The Best Tools for the new map

[Mr Chill Chill]

Considering the cost in metals and durability, the best tools are as follows....

Knives- bronze/iron
Hammer- bronze/iron
Hoe- leftover copper
Axe- bronze/iron
Pickaxe- iron
Sickle- bronze/leftover copper
Scythe- bronze
Shovel- bronze/iron
Shearing scissors- iron

[Mr Chill Chill]

Note that if you have a large scale farming operation, you can use the leftover copper on something else like knives for example, and would be wise to stick with iron hoes unless you have so many logs you don't know what to do with.

[Maehlice]

IMO, for personal use, Pickaxe and Axe are Iron all the way regardless of mats and costs, because expending one less strike goes a long way towards saving stamina and speeding up the extraction process. It's basically a 20% & 25% reduction in stamina usage.

For the sake of profit, Copper Sickle and Bronze Knife are the money-makers.

[Mr Chill Chill]

The thread was really about the best for the villagers, as we as players always get to carry the iron version. As human players we also have the benefit of bonuses on top with the perks. I haven't really looked at the sale prices either; it was all about productivity vs cost of making the item.

[Maehlice]

Well. It turns out low tier sh!tty tools are actually the best (sort of). You're better off selling the "better" tools and buying a bunch of the "lesser" tools for your villagers instead. Check this out:

An Iron Pickaxe sells for 400 coin, taking with it 800 durability from your village.

12 Stone Pickaxes can be purchased for 84.4 coin, bringing back 840 durability to your village.

400 - 84.4 = 315.6 Coin profit for "trading in" an Iron Pickaxe for a bunch of cheaper tools.

........

For your own use, you can sell a couple Bronze Pickaxes you've make and upgrade to an Iron one instead:

Bronze Pickaxe (2): +624 Coin, -400 Durability
Iron Pickaxe (1): -600 Coin, +800 Durability

........

Similarly:

Copper Axe (1): +208 Coin, -150 Durability
Stone Axe (3): -25.2 Coin, +150 Durability

........

Obviously, this only works as many times as the vendor has those tools to sell, which is why they're only "sort of" better. It's sort of situational and subjective. Eventually, your village's production potential will outstrip the hassle of you being a broker.

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More objectively, it's interesting to analyze the Hoe. When you consider and factor all of the villagers' combined efforts to make the different Hoes, the Wooden Hoe is the most efficient all the way up to Iron.

(This considers an "automated" village doing 100% of the work. If you're doing any of the collection -- especially mining and smelting -- these numbers don't hold true.)

A Level 1 Mood 0 Lumberjack and Blacksmith can collectively produce about 5.5 Wooden Hoes each day (176 Durability / 2 workers ... 141 total in-game minutes per Wooden Hoe).

A Level 1 Mood 0 Lumberjack, Miner (shed), and Blacksmith can collectively produce about 3.7 Stone Hoes each day (236 Durability / 3 workers ... 314 total in-game minutes per Stone Hoe)

On a per-villager basis, setting them to make Wooden Hoes is about 12% more time efficient than Stone/Copper/Bronze.

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When purchased cost per durability is preferred (as in the first example above), the list is very lopsided:

Hammer: Wood, Iron, Bronze*, Copper*
Knife: Stone^, Iron, Bronze, Copper*
Axe: Stone^, Iron, Bronze*, Copper*
Hoe: Stone/Wood^, Iron, Bronze, Copper*
Shovel: Wood^, Iron, Bronze, Copper*
Sickle/Scythe: Stone^, Iron, Iron/Bronze Scythe, Bronze*, Copper*
Pickaxe: Stone^, Iron, Bronze*
Shears: Iron^, Bronze*

........

When tools are 100% villager-produced and used, the "tier list" generally follows what you'd expect to see, except that Copper is almost always worst and frequently a clear loser:

Hammer: Iron^, Bronze, Wood, Copper
Knife: Iron, Bronze/Stone, Copper
Axe: Iron, Bronze, Stone, Copper*
Hoe: Iron, Wood, Copper/Stone/Bronze
Shovel: Iron, Bronze/Wooden, Copper*
Sickle/Scythe: Iron Sickle/Bronze Scythe, Iron Scythe/Bronze Sickle, Copper,* Stone*
Pickaxe: Iron/Stone, Bronze*
Shears: Iron^, Bronze*

^ :: breakout winner
* :: far and away loser

EDIT, NOTE: Copper production was calculated using the Mine's rate, since the Excavation Shed is too comically slow to even consider.

[brown29knight]

There is also the weight factor to think about. I do not want 2000kg of wood and stone tools sitting in my resource storage.

[galadon3]

Copper also has the big problem of the very low production of the Tier 1 Excavation Shed when it comes to copper, and is not upgradable.

Well Bronze has the problem that villagers can't produce tin before being able to build the Mine, wich means you'd most likely swap to iron anyway.

Right now it kinda feels like an Excavation Shed II is missing with the new balancing. That increases production per villager like with the other production buildings and maybe allows the villagers to mine tin, before being able to build the Mine.

[Mr Chill Chill]

I have fast tech enabled, so was able to access the mine and iron fairly quickly. Its a lot less of a pain to get anything done, and I don't have to worry about this or that tool, as the miners are great at mining iron and other ores, and its only a matter of smelting ores. The nice thing about relying on NPCs for mining is that there's no limit on the amount of iron per season.

I'm sure that with all of these updates that the stats are different now, but I mostly just rely on iron and little else. I think there is a benefit, however, in having your smithiess work on things like wooden hammers and other lower tier tools, as they likely level up quicker. I'm trying to do a mix at the moment to see if I can level up my smithies at a faster pace.