worthy kiln
Category: QOL
Applicable Tier: Early Game, Stone Age, Steam Age
So if you've got a little bit of experience with modded MC, you probably already know that TiCon crafting stations keep their slot inventories if you left anything there when you closed the UI. They don't drop things on the ground like vanilla crafting tables will.
One of the biggest immediate timesavers you can access using this as early as having made your first GT tools in Stone age is what I call "prestaging" GT Tools recipes, especially hammers and files. You're going to go through a LOT of hammers and files just getting out of steam age, and it gets very quickly wearing having to dump those in the crafting table slots every single time you need a new one, but durability items are also a pain to drag around on your person in bulk.
So what's the solution? Fill in enough materials for a whole bunch of them in a TIC crafting station and just leave them there! That way, every time you need a new hammer or file or whatever other tool you feel like setting this up with (saws, mortars, and soft mallets are also popular early culprits for extremely repetitive tool crafting), the new one is only a single click away.
Expansions on this you'll probably hear other experienced players bring up -- crafting stations being able to access adjacent inventories. I don't recommend just stopping here at 1 or 2 empty crafting stations based on the simple fact that you're not inherently eliminating the step of having to put everything back in the grid every time you need a new one.
Worktables -- they're also useful for other things, but they're gated by your first Steam Compressor. You don't even need to unlock Steam age to start prestaging your GT tools. I still use this for some things all the way into LV/MV just because it's easier to keep track of available materials against the relevant recipe in a crafting station.
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