De Re Metallica

Notice: any version that says unsupported, will no longer receive any updates!

MEDIA

This is an update to my ancient old Mod named Material Evolution, a feature rich anthology trying to unify the aspects of Metallurgic Realism, Survival Crafting, and new game mechanics, that will either enhance gameplay, or make it more difficult, specially in relation to early game progression. It is obviously tailored to Survival gameplay, and pretty much equivalent to hardcore, except you can die as often as you want, and keep your inventory on death. The old Evolution Mod has since been divided into a base library(Material Library), and this Modification. There are plans for releasing single purpose extractions of the main Mods, but for now I'll focus on porting them to newer versions of Minecraft. DRM is based on Material Library, so you will need to have it installed for the given supported version. Refer to changelogs to figure which versions are compatible with each other, and which new materials, gameplay elements, and features have been implemented. Features include, but are not limited to:

- more than 70 new ores, minerals, stones, and other block types to import real life materials, see the MatLib description to figure all the new materials

- more than 60 new tool and weapon variants (wood, bone, stone, flintstone, copper, bronze, iron, steel, manganese(steel) and titan(steel))

- 11 new armor variants (canvas, bone, fur, leather, copper, bronze, chain, iron, steel, manganese(steel), titan(steel))

- more than 95 new item variants, including crucibles, mercury/bitumen bottles, ounces, ingots, gravels, nuggets, tinder, adhesives etc.

- 4 new food items(boiled egg, pumpkin puree, raw pumpkin and baken mushroom)

- 4 new healing items(pavement, bandage, splint and zinc ointment)

- 15 new Gem types including Saphire, Ruby and Topaz to be used as dyes

- 7 new devices(tile entities): campfire, roaster, firepit, bloomery, kiln, stove, and crusher

- lore and antique/medieval friendly metallurgy with realistic pre industrial metal variants and techniques

- several new organic material variants: crude oil, bitumen, black coal, brown coal, methane(gas), graphite etc.

- several changes to vanilla gameplay(all configurable), to tailor survival more close to hardcore

Early Game

One of the major focus of this Mod is early game difficulty, and beyond. There are several restrictions that will really make you feel like striving for survival. A major game changer is removing any non real life material variants to be used as tools, weapons or armors. This includes Diamond, Gold, and partially Wood and Stone. Iron is more or less untouched, since it's the only real life example. You can not harvest trees by hitting them. You can not build early game weapons, and tools without one of the most important ingredient(adhesives). Early game weapons and tools are slow, sluggish and can't even harvest some of the most hard elements. There are a lot of vanilla recipe changes to include the new materials, or make them closer to real life equivalents. For a guide, simply refer to the DRM advancements tab. It will show you exactly what to do, and sometimes exactly how to do it. But the further you progress, the less of a guide it will be, as there are some things that are supposed to be figured on your own initiative.

Major Game Changes

I already mentioned the recipe changes, as well as removing most of the "unrealistic" game features. But another important part is the Ingression of difficulty in regards to the gathering of materials. Hunter&Gatherer obviously was the motivation behind this. You can't, for example, just willy nilly enter a dungeon or mine, and start letting your pickaxe of the hook. All of the mineral variants have different purposes, and prerequisites to be mined. A major prerequisite to mine in general is light. But you do not have early access to light, unless you're lucky to find them in portal boxes, on ships, or steal them from villages. And even if you have access to reasonable tools, enough light, and somewhat protecting armor, there's still the danger of using some of the tools in the wrong way. One example here is Methane(gas). It exists(as Air Block equivalent) in caves, mines and dungeons. It is poisonous, extremely explosive, and virtually present anywhere in around organic materials. You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't make it visible in any way(only in debug view) and it will most certainly kill you in an instance, if you just enter a mine, and use sparking tool variants on elements you shouldn't use them on. History is full of reports about mining accidents, which most of the time had any form of firedamp involved.

But that's not where the story ends. Drowning with to heavy armor parts? Check. Exploding organic variants? Check. No Automatic Health Regeneration? Check. Any single block needs a tool to harvest it? Check. Exceptions obviously are grass blocks, mushrooms, and all the stuff that can be extracted in real life with bare hands as well. But worry not, you'll have a multitude of new elements added to the game, to get you back on track, only you will strive much harder to gather them. You will produce adhesives. You will craft useful new tools, like a forging hammer, a bow&drill, and a mortar&pestle. If you're good enough and find the correct ingredients, you will even get the chance to build your personal telescope. You will build and use dedicated devices for smelting, cooking, and producing. And you will often need to build them as multi block, in order to forward there purpose.

Some Examples of New Features

Well, in the beginning there's the Digstick. Jup, that's right, it does what its name implies. It digs. It doesn't do that very well though. But it's the first tool you'll need in order to get something done. It is also increasing your damage to entities by 50%. You will need it to find Flintstone, while you are searching for rocks randomly spawning on the surface. I let you figure where exactly you would find the raw materials. You probably want to refer to your recipe book and/or advancement tab. Once you've found enough rocks, you can use them to build a Campfire. But what now? You don't have any Source of Fire? Well, actually you have. It's anywhere around you. And all you need to get it is a stick. A Stick on Fire that is. What could you set a stick on fire with? But beware, this stick on fire is not a regular torch. It has a time limit for existence, and you can't attach it to a wall. Its only purpose is to light up devices. It will be consumed after that. But obviously once you got access to a preservable source of fire, that's a major game changer.

At this point you maybe already collected raw materials that you could turn into adhesives, which will give you access to your first ax, which in return gives you the option to finally chop wood. No more will you be limited to 4 crafting grids only, and no longer you will be restricted from properly mining minerals and stones. But that's not the end of the story. You've just entered stone age, and to move on to the next period will be still a long way. You'd thing you'd just go out now, mine some iron blocks, and smelt them in your kitchen stove to iron ingots? Wrong! There is no native Iron anywhere. Iron is available in abundant amounts, but you can not access it without a Bloomery, which you can only fuel with Charcoal, which you can only make in a Kiln. You could try to mine for lower tier minerals, that grant you access to Copper or Hardlead. And if you're lucky enough you'd even get early access to raw materials for Bronze. But you certainly will not have the option to get easy access to the very best materials, like Steel, Manganese-Steel, or even Titan-Steel.

Given the abundant amount of different minerals, and blocks to harvest, you most of the time don't even know what you're getting, unless you start to study, document, and learn. Steel with Black Coal smelted in a Firepit? Nope. The result will be brittle and dull. Making a torch with just coal put on a stick? Nope. How does that burn to begin with? Harvesting cobblestone from stone blocks? Why not the other way around? I've never seen anyone making cobblestone without first crushing the raw material. Some of the minerals will act like a poison in your inventory. Some of the minerals will blow up your whole mine. Some of the minerals will simply turn out to be just glossy and slack. And yeah, on top of that there is all the vanilla entities that spawn at night, which you can't easily guard yourself from, if all you have is a shelter made of dirt. One Boomer aside your newly gathered Black Coal mineral depot, and you will see the world burning.

FAQ

What exactly do you mean by exploding mines and Sparking Tools?

Well, exactly that. You need to keep your eyes open when entering a mine. And you need to figure, or already know which tools will create sparks when you use them. If you don't do that, you will probably burn up in flames, before you even find your first source of coal in your pockets. Watch out for trickling ash from the cave ceiling. There's a reason why the material over there seems to be more brittle, than anywhere else.

How do I gather some of the early game items?

I think you know how do, unless you've spend all of your childhood not going outside. A tree can be a source for many materials. Simple gravel as well. How do you think humanity created something tuned to the peak like wheat? What is wheat actually? Try to find out what sticks and pastes. And try to find out what is most essential for progression from one step to another.

I can't ever seem to get to the level of making metals in any form or variant?

Sure you can. It's pretty much just the opposite of what Vanilla Minecraft is trying to teach you. Everything is based on trial and fail, from there it's called knowledge. A good start if you can't even find your way to proper forge, or smelt high tier metal, is striving the wilderness for random nugget drops. Native metal isn't available in abundant amounts, but it's way more easy to process.

What are the single Tile Entity Devices for?

I'm not going to give you exact instructions on what they do. But I'll give you cryptic hints on how to use them, and there properties. One good idea here is, to forget about how we understand materials, and metals in modern times. In ancient and medieval times there very few perfectly fitting designations, names, and descriptions. In general most of the metals were just grouped into 3-5 different qualitys, and most often just divided by color. To them, Iron was basically just the same as Lead, after you smelted/forged it, only that Lead was a soft variant of Iron. Well, actually it was the other way around, because humans had access to lead way more early than iron. However: the campfire will only burn on sticks, thus it has low temperature. the roaster will have room for more fuel, but it still doesn't have access to enough temperature. The firepit has bellows attached, it won't get any hotter than this. The Bloomery is working with a stable temperature. The Kiln doesn't build up any real fire at all. And yeah, would you cook your metal, with all its dirt, in the same place you cook your food? Last but not least, the Crusher is a new device(since 0.4), which is used, well, to crush any stone variant into cobblestone. You can also use it to crush materials, as long as you do not have access to a Hammer&Chisel.

I love the Metallurgy Aspect, but the Survival not so much?

You can configure all of the survival and difficulty aspects to your hearts liking, and even completely turn them off.

Do you use other Mods with DRM?

Of course. I even have most of these Mods installed in Eclipse during development, for testing purpose. DRM is specially tailored to work good with Better Default Biomes, Biomes O Plenty, Tough as Nails, Serene Seasons, Hourglass, Ambient World, Better Animals Plus, and Heart Balance. Of course I would also recommend Ice&Fire, De Extinction, Druidcraft, Exotic Birds, Forbidden Arcanus, Guardscraft, Whisperwoods, and Total Darkness.

You've mentioned various mods in your changelogs, do I need them to run DRM?

No. The mod will auto detect if those mods are present, and if not, the addressed changes don't do anything at all.

Still a Beta?

Yes, but fully playable that is. I try to "finalize" newly added features for any new version, so there are no half baken features inside any new version. But yeah, the mod has a huge scope, and polishing is not priorized. There are still some inconsistencies specially in relation to recipes.

Any more info?

Review the images, and specially the changelogs. They are full of detailed information. But I'm certain you'll find your way even without them. Stoneage wasn't that hard...:D