Hazards
Hot metal is hot wherever it is, a full boiler is full of pressure, and a bare wire is live. Feedback lets those things hurt you. None of it stops you doing anything: you can grab a red-hot ingot bare-handed, once, and learn why tongs exist.
Hot things
Holding a hot piece
A hot item in either hand hurts you twice a second while it's hotter than you can handle. In your pockets, your hotbar or a chest it does nothing; only what you're holding counts.
There are three bands, named the way they feel:
| Item temperature | Band | Damage, twice a second | Also |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 Tu (water boils) | Scald | ½ heart | |
| 300 Tu (wood chars) | Burn | 1 heart | sets you alight for 2 s |
| 700 Tu (first red glow) | Sear | 2 hearts | sets you alight for 4 s |
You'll see "Too hot to hold."
Touching a hot block
Right-click a hot block (a crucible, a furnace, a hot cable, anything with a temperature) with a bare hand and you take one hit from the same table, "Too hot to touch." Whatever you were doing still happens. You just pay for it.
Protection
Fire Resistance protects you from all of it. Otherwise there are two physical answers:
- Gloves: a leather or cloth hand covering; always on, covers warm work.
- Tongs: cost you a hand, cover glowing work.
Gloves
A glove has a leather or cloth body (wool carpet, shaped at the Tool Table); a metacarpal plate on it adds punch and armour but protects from neither heat nor shock.
L L
L L L
L is Leather. Wear them in the hands slot (from Curios).
A glove sits against your palm, so you feel a quarter of how much hotter a piece is than the room. Wool stands 100 Tu, so in wool gloves you can hold things up to about 340 Tu, warm work but nothing glowing. Over that, the gloves aren't protecting you.
Wool gloves also stop electric shocks below 24 V (HV). See Shock.
Gloves don't wear out. A glove in the hands slot is also what lets you grab something, and a blaze rod weapon burns a bare hand like any hot piece.
Tongs
Two rods of one metal and one grip, in any arrangement in a crafting grid. The tongs are made of exactly those: the tooltip shows Grip and Arms.
Hold the tongs in one hand and the hot piece in the other. Tongs put an arm's length between you and the work, so you feel only a tenth of the excess. Their limit is the lower of two things:
- The grip, which has to insulate. Metal grips don't. Wood and bamboo stand 150 Tu, bone 200 Tu.
- The arms, which give out at their metal's melting point.
| Grip | Arms | Safe up to | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood or bamboo | Iron | 1320 Tu | yellow heat: hot-working steel (900–1100 Tu) |
| Bone | Iron | 1600 Tu | iron's melting point: steel fresh from the crucible |
| Bone | Steel | 1450 Tu | steel's melting point |
| Any | Copper | 1000 Tu | copper's melting point |
| Any | Brass | 900 Tu |
So for steel straight out of the crucible (1350–1410 Tu) you want bone-gripped tongs with iron or steel arms. Wooden grips are fine once the steel has cooled into its working window.
Holding tongs when the piece isn't hot enough to need them: "Not hot enough to need them." Tongs do nothing against electricity. They don't wear out.
Grips are turned on the Lathe from a stick, a bone or a bamboo stalk. Rods come from the Rolling Mill.
Steam
A Boiler with nowhere to send its steam builds pressure:
- Weeping: above 3.5 Pu its seams leak. It hisses, vents a cloud, and scalds anyone within about 1.5 blocks for 1 heart at a time.
- Bursting: a boiler that keeps climbing explodes, wrecking blocks and scalding everyone within 4 blocks for 4 hearts.
Steam gets in under a glove. Only Fire Resistance helps.
Shock
Two things are live to the touch:
- Bare cable carrying current. Cable becomes bare when its insulation burns off from overloading. See Copper Cable.
- A Leyden Jar charged to 6 V or more.
Walking into one shocks you twice a second; right-clicking one shocks you once. Damage goes by voltage band:
| Band | Volts | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| LV | up to 1.5 V | ½ heart |
| MV | over 1.5 V, up to 6 V | 1 heart |
| HV | over 6 V, up to 24 V | 2½ hearts |
| UHV | over 24 V | 5 hearts |
Armour doesn't help; a chestplate isn't insulation. Insulating gloves stop anything below 24 V.
Right-clicking a bare live wire with a Galvanometer or Electroscope is still a hand on the wire, and it still shocks you.
When you're away
Blocks keep living while you're gone. A crucible over a lit Firebox in a chunk you walked away from burns its fuel and cools across the time you were away. When you come back it's where it would have been, not frozen as you left it. See Heat.