Seaweed to save Innawoods.

[cheesealmighty]

In the innawoods mod, moving into steel production is straightforward. Creating glass, plastic, and anything chemistry-related is locked behind rummaging bushes for glass bottles.

To create glass shards, you need chemical making 2, sheet metal(this is doable), ammonia (impossible), and bone meal. But this material existed back in 1500 BC. It was historically made with either mined Natron out of dry salt lakes or plants high in salt, such as seaweed and sandwort.

We already have limestone and sand. We only need either/both seaweed/glasswort and Natron that could be mined. Seaweeds are the more versatile of the bunch, so adding them would make more sense.

We already have a code for cattail spawning and farming. We could make it so seaweeds spawn in swamps and riversides. I remember seeing a river shore special in the CDDA that consists of many cattails. It could spawn like that as well...

Seaweeds can be converted into soda ash and then be used the glass-making process:

Seaweeds can also be used as food items in sushi and other Asian cuisine. The same applies to glassworts. They are eaten raw or with a little bit of olive oil in Mediterranean cuisine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicornia_europaea

There is also the issue of plastics. Currently, no cows spawn in the wild, making it impossible to create plastic in the innawoods setting:

Yet, both seaweeds and the cornstarch can be used to create plastics (roughly), with the addition of glycerol from tallow.
General production methods for PLA: https://europlas.com.vn/en-US/blog-1/how-to-make-pla-plastic-at-home

Experimental methods for using seaweed: https://www.iitf.lbtu.lv/conference/proceedings2021/Papers/TF370.pdf

Soda ash also has applications in the creation of soap and paper and could be added into the production of these items.

Also, to add to this, the current process of making copper wires out of duct tape and copper, which is the stepping stone to the electrical age, could be simplified by using plant thread/fiber covered up with pitch as described in this paper:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/00033790110117476?needAccess=true

[cheesealmighty]

Light is one of the most important things when you are out in the woods. And yet, there is no way of creating light bulbs in innawoods. I suggest creating light bulbs out of wires and glass jars, which have their air emptied using the in-game hand pump. https://permies.com/t/31062/incandescent-light-bulb

Of course, the recipe for hand pumps calls for rubber hoses. But you can't get rubber hoses when you're innawoods. And certainly, you don't have a way to obtain rubber in North America unless you use non-latex-based rubber alternatives, such as starch+glycerol-based rubber: https://class.textile-academy.org/2020/loes.bogers/files/recipes/biorubber/

With a rubber process, you can also create some sort of punctureless tires with steel or wood rims. You could use them to cover up copper to create wires. Hell, you could make rubber boots and gloves.