How To Prepare for 1.7

#1

Here you will find a post full of ideas to help you prepare for the upcoming update, 1.7, as well as various ways to go about doing so! For your convenience, a TL;DR is located beneath this opening paragraph, followed by the primary body of the thread. I hope that even experienced members will see something here that they may not have necessarily thought of (even if they knew it already, just a reminder) that will help everyone! DISCLAIMER: This is all speculatory. You’ll probably need these items based on past updates and spoilers given by @majicDave about 1.7.

TL;DR (Very Short Version of Thread)

Stock up on everything. The main things that you will want a lot of are probably going to be:

  • Metals (especially iron, steel, and probably titanium. I’ll throw in Carbon Fiber as well, despite the fact that it’s not actually a metal)
  • Food
  • Coffee
  • Time Crystals
  • Server Credit
  • General Exploration Tools (i.e. pickaxes, lanterns (preferably steel), jetpack, boat)

Now that that’s been covered, lets get into the good stuff.

Time Crystals

First and foremost, time crystals. The best way to get a head start on any update is to have a bunch of extra time crystals that you won’t mind spending. These can help you to get a head start on any world, whether old or new1.

Time Crystals are valuable for a great multitude of reasons. The best of these, I would say, is rushing time. However, Time Crystals can also be used for teleportation, crafting items at the portal (such as Portal Chests and gem pickaxes), and warping in new blockheads.

Acquiring Time Crystals

There are various excellent ways to acquire time crystals. Many of these methods (if not all) have threads, which can be found below. Here I briefly list a few quick hints/tips/ways to get Time Crystals.

  1. Videos. Watching video ads earns you 20 Time Crystals per video view, and you can do this generally at least 5 times a day (more, in many cases). This allows you to earn at least 100 Time Crystals a day, which means that if the update comes out in a month (and it will probably take longer than that), you could have over 3,000 extra time crystals sitting around at least!
  2. Mining. My personal favorite way to get Time Crystals is to mine for them. This must be done in a vanilla world. You can earn 3 time crystals per block that you find (time crystal blocks are located in caves) if you use a regular pickaxe on them, but you will earn 18 per block if you use a diamond pickaxe instead.

No matter what, please refrain from pirating Time Crystals. If you have pirated time crystals, please properly dispose of them.

Additional Sources that May Be Helpful

Maximum Crafting Time Before Your Little BH Needs Rest by @Skeeve - how much time is a time crystal worth?
How To Get Lots of Time Crystals by @Lizzie1
A Quick Guide to Time Crystals2 by @Bren
How to Get 10,000 TC - an illustrated guide3 by @Ronnie
Guide To Hacked/Pirated Time Crystals by @Smeeglefied

Steel (and Iron, and…)

Metals are always a safe investment to make. The most likely metals that you will need are the currently most valuable of the metals: first is steel. Steel is the strongest of the common metals and is actually not that rare or hard to craft, especially when you have a good factory-style setup going and a productive mine. Both of these will be explained in this thread at various points below.
Steel will be useful in making many things that exist already in the game and will help to make you rich, and also will likely be useful to make items that are coming soon :smiley:. (The two things I would most recommend making with your steel and also stocking up on would be steel pickaxes and steel lanterns.)
How much steel is enough? I would recommend storing up at least half of a chest of steel ingots, as this should be enough to get an excellent start on whatever comes. This is plain steel ingots: you’ll want to make more to be able to make products with your steel to also be ready for the update.

Iron is required to make steel, but it is also useful for a whole lot of other things. First off, crowbars. Just kidding, there are more useful things. Iron can make swords (no steel alternative, and much cheaper than titanium), pickaxes (would not recommend because steel is faster and lasts much longer, and for only 5 coal), machetes (the highest tier of machetes are crafted from iron: not even a titanium variant exists that is better). In addition, I would recommend stocking at least half as much iron as you have steel, but better yet you should have as much if not more iron. Remember that if you have more iron than steel and you run out of steel, you’ll be able to easily make more if you’re prepared with an iron overage.

Bronze, tin, and copper are metals that are much less useful by the time you get to late game, but who knows what is coming in this update! You’ll want to be prepared for everything, so I’d recommend storing up a few stacks of each, especially copper and tin (if you have plenty of each and need bronze, that will be no problem!). Copper is useful for wires, which may or may not have additional uses with 1.7 (or whatever upcoming update there may be as future readers view this thread). Tin is useful for tinfoil (cooking fish, plus tinfoil hats (auto-farming!) and buckets, which can be used to make coffee, clay for your lanterns, and more. I love buckets. I made over 400 recently :smiley:

I would also recommend stocking up on other metals (gold, platinum, and titanium). Titanium, being the most valuable/rare metal, is used for some of the best tools4 (swords and pickaxes), the best armor (equal to carbon fiber), and of course, jetpacks. Gold is best used to make gold spades (more shortly on that), and the occasional gold bow. I recommend you keep a few stacks of gold on hand as well. Platinum probably won’t have a whole lot of uses, so I would say that it’s safe to store your platinum as coins instead of ingots. If you want to be especially prepared, you can keep some platinum ingots somewhere, but it’s not too much work to turn coins into ingots if you desperately need those, and coins are likely to be more helpful to you.

In addition, I would try to get around 100 carbon fiber sheets ready in case you’ll need those.

Acquiring

Steel can be crafted at a furnace (regular) for 2 coal and 1 iron ingot. However, it’s better to craft it at an electric furnace because you can save 1 coal per steel ingot: the recipe there is 1 coal and 1 iron ingot per 1 steel ingot.
Iron can be crafted two ways: the regular way, which costs 3 iron ore at a furnace (any) or via pig iron. This way triples your iron output, because instead of costing 3 iron ore for one iron ingot, you can get 1 iron ingot per iron ore and 1/5 of a limestone block. This method involves crushing the limestone at a press (any) into Crushed Limestone, and then crafting Pig Iron at an electric furnace and making that into an iron ingot, also at an electric furnace.
Bronze, copper, and tin are simple and have one way to be crafted: they are crafted at any furnace. Copper and tin are crafted from three of their respective ores, and bronze is crafted from two copper ingots and one tin ingot, to make three bronze ingots.
Gold, platinum, and titanium are all more rare ores. These are all crafted similarly (3 of their respective ores at a furnace (electric furnace required except for gold)), but there are many handy tricks to produce more ores per block you find.

Collecting the ores is where the real tricks can come in:

Gem Pickaxes and Gold Tools

Gem pickaxes are well known and most often used for multiplying output of Time Crystal ore. However, they are also very helpful when mining up metals (especially those rare ones such as titanium, platinum, and even gold). The ascending tiers of gem pickaxes produce greater amounts of the resource you mine than the tier before it:

  • regular pickaxe: 3 of mined ore
  • gold pickaxe (and spade): 3 of mined ore, plus chance for bonus 10 gold ore (may happen multiple times), plus chance for bonus random ores possibly including the ore being mined
  • amethyst pickaxe: 6 of mined ore (2x)
  • sapphire pickaxe: 9 of mined ore (3x)
  • emerald pickaxe: 12 of mined ore (4x)
  • ruby pickaxe: 15 of mined ore (5x)
  • diamond pickaxe: 18 of mined ore (6x)
    I would not recommend making any pickaxe lower than an emerald pickaxe, except for mining time crystals very early-game. I would advise going with ruby or diamond pickaxes for mining ores in most conditions.
    Thing is, gold pickaxes produce their drops randomly on any hit of the block. Since spades aren’t “the right tool for the job”, spades take a lot more hits to break a block than pickaxes do. Gold spades still produce the same drops as gold pickaxes do on the same blocks (i.e., both will drop random ores when used on stone). This means that you can use a gold spade on a block of titanium ore to get more hits in, which leads to a higher chance of getting (more) +10’s of titanium ore. If you leave the last hit for a gem pickaxe, then you can get the bonus 10’s of the ore from the gold tool, and then also get the multiplied number of the final product. I can typically get no more than 3 groups of +10 of the ore I mine, meaning that I max out at 48 titanium ore per block of titanium ore that I find. This is an incredible increase in the amount of titanium ingots you will be able to make - from 1 ingot to 16!

I would recommend using this method on gold (so you can make more gold tools) and titanium. Platinum only if you really want, because I tend to find that I don’t really need a whole lot more platinum. That could just be because I try to stay away from trade portals, though. I will generally only use a gem pickaxe or gold spades on iron ore (typically the former). I may use a gem pickaxe on copper or tin, and I typically will use it on coal - more steel! - but generally I will use a regular pickaxe on copper/tin ores because they are common enough and don’t have so many uses.

Magnets

Magnets can be used if you don’t want to use a gem pickaxe on iron ore. Many people are unaware of the fact, but you can use a magnet on iron ore to retrieve 5 iron ores from a block of iron ore, almost doubling your output! This is especially helpful if you craft it into pig iron first.

You may find that magnets are somewhat expensive to make, but assuming you have a bit of gold to spare that’s no problem! Simply craft a few gold pickaxes / spades (pickaxes will be easier) and use them to mine up black sand. You’ll notice a few magnets, among other items, popping into your inventory.

Spelunking VS Strip Mining

Depending on what you’re looking for and how much space/time you have, you can use either method. Neither is inherently better than the other. Strip mining tends to use more pickaxes, less lights, and produce more metals per space you look in (you won’t have to go as far from home during trips).
Spelunking, which I prefer, uses more lights - and on the topic, I recommend using oil lanterns typically because they don’t cost steel, they cost the almost-renewable clay, and no glass - and uses less pickaxe (yay for us metal cheapskates). You will, however, have longer trips to and from your home. However, you’re also more likely to find Time Crystals and Cave Trolls!
Here is a thread that briefly explains the mining styles.

Additional Sources that May Be Helpful

How To Get Iron by @ErickMatrix (hey, that’s mee!)
Information on every gem/ingot/ore in the game by @Buddy9104
A neat little chart showing mining improvements after version 1.6 by @Skeeve
Mining Styles by @PercyJackson
Deluxe mining base- some tips by @Joe
Converting Copper to Gold & Vice Versa by @ErickMatrix

#2

Coins

Coins is a simple one. You’ll probably want a lot of money to be ready, if you like buying things at the trade portal. This will provide you with things most quickly, assuming they are available there. Since Dave has stated that he is probably nerfing trade portals5, you may need a lot more money.

Helpful Threads

Trade portal profit calculator by @abcboy
Got any more? Let me know via PM.

When you have a lot of money and need to store it, check out this thread:
Compact money by @Buddy9104

Food

Due to food changing in 1.7 5, you will probably want to stock up on food before the update is released. Food is always great anyway, and you’re going to need it eventually, so you might as well get prepared before the update comes out so that you don’t have to spend precious time meditating while you wait for those oranges to grow so that you can keep crafting.
(Remember to stock up on all foods, including things like maple seeds and kelp.

The best foods to stock up on are meats and meals - that is, cooked dodo, cooked fish, dodo stew, and fish curry. If you’re like me, you never have much room in your inventory. If that’s the case, I recommend you stock up on cooked dodo - the stuff is simple (cheap if you’ve got a good dodo farm), quick to make, and quite filling (roughly 75% of your hunger bar will be filled IIRC). Cooked fish is another one that is very simple and cheap - sharks and fish are easy enough to farm, produce a lot of fish meat, and it can be cooked quite simply: it takes tinfoil, which costs 1 tin ingot as opposed to the three iron ingots that a pot costs. The only (small) issue with this is that eating the cooked fish will return to you tinfoil, which means you’ll have less inventory space available.
If you’re going all-out, however, you’ll want dodo stew or fish curry. These are the two master-meals, the best eating you can get. Dodo stew and fish curry both fill equally, and will turn your hunger bar a golden color for I believe five minutes. During this time, your hunger will not diminish. The troubles with these two meals is that they cost a lot more food - a meat plus three grown products (fruits/vegetables) - and they also require an iron pot. Iron pots cost 3 iron ingots each, so they are fairly expensive if you’re being stingy with that iron to store it up, and the pot is returned to your inventory after eating the meal, meaning that, like with cooked fish, you have one less inventory spot available for other items.

I recommend collecting at least a stack of every food, just in case they are used for something (corn chips? tacos?). I also advise that you have plenty of compost in storage somewhere, ready to use if you need a lot more of some kind of food.

Of course, you could also just get a whole bunch of hats of fullness. But where’s the fun in that?

Acquiring

Probably the best way to do this is to make an area where the trees growing food won’t exceed four blocks tall, and have them all start in a one-block-deep hole (in compost). Let them grow, have rails along the entire path except for int he one-block-deep holes, and send your blockhead along on a handcar to collect food during its season!

Additional Sources that May Be Helpful

The Ultimate Guide to Farming by @ErickMatrix
Laziest Way to Farm also by @ErickMatrix
Mass Production of Coffee by @Ace42292
Helpful tip for harvesting tree items :) by @Ace42292
If there is a thread on how to do the rail farming I explained above, please send me a PM so that I can add it to this list.

Coffee

Little is more annoying than running out of energy when you’re 90% done with crafting some long-awaited product. This can always be remedied with coffee! There are so many threads about coffee, I’m just going to put down the one by Ace again (even though it’s kinda old). I really recommend stocking up on coffee. Even if there weren’t an update coming out soon, coffee is never something you can have too much of! (I have chests upon chests full of coffee. :slight_smile:)

Mass Production of Coffee by @Ace42292

Tools

You ought to stock up on tools. You’ll use them anyway, and you would even without the update coming out, right?
Here’s a list of tools you’ll need, and in order of importance:

  • pickaxes
  • lanterns
  • swords
  • machetes
  • spades

Pickaxes will be used when you go mining. You should do a lot of mining, so you should need a lot of pickaxes. I prefer to use the steel pickaxe because it is 1) almost as fast as a titanium pickaxe, 2) lasts for a very long time, and 3) is much cheaper than a titanium pickaxe, not much more expensive than and iron pickaxe, and works about as quickly as a titanium pickaxe. I would advise that you use steel pickaxes, not iron or titanium, but that is personal preference.

Lanterns are also very important. I prefer to use oil lanterns most often, becauase they are much cheaper than steel lanterns. Oil lanterns cost clay and oil: oil comes from flax seeds, and clay comes from dirt and water. Steel lanterns cost steel, glass, and oil, and aren’t a whole lot brighter than oil lanterns. I believe that oil lanterns are most cost efficient for these reasons, but if you are rich enough for this not to be an issue then don’t worry about it. Either way, I recommend you have at least some steel lanterns available in case you find water in a cave. When I go mining, I like to have at least one chest full of lanterns when I start. (I typically have a portal chest with me so that I can get as many more as I ever need and have one blockhead that never leaves the mine.)

Swords are going to be helpful, I feel like. With many major updates of the past, new creatures have been introduced - first fish and sharks, then cave trolls, then scorpions. Since there wasn’t one in 1.6, I feel like it’s all the more likely that a new creature of some sort (hoping for something flying around on the sky islands) will exist, and I imagine you’ll want to go hunt them down. Swords, then, should be crafted (I would use iron/steel, can’t currently remember if there is a steel sword), since it’s, again, so much cheaper than titanium and so much better than bronze. I would also have a few gold bows, in case the new creature is some sort of ranged or flying one.

Machetes and spades were at the bottom of the list, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need them. Machetes are great for getting sticks and plants, and spades (especially the tin spade) are “plant matter splatters”. I think that’s actually the description for a machete, but it is quite the case. Pro tip: if possible, always use a tin spade to chop down your plants - they don’t lose durability and you still get the right-tool-bonus.

Rails

I’m not sure just how much nerfing will happen to Trade Portals, nor if any will happen to Portal Chests (I currently don’t believe any will happen to Portal Chests), but you may want to use rails as a transportation method, or be prepared to. This is just something bonus that I feel like may be helpful (especially as a way to save Time Crystals and money (i.e. teleportation or portal chests, or buying from a trade portal).

Acquiring

You’d be best off crafting rails (2 steel and 1 wood at a train bench), but you can also buy rails at a Trade Portal.

I must honorarily mention @Skeeve and @jemnidad in this section for their known association/fascination with railways and their uses. And just because I feel like getting their attention.

A Factory World

If you have a whole lot of storage and are going to want to be ready to start running a factory to sell these new items at the trade portal that are no doubt going to be getting drastically more expensive, especially within the first couple weeks after release, then you will probably want a factory world. This will allow you to craft constantly and make items as quickly as possible.
My factory worlds generally have 3-5 of every bench, 3-5 blockheads (all with hats of fullness), a lot of coffee easily available, and all electric benches are powered as much as possible with solar panels and a lot of flywheels. This is so that I don’t run out of power while I am off doing something elsewhere, because that is also a huge pain. (Typically I can’t run more than one refinery at a time off of solar power, though).

Less Common Stuff

Based on what we saw in 1.6, we can’t rule out less common items. I believe we were all caught by surprise by the superb need for oil that was needed for jetpacks. As a result, I recommend that you stock up on at least a decent amount of every item currently available in the game. Need help sorting? Check out these threads:
A Guide to Inventory Organization6 by @Skeeve
Sorting Your Items! by @ErickMatrix

Server Credit

Aside from having a bunch of time crystals available and ready, if you have any servers that you own or that you’d like to see stick around for a while, you should fill the credit up to the brim. The more time in the server, the longer it will be around after the update comes out (because in case you weren’t aware, server credit will cost real money in 1.7 onward)

Acquiring

The best way to get time added to a server is by adding it in large quantities at a time - it’s cheaper to add 1x30 days than it is to ad 30x1 day, or (4x7)+(2x1) days. The best way to add credit is a month at a time - 30 days for 2000 crystals.
Just before the update comes out, you should make sure the server has as much as possible. If you can, get it up to around 90-100 days without getting the credit so high that you can’t add more, and then add a 30-days credit, and you can get up to 120-130 days of credit stored up this way, as opposed to ending up with only 90-100 days stored up.

See the Acquiring section of Time Crystals for more details, hints, and tips.

Credit where credit is due:

1I cannot guarantee that Time Crystals will be usable in Expert Mode worlds at this point, and by the time that I know I will not be allowed to share details, so I’ll leave this as is.
2 This thread is very out of date and some methods within no longer work (primarily, the entire part about invisible backwall). The thread is linked to for its information on Time Crystals and gem pickaxes.
3Personal recommendation. This method is probably the best way to mine for time crystals.
4I would not recommend making titanium swords or pickaxes. While they are better than steel, steel gets the job done well enough. Titanium lasts longer, but it doesn’t have a very high mining speed or damage boost as compared to steel, and so for the value I do not consider it worth it. I would advise you keep your titanium for more valuable things (or just sell it for roughly 15-20 platinum coins per ingot, if you’re in need of money).
5See quote below

Here

6Personal recommendation, and what I myself currently use now. Best suited to a massive storage area, not a small one.

Wow, over 4,000 words. This ended up being a bit bigger than I was expecting. Hope you guys don’t have trouble reading through it all, and I definitely hope this helps you guys to prepare!

This is broken into two posts because I was ‘tagging too many people’ or something, plus I figure a 4,000 word post is a bit big. Please don’t complain because I’m pretty sure this is fine.

Repeating this:
DISCLAIMER: This is all speculatory. You’ll probably need these items based on past updates and spoilers given by @majicDave about 1.7.

Comments, questions, criticism? Did I get any facts wrong, or miss anything? Please let me know! I want this guide to be the best it can be, and that may require some input from you. :slight_smile:

#3

Very detailed, @ErickMatrix! Lots of effort put into it.

#4

may i ask how long it took you to type those 4000 word @ErickMatrix ? seems like it would take 2-3 hours
edit:

HAH

i didnt know you could do this word enlarging thing. i only knew it after seeing your post

#5

Yes, roughly two and a half hours. A lot of that time was spent looking for the many threads I linked to.

#6

Sorry but there is too much reading

#7

That is why I included the TL;DR, located at the top of the first post.

I knew that if I had it at the bottom, people who thought it was too long wouldn’t make it that far, but I figured they might read the first paragraph at least…

#8

Well done @ErickMatrix on such an excellent and comprehensive guide!

#9

Yeah, well done. @ErickMatrix just out of curiosity, what makes you think we will need more of all the stuff than we do need in 1.6? It’s obviously a good idea to max out server credit, but all the rest?

#10

Can someone summarize this for me please?

#11

Lame. Why dont you just read the summary Erick provided near the top of the OP? He pointed you towards it 40 min ago :see_no_evil::see_no_evil:

#12

Very nice collection of information, Erick! Well organized too. I love most that it is one stop shopping for me to remind myself of things I’ve learned or read before but have forgotten. I’ve also learned one or two new things which was a wonderful surprise. I think this guide will help me most even now before the new release when I play on WFS servers and challenge/survival servers where it’s important to get to a certain point quickly for protection and survival, or on custom worlds with precious few resources. It will be great to reference in expert mode with the new release.

As a fellow member of the thousand-words club here, you absolutely should not apologize for 4,000 words. Insults, derogatory comments, jokes behind one’s back, or getting flack for it directly has always been a sign of poor character in my book. (I’ve been a target on these forums and in message groups in all those ways, even earlier this year at the hands of whom I thought were my friends,) I’m certain you have overheard even mild criticism of someone else’s long post at one time or another, and therefore are self conscious about it yourself, but you don’t need to be. You don’t even need to give fair warning. Your thioughtful TL;DR was sufficient in being considerate. Quality and clarity take a lot of words, period. Your post is high quality, and clear as day. Thank you for your gift of time to do this for us.

@TheFoil when you love the game deeply enough to be ready to really learn the finer tricks of the trade, of which there are too many to fit into your preferred sized paragraph, come back to this thread. In the meantime it is not for you. You asked someone to summarize, but that is exactly what Erick just did, and the summary takes 4,000 words, period. There really is that much in this game. Might I suggest that you bookmark this thread. Then read one section/heading at a time and put it away. Come back the next day and read another paragraph, then put it away. That will let you have time to let it sink into your long term memory and be able to practice some of the advice in that section while you are playing right now. Eventually you will get through this, and finally have a clear understanding that you couldn’t summarize it with any less words if you tried, without miscommunication and confusion. I hope you try my advice, because a summary would leave you without very much value.

#13

I don’t recall saying how much we needed before 1.6 :wink:

Some things, like food, titanium ingots and platinum coins, etc we will need more of than we did before 1.6 for what should be some fairly obvious reasons (hunger changes and didn’t exist, respectively).

One reason for the bulk of everything is that, like me, I imagine people will want to make a lot of the new things (5 jetpacks as opposed to one, for example). Extra of the products can be sold because, as I said, it’s very likely that such will be profitable at a trade portal during the first few weeks.

#14

Nice job! I tried reading it all and i ended up skimming through it :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

So detailed :slight_smile: , like Best I , skimmed over it … lol
Is there a part that says fill your server up with TC credit in 1.7 to keep it running for a while instead of paying cash for a month of credit ? I think that’s useful .

#16

Added a section on server time. I meant to have it in the primary body of the message, but it was late and I forgot (it was in the TL;DR though…).

#17

Thank you!

#19

OH god no.
I’m not working for you, you made me leave the forums.

#21

Wow, truly a must-read for new players! I actually learned quite a bit there! (And yes, I read every single word. The inner bookworm couldn’t resist!)

:scream: Whaaaaat?? I’ve been doing this all wrong! Who knew bashing a titanium block with a gold spade a few times could equal so much titanium goodness??

Oh, and I’d like to say that titanium swords are actually an excellent use of your titanium, if you’re aiming to sell it. Ingots alone sell for 10-15 platinum each, but titanium swords sell for 70-80 platinum. Doing some simple math, we can figure that crafting your titanium into swords before selling increases the profits by 35-40 platinum per 3 ingots!

#22

I do have to say that this is a really detailed, awesome guide! It includes a lot of information to help people for 1.7.
(As I am a noob)