Welcome to HardRock TerraFirmaCraft! (aka HTFC) The following guide will help you get started playing this mod pack for Minecraft. It will focus on core aspects of HardRock, as well as a few tips and tricks for easier starting gameplay. Throughout the guide, the text will contain links to individual wiki pages for learning more information about that particular topic.
HTFC have several changes to the core gameplay of Minecraft, this section will go over the most important changes.
Default settings for HTFC have you start at 3 hearts, early on this makes you incredibly weak, but your maximum heart count can be increased by eating food. Each new heart requires a certain amount of unique food to be eaten, once you eat that amount of unique foods, you'll gain a new heart, up to 10 hearts. You'll only ever need to eat a unique food once for it to count towards getting new hearts, and all food will indicate if it's something you have or have not eaten before. Unlike vanilla, you regenerate hearts incredibly slowly, even food does not help, but there are game mechanics that can help heal you faster.
Instead of the usual Minecraft hunger bar, you have a green bar to replace it. It's still similar to the vanilla hunger bar, but with some added effects. Like hard difficulty vanilla you will take damage and die if it reaches zero. When you reach about 2/6 of your remaining hunger bar, you'll be unable to sprint, and destroying blocks will be incredibly slow, and your screen will start to lose color, becoming completely black and white with an empty hunger bar. You refill the hunger bar by eating any type of food.
The blue thirst bar is similar to the hunger bar, but has less of an impact in comparison. Similar to the hunger bar, being at empty will make you take damage and die, but your screen won't change color, and you lose the ability to sprint at 1/6 of your remaining thirst bar, and also breaking blocks incredibly slow. You refill the thirst bar by drinking any kind of water or alcohol. You do have to be careful about what you drink, as unsafe water can make you sick or poison you.
Unlike regular Minecraft, you're unable to go up to a tree and start punching it for wood, doing so will instead damage you and can kill you. This also goes for other things like stone or ore. Even blocks you are able to break like dirt, sand, even though may not injure you, will be incredibly slow without the required tool. As long as you have the tool required for the block type, you'll be fine.
Similar to sand and gravel, several other blocks have gravity now, like dirt, and cobblestone. A lot of other blocks can be effected by gravity, but not in same way. Raw stone will normally not fall due to gravity, but only if supported by other raw stone or similar blocks that can support the gravity of the stone. If blocks like raw stone lose that support, they'll collapse. There are still a lot of blocks that don't have gravity applied to them, any plank, bricks, logs, and several more.
Unlike Minecraft's biomes, HTFC has temperatures, rainfall, and a rotating weather system. So unlike vanilla Minecraft, where you may find a desert biome, near a plains, and close by a snow biome. You'll have to travel to a place with very little rainfall to find a desert, or far north to find a snow biome.
You'll also have to take note of the time of year, as that as an impact to the ambient temperature, increasing in summer, and lowering in winter. If it gets too hot, or too cold, you'll start to take damage and die from the environment.