Tools and Items
In AstraCube the shape of a thing decides what it does, and the material decides how well. A drill made from a hard, energetic ore beats one made from soft rubbish. These pages cover each item and which ore numbers matter for it.
Tools
Hands work on rock, wood and soil, but slowly: 8×, 5× and 7× slower than the right tool. Ore needs a tool.
Pick
The tool that opens the game. Nothing else gets you rock quickly, and nothing but a pick or drill gets you ore.
Axe
For wood: logs, planks and leaves. Five times faster than tearing a tree down by hand.
Spade
For soil: dirt, grass, sand, snow and ice.
Hoe
Worked wood on a handle. It turns grass or dirt into tilled soil you can plant in.
Hammer
Strikes a workpiece on an anvil. It doesn't mine.
Drill
The last mining tool you'll need: it works on every material at once, and a good one mines faster than anything.
Bucket
Water you can carry, so your fields don't all have to be on the shore.
Fishing Rod
Cheap on purpose. The rod isn't the hard part; catching anything with it is.
Weapons
Gear
Worn or carried on your back.
Heat Suit
A plain sheet of metal over a lining of hide. It does one thing: lets you stand in the deep.
Insulated Suit
The suit you live in. It cuts heat and cold damage by 30% to 90% depending on the ore it's lined with, and holds about 20 minutes.
Jetpack
Two nozzles on your back. Hold jump in the air and it pushes, for a couple of seconds per takeoff.
Pack Cell
A cell shaped to sit against your back. It pours its charge into whatever suit you're wearing.
Light
Metalwork
The parts every machine is made of. Each keeps the properties of the ore it came from.
Ingot
Smelted ore. It carries the ore's name and properties into everything made from it.
Bar
An ingot drawn out on the anvil. It's pressed into wire, machine cores, tools and drills.
Sheet
A bar beaten thin. It's the casing of batteries, circuitry, buckets and suits.
Plate
The last stage on the anvil. Machines are built from it, and four pressed together make a block of hull.
Scrap
What you get when you hit a plate one blow too many. Remelt it and nothing's lost.
Wire
Drawn from a bar. A conductive ore goes much further: the same lump gives you four lengths or thirteen.
Circuitry
A sheet and two lengths of wire, pressed into the electronics nearly every late machine needs.
Alloy Plating
Ingots fused with plate in the smelter. It's what thrusters, the Shipworks and reactors are shielded with.
Machine Core
Two bars and two plates pressed into the heart of a big machine.
Metal Hull
The building block of ships and serious bases: four plates pressed into one solid block.
Glass
Sand, melted. Windows, solar panels, lanterns, life support and the coolant jacket all need it.
Wood and cloth
Door
Wood, and only wood: the one early block you actually want, to close up your first shelter.
Cloth
Spun from plant fibre. The farmer's soft stock, for beds and suits.
Leather
Tanned hide. The hunter's soft stock, for beds and suits.
Wood Plate
Flat wooden stock cut off a log. The wooden version of a metal plate, rolled into wooden duct.