Metals and tools

The five metals of the mod are not mined. They sit in combs, and the way out is comb, centrifuge, nugget, ingot.

From comb to ingot

A metal comb in Forestry's centrifuge gives a nugget with the chance below, a Honey Drop at 75% and the propolis of its metal at 10%.

• Reinforced Comb: Reinforced Nugget, 25%
• Mutated Comb: Mutated Iron Nugget, 15%
• Witheria Comb: Witheria Nugget, 15%
• Draconic Comb: Draconic Nugget, 10%
• Legendary Comb: Legendary Nugget, 5%

Nine nuggets make an ingot, nine ingots make a block, and both crafts work backwards. On average an ingot is 36 Reinforced Combs, 60 Mutated or Witheria Combs, 90 Draconic Combs or 180 Legendary Combs. The bees add a little themselves: a nugget straight from the hive at 10% for Reinforced and Mutated and at 5% for the other three.

The six farm combs hold no metal. The guide book says that every comb gives a nugget, honey and propolis. That is true only for these five.

Where the metal goes

Two ingots, one above the other, give two sticks. After that the sticks and ingots go into:

• frames: up to eight sticks each
• scoops: four sticks
• grafters: one ingot and two sticks
• Portable Hive upgrades: seven ingots and one propolis, for Reinforced, Draconic and Legendary only
• Aura Charms: three nuggets and one propolis

Mutated Iron and Witheria have no tools and no hive tier. Mutated Iron goes into the Mutation Frame, Witheria into the Witheria Frame, and their propolis into modules and charms.

Propolis is spent on the nine hive modules, the hive upgrades, the charms and the guide book.

Scoops

• Reinforced Scoop: durability 300, dig speed 7.5
• Draconic Scoop: durability 700, dig speed 10
• Legendary Scoop: durability 10,000, dig speed 15

The dig speed is for the blocks that Forestry gives to the scoop, which are its wild hives. Everything else is dug at speed 1. A broken block costs 1 durability, a hit on a mob costs 2. All three are in Forestry's scoop tag, so they fit wherever Forestry asks for a scoop.

Right-click a vanilla bee with any of them: the bee disappears and a Forest drone drops in its place, for 1 durability. The guide book says that a better scoop catches faster. It doesn't. The catch is one click with any of the three, and what grows is durability and dig speed.

Grafters

• Reinforced Grafter: durability 300, sapling modifier 3
• Draconic Grafter: durability 700, sapling modifier 5
• Legendary Grafter: durability 10,000, sapling modifier 10

The sapling modifier multiplies the chance of a sapling when you break Forestry leaves. For comparison, Forestry's own Grafter reports 100 for this number (checked in Forestry CE 2.5.0), so per leaf block these three are much weaker. In exchange, Forestry describes its Grafter as having a very limited number of uses, and these have 300 to 10,000.

Storage blocks

The Draconic, Legendary, Reinforced, Witheria and Mutated Iron blocks are nine ingots each and give off light of level 4. Hardness goes from 3 for Mutated Iron to 7 for Legendary.

The blocks are set to drop only when mined with the correct tool, but the mod's files name no such tool and hold no loot tables for them. Do not count on getting a placed block back with a pickaxe. A block from the inventory turns back into nine ingots in the crafting grid.

Glint

Draconic and Legendary nuggets, ingots, propolis, charms, frames, scoops and grafters shimmer like enchanted items. Of the sticks only the Legendary one does. It is decoration: the items carry no enchantments.

Thermal machines

On 1.20.1 with Thermal Series installed, Thermal's machines take the mod's items:

• centrifuge: a Draconic, Legendary or Reinforced Comb gives an ingot at 90% and a nugget at 25%. A Mutated Comb gives an ingot at 85% and a nugget at 30%. A Witheria Comb gives two nuggets at 80% and one more at 30%. Every comb also gives a vanilla Honeycomb.
• pulverizer: a Draconic, Legendary, Reinforced or Mutated Iron block gives nine ingots.
• smelter: a Draconic Ingot and an Iron Ingot give two Reinforced Ingots.

That is an ingot from almost every comb, where Forestry's centrifuge gives at best a nugget from every fourth. The same recipes are in the 1.21.1 jar, but there is no Thermal for 1.21.1.