My answer is D, None of the above. My first three iron usually go towards a bucket, since I'll likely be heading down into the depths very soon and there will be plenty more iron soon enough, but water may be hard to come by. After that I make a pick, to make the mining go faster, and then probably a sword.
Probably a pick, sword and bucket. Save the last one till later. Wouldn't want to waste iron early on with tools that I don't need to get the item (ie axes, shovels etc) Sheers would be nice as I don't like to kill sheep either so I would probably wait to make a bed until I found more iron. I tend to me a minimalist until I am rolling in the stuff.
Pick, bucket, sword, save the last ingot for later. Shears and a second bucket come after the chestplate, then the rest of the armor. The next half-stack or so goes for an anvil, probably with a compass or two for maps in there.
ETA: And the half-stack after that goes for a spare set of armor, sword, and bucket, for my "go chest". That's so if I get killed within update radius of my bed, I'm not rushing back bare-butt to whatever hazardous situation got me killed in the first place.
I did some CraftTweaker scripts for Mystical Agriculture. They fill in a couple of small gaps in MA, and also let you make or duplicate not only vanilla plants, but the blocks, plants and wood from Quark and Biomes O'Plenty. Also spawn eggs for most vanilla mobs! The scripts are here on Github.
(snip, snip) but if you used an iron shovel instead of stone, you wouldn't break near as many since they'd last that much longer each one... (snip, snip)
The thing is, i mean that I break loads of shovels. Enough that I'd break loads of them even if I used iron shovels.
I am conservative with my iron, so using stone shovels (since I dig so much, I have dozens of stacks of cobblestone at any given time) is more appealing to me. I use stone pickaxes for most things for similar reasons. Really, I'm just very stingy with my iron.
But I see your point that I'd break fewer of them. I might think about using RailCraft steel for shovels since it's much more durable than iron. I'll keep it in mind for sure.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The source of my intention isn't really crime prevention; my intention is prevention of the lie! Yeah, welcome to the Scatman's world!
The thing is, i mean that I break loads of shovels. Enough that I'd break loads of them even if I used iron shovels.
I am conservative with my iron, so using stone shovels (since I dig so much, I have dozens of stacks of cobblestone at any given time) is more appealing to me. I use stone pickaxes for most things for similar reasons. Really, I'm just very stingy with my iron.
But I see your point that I'd break fewer of them. I might think about using RailCraft steel for shovels since it's much more durable than iron. I'll keep it in mind for sure.
What I think.. is that you need to start researching some iron golem farms and into perfect villagers. I used to be pretty conservative with my iron as well until I got big into villager trading and iron farms, and now I use nothing but iron or diamond tools and armor. I blow my iron like its cobblestone. Actually I tend to run out of cobblestone more than iron now because I build much more than I cave because of using villagers for everything these days and never actually go collecting any more. Hell, In a world I abandoned about a month or so ago I used 85 hoppers (425 pieces of iron) alone on a double spawner trap and I didn't even have an iron golem farm in that world.
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
No reason to get armor, buckets, or axes made of iron that early (stone work just fine for this early on).
There is definitely a reason to get a bucket early on in the game. Except while in the nether I travel with a bucket 24/7. Buckets have so many uses. You can use a water bucket to save yourself from a mob attack by washing them away, take care of that pesky lava while caving, you can even save yourself from death from falling if you place it under your feet as soon as are about to hit the ground. If you end up running into an abandoned mine shaft a bucket of milk will save you from the cave spider poison taking you down to half a heart, which is especially helpful to people like me who play with natural health regeneration turned off.
None of those reasons included the obvious use of being able to make a farm anywhere since you need water to hydrate soil. I don't know about you but if you have an outdoor farm and you need food in the morning, have fun dealing with the skeletons hanging out in the water you need to hydrate your farm land and creepers. I'd much rather have a secure indoor farm so I can get my food whenever I want.
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
But-- but-- ...You don't want to use an iron shovel because you break so many stone ones...but if you used an iron shovel instead of stone, you wouldn't break near as many since they'd last that much longer each one...
Personally, I use diamond shovels, at least once I find a blacksmith villager who'll sell them to me.
Iron tools only have double the durability of stone. Unless you do have a golem farm, it's much better to use stone tools for everyday stuff, and save up the iron for the things that specifically need it:
Armor -- 24 ingots for a set.
Anvils -- they slowly wear away, and replacing one costs half a stack.
Buckets -- save up lava for big projects, have milk and water on hand and in your go-chest.
Nether exploration, where stone goes to protection instead, joined by iron bars and doors against ghasts. (Eventually you'll have some nether brick fences, but those take a lot of gathering!)
Devices: Hoppers and minecarts both cost 5 ingots each, a few other devices grab individual ingots here and there.
Big rail systems: Getting the "On a Rail" achievement can cost up to 6 stacks of ingots just for rails. (Minus what you scavenge from some newly-scarce AMSes.)
I did some CraftTweaker scripts for Mystical Agriculture. They fill in a couple of small gaps in MA, and also let you make or duplicate not only vanilla plants, but the blocks, plants and wood from Quark and Biomes O'Plenty. Also spawn eggs for most vanilla mobs! The scripts are here on Github.
Iron tools only have double the durability of stone. Unless you do have a golem farm, it's much better to use stone tools for everyday stuff, and save up the iron for the things that specifically need it:
Armor -- 24 ingots for a set.
Anvils -- they slowly wear away, and replacing one costs half a stack.
Buckets -- save up lava for big projects, have milk and water on hand and in your go-chest.
Nether exploration, where stone goes to protection instead, joined by iron bars and doors against ghasts. (Eventually you'll have some nether brick fences, but those take a lot of gathering!)
Devices: Hoppers and minecarts both cost 5 ingots each, a few other devices grab individual ingots here and there.
Big rail systems: Getting the "On a Rail" achievement can cost up to 6 stacks of ingots just for rails. (Minus what you scavenge from some newly-scarce AMSes.)
Using iron shovels will also save wood, don't forget that, and don't forget about enchantments. Getting unbreaking alone on an iron shovel will make it last quite a bit longer, and a lot of the time it can get paired up with efficiency as well, which makes the usefulness sky rocket. Sure, you can enchant stone too, but it's pretty useless to do so. It would break in no time at all and the enchantability of stone is lower than iron if I remember correctly.
This doesn't even mention the fact that iron alone is quicker for digging than stone, which means you get more work done than stone, which allows you to have more time to go dig up one more lousy ingot to make a new iron shovel when it breaks.
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
I find such ridiculous amounts of iron that it's hard to say what I'd do with just 9 pieces, but I'd make a sword, bucket and iron pickaxe first (1 piece left over).
My answer is D, None of the above. My first three iron usually go towards a bucket, since I'll likely be heading down into the depths very soon and there will be plenty more iron soon enough, but water may be hard to come by. After that I make a pick, to make the mining go faster, and then probably a sword.
Iron tools only have double the durability of stone. Unless you do have a golem farm, it's much better to use stone tools for everyday stuff, and save up the iron for the things that specifically need it:
I do have one, but even before that I still used iron tools almost exclusively (before trading came along and introduced a renewable source of diamond gear, that is.) Maybe it's different for folks that spend more time building on the surface and less of it digging underground, but I found that even a quick caving run can get me half a stack or a stack of iron, which is enough to last for a good long time.
Plus, there's that whole work-speed issue mentioned by Crumpet. The time saved by using an iron pick versus a stone one should allow you to mine far more than the three iron it took to make that pick in the first place, above and beyond what you would have mined with stone ones in the same amount of time.
Using iron shovels will also save wood, don't forget that, and don't forget about enchantments. (...)
This doesn't even mention the fact that iron alone is quicker for digging than stone, which means you get more work done than stone, which allows you to have more time to go dig up one more lousy ingot to make a new iron shovel when it breaks.
I do have one, but even before that I still used iron tools almost exclusively (before trading came along and introduced a renewable source of diamond gear, that is.) Maybe it's different for folks that spend more time building on the surface and less of it digging underground, but I found that even a quick caving run can get me half a stack or a stack of iron, which is enough to last for a good long time.
Plus, there's that whole work-speed issue mentioned by Crumpet. The time saved by using an iron pick versus a stone one should allow you to mine far more than the three iron it took to make that pick in the first place, above and beyond what you would have mined with stone ones in the same amount of time.
Well, most of my mining (by stone mined, a vast majority) is branch mining, and for that, using iron picks is just unsustainable regardless of enchantments. Caving got rather safer in 1.7, but it still costs something in risk and armor wear, not to mention exploration time. But time isn't even a limiting factor, rather the amount of stone you're chopping is. Between coal mining and miscellaneous rock-chopping, I still think that using iron picks for general mining is going to soak up a whole lot of iron that could better be used for other things. (And using enchanted iron picks soaks up levels that I'd rather spend on weapons and armor -- much better to save enchanted iron picks for high-value ores!)
Using iron axes and shovels is worse, because those are pure cost to the iron budget. And I do a lot of digging out dirt/gravel below ground (exposes rock quickly), and landscaping above, plus harvesting big trees -- formerly jungle giants, now large spruces. (Fencing for farms and villages adds up fast.)
I still would rather save up my iron for hoppers and other devices, Nether exploration, and rails, than spend it wholesale digging mostly cobblestone.
ETA: Also: The wood savings between iron and stone picks amounts to one measly plank per iron pick, and replacing the pick on the fly involves underground smelting, plus more inventory slots for supplies.
I did some CraftTweaker scripts for Mystical Agriculture. They fill in a couple of small gaps in MA, and also let you make or duplicate not only vanilla plants, but the blocks, plants and wood from Quark and Biomes O'Plenty. Also spawn eggs for most vanilla mobs! The scripts are here on Github.
ETA: And the half-stack after that goes for a spare set of armor, sword, and bucket, for my "go chest". That's so if I get killed within update radius of my bed, I'm not rushing back bare-butt to whatever hazardous situation got me killed in the first place.
2. Iron Pickaxe
3. Compass
Cubic Chunks mod: https://discord.gg/kMfWg9m
Mental Block server: https://discord.gg/AssnrXr
The thing is, i mean that I break loads of shovels. Enough that I'd break loads of them even if I used iron shovels.
I am conservative with my iron, so using stone shovels (since I dig so much, I have dozens of stacks of cobblestone at any given time) is more appealing to me. I use stone pickaxes for most things for similar reasons. Really, I'm just very stingy with my iron.
But I see your point that I'd break fewer of them. I might think about using RailCraft steel for shovels since it's much more durable than iron. I'll keep it in mind for sure.
The source of my intention isn't really crime prevention; my intention is prevention of the lie! Yeah, welcome to the Scatman's world!
What I think.. is that you need to start researching some iron golem farms and into perfect villagers. I used to be pretty conservative with my iron as well until I got big into villager trading and iron farms, and now I use nothing but iron or diamond tools and armor. I blow my iron like its cobblestone. Actually I tend to run out of cobblestone more than iron now because I build much more than I cave because of using villagers for everything these days and never actually go collecting any more. Hell, In a world I abandoned about a month or so ago I used 85 hoppers (425 pieces of iron) alone on a double spawner trap and I didn't even have an iron golem farm in that world.
Bored enough to watch some vanilla lets plays? http://www.youtube.com/user/Crump3txxix
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
1 Sword
1 Shovel
No reason to get armor, buckets, or axes made of iron that early (stone work just fine for this early on).
There is definitely a reason to get a bucket early on in the game. Except while in the nether I travel with a bucket 24/7. Buckets have so many uses. You can use a water bucket to save yourself from a mob attack by washing them away, take care of that pesky lava while caving, you can even save yourself from death from falling if you place it under your feet as soon as are about to hit the ground. If you end up running into an abandoned mine shaft a bucket of milk will save you from the cave spider poison taking you down to half a heart, which is especially helpful to people like me who play with natural health regeneration turned off.
None of those reasons included the obvious use of being able to make a farm anywhere since you need water to hydrate soil. I don't know about you but if you have an outdoor farm and you need food in the morning, have fun dealing with the skeletons hanging out in the water you need to hydrate your farm land and creepers. I'd much rather have a secure indoor farm so I can get my food whenever I want.
Bored enough to watch some vanilla lets plays? http://www.youtube.com/user/Crump3txxix
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
Iron tools only have double the durability of stone. Unless you do have a golem farm, it's much better to use stone tools for everyday stuff, and save up the iron for the things that specifically need it:
Using iron shovels will also save wood, don't forget that, and don't forget about enchantments. Getting unbreaking alone on an iron shovel will make it last quite a bit longer, and a lot of the time it can get paired up with efficiency as well, which makes the usefulness sky rocket. Sure, you can enchant stone too, but it's pretty useless to do so. It would break in no time at all and the enchantability of stone is lower than iron if I remember correctly.
This doesn't even mention the fact that iron alone is quicker for digging than stone, which means you get more work done than stone, which allows you to have more time to go dig up one more lousy ingot to make a new iron shovel when it breaks.
Bored enough to watch some vanilla lets plays? http://www.youtube.com/user/Crump3txxix
Need a good universal mob farm? Check out the Double Shift Towers. Designed for 1.9 and gets 22,000 Items / Hour with a very simple redstone set up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8aoJpjjgU
I used to be chocolate cake.. but then new Minecraft Forums happened..
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
A bucket gets me water.
Water gets me a wheat farm and sugarcane farm,
Sugarcane farm gets me paper
Wheat farm gets me breeding cows.
Breeding cows gets me food and leather.
Leather and paper get me books
Books get me enchantments (once I find some diamonds)
After a bucket, a sword, armor, iron door
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0OtPNZX22RvZVeq4-dHa8GYKOc5lojKX
I like the End. What is wrong with liking the end?
My answer is also D, None of the above
It will be a a bucket, pick and sword.
I do have one, but even before that I still used iron tools almost exclusively (before trading came along and introduced a renewable source of diamond gear, that is.) Maybe it's different for folks that spend more time building on the surface and less of it digging underground, but I found that even a quick caving run can get me half a stack or a stack of iron, which is enough to last for a good long time.
Plus, there's that whole work-speed issue mentioned by Crumpet. The time saved by using an iron pick versus a stone one should allow you to mine far more than the three iron it took to make that pick in the first place, above and beyond what you would have mined with stone ones in the same amount of time.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
Well, most of my mining (by stone mined, a vast majority) is branch mining, and for that, using iron picks is just unsustainable regardless of enchantments. Caving got rather safer in 1.7, but it still costs something in risk and armor wear, not to mention exploration time. But time isn't even a limiting factor, rather the amount of stone you're chopping is. Between coal mining and miscellaneous rock-chopping, I still think that using iron picks for general mining is going to soak up a whole lot of iron that could better be used for other things. (And using enchanted iron picks soaks up levels that I'd rather spend on weapons and armor -- much better to save enchanted iron picks for high-value ores!)
Using iron axes and shovels is worse, because those are pure cost to the iron budget. And I do a lot of digging out dirt/gravel below ground (exposes rock quickly), and landscaping above, plus harvesting big trees -- formerly jungle giants, now large spruces. (Fencing for farms and villages adds up fast.)
I still would rather save up my iron for hoppers and other devices, Nether exploration, and rails, than spend it wholesale digging mostly cobblestone.
ETA: Also: The wood savings between iron and stone picks amounts to one measly plank per iron pick, and replacing the pick on the fly involves underground smelting, plus more inventory slots for supplies.