Quick Starting Guide

Hello and welcome to this guide to ExPetrum that will let you know how to not die on your first night and have a successfulll playthough with the mod!
This guide is divided into "ages". Each age is started when you progress to that age in the game and ends with you crafting the item necessary to progress into the next age.
This guide was written for ExPetrum v 1.0.9.

Preparations

In order to have a nice time playing with the mod some preparations might be in order.
For starters ExPetrum while ment as a standalone experience has a list of recommended mods to include in your modpack.
These mods are chosen to provide a more entertaining gameplay while barely affecting your performance and load time.
Keep in mind that these are simply recommended mods - you are free to install whatever mods you want.

Recommended Mods:


Any kind of minimap: Voxelmap/Journeymap/Xaero's Minimap/Antique Atlas/Mapwriter 2/Etc.

A minimap greatly enhances your experience playing with ExPetrum.
In ExPetrum you will need to explore a lot to find the items you need to progress. As such knowing where your home is at all times is essential.
Additionally if you happen to find an ore cluster having the ability to mark it in any way is very helpful.


Nutrition

Nutrition is a mod designed to make you eat different kinds of food instead of sticking to one for the rest of time.
It is recommended since eating healthy and gaining benefits from it is realistic.
ExPetrum has a compatibility patch with Nutrition so various food added by ExPetrum contributes to nutrition levels.
This mod will enhance your gameplay by making you search/create different food instead of sticking to a group of fruit trees you found earlier.


Chisel And Bits

Chisel and bits is a mod that allows you to build finer details by allowing you to chisel off bits of blocks.
It will help you build more realistic buildings as in real life not everything is square.
ExPetrum doesn't include this feature since there is already a mod that does exactly this - and this is the mod being recommended to you right now.
ExPetrum has a compatibility patch with Chisel And Bits allowing you to craft chisels from that mod by using chisels added by ExPetrum.


Just Enough Items

Just Enough Items is a recipe lookup mod.
ExPetrum adds quite a lot of different recipes and methods of crafting and the wiki isn't 100% complete exactly bacause JEI exists.
In game you will need to constantly consult with something to know how to craft the items you need and JEI is the prime candidate.
Additionally if you have other mods installed JEI will show you the recipes for blocks/items/fluids added by those mods aswell.
ExPetrum has a compatibility patch with JEI allowing you to see recipes added by ExPetrum even if they are done in an exotic manner(for example JEI allows you to see alloy compositions).

Stone Age

So you create a new world. Make sure that the world type is set to ExPetrum while you are in the world creation GUI.
A new world welcomes you! However this is not the time for aimless wandering around. It is essential to do some things right from the start:
First of all you need to find a source of fresh water. While rain can create puddles of water on the ground it is unreliable at best and doesn't happen during winter. Water puddles also will evaporate over time.
Finding a river or a lake should be your top priority.

When you've found yourself a source of water it is time to think about a source of food.
Good early game source of food are wild crops, berry bushes or fruit trees.
You can easily spot wild crops. Just hold right mouse button to harvest them. Note that by harvesting them that way you will be destroying the crop with no chance to get the seeds so leave at least one crop be(usually not all the crops in the patch will be grown so you will end up leaving one or two be).

Berry bushes generate quite often and when they do - they already have berries on them so you don't have to wait for the berries to grow. To harvest the berries must hold your right mouse button. Note that this method of harvesting isn't guaranteed to give you berries and will fail in ~20% of all cases. However for now you don't have a better way of harvesting them.

Fruit trees aren't worth much when you've just created the world since they won't have fruits. However they are worth marking on your minimap if they are close enough since as long as the chunk is loaded they will eventually bear fruit. To harvest fruits simply break the fruit block with either your hands or a knife.

If the food is taking too much space in your inventory remember that you can combine identical food up until the point where the result weights more than 10kg.


Now when you have food and water it's finally time to progress.
Find some pebbles on the ground. They are extremely common and easy to spot. Then just break them with anything to receive rocks. You will need a lot of rocks so harvest a lot of pebbles.

Then break some bushes or some tree leaves to obtain sticks. Yet again you will need a lot of these since they will be your fuel source later on.

Finally break the tallgrass around yourself to gather some twine. You won't need much of these so collect ~15.

Finding some flint will allow you to collect less pebbles since flint won't randomly break while knapping but it is optional.

Now when you are done harvesting find yourself a boulder. These are easy to spot and chances are you've already passed by a couple of them.
Now take your flint or rocks and start knapping the boulder. Just hold right-click untill the shape of the boulder changes.

Refer to the knapping page for boulder shapes.
When you are satisfied with the shape simply right-click the boulder with an empty hand to grab your tool head.
You want an Axe head, a Hammer head and a Chisel head. Everything else is optional although a shovel head is also recommended.
When you are done combine 4 twine to make a plant fiber. Then you can combine a stick, a plant fiber and a toolhead to make your first stone tools!


Now when you have an axe time to fell some trees! This process is simple enough although look out for falling trees. This will give you some necessary logs.
After you are done gathering logs find yourself some place to call home for a while. If you have time dig some dirt and make a basic dirt perimeter around your newfound home to protect yourself from wolves that will surely come during the night.
Time to make your first crafting blocks. You will need to make a campfire and a pottery station. Use JEI to learn the recipes for these.


Your next task is to find some clay. It is fairly common in the world so it should be easy to find. After you've found a clay pool start digging. A shovel will help you dig faster!

You will need a fair amount of clay so dig as much as you can.
While you are searching for clay be sure to probe every ore deposit you find. Just right click an ore boulder with a chisel while having a hammer in your inventory to get the ore. Make sure to leave waypoints near the ore deposits because chances are - you will be coming there later to mine those ores.
Next use the pottery station to make yourself a clay pot. At least one is required, more is optional. You can also make a jug if you want to do it. Refer to this page to learn how to use the pottery minigame.

Since you want to make some tools you also need to make some tool molds. A saw and a pickaxe are necessary, anything else is optional.
Next use 2 flint to make a firestarter, put some fuel(sticks or logs) in your campfire and right-click it with the fire starter to light it up.

Put your clay pottery into the campfire and let it heat up to Red. This is the temperature level at which your pottery will become ceramic.
Ceramic pots can be used as a crappy storage but this early anything helps.

Your next task is to find some copper. Any kind will do(Bornite, Chalcocite, Chalcopyrite or Malachite are all copper ores). You will need 10 units of ore.

Remember to mark any ore deposits you find especially if they are tin, bismuth or zinc deposits!
Aditionally if you have any raw meat on your hands remember that you can cook it in a campfire to preserve it and have a great supply of food.
Next open the pot and put exactly 10 ores in it's inventory.

Then put the pot with those 10 ores in it in a campfire and let it heat up to red.
After it's done quickly grab the pot from the campfire, open the interface and put your tool mold in it's now only slot.
If everything is done correcly you will have on your hands a tool head mold with a copper tool head inside!

Then all that's left is to put the tool mold in your crafting grid to get the tool head and combine that tool head with a stick to get your first copper tool!




Chalcolithic Age

Now when you have a saw it is time to progress further.
Craft yourself some planks from the logs you've been collecting and then craft a workbench out of those planks. You will need it.
You can also use the planks to craft a crate now when you have a crafting table. Crates are a much better storage solution(125% better in fact) than the pots.
Next you will need a lot of things so you can go ahead and spend some time building now when you have access to a material that won't fall on your head - wood. You can also craft doors, fances and fence gates!
Remember that you can make torches by putting sticks into a campfire.
You will need more ore. Craft some Support Beams and grab your pickaxe - it's time to mine!
Head to those copper ores you've been marking on your minimap and start digging down. When you encounter an ore digging around it is a good idea - ores spawn in big clusters in a circular shape.

Your pick is likely to break from mining all those ores - that's why you are mining copper right now so you can make a new one at any time.
Next up you should decide which alloy to go for. You want some kind of bronze or rose alloy. The alloy you'll be making depends on the ores you've been finding. Just pick one that includes the ores you've found. Here are your possibilities:
After you are done collecting ores for an alloy you will need a Forge. Forge is a multiblock structure that requires 2 things you don't have yet - fired bricks and charcoal. So let's fix that!
Go ahead and chop all the trees you can find. You will need many many logs.
When you are done collecting wood dig a square hole in the ground. The size depends on the amound of wood you want to process but aim for a minimum of 3x3x3.
Next put the logs into the hole as log piles. To place a log pile place a log while sneaking. Then you can add wood to the log pile simply by right clicking it with a log in your hand.

Next make sure that every log pile is completely covered on all side so no air is next to it. That means putting dirt on the top of your log piles that are at the very top. Leave 1 square open though since you'll need to light the piles on fire.
Then light the log on fire and quickly close the last gap. If done correctly you'll see some smoke particles coming through the dirt:

This will be burning for quite some time so let's go exploring for now. You need to find kaolin. It's a white rock that gets generated on the surface in a circular formation. Chances are you've seen it already.

Simply mine it to obtain Kaolin Clay.
You will also need some more clay and flint so make sure to collect them on your journey.
By the time you are home the logs should have finished burning and you should see that the dirt has collapsed. Dig it to unravel layers of charcoal!

Simply dig it with your shovel to grab the charcoal.
Next you will need to craft a quern and a grindstone. Place the quern on the ground and put the grindstone in the top left slot of the quern.
Then place your flint in the left middle slot of the quern, exit the gui and click the top of the quern. It should start rotating grinding your flint into fine flint powder.
Repeat the same process with the kaolin clay you've gathered to create kaolin powder.
Finally you can combine flint powder, kaolin clay and normal clay to make fire clay!

All that's left now is to use a campfire to turn that fire clay into fired bricks and make Fired Bricks.
Combine 8 charcoal to make a forge core and build the forge as described here.

Remember that you can build a chimney up to 10 blocks tall 3 blocks above the forge to increase it's maximum temperature!

Now when you have the forge it's time to work on the Anvil.
You can craft the stone anvil from stones but that anvil is only good for welding copper ingots. Thankfully that is exactly what you need to do.
Make some charcoal metallurgic flux by grinding charcoal. Then you will need 14 copper ingots so make the ingot mold, smelt the copper in the pot and cast it into ingots. Then weld the ingots together in your copper anvil.
Once you have 7 copper clumps you can combine them together to make a copper anvil:

Replace your stone anvil with a copper one.
Now the copper anvil on it's own is pretty usefull since it allows you to create copper tool heads without having to constantly make tool head molds. However you need it to weld the bronze ingots together.
Now you can weld copper ingots together with fired bricks(the item) to make Copper Coated Fire bricks. As you've guessed our goal is to make a Crucible to finally stop using pots to smelt metals.
So do just that. Cast 7 more copper ingots, weld them with fired bricks, craft a crucible and place it atop the forge.

Now with the crucible you can smelt and cast your metal without the pot nonsence.
However the reason to create the crucible is for you to be able to create alloys.
It's time to create the alloy of your choice. For example if you wanted to create bronze you would put 9 copper ores and 1 tin ore into the crucible.
You need 14 ingots of alloy for the bronze anvil. You also need some more ingots for your tools so go ahead and make however many ingots you want.
Once you have 14 ingots of bronze weld them together and make a bronze anvil. You will need it to create bronze tool heads and you can still use it to create copper tool heads.
Remember that you can always melt the old anvil into the liqud metal in the crucible!

Now it's time to get the last third piee of the puzzle - leather.
You must start by creating a barrel from 2 copper rims(made from a copper ingot), 3 planks and a saw.
Next make a wooden bucket, collect some water and deposit it into the barrel.
Then you are going to need some raw hides. Chances are you already have some but if you don't - go and kill some wild animals.
Place the hides in the barrel with water and everything that's left is for you to wait.
While you are waiting you can go ahead and make a knife and a Scraping Rack.
If you don't mind using another copper ingot you can make another barrel, fill it with water and place 16 twine in it to make tannin now rather than wait for the hides to bcome soaked hides.
When you got yourself some soaked hides right click them on a scraping rack and start right clicking the rack with your knife. 10 clicks with a delay between them will make you a Scraped Hide.
Next you need to put the prepared hides into a barrel with tannin. Tannin is made by putting 16 twine in a barrel with water.
After a while you will have yourself a barrel with leather in it!


Now you can make an alloy tool head, make leather straps from the leather and a knife and combine a stick, leather straps and a tool head to create your first bronze tool!




Bronze Age

Now that you are in Bronze Age you can relax a bit and do something not progression related for a while. Build buildings, start an animal husbandry, begin a farm.
This however isn't a guide about farming, it's a guide about progression. So what is it you have to do next?
Next you will need to get some iron. Most likely you've already found a deposit of iron of some kind but if not - go ahead and search for it.
Once you have some iron ore it's time to build a Bloomery:

A bloomery needs a tuyere to work so create one from your alloy.
Next open the interface of the bloomery by right clicking on it and put the tuyere in the slot on the far right.
You will need at least 10 of iron ore to initiate the smelting process!
Then put your iron ores in the left of the two slots on the top left of the bloomery and an equal amount of charcoal/anthracite in the slot next to it.
All that's left is to lit the bloomery up by right clicking on it with a firestarter and wait for the iron to be made.
Your tuyere will take some damage during the process but it should survive.
If you are repeating the process make sure that the tuyere will survive the process! If it breaks during any point of the ore smelting you will loose the resources and will have to clean up the solidified molten metal in the middle of the bloomery!
When the bloomery is done you can grab your iron blooms from the bottom slot of the bloomery. All that's left is to refine them.
Put them in the anvil and process them into Refined Iron Blooms. Next you can process the Refined Iron Bloom into Iron Ingots in the same anvil using the same method!
Remember that if you are having trouble processing the blooms that you can always cool them down using the Trough! Not only does that remove all the heat but it also will restore some of the lost integrity which can be VERY helpful! Remember - it is always better to wait for the bloom to heat up again rather than loosing it due to integrity reaching zero!

Now comes the usual stuff. Repeat the smelting process, get more blooms, refine them into iron untill you have 14 and start welding! Wait a second. You can't! Even with the full chimney the forge simply doesn't heat up enough to allow welding of iron!
That's where the Bellows come into play! You will need to craft yourself one using a Copper Ingot, 4 planks and 3 leather. Next place one next to the crucible in a way that the bellows would face the crucible.

You can click on the bellows to temporary increase the maximum temperature of the forge by 100 degrees. Be careful not to allow your forge to heat up enough to melt the iron!
Bellows can be clicked multiple times in a row to additively increase the maximum temperature of the forge.
Anyway back to the basics! Weld those 14 ingots of iron together and make an Iron Anvil.
Let's go a little bit away from progression and think about convenience.
You are most likely annoyed by the wolves. They spawn during the night and pose a threat. Additionally if your ome is built away from spawn then dying might be a pretty big setback for you since you'll have to run back home again.
Let's fix both of these issues by making a bed.
First you will need a sheep that trusts you. To gain trust simply feed your animals with the food they like(grains)
Then you will need to right click the sheep with a knife to get some wool.
Next place the wool into a barrel with water to make Soaked Wool.
While you are waiting grab yourself some copper, make copper pins on an anvil and make a Wool Card.
Combine the wool card with a piece of Soaked Wool to get yourself Carded Wool.
Make a Spinning Wheel and right click the carded wool on it. Then just keep right clicking untill you get Wool Yarn.
You will need 12 wool yarn. Next create a Wooden Needle from a stick and combine 4 wool yarn with it to get Wool Cloth.
Finally combine 3 wool cloth with 3 planks to make yourself that bed! Now you can sleep through the nights and set your spawn point!

Anyway back to the topic at hand. Making Iron Tools.
Next you will need a Treated Stick. To get it you will need 2 things - a stick of any kind and a barrel with some Olive or Walnut oil.
Of course to get the oil first and foremost you will need the respective fruit. Olives are pretty common having a chance to spawn in any biome. Walnuts are a bit more rare. Go ahead and find and collect either of them. You might need to set up camp waiting for the olives/walnuts to grow.
Next you will need a fruit press. Craft one from some planks and a Double Copper Sheet.
Place the barrel and the press right above it. Then place the olives/walnuts in the press and start jumping on it. When you are done the barrel should have some olive/walnut oil in it.

Now you can finally place the stick in the barrel full of oil and get your treated stick!
All that's left is to combine it with an Iron Tool Head and get your iron tool!




Iron/Rotary Age

This section of the guide compresses two ages into one section since if progression is the main goal the rotary age is achieved nearly instantly.
In order to progress further you will need a lot of iron so make sure you've got it.
You'll need a source of rotary power. A water wheel is fairly consistent while a windmill will output varying levels of power based on the wind.
Create one of these, couple of gearboxes and some shafts. It is worth noticing that unlyss you'll want to transmit power in separate lines you will need to use iron shafts because the power output is too much for other shaft types to handle. However you could place a splitter gearbox at the very beginning of your power generation and transmit the power using bronze shafts.
In any case place the gearbox and your power generator on it. If it is a water wheel you'll need to place it 3 blocks above the water.

Then you can connect the gearboxes using the shafts.

Now when you have the power it's time to spend it.
There are a couple of devices that use the power but aren't necessary for progression.
A Mechanical Quern is a quern that works on it's own using power and doesn't need a grindstone.
A Mechanical Pottery Station is a pottery station that creates pottery automatically without the need to solve the minigame.
A Sawmill allows you to get 4 planks per log instead of 2(that's a 100% profit). It also allows you to get wool pulp that can be crafted into paper.
Finally the Mechanical Bellows is what you need. Not only are these bellows you don't need to click everytime they also can increase the maximum heat by 750 instead of 500.
You'll need a Blast Furnace to make steel. To construct a Blast Furnace you'll need 4 things - the blast furnace block itself, some Iron Plated Fired Bricks, a Crucible and the Mechanical bellows. So start crafting!
When you are done build the blast furnace as described here. Don't forget to connect the potary power line to the mechanical bellows!

Don't forget that you'll need a way to the top of your blast furnace - a ladder or some stairs will do.
Finally it's time to make steel! Firstly you'll need 2 tuyeres. The material choice is up to you.
Then you'll need Iron Ore and Charcoal. Each layer of the blast furnace is able to process up to 8 recipes at a time so if you have 1 layer you'll be able to process up to 40 iron ores + 40 charcoal at a time to make 4 steel ingots.
Finally you'll need some charred bone ash. The metallurgic charcoal flux is good for welding but won't work for the blast furnace. To get the charred bone ash first heat a bone up to 1400 degrees and then grind it. You'll need 1 charred bone ash per 5 iron ore + charcoal you are putting in.
When you've calculated the amounts you need climb to the top of the blast furnace and toss the things in. Remember that the blast furnace will not consume your inputs if you are tossing in multiple stacks at a time so toss in up to 60 of your ingredients, wait for the blast furnace to consume them and then toss the next batch.
As you toss items in you will notice the level of Blast Furnace Metal raising. That's the indicator that you are doing things right.
Finally when you are done tossing items in just light the blast furnace up using a firestarter or a flint and iron and wait!

The reason you need a mechanical bellows here is because the blast furnace needs to heat up to Iron melting point in order to work. However it can't on it's own and the manual bellows can't heat it up enough. The mechanical bellows however do the trick just fine due to 50% increase in heat they provide.
When the process is complete you will recieve... Pig Iron? That's not steel. To process pig iron into steel you'll need to put it through the blast furnace again.
Now when you finally have the steel it's time to go through the familiar process. 14 ingots welded tigether make a steel anvil. An ingot or two to make a tool head. An Iron ingot to make a tool rod. And finally - the steel tool itself!




And this is where the guide ends... for the time being that is. As ExPetrum gets more content this page will be updated. Thanks for reading through!