Simply Steel logo A simple Vanilla+ style mod that adds steel.

NOTE: I will not be updating this mod further, as I no longer have the time to do so. The code is available on GitHub, feel free to do with it what you like.

Purpose:

Adds steel as an early-game durability fix. No more crafting four iron pickaxes when searching for your first diamonds! Also it adds cool new block textures and some other miscellaneous things.

Feature List:

Steelmaking

Craft an Iron Ingot with Coal into Crude Iron.
Smelt Crude Iron in a Blast Furnace to make a Steel Ingot (costs 6x more fuel than normal)

Steel Tools and Armor

Compared to iron, durability is improved with steel tools (250 -> 484) and armor (240 -> 320)
Steel tools are slightly more efficient (6.0 -> 6.5), and steel armor has +1 Armor Toughness.
Steel has slightly higher enchantability (14 -> 16)

Steel Anvil

Has half the chance of cracking from being used or dropped, allowing it to last much longer on average.

Steel Doors, Trapdoors, Bars, and Blocks

Harder and more blast resistance than their iron counterparts, these come with new textures great for brutalist or industrial builds.

More Firestarters (Flint and Steel variants)

Quartz can be used in place of Flint to create a firestarter with more durability.
Steel is now used to craft firestarters. Using Iron in the crafting recipe now results in a 50% sparking failure chance.

Steel Golem

Created similarly to an Iron Golem, it has 50% more health and heals 50% more from ingots.
Advancements!
Acquire Harder-ware - Blast a Steel Ingot
Heavy Duty - Place a Steel Anvil
Real Steel - Summon a Steel Golem to help defend a village
Watch the World Burn - Completely use up every firestarter, then reevaluate your sanity

Images

Item showcase

Steelmaking tutorial

Block showcase

Steel Golem

Changelog:

Version 2.2.0

Added Steel Shears
Added Tetra support
Added more forge tags for compatibility purposes

Version 2.1.1:

Fixed modded firestarter items not lighting Candles or Cakes with Candles (must be crouching for the latter)

Version 2.1.0

Updated to 1.18.1
Added recipe unlocking
Added 4 Advancements:

Acquire Harder-ware - Blast a Steel Ingot
Heavy Duty - Place a Steel Anvil
Real Steel - Summon a Steel Golem to help defend a village
Watch the World Burn - Completely use up every firestarter, then reevaluate your sanity

Version 2.0.0:

Updated to 1.17.1
Re-textured everything
Added Steel Anvil
Added Steel Golem
Increased cost of blasting Crude Iron
Slightly reduced Steel blast resistance
Iron firestarters can now be made from Raw Iron (other modders, use forge:iron_firestarter_materials to add your items)
Fixed Steel Trapdoors not having the correct blast resistance
Removed unnecessary vanilla Forge tags

Version 1.1.0:

Increased Steel Tool durability from 343 to 484
Smelting Crude Iron now requires a Blast Furnace
Added Steel Nuggets
Fixed Steel Block to Steel Ingot recipe

Known Issues:

Cakes with Candles can only be lit by modded firestarters while crouching. Mojang hardcoded the use behavior to always attempt to eat the cake unless holding specifically a vanilla firestarter item.

Feel free to use this pack in modpacks. Please include credit.

Note: Should be compatible with other mods' steels, if they use the proper forge tags.

Simply Steel [Forge]