Hydrocraft Industrial Guide, Starting tips for the beginner

This is a basic guide for getting started in hydrocraft. I've not really gotten to everything myself, so it's not entirely complete, but I'll keep updating my guides on Hydrocraft as I get farther into it. This mostly covers getting your industrial production up, and a few other tips and tricks.

Getting Started: What to focus on

Hydrocraft can be a bit daunting at times and completely overwhelming to the novice, so I'll tell you guys a few tricks that got me on the right foot.

1. Setting up your character. Ok, with hydrocraft there are a few things you need to consider. The first is that it really helps to toss yourself the engineer perk to start with. It gives you a little jumpstart in the crafting side, and those extra recipies you can only get as engineer are helpful, as you can improve your explosives, etc with the electrical side of Hydrocraft. Also, food and water are really easy to come by if you have this mod so don't hesitate to toss the debuffs for those on your character.

2. The first thing you do in this mod is go looking for as many of the skill books as you can get, focus on finding the electrical,foraging, and carpentry skill books, and read every book that has recipes. Keep your eyes out for the Anarchist cookbook, the various recipie magizines, etc.

3. I reccomend the first skill you invest time into is foraging. Foraging is very important in Hydrocraft, the skill level determines what you get in many other areas, not just when you use the foraging skill. What you find while mineing or searching for metal with the detector are all also dependant on this skill.

4. The fastest way to level up foraging isn't just to click on a tile and forage. After you get the skill books, also look for the different guides. The three field guides you want to use are the Fungus, Tree and Flower field guides, you can just right click them when you are standing on a forage tile and you have a higher chance of a skill tick by finding something. Just max the damm skill out, don't hold back the more skill you have in this the easier hydrocraft will be for you.

5. Get your carpentry up. Focus on getting a lot of wood, if you don't know what to do with it all make pallets of the stuff out of it. It's easy to make rope by breaking down clothing in abandoned houses and makeing sheet rope out of all of it, and then makeing actual rope out of the sheet rope. The pallets can likewise easily be made with nails and boards. Pallets make it easer to move large ammounts of stuff, and they are essential in Hydrocraft, as many things you will have to build require a TON of resources.

Getting your Base Setup

There are three major things you will need in your base.

1. A well. I can't stress this enough get a damm well up.
2. A mine. This is your best bet early game, especially once you get your foraging skill up. Make sure you upgrade that sucker to the mine with pully asap.
3. A crapton of trees. Hydrocraft sucks a ton of wood up, so make sure you build in or near a damm forest. Most of those trees will be made into charcoal. If your having trouble making charcoal you can make charcoal in the kiln from a few other things too such as rags or dead zombies.

Machines are your Friend!

Your industrial base is very important in hydrocraft, and is the first thing you should focus on, above all else. Your goal is to get to the charging unit. To get to that machine you have to go through a lot of steps. Before you build anything get your carpenter's bench up and the saw horse, since those two stations are used to build a lot of the stuff you need. A drying rack and a few buckets also help to have around before you begin. Make sure you have a welding torch, welding mask, work gloves, tongs, etc and lots of welding gas tanks.

1. Craft a blacksmith's apron or find a Fire Suit/Fireman's Jacket. As you are leveling up your foraging make sure you keep those waxberries. You will need them for makeing hardened leather. Make sure you have all the various recipie books read before you even attempt to do anything in hydrocraft, so yea make your dam apron.

2. Get your mine up, then go looking for a portable mining tool, and a grinder head. Get lots of empty sand bags. The mining tool also takes large batteries. Your going to need a ton of cement everntually so it helps to have this thing setup and saving up batteries for it as early as possible. You can build a stamp mill instead, but I never bothered with one.

3. Build a Kiln and Smelter early on, and make sure you save up any lighters/matches you find. Don't bother trying to smelt crap until you get that apron up, or you will regret it. Smelt ♥♥♥♥ while having a welding mask, apron/firesuit/firejacket, gloves/mittens in your invintory.

4. Look for things your smelter can melt down. You want steel, lots of freaking steel, but there are only a few items the smelter can melt down into steel bars. Look for hammers and other tools. The "make melting" option on it. Your going to need a crapton of steel early on, and it will be a while until you get your blast furnace and you can melt down a larger selection.

5. Mine for hours. Yea it's boing, but once you get that mine upgraded its important you eat up, make sure your safe, then click on the mine all option, so it just keeps pounding away. You need a ton of resources to make your first machines so this is a good time to go grab a sandwich. Oh and make sure your foraging is maxed out first, or don't bother. I literally mean hours bub, just dump your character out on nearby tiles over and over again until you have a massive stockpile of ♥♥♥♥ to sort through.

6. Once you get back start thinking about upgrading to that blast furnace. Melt down as much as you can, and get yourself an anvil, up, and work up through the differnt hammers until you have a steel blacksmith hammer. You will need that anvil for a ton of crap so get used to using it.

7. Get yourself up to a medium full junkyard. I helps to have this thing, because you will need the dynmos you get from them, and a few other items that are hard to find from anything but junkyards. Junkyards also give the odd raccon you can make into a coonskin hat, or just make the bellows for your blast furnace out of him like I did.

The Blast Furnace Era

That blast furnace is very important, there are some things you will need you can only make with the blast furnace, and it makes melting down everything in sight easy. You want that thing up as quickly as possible.


Getting your steam machines up is important

When you are out looting make sure you keep your eyes pealed for calculators. Once your blast furnace is up you need to make thermocuple wire, save up that Pentlandite from your mining, you will need a ton of it. For making nickle you will also either have to make or find a gas mask. Nickle and coper make Constitan ingots, which you use a small rolling mill, and a welding torch to make into wire, you will need a ton of copper wire too, so keep an eye out for that in hardware stores, as it can save you from having to use up more of your welding gas for copper wire. Get your electrical skill up to at least 6 before you go for your steam machines too btw.

The thermocuple is probably the hardest part of the steam machine. Once you have your blast furnace up just get a ton of sheet metal, steel, etc. I would suggest building two thermocouples at once early on. Build the steam hammer first, then build a charging unit.

The glory of having a charging unit and a metal detector

When your looking around for loot make sure you pickup a metal detector, and lots of medium batteries.

I'm saying this because once you have a charging unit and pretty much unlimited power for your metal detector it makes life so much easier.

Setting up your Charging/Metal detecting area: Slap your charging unit down next to your well. It sucks up a ton of water so have a bunch of strapped canteens in your inventory when your working with it. Before you do anything find a couple of dollys and put them down on the same area or tile as your charging unit. One for your batteries/detector gear and one for your charcoal fuel. Fill up your fuel dolly and if your close enough to it, it will just suck charcoal out of the dolly instead of having to keep the stuff in your inventory.

The glory of having a metal detector:

1. You can indeed find a TON of dog whistles with this thing. This is especially important on multiplayer servers where they are really hard to find.

2. Fire extinglishers. The very BEST way to get sheet metal is melting these things down for alum, they give TON of it.

3. Chains, until you get a charging station and metal detector up you won't find many chains. You need a bunch of them for your large junkyard's giant magnet.

You also find a ton of other useful and rare crap with your metal detector, and those metal barrels you find also are nice for building more steam machines with. You also find hydrocraft batteries, and TON of them.

Industrial Power!

One of the later things you will get up is your large junkyard, you will need the industrial furnace to make the giant magnet, chains from your metal detecting, and magnitite from your mineing to do this, but it's worth it. You find a ton of awesome crap from the junkyard. If you search with the giant magnet in the large full junkyard you can get a few machines you can either fix or break down for a ton of useful parts.

That charging unit is just used for so many different things, you will wonder just how you lived without it. Everying a lot easier once you have all your machines up. You metal detector will often turn up augers, allowing you to easily dig more cellers too, and your mine will give you more stone for making cement with than you will know what to do with. The zombie bones from the mine, are grinded down to powder for cement or glue.

It all fits togather, and lets you move into the rest of hydrocraft much easier, as you can make just about anything you need for all the other crap. The glass for the lab, or nails, or anything. Even making your own ammo.

[Evmeister88]

Something I wanted to point out for people. If you're using YAHydrocraft, which is the latest updated Hydrocraft at this time, I had to Anchor the Mine and Smelter to use them. Could possibly one of my mods effecting that though.

[Pvt. Dabsprey]

hurr durr cant read, why not video REEE

[F1tgal911]

+1 for the YT video

[ParaScuba]

What about make a YouTube of your story. I learn from YouTube better than read

[Kelthehet]

7 - He's not kidding about the three field guides in this guide. If you can get the flower, tree, and mammal field guides, you have just broken the whole of foraging. You can forage anywhere that isn't inside as long as you carry the books.

8 - Get yourself a hydrocraft book that reduces stress and unhappiness. You can read it over and over and over and over. The benefit is applied every time, and reading Fairy Tales or some such can actually bring you out of the depths of the severest of depression.

9 - Do yourself a favor when you have a needle (or make a bone needle), thread, and scissors. Cut up those bags and sew yourself a large ALICE Pack. The capacity and weight reduction are supreme.

10 - If you find a toy wagon, you now have more carrying capacity than most cars. Equip that sucker in your secondary slot and go loot like a king.

Hopefully this helps!

[Kelthehet]

5 - There is an excellent wiki that gives you recipes for hydrocraft called undeniable.info. Google hydrocraft wiki, and it's usually the fourth result. It has been priceless for my journey through hydrocraft. I recommend spending some quality time with this website to get familiar with the crafting recipes in order to plan out your progression. This will also give you invaluable information on the bottleneck items that you need to get your hands on in order to progress. It also tells you many alternatives in certain recipes. A little attention at this site will also help you optimize the gear you're using. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

6 - Although it's not always well defined, there are tons of workarounds for items that are hard to find naturally in Hydrocraft. The recipe books give you the how to, and the B button also gives you the required items and levels, assuming you're willing to take the time to search the many, many recipe tabs that you will unlock.

[Kelthehet]

3 - When placing structures, yes, just drop them. On rare occasion you might consider anchoring them to a point, but you really can't move them afterwards, so make sure you're 3000% sure before doing so.

4 - Animal and animal seeking are both overpowered and very involved. IF you have a dog that is able to herd, you can get herding animals. IF you have a dog that can hunt, you can go hunting for animals. NOMIS on youtube does an extra wonderful job explaining this in his dog tutorial for Hydrocraft. Another excellent youtuber who teaches hydrocraft extremely well is Skill Incarnate. His most excellent tutorials will take you through the first year at minimum.

[Kelthehet]

Hey there. A couple points that may help.

1 - You can use zombie corpses to make charcoal. This severely cuts down on your wood consumption for usage in metalwork. You want and need to use this trick with your kiln.

2 - When using the kiln or other metalworking type structures, you can use a notched plank and sturdy stick to light them up instead of fire strikers or lighters. If you end up using the lighter, you can refill them using the lighter fluid you can find all over the place.

[luizflaviolopes]

hey guys,
I'm using Hydrocraft and I was very lost at the beginning. To help me, I developed a visual system to understand the connection between the items and to know better what to look for in the game. I think it can also help the community, so I uploaded it to a public host: {LINK REMOVED}http://zomboid-hydrocraft.s3-website-sa-east-1.amazonaws.com/

GitHub of the project: {LINK REMOVED}https://github.com/luizflaviolopes/pz-hydrocraft-graph

[= LUMINAK =]

is this for a mod ? i am new to the game ! thx you