Iron sand

[Samoja]

In certain parts of Asia good quality iron ore was not really available. What they had to use instead was iron extracted from sand. It had way more impurities than regular Iron, so had to be folded to get them out, the process also stripped out the carbon, making for a softer iron, so it was usually forge welded with better quality steel, soft iron making the core.

I think it would be cool to recreate this process, especially if you could get small ammounts of steel from traders. You would be able to extract iron from certain kinds of sand, but it would be a special kind of iron not suitable to making tools and weapons, and would require a lot more hammering to get the slag out of it(with initial bloom having a lot of hidden slag voxels you would need to dig out), but adding a few chunks of steel to it would make a cheap, if not as durable, alternative to steel.

[Facethief]

How would it spawn? I feel like it would be fitting to see in basalt or other mafic rock types.

I do like the idea of having poor-quality iron. However, I’m not sure how this could be best executed outside of requiring multiple blooms for one ingot, as you seemed to suggest.

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, Facethief said:

I do like the idea of having poor-quality iron. However, I’m not sure how this could be best executed outside of requiring multiple blooms for one ingot, as you seemed to suggest.

I'm not opposed to having a poor-quality iron source, but I doubt many players would be thrilled about needing multiple blooms to make a single ingot.

 

1 hour ago, Samoja said:

but adding a few chunks of steel to it would make a cheap, if not as durable, alternative to steel.

The problem here is that the player needs steel to make this work, and if they have steel then they not only have iron, but a better material than plain iron to boot. I don't really see how this is a good alternative to iron or steel.