The addition of copper tools in the next update (which I’m assuming will be somewhere between stone and iron) has me wondering what the benefit is to creating tools that fit on the lower end of the already existing tier list of materials. Like, I’m glad to see copper get some actual usable recipes, but stone to iron isn’t exactly a long lasting gap even with the modern ore distributions, so the use case for these new tools is fairly non-existent.
Unless…
If copper tools (and the other materials) had perks that improved gameplay in meaningful ways, there’d be a reason to keep those old tools outside of the 5 minutes it takes to get the next material (another use-case of the new shelves being added, as well). I’m not clever enough to come up with what each material should get, but I’m sure there are good ideas out there. At the very least, it would give some possibility of new materials that are more than just “mines faster/hits harder than [material we added last update].”
There was a mod probably 5 years back now, I believe it was called Tinker’s Toolkit, where you could build the handle, tool head, etc out of different materials which effected the functionality and stats like you’re looking for (on top of a little bit of minor random modifiers). It even had support for new wood and other materials from other popular mods.
Are you referring to Tinkers’ Construct? I think it’s way older than 5 years and is prevalent in most mod packs