Tried to craft a vanilla pickaxe only to find "You cannot make vanilla tools, use Tinker's Construct" and was confused on how to do it? Here is a guide.Tinker's Construct is the main mod used for tools in this modpack. It is very robust, allowing incredible tool customization and variety. Each tool is made up of multiple parts, and each part can be made out of dozens of materials. The options can be overwhelming, so you'll find some guidance down below.
Link to the mod's page on CurseForge
Tinker's Construct pickaxe with a stone pickaxe head, wooden tool rod, and wooden binding
Getting Started with Tinker's Construct[]
Creating Your First Tools[]
To create your first Tinker's tool crafting setup, at minimum, you'll need a Stencil Table, a Part Builder, a Tool Station, and 6 or more Blank Patterns. Personally, I also recommend making a Pattern chest and some extra blank patterns.
Once you've created your items, in your base, set up the Stencil Table, Part Builder, and Tool Station (and optional Pattern Chest), so that they are touching each other. Now, interact with one of them, and you will notice that each block is accessible through the use of tabs at the top of the user interface. Start at the Stencil Table; this is where you create the patterns that are used to create tool parts. Place your Blank Patterns in the slot on the left, and choose your desired pattern from the grid on the left. You will definitely need a pickaxe, so check what you need to make a pickaxe in the Tool Station. If you click on the pickaxe icon in the Tool Station, you will see that there are slots for a pickaxe head, a tool rod, and a binding. So, you know that you need patterns for all three of those parts. If you want to create other tools, note which parts you need in the Tool Station, and make patterns for those parts in the Stencil Table.
A simple Tinker's Construct tool crafting setup. From left to right: Stencil Table, Pattern Chest, Part Builder, Tool Station
Once your patterns are created, you can place them in the optional pattern chest if you have it. Now, it is time to move on to the Part Builder. If you have a pattern chest, in the Part Builder interface, you will be able to click on patterns in a grid on the left in order to automatically put them into the proper slot. If not, just place the desired pattern in the leftmost slot. Let's start with the pickaxe head. With the pickaxe head pattern in the pattern slot, you can place a material in one of the other two slots (it doesn't matter which) to see that material's properties. Try placing some flint in the material slot. A quick mouseover of the pickaxe head pattern will let you know that you need two units of material to make a pickaxe head, so place 2 flint in the material slot and notice that the right side of the screen shows stats for the material. There are individual stats for head parts, extra parts, and tool parts. In the case of flint, you can see that it has 150 base durability as a head, which is pretty good for your first tool. It also has the Crude II trait.
If you mouse over this trait, you will see that it does bonus damage to unarmed mobs, so that won't be very useful for your pickaxe. You could compare this to wood, which has a durability of 35. These are probably your two main choices at this point, so flint is clearly the way to go for the head. Go ahead and craft a flint pickaxe head. Now, to save me some writing and you some time, I recommend crafting a wood tool rod and wood binding; they have passable stats and are incredibly cheap. It is important to note that you can upgrade your tool by swapping out individual parts at any time, so these will quickly be changed out for superior materials. Once your parts are created, interact with the Tool Station, choose the pickaxe in the grid on the left, and place your parts in the correct slots. Before you grab the pickaxe from the output slot, you can give it a name in the input bar toward the top of the interface. Once you've given your pickaxe a name (or not), you can grab it and claim it as your own. Note that this pickaxe has a mining level of Flint. In this modpack, that means it can mine things like stone, coal ore, and copper ore. To mine higher level things like iron ore, you will have to progress along in the Getting Started questline.
Along with a pickaxe, I also recommend making a shovel, a mattock (think hoe/axe combo), and a sword (for the sword, don't forget that you can use the cactus sword blade). I recommend making the shovel and mattock with wood tool rods, stone bindings, and stone heads (this allows for cheap repairing), and making the sword with a bone tool rod (or wood, if you don't have a bone), a flint binding, and a cactus sword blade. This set of parts gives quite a bit of damage, with good material traits to boot.
Upgrading Your Tools[]
Really quick, if you want to learn how to upgrade your tools, find some stone and mine at least one piece, or, ideally, just use Ore Excavate to mine a bunch of stone. Once you have mined some cobblestone, create one stone binding in the Part Builder. Now, put your pickaxe into the middle of the Tool Station, and place your new Stone Binding in one of the slots surrounding the pickaxe. You will see the new, upgraded pickaxe in the output slot on the right. You can compare the stats of your original tool and the potential new tool before finalizing the upgrade. Note that the upgraded pickaxe has a bit more durability, as well as the cheap modifier, which allows the tool to be fully repaired with fewer materials. I also recommend replacing the flint pickaxe head with a stone one to allow for cheaper repairing.
Repairing Your Tools[]
To repair your tools, simply place a tool in the middle of the Tool Station Interface, and place materials that match the tool's head in any of the surrounding slots. For example, for your flint-headed pickaxe, you can just place flint in any of those slots. Pull your tool out of the output slot to use up 1-2 materials and increase your tool's durability. You can also repair tools by creating Sharpening Kits in the Part Builder, and combining your tool with the sharpening kit in a crafting table. For that reason, I recommend making a stack or so of stone sharpening kits, and keeping a stone shovel and stone mattock until later in the game. This way, you have tools that can vein mine without expending lots of your better resources.
Metal Tool Parts[]
Metal tool parts must be cast from molten metal in a Smeltery. For more information on the Tinker's Construct Smeltery, go here.
Tools to Aim For[]
Work in progress