Alright, time to make use of all the cactus and string. First I swap out the flint full guard for a cactus full guard for my cutlass. Besides determining what type of sword is crafted, the only other thing a guard adds to a weapon is adding any material trait that the material has. It doesn't affect damage or durability. Cactus gives the material trait of "jagged" which means the weapon will do more damage as it takes durability damage. A small upgrade but better than nothing.
String also means a shortbow. The normal Minecraft arrows suck horribly but it's still a reliable ranged weapon.
Also, the string means wool. Now I can replace all of my normal chests with chests from the Improved Chests mod. These can be upgraded in place and can be placed next to each other.
This also means I can start making some inventory management items. First is a Tier 1 bag from the Bagginses mod. Now I can carry all my little used tools on me without cluttering my inventory.
I also make a book binder. This works like a backpack but only for books. the plus is you can read the books inside of it without taking them out of the binder.
Now that those upgrades have been made its time to work my next goal; dyes. While this pack allows you to grow 9 flowers for dyes. The other 7 dyes left out can be crafted with the dye seeds you can make through Botania. To start I need a runic altar which allows you to infused materials with stored mana.
Once the mana requirement is met you'll see lightning effects. Throw a livingrock on top and right-click with your wand and presto.
The farm now with the 9 flowers and dye seeds added to it:
---------- Post added 06-10-2015 at 08:24 PM ---------- Previous post was 06-09-2015 at 07:37 PM ----------
Started the very beginnings of breeding bees and fish.
I also harvested some oysters. By placing sand in them they'll eventually convert the sand to pearls.
---------- Post added 06-12-2015 at 10:05 PM ---------- Previous post was 06-10-2015 at 08:24 PM ----------
Currently, all of my bees are Modest bees. They're the only ones who can survive the hot, arid climate of wasteland biomes that I have access to. There's not much I can do with them besides continue to breed them to gather a large storage of modest drones and modest cones. I'm also forced to use beehouses as the next step up requires bronze and some machinery to create.
I can't construct a suitable fish tank to breed fish in yet as it requires aluminum and iron. My oysters are doing a great job though and occasionally among the pearls harvested is an ender pearl. With those I'm able to make ender seeds in Botania's runic alter. Now I wont lack for ender pearls any longer.
I've also crossbred an essence seed with a sugarcane seed resulting in a nature seed. The nature essence I harvest from these crops allow me to make things like vines and lily pads. Most importantly though, they also allow me to make mossy cobblestone.
Nine mossy cobblestone in a crafting grid makes a ball of moss which is my first tool modifier available to me. Adding moss to your weapons and tools gives them the ability to slowly regenerate damage which means less repairing of tools. While my final set of Tinker's Construct tools wont have this modifier on them, it's great for the shirt term.
By the way, I found that the best place to find dirt is in beach biomes.
Using the flowers I crossbred two days ago I was able to crossbreed a full set of 16 different mystical flowers for Botania. Once these are bred up to 10/10/10 I'll be able to get much deeper into mana generation.
Using that I was able to go on and start my path to copper. By turning in this repeatable quest four times:
I had enough to craft a copper seed on my runic altar,
Using the same tactic I was able to improve my fuel source and make coal seeds as well. The new farm:
