I Need Steel To Build Certain Things But No Way To Smelt...Without Steel

[johnyoga]

Hello Folks,

It's like a Catch 22: I need Steel to build various different production devices. Therefore, I need to build a Smelter...to extract steel. Or, I need steel to make the Stonecutter's Table to cut the Granite Blocks to make a Fueled Smelter.  Steel is needed to make production devices to smelt Steel. LOL

It's fairly early game; therefore, there are no traders yet.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

Marc

[ReZpawner]

Well there sonny, I'mma tell you the same thing as mah grampa told me. There's steel in dem there mountains.

(Go mining, compacted steel is what you're looking for. Alternatively, you can send out a caravan to a nearby settlement and buy some from them, but keep in mind that it's heavy).

[5thHorseman]

Also check all walls on the map, sometimes they're made of steel. Take the floor too.

[johnyoga]

Thanks to you both!

Your comments made me think about alternative ways to gather usable steel...

I ended up deconstructing some old remains. I have a mod that brings in old remains from others' games. That did it. I have few mountains around me, but their edges, at least, are stone types.

I will remember your comments.

Thanks for responding...

[Pangaea]

This probably isn't suitable in the early game, but later on when you have more man/girlpower you can try hacking through mountain every third row. With some luck you'll find resources in there. Depends on the map type ofc, as flat maps won't have much at all.

Like this:

[bugi]

Some kind of stone cutting should be possible even without steel, as the (historical) early stone cutting didn't have steel (or any other kind of metal) available, yet made even quite accurate and beautiful results, be it bricks, smoothed blocks or statues.  Just wood, water, leather, other stones and sand, and lots and lots of work. Some variations exists, like drilling holes first (without metal tools!), but the basic processes were usually the same, hitting hard, lots of expanding force in cracks or holes, or grinding.

If such was possible in Rimworld, that would allow "bootstrapping" the process with zero steel. For easy implementation in Rimworld, I'd just make it a process doable "on the ground" (can't remember the name of the suitable spot), e.g. with a little bit of wood and two stone chunks, for similar output as the stonecutter bench, but taking around 3 times as long. The process is more wasteful than optimized cutting, so two chunks input, and the wood gets wasted, too.

[Canute]

So far i remember you can build simple workbenches, like stonecutter from other material like wood/stone blocks too.
Steel is maybe just the default material. Keep left clicking on the icon then you should be able to select the material.
Sure any smithy is still made from steel.

[bugi]

"wooden" stonecutter's table: 30 steel + 75 wood
steel stonecutter's table: 105 steel
(Edit: and stone variants are not possible for that.)

Wooden butcher's table and hand tailor bench are pure wood. All the rest need steel

[johnyoga]

Thanks folks!

Yeah, that was my problem...all the ways to extract Steel from a production table requires...steel!

But, we found a workaround because of your ideas and thinking outside the box, so to speak.

I appreciate it...

[entelin]

all the ways to extract Steel from a production table requires...steel!

You aren't intended to get the majority of your steel from any production table. The *vast* majority comes from sources that require no steel input. First look for steel buildings to deconstruct, this is the fastest early steel and is on almost every map, if you are on an ancient highway the objects next to the road also yield steel. Mining of course, In over 800 hours I've never seen any map without a lot of exposed steel, if your map doesn't have that, that's really weird. If you are new enouph to rimworld to be asking this question I would really recommend playing through the game without any gameplay altering mods first, the vanilla game is really very good. Deconstructing ship chucks which commonly fall down also gives you a fair bit of steel. Late game producing things for money and trading for steel is the best way to get 1000+ at a time, keep in mind that you can travel to and trade with towns on the map at any time in the game, and you should be doing this early. Early money can be made by a variety of methods, but killing a large animal and quickly caravan the meat over before it rots can give you quite a lot of quick silver. If your map is out of easy to reach iron, you can make a second "colony" and send people over to mine it as well. Late, deep drilling is an option, but it's not great and causes infestations, so I don't use it personally. Smelting enemy weapons and steel chucks are really the last source you want to be going to, and it also requires research and electricity all of which require steel, it's simply not an early game thing.

I would also advise against tunneling to find more resources on your own map. It provides opportunities for infestations, destroys natural defensive features, and is basically just a waste of time since most of your mining will be just stone, and you could instead get resources from any of the other methods I mentioned above.

[johnyoga]

Thank you for your detailed response, Entelin!

I wrote several notes from your words.

Regards,

Marc