone pickaxes buffed, it's less painful to use those for longer, making iron less of an immediately necessary upgrade

Axe:
- Pro: No hunger penalty for breaking tall grass

I used to do [rod] -> hoe -> pick -> shears -> axe
hoe first (renewable food; I always used hemp so I don't mind wait)
then Pickaxe to expedite the next tools,
then shears to bring the cows home
then finally axe, because stone axes got the job done fine.

I'm still on hoe first, because renewable food is hard, but the change to stone pick has bumped pickaxe down quite far - though I'll probably still need one before diamond.

I'm posting because I didn't know about "no hunger for breaking tall grass," which means i'll definitely be making an axe before shears now, so now hoe -> axe -> shears -> pick. Quite different.
hoe ->

Caevin wrote: Axe:
- Pro: Based on what people have said in posts, sounds like you can pick up blocks like planks and chests with it, that's nice.

Hehe... that's actually a massive understatement of what axes do now. I'm axe first on pretty much every respawn now.

Axe once I have the iron for it, but a pickaxe if I've hit the second strata and I'm sure there's enough iron behind what I've already collected for an axe.

That said I died today, so the new spawn, I may try something new. Hoe and Shears could be interesting, if my thoughts on making things mob-proof work out.

Gilberreke wrote:I'm thinking iron pick only when I really have to. I might even skip it entirely if I luck out on diamonds.

So how do you get those diamonds without an iron pick?


For me it is definitely the axe. Because the next stage basically is caving and colleting more iron. The axe allows you to gather wood quickly, which you will need for the caving. Also, caving is inherently a dangerous activty, arguably one of the most dangerous ones in the game, certainly when you are at a stage of blunt weapons and porous armour. So yeah, I want chests. My inventory in spilling over anyway at the stage of my first iron tool. Plus it's kinda nice to be able to make crafting benches at will.

Next up is probably pickaxe, so I can mine at a more reasonable speed. After that, sword, to feel safer during mining and increase my hunting potential, after that shears for the leather armour and increased safety against creepers.

So, no hoe for me. I don't really see the appeal of starting hemp farming early, if you don't have the ability to create a safe space.

Fret wrote:So how do you get those diamonds without an iron pick?

FlowerChild wrote:Hehe... that's actually a massive understatement of what axes do now

Fret wrote:...Plus it's kinda nice to be able to make crafting benches at will.

Oh there is a lot of potential there I didn't even know about it. I think I'm going to go axes (once I get to iron again, I started yesterday about to get 2 ingots and then died 5 minutes in, oh the joy xD ). One worry of mine is always food but hunting is always better than I expect, plus people have reminded me while streaming that I can always do fishing if I'm hard up for food. Only costs one nugget!

axe first period. then pick, hoe, shears, bucket

Sword after axe is also not a bad call, just to be able to block.

dawnraider wrote:Sword after axe is also not a bad call, just to be able to block.

You block guys are so weird, I can't even remember the last time I tried blocking with a sword. I wonder if I'm the only one that doesn't block. Is there two kinds of people or am I just weird and/or bad at games?

i'm there with you Gil. every time i tried to block i'm just too late or too fast, so i've stopped blocking and just go for the kill

I mostly use it against skeletons and creepers. For if you want to approach skeletons, of you get the timing right you can block every shot and take half damage before you get into melee. Creepers I mostly use it if surprised and I don't have the time to shear them. It's saved my life on several occasions before I get iron armor to be able to tank hits.

dawnraider wrote:I mostly use it against skeletons and creepers. For if you want to approach skeletons, of you get the timing right you can block every shot and take half damage before you get into melee. Creepers I mostly use it if surprised and I don't have the time to shear them. It's saved my life on several occasions before I get iron armor to be able to tank hits.

We're getting off-track, but since this is still related to iron use: I now get why people wear iron armor so often too. If you're not in the habit of blocking, you don't "tank". I don't really wear armor that often, except when going to, say, the nether, because I have a strategy built on not getting hit, instead of one built on minimizing damage. The difference between the two is that when I fail, I fail hard, while you probably degrade more gracefully, but on the other hand, I probably get into less fail situations.

In any case, I can see how all that matters when deciding on first iron tool. For me, it's another huge "axe wins" thing, because if you don't need to block, an axe makes for a decent weapon too. On top of that, I don't ever craft iron armor, usually the first time I need it is nether, so then I go straight to diamond pieces.

On the iron sword topic, I usually don't have any problems finding an iron sword carrying zombie before getting the iron for the first tool, so I don't usually craft them myself.

Pick first; I think being able to mine out second strata veins is worth it. Then axe, hoe. Fishing rod whenever bait accumulates. Sword, sheers and bucket. Shovel post-nether.

Personally, I still go with pick. Once you have it, finding another 18 iron is pretty easy since you can mine out old veins where you simply scratched the surface, whereas an axe requires you to find 27 iron ore from completely new sources. I'd rather put up with baskets, inefficient wood usage and inconvenient tool crafting for a little bit longer than continue caving with temporary torches and no ability to manipulate the second strata. That crap is a nightmare.

8bitBob wrote:Personally, I still go with pick. Once you have it, finding another 18 iron is pretty easy since you can mine out old veins where you simply scratched the surface, whereas an axe requires you to find 27 iron ore from completely new sources. I'd rather put up with baskets, inefficient wood usage and inconvenient tool crafting for a little bit longer than continue caving with temporary torches and no ability to manipulate the second strata. That crap is a nightmare.

I think the above includes some fallacies. First of all, the iron pick cost 27 nuggets instead of the axe's 18, so you don't have to find 27 completly new sources, but 18. Secondly, even with an iron pick you still have to deal with temporary torches. So, your choice for pick first might be fair, but I don't think the given rationale holds up.

Fret wrote:

8bitBob wrote:Personally, I still go with pick. Once you have it, finding another 18 iron is pretty easy since you can mine out old veins where you simply scratched the surface, whereas an axe requires you to find 27 iron ore from completely new sources. I'd rather put up with baskets, inefficient wood usage and inconvenient tool crafting for a little bit longer than continue caving with temporary torches and no ability to manipulate the second strata. That crap is a nightmare.

I think the above includes some fallacies. First of all, the iron pick cost 27 nuggets instead of the axe's 18, so you don't have to find 27 completly new sources, but 18. Secondly, even with an iron pick you still have to deal with temporary torches. So, your choice for pick first might be fair, but I don't think the given rationale holds up.

Fair enough point about the relative iron still being the same, but it doesn't change the overall point. The pick is still going to make acquiring the rest of the iron much easier.

The line about torches isn't meant to imply that having a pick solves torches, but rather that the torch changes make caving a far more difficult experience, which iron picks help alleviate. It allows you to manipulate the terrain, which is a huge advantage for creating direct paths to fresh mining areas, or creating straight tunnels upwards for direct sunlight from basing areas. Without one, you can only do this in the upper strata, which you'll likely have scoured over for your first tool.

Not the best wording, so I can understand the confusion, but the rationale is perfectly sound.

8bitBob wrote: Fair enough point about the relative iron still being the same, but it doesn't change the overall point. The pick is still going to make acquiring the rest of the iron much easier.

The line about torches isn't meant to imply that having a pick solves torches, but rather that the torch changes make caving a far more difficult experience, which iron picks help alleviate. It allows you to manipulate the terrain, which is a huge advantage for creating direct paths to fresh mining areas, or creating straight tunnels upwards for direct sunlight from basing areas. Without one, you can only do this in the upper strata, which you'll likely have scoured over for your first tool.

Not the best wording, so I can understand the confusion, but the rationale is perfectly sound.

Ok, fair enough :)

Sometimes i chose pick axe and sometimes hoe...
But i make sword only if i get a lot of iron...
Because the nigth i stay in safe place and in cavern exploration, i make wall to trap mob.

About sword :

We can also get sword by killing a zombie ! Its not extremely rare !

Of course there still a trick with sword, you can hit and block in the sametimes ... a lot of player use that, for me its a bit cheaty ... so i dont make that.

Observations:
Update AABABABA pushed me over the edge with the reduced utility of the stone shovel, and it's extended my early game in a way I didn't anticipate.

I've now gone from
hoe->pick->shears->sword->axe->shovel in 4.9A to
hoe->axe->shovel->shears->pick->sword by AABA

The most recent change is the prioritization of shovel over pick. I just can't stand seeing gravel go to waste via [less efficient methods]. I need the gravel for paths between my world center and out to colonize the surroundings, especially for paths between big-base and local surface caves.

Instead of making a mad rush with iron pick & torches to find diamond as quickly as possible, I'm doing the exact opposite. I'm stockpiling logs->sticks, to make sure I can make my way back out of caves, which will take as long as getting into them. I'm not descending into the second strata at all. I'm conserving coal as carefully as the gravel.

It's... quite satisfying.