Knapping, clay and smithing

Tool heads, pottery, molds and metal parts are shaped: a work piece made of voxels lies on a work surface, and every click changes one voxel until the piece matches the recipe’s target. Three materials are shaped this way, each on its own surface, as data/crafting.json defines them.

Material	Surface	Piece	Starts as	Gestures
Flint (knapping)	Knapping Stone	10 x 10, 1 layer	full	remove
Clay	Clay Forming Board	16 x 16, 8 layers	empty	add, remove
Metal	Stone Anvil, Bronze Anvil	16 x 16, 6 layers	the ingot, 8 x 3 voxels, 2 layers high, in the middle	hit, upset, split

Making the surfaces

The knapping stone and the forming board are made by hand, the anvils at a workbench.

4

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Knapping Stone

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Clay Forming Board

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Stone Anvil

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Bronze Anvil

The knapping stone takes any 4 pebbles, the board any log, and the stone anvil any stone (stone, andesite, basalt, granite, limestone or sandstone).

Working a piece, step by step

1. Hold the material and press the interact key (E by default) on an empty surface: it lays one of it down (a flint, a ball of clay, an ingot or a work piece) and starts the piece.
2. Aim at the piece: a recipe picker lists the recipes it may become, those your character knows. The right mouse button goes to the next recipe, the left one chooses it.
3. The recipe takes the rest of its material from your inventory (most clay recipes ask for 2 or 3 balls of clay). Until a recipe is chosen, the interact key takes the material back untouched.
4. The target shows as ghost voxels. Each click makes one gesture on the voxel under the crosshair.
5. The gesture that makes the piece exactly the target gives the output (into the inventory, the rest dropped on the surface) and empties the surface. A gesture after which the target can no longer be reached ruins the piece: the surface empties and gives back what it gives for a ruined piece.

Every voxel rests on the floor of the piece or on the voxel below it. A piece is therefore a height per column: removing or cutting always takes the top voxel of a column, and adding always puts one on top. Gestures are limited to 15 a second, with a burst of 30 after a pause.

Knapping flint

Lay a Flint or a Flint Shard on the knapping stone. The piece starts as a full single layer of 10 x 10 voxels.

• Left button, holding a flint or any pebble (such as a Stone Pebble): knocks the voxel off. The striker is not worn.
• Flakes never come back. Knocking off one voxel of the target ruins the piece, and a ruined flint gives a Flint Shard, which can itself be knapped again.

Inputs: Flint

Layer 1 (bottom)

Result: Flint Chisel Blade

The flint recipes give the heads of every flint tool (axe, chisel, hammer, hoe, knife, pickaxe, saw, shovel, sickle), a spear head, and 4 Flint Arrowhead from one flint. See Tools and mining to haft them.

Forming clay

Lay a Clay Ball on the forming board (a block of Clay kneads into 4 balls by hand). The piece starts empty: you build it up layer by layer, with empty hands.

• Left button: pulls the top voxel off.
• Right button: presses a voxel on top of the column.
• Since a voxel can always be pressed back, a clay piece is never ruined.

Inputs: Clay Ball

Layer 1 (bottom)

Layer 2

Result: Raw Roof Tile

The clay recipes give raw (unfired) pieces: a bowl, a pot, a jar, a crucible, a brick, a roof tile and the molds (ingot, axe head, pickaxe head, blade). They still have to be fired, see Fire and stations.

Smithing metal

The Stone Anvil works copper only; the Bronze Anvil works copper and bronze. Lay on it a hot Copper Ingot or Bronze Ingot, or a work piece of that metal: the anvil lays the ingot’s 48 voxels down in the middle (8 x 3, 2 layers high).

Gesture	Button	In hand	What it does
Hit	left	a hammer	flattens the top voxel down onto the lowest of the four neighbouring columns, where it lands lower than it sat (east, west, south, north first on a tie)
Upset	right	a hammer	pushes the top voxel sideways onto the next column in the direction you look, where it lands at the same height or lower
Split	left	a chisel	cuts the top voxel off

Each gesture wears the hammer or the chisel by 1 use. The hammer moves metal without losing any; the chisel removes it. A piece left with fewer voxels than the target can never be finished: it is ruined, and a ruined metal piece gives nothing back.

Inputs: Copper Ingot

Layer 1 (bottom)

Temperature: 🔥 600 °C

Result: Copper Chisel Blade

Heat

Every gesture needs the piece at the recipe’s work temperature at least: 600 degrees for the copper recipes, 500 for the bronze ones. A piece is laid on the anvil at the temperature of the item, and it cools there by 5 degrees every game second down to the air’s 15 degrees. A cold ingot must be heated first.

When the piece gets too cold:

1. Press the interact key on the anvil: the piece comes off as a work piece (Copper Work Piece or Bronze Work Piece) at its current temperature. Its voxels and its recipe stay waiting on the anvil.
2. Reheat it in a station’s slot, such as the Bronze Forge: an item in a station moves toward the station’s temperature by 25 degrees every game second.
3. Press the interact key on the anvil with the work piece in hand: it goes back exactly where it was, at its new temperature.

The finished part keeps the heat of the piece. Hot metal above 60 degrees burns whoever carries it (2 damage a second) unless tongs are in the hotbar, and it glows from 400 degrees. A work piece, like an ingot, also melts back in a crucible into 2 units of its metal (see Metalworking).

The metal recipes give the copper and bronze heads of every tool, sword blades, mace and war axe heads, and armour scales and studs. Their recipe pages, under recipes, show each target.