SnapJelly Posted September 2 Report Posted September 2 Hello friends, So I just had this thought where I figured that I have only ever used Meteoric iron tools 1 time and that was because I couldn't find any bauxite so I couldn't make steel, when you get to the iron age I find iron tools are plenty strong and (save for a time crunch) the step to steel is never very far away, steel is objectively better than Meteoric iron and the materials used to make steel are also incredibly prolific whereas Meteoric iron spawns quite rarely. Which makes the decision to skip it and going straight to steel usually an easy one to make for me. I do pick it up, sometimes to decorate, other times it just sits in a box for the entire game doing nothing. So the suggestion is simple, being able to transform Meteoric iron into a slightly stronger steel the same way the base material is a slightly stronger iron would be a logical next step gamedesign wise I think, It's a rare material so it would make the strongest possible equipment in game rare as well by default and it would give more purpose to an existing item which (while cool) is imo not much more than a gimmick as it stands. But what do you guys think? Maybe I am alone in this and you guys use Meteoric iron tools more often? Lmk what you think!
LadyWYT Posted September 2 Report Posted September 2 9 minutes ago, SnapJelly said: But what do you guys think? Maybe I am alone in this and you guys use Meteoric iron tools more often? I like to hoard meteoric iron because it's rare and pretty. I also tend not to use it for tools for the same reason, and also because steel is just better and fun to make(in my opinion). I do think meteoric iron should be able to be converted into steel, but I'm not sure that it should be any better than the steel we already have. What I would rather see when it comes to better steel, is some extra steps adding to the refinement process we have already, in order to get even better steel quality, or at the very least have a way to smelt down steel for casting. 1
Nathan Flaminio Posted September 2 Report Posted September 2 There is a mod for Meteoric Steel that works quite well. I use it to make the falx and armor, but otherwise stick to normal steel for the rest of our tools. (Though I did make an Uber-shovel, axe, and hoe for big jobs). I make us each one set of tools with Meteoric Iron, but otherwise only use it for a few lanterns for myself, my elk, and my sailboat. The rest get turned into Meteoric Steel.
williams_482 Posted September 2 Report Posted September 2 Meteoric iron is very easy to find in large quantities with some practice viewing a map, and easier to process than iron because the bloomery converts it directly into ingots. I use it as my primary tool material until I have an adequate supply of steel, beyond what I need for higher priority armor and pickaxes. After that point, I'll use my meteoric iron stocks for generic stuff like nails or lanterns. Between the ease of processing, the superiority over regular iron, and the distinctive color and pattern, I think meteoric iron already has a meaningful niche in the game and I'm happy with that. 1
MKMoose Posted September 3 Report Posted September 3 (edited) As much as realism is naturally not the be-all end-all here, it has always somewhat grated me that meteoric iron is implemented the way it is. Real meteoric iron is confirmed to have been used at least as early as at the start of the Bronze Age (~3000 BC), and was one of the two only sources of iron metal prior to iron smelting - the other source is telluric (native) iron, of which only one major deposit was found in Greenland. The availability and practical value of meteoric iron is highly regional: in the Arctic, it was somewhat common and a lot of it was obtained from the Cape York meteorite, frequently used for small tools, knives, spears, harpoons and so on, in other regions including Ancient Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, very scarce, rare enough that it could be very valuable and potentially more frequently used for various cultural items more than ordinary tools. In terms of ease of obtaining or processing, it can be more accessible than even copper, albeit generally available in very small quantities. Because it consists of native metal and not reducible ore, it can't be smelted in the strict of the sense of the word, and it doesn't need to be - it was generally cold-worked or hot-worked into shape, but not melted. As a tool metal, it was as far as I can tell roughly similar in value to bronze (better for small cutting tools and points, but can be brittle and can't be cast easily) or to early low-quality iron. One of its primary flaws is that it's very heterogenous - two different meteorites could be completely different in composition and significantly different in physical properties, and they often contained inclusions, cracks and other flaws. An interesting question about the implementation of meteoric iron is whether its availability should be reasonably closely dictated by its real-world distribution. A meteorite could have theoretically fallen nearly anywhere, and it's not technically necessary to reflect real history in the VS world. That said, I think it could be interesting if meteoric iron served as a way to bring an interesting distinction to cold climates, as it's one of the few instances where a metal could be justifiably restricted climatically to a significant extent. On 9/2/2026 at 4:27 PM, SnapJelly said: But what do you guys think? Maybe I am alone in this and you guys use Meteoric iron tools more often? A lot depends on luck here, naturally, but I've found that the meteorites are actually somewhat common once you know what to look for, and as such can be quite reliably used for tools. In flat areas it can get up to approximately one meteorite impact for every 500x500 area on average (as far as I was able to find). I tend to use it over regular iron whenever possible, though its value naturally dwindles once steel becomes available. Since it processes directly into ingots and not into blooms, I've found it very useful if I happen to obtain iron prior to setting up a helve (which is frankly pretty trivial to do if you know what you're doing, because a helve requires a windmill and that in turn takes a lot of waiting for flax to grow). Processing the blooms for the anvil without a helve can be a bit of a pain, but once you have the anvil then meteoric iron is significantly more convenient to use compared to regular iron, and it's a tiny bit better at that. On 9/2/2026 at 4:27 PM, SnapJelly said: So the suggestion is simple, being able to transform Meteoric iron into a slightly stronger steel the same way the base material is a slightly stronger iron would be a logical next step gamedesign wise I think, It's a rare material so it would make the strongest possible equipment in game rare as well by default and it would give more purpose to an existing item which (while cool) is imo not much more than a gimmick as it stands. It could be a pretty good fit in terms of gameplay, as it naturally gives meteoric iron a more significant use after steel becomes part of the equation, though it can also be easily argued that being easy to process is already a sufficient niche - meteoric iron is faster to process and costs several times less fuel to make than steel, and is also better than ordinary iron, so it can be considered better in scenarios where superior durability or slightly higher stats of steel are not paramount. It is also not unreasonable in terms of realism, as meteoric iron could theoretically be made into steel through carburization (or cementation), though it can have a couple issues: Nickel content and various impurities greatly affect the quality of the final product - it could theoretically be diluted in standard iron (there is some archaeological evidence for mixing meteoric iron with ordinary iron in some capacity, but it's nowhere close to being a well-established metallurgical practice, and especially not for the purposes or producing steel). Due to heterogeneity between different meteorites, without modern analysis, using a new batch of meteoric iron would be largely shooting in the dark, and it would require a whole trial-and-error process just to arrive at a high-quality product. Even small inclusions which don't greatly affect the steel initially can cause heat treatment to behave differently, sometimes with effects largely nullified or even potentially opposite to what would be expected for standard steel. The main issue, though, may be that this has never been done in real life at any meaningful scale (or at least there is no evidence thereof), most likely simply because there was not enough meteoric iron to allow freely experimenting with it to attempt steelmaking, not to mention making any larger endeavors reasonably cost-effective. Ordinary iron is right there as a perfectly viable and quite abundant resource with a more easily standardized production process. Granted, the meteoric iron we have in the game is already unrealistic, so stretching it further wouldn't be too bad, but still I'm not sure that it makes much sense to deliberately add a feature which in real life simply wasn't viable and lacks any historical evidence, even if it is theoretically possible. Edited September 3 by MKMoose 1
Mac Mcleod Posted September 3 Report Posted September 3 Meteoric iron is generally iron–nickel alloy, not steel in the conventional sense. Meteoric iron: Mostly iron (Fe) with significant nickel (Ni), commonly around 5–20% nickel, plus smaller amounts of cobalt and other elements. Steel: Iron alloyed primarily with carbon, generally up to about 2.1% carbon for ordinary steels, with other alloying elements sometimes added. Meteorites can contain extremely low carbon, so chemically those are quite different from steel. Why meteoric iron was valuable for weapons Meteoric iron excels for making tools and blades. Some iron meteorites have a distinctive crystalline structure called the Widmanstätten pattern, produced by extremely slow cooling over millions of years inside an asteroid. Ancient metalworkers who worked meteoric iron were essentially starting with a naturally occurring metal alloy that was already relatively tough and workable. They could forge it, hammer it, and cold-work it, but they couldn't harden it through the conventional carbon-steel quenching process in the same way. 1
SnapJelly Posted September 4 Author Report Posted September 4 7 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said: Meteorites can contain extremely low carbon, so chemically those are quite different from steel. Well yeah, that's why a cementation furnace would be needed to add carbon to the iron
Mac Mcleod Posted Friday at 09:05 PM Report Posted Friday at 09:05 PM 19 hours ago, SnapJelly said: Well yeah, that's why a cementation furnace would be needed to add carbon to the iron I finally undersand why it looks like it does. Because of the nickel. I always think of it as "Mithril". I think it looks so much better than steel. Just found my first one on TOPS today. 8 meteoric iron blocks. Got 4 of them. The others will make 7 meteoric iron ingots.
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