On; Steel Bloom

[Gryphon Nerd]

Just had this thought as I was playing, and i am sure this has probably been voiced before, but one suggestion I had suddenly is to make steel bloom more worth making in the long run.
To explain, we have a few different ways to make steel bloom, but it still feels like its quite the chore. How to make this easier? Well I had the thought of making it worth it to use coal as a resource to make steel bloom since you can more effectively use it to power a smelter early on or use light sources. So, the idea is that you get double or triple the times when using coal. Its a simple small uptic but it makes a difference in the long run.
I also had a thought on smelting iron, and hear me out here, what if you get more iron when you use different smelters? The different smelters mean more efficient use, so wouldn't it make sense that you'd get more if you used higher grade smelters?

This is just my thoughts on it, and suggestion, and figured to share to see if it has any merit.

[william_es]

What is "quite the chore"? pressing some buttons?

We already have an alternate recipe that uses charcoal for bloom, so that already conserves coal.

Why would better smelters make more? refining materials actually reduces it, not the other way around. When you melt it and separate the impurities, the volume shrinks by a huge amount. Why would a more efficient smelter suddenly cause the material to double or triple in weight/volume? Are we baking cakes? fluffy cakes?? or is it using magic?

More efficient smelters would just smelt faster, or the high grade smelter would simply be necessary to even reach the correct melting point for certain materials. There's equipment that will easily melt iron, but not evennnnnn remotely reach the temperature needed to melt aluminum for example.

[Spaceminnow]

It looks like your asking for more material out from a small amount of material in...
If we could do that; our material and energy problems are over...

[Brew]

Originally posted by Gryphon Nerd:

you can more effectively use [coal] to power a smelter early on or use [for] light sources.

To me, it is the opposite. It is not worth using coal for fuel; I'd rather save it for steel production. Yes it is an efficient fuel, but I always have mountains of wood from windfall trees (still mostly playing in forest, maybe the balance shifts in other biomes). A wall torch burns for ages on a stack of wood, so I never find myself wanting better fuel there. Burning wood as fuel produces charcoal as by-product, which you can use in great quantities for gunpowder (especially incendiary rounds). Burning coal as fuel produces nothing, making it more of a waste. In fact, you can get lots of sticks from those trees as well; if you don't need that many, may as well use those for fuel too, to augment the charcoal supply. The new smoker requires charcoal for fuel also, so there's another reason to burn wood as fuel, not coal.

[william_es]

Originally posted by Brew:

The new smoker requires charcoal for fuel also, so there's another reason to burn wood as fuel, not coal.

Yeah. One of the first things I do is set a campfire up, dump in hundreds of wood and let it go. Later on when I build the forge, I just start stockpiling 500 stacks of charcoal in the forge to store it.

Steel bloom, medicines, gunpowder. It has a lot of uses, it will not go to waste.

[Dallas]

The lightening strikes on trees are an excellent source of charcoal too. Two chops you get a trees worth. I find i use a lot of charcoal playing in open world.

[Punabra]

Originally posted by Dallas:

The lightening strikes on trees are an excellent source of charcoal too. Two chops you get a trees worth. I find i use a lot of charcoal playing in open world.

why wait for lightning to get burned trees for charcoal ?, i just light them on fire way faster and i dont need to wait for lightning

[william_es]

Originally posted by Punabra:

Originally posted by Dallas:

The lightening strikes on trees are an excellent source of charcoal too. Two chops you get a trees worth. I find i use a lot of charcoal playing in open world.

why wait for lightning to get burned trees for charcoal ?, i just light them on fire way faster and i dont need to wait for lightning

I know. But all the burned trees are sad and depressing to look at. And there's currently no way to re-grow or re-spawn trees. So I try to actively avoid burning them down.

Lightning does it for us anyways. I tried to leave one, just ONE, grove of trees near my prometheus base... and lighting hit and burned the whole grove down. I step onto my porch, I get to look at crispy toothpicks.

[Cutlery]

If you've progressed at all, bring the MXC Furnace, it weight 5 kg and will smelt iron as you're mining out a cave to reduce overall weight. Also make a mortar to take with you and turn a fair chunk into bloom while you mine. A cheap antibiotic injector helps too. You said you wanted more materials from nodes, there are perks for that.