Getting Started (Tinkers' Construct)

Tinkers' Construct is a mod based on many different tools and weapons that can be customized fairly easily. You can unlock some tools with special abilities and some customization that vanilla tools may not have.

Tinker's Basic Tools
To get started with Tinkers', you will need a few logs. You should have a book to start off with and can be crafted into two other books. You can read them for basic information. Get yourself a few patterns and build yourself: Grab another three patterns and put them into the Stencil Table. You now have access to most of the stencils for different part of tools in Tinkers'! Pull out the Tool Rod, the Binding and the Pickaxe Head. Get into the Part Builder and make one of each in wood. Store your pattern in the Pattern Chest and go in the Tool Station. Click on the pickaxe and place the part in the right spot. Name the pick if you want and take it out. Voila! your first Tinkers' tool! Go mine a few Cobblestone and redo this whole operation from the Part Builder, but in stone! You can also grab yourself an hatchet, which is an axe, a shovel and a basic sword. You can also mix and match different materials. Your tool broke? Go back to the Tool Station, put it in with a piece of the head's material and take it out with recovered durability. Now you know how to repair your tool!
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Building
To make parts out of metal, you will need the Smeltery. Grab yourself a stack of, and  to combine them into two stacks of Grout. Smelt the Grout to get Seared Brick. While it's smelting, find a pool of Lava, since you will need it to smelt items in the Smeltery. Grab your Seared Bricks and make
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You should have acquired a book on how to build the Smeltery! It also contains information on alloys and other properties of the Smeltery. Build a 3x3 base out of Seared Bricks, then go up one and one out (5x5) and place the remaining blocks as you like. Be sure the drains' hole is pointing outwards and place Faucets on them. Place the Casting Table and Basin one block below the Faucets. Put your Lava into the tank. Now you have a Smeltery that is ready to go! Note that the Smeltery can be expanded upward. It can also be made in 5x5 of 7x7 dimensions instead of just the 3x3. Also, it doubles ore-to-ingot output!

I want awesome parts now!
To get some new parts, you will need either Gold or Aluminum Brass. Aluminum Brass is made at a 3:1 ratio of Aluminum to Copper in the Smeltery. Each conversion will give 6 ingots worth of Aluminium Brass. Aluminum Brass can make casts, which are needed for metallic tools. To make casts, you will need one ingot of molten Aluminum Brass or two ingots of molten Gold and the part you want to make a cast of (e.g., you would need a pickaxe made out of wood or stone to make a Pickaxe Head Cast). Put the part on the Casting table and right-click on the faucet. It will pour out one or two ingots, depending on what metal you are using. After, you need to smelt down one or more ingots' worth of Iron into the Smeltery. If the Smeltery is not empty, you will need to switch the metal since it will pour the metal on the bottom out first. Go into the interface and left-click the metal you want at the bottom (In this case, iron). Pour it out the same way you did for the cast, but with the cast on the table. Now you have an Iron Pickaxe Head. You know how to do tools, go for it!

Tiering up!
Now that you can make metal parts, you will need to progress to alumite or steel (if you have a mod that includes steel) since those two materials can break ardite and cobalt, both of which can be found in the Nether. Alumite needs a 2:2:5 ratio of Obsidian:Iron:Aluminum. But first, you need a tool to mine Obsidian! Any tool with a diamond modifier will be able to. The other materials available are Obsidian and Thaumium (from Thaumcraft). Very few choices!

After you acquire some Cobalt and Ardite, you can access Manyullyn, the best material for weapons.

Advanced Tinker's
To access the advanced Tinkers' tools, you need to build a Tool Forge.

This costly little guy will let you build, for a costly price, three important upgrades of regular tools (as well as a few others): The Hammer from the Pickaxe, the Excavator from the Shovel, and the Lumber Axe from the Axe.

Material Traits
Reinforced: Acts like a level of Unbreaking.

Find on: Iron (1), Bronze (1), Steel (2), Alumite (2), Cobalt (2), Obsidian (3)

Stonebound: Increase speed while decreasing attack as the tool damage goes up.

Find on: Stone (1), Netherrack (1), Ardite (2)

Jagged: Increase attack while decreasing speed as the tool damage goes up.

Find on: Cactus (1)

Writable: Extra modifier slot

Find on: Paper (1)

Thaumic: Extra modifier slot according to the number of piece used: One, three and full give you each a modifier.

Find on: Thaumium (1)

For All
Diamond: +500 durability, increase tool mining level to 3. (Once only)

Emerald: +50% durability, increase tool mining level to 2.(Once only)

Lapis Lazuli: Luck or fortune. One level at 100, 300 and 450.

Ball of Moss: Auto-repair (Once only)

Lava Crystal: Fire aspect lasting 3 seconds or autosmelt. (Once only)

Flux Capacitor (Requires Thermal Expansion 3): Use redstone flux energy instead of durability. (Once only)

Obsidian Plate: Add a level of Reinforced. (see above)

Diamond + Gold block: Unlocks a modifier slot. (Once only)

Nether star: Unlocks a modifier slot. (Once only)

Enchanted golden apple + Diamond Block: Unlocks a modifier slot. (Once only)

For Tools
Redstone: +0.08 speed per redstone. Up to 50 per modifier slot.

Silky Jewel: Silk Touch

For Weapons
Nether Quartz: Adds sharpness. +0.5 attack at 1, 36 and 72 quartz. Up to 72/Modifier Slot

Blaze Powder: Adds fire aspect. +0.2 seconds per powder. Up to 25/Modifier Slot

Necrotic Bone: Adds Life steal. 0-1 hearts per hit, per bone added.

Piston: Adds knockback to the tool. Up to 10/Modifier Slot

Obsidian + Ender pearl: Adds a level of Beheading.

Fermented Spider Eyes: Adds Bane of Arthropods. +1-2 hearts per level. Takes 4 per level

Consecrated Soil: Adds Smite. +1-2 hearts per level. Takes 36 per level

Some other known Abilities
Cleaver: Has beheading

Hammer and Excavator: Mines Stone/harder materials and Dirt respectively in a 3x3 space centered on the mined block

Scythe: Cuts and attacks in a 3x3x3 cube.

Lumber Axe and Battleaxe: Chops down tree to a maximum of 30 and 9.

Rapier: Bypasses armor

Hammer: Has Smite

Tinkers', beside the tools?
Tinkers' Construct, beside the tools, also offer a few gadgets. Most of them are now in a mod called Tinkers' Mechworks. However it keeps two major components: Tinkers' armor and heart canisters.

Canisters
The canisters come in three different levels: Red, Yellow and Green. Miniature Red Hearts drop from any mobs and can be eaten to restore 10 full hearts of life. They can also be crafted into Red Heart Canisters. Miniature Yellow Hearts will drop from boss mob and will restore 20 full hearts of life when eaten. They can be crafted into Yellow Heart Canisters and into Miniature Green Hearts by surrounding them with Emeralds. The latter will restore a full 30 hearts when eaten and can be crafted into Green Heart Canisters. You can have a maximum of ten for each type of heart for a grand total of 80 life point, or 40 hearts!

Armor
Tinkers' armor can be crafted by using Bronze Large Plates (The same one used into hammer recipe) in the same shape as vanilla armor. Each of them can be modified, like their tool counterpart. Each armor piece has a total of 30 modifiers. Note that not every modifier takes only one spot! You can mix and match the modifiers.

Modifier
Redstone: 1 modifier per piece, adds 1% speed each (Max 30% per armor piece)

Diamond: 3 modifier per piece, adds 5% attack damage (Max 50% per armor piece)

Gold: 2 modifier per piece, adds 1% knockback resistance (Max 15% per armor piece)

Block of Quartz: 5 modifier per piece, adds 5 attack damage (Max 6 damage per armor piece)

Iron Large Plate: 3 modifier per piece, adds 2% protection (Max 20% protection per armor piece)

Red Heart Canister: 6 modifier per piece, adds 2 max health or 1 heart (Max 10 health per armor piece, giving you a maximum of 120 health or 60 hearts)

Congealed Blue Slime, Congealed Green Slime, and Ghast Tear: 5 modifier per piece, adds Jump boost

Other
Other than all this, Tinkers' also adds one mob and a few worldgen items. The Blue Slime will spawn on a blue slime island, which can be found up at around y=150. These will spawn with special dirt and grass known as Blue Slime Dirt and Slimy Grass. It will also generate Slimy Water, which will spawn those Blue Slimes.

For ore generation, Tinkers' adds Copper, Tin, and Aluminum ore in the Overworld and Ardite and Cobalt ore in the Nether.