I'm curious if I can actually get more steel from a steel shape pack by smelting it

[Amins]

I got a steel shape pack from a quest reward and decided to smelt most of it down. Unfortunately I didn't think to do the math before I started the process, but now I'm curious if it will end up getting me more steel out of the deal. Assuming it costs 5000 forged steel to upgrade those same 500 blocks. If you have enough points in Advanced Engineering to cut the cost of steel down, it kind of seems like I'm getting more out of smelting it into forged steel.

[Amins]

Okay, I think I just figured it out for my situation. It says I'd get 150 scrap iron for scrapping one block down. Which means 75,000 for the 500. Without the 25 percent penalty by smelting it directly, that makes 100,000 iron in the forge.

With the level 4 in Advanced Engineering, it costs 23 iron for one forged steel. Which comes to 4347.83 forged steel for the whole batch. So I'm at a loss right now. Although, if it costs less than 20 iron to make one forged steel at level 5 Advanced Engineering, I think I may have discovered a way to farm steel.

[Amins]

Alright, loaded another world with maxed out Advanced Engineering. Looks like it's 1 to 1 conversion that way at 20 scrap iron per forged steel. And here I was thinking I just discovered a cool exploit...

[seven]

Yeah, with no perks you only get about 60% of the metal needed. With max perk you get 100% back, but then you still need clay. Still, if you have a lot of extra steel blocks it can be smelted and used for steel in other things.

[Amins]

Yup, that's what my idea was. I'm still fine losing 13 percent of the equivalent iron so I can get more use out of it.