Vanilla Steel

Adding a tier of items between Diamond and Iron in a vanilla way

Inspired by Quark, I wanted to add a simple, vanilla way of getting a mid-tier of items between diamond and iron without adding new ores or machines. You can make steel using available vanilla machines and items. No new things necessary!

Features

Steel Tools - same features as iron but double the durability, and the sword is just slightly better.
Steel Armor - same armor levels as iron but with +1 Armor Toughness and more durability
Steel Pickaxe - like iron, but twice the durability and can harvest obsidian (toggleable via config)
Steel Doors, Block, and Bars - decorative like their iron counterparts but darker and cooler looking. (For that nice dark fortress you were thinking to build!)
Steel Ingot - can be uses in just about any recipe an iron ingot can be used in, but is more efficient to produce.

So how do I make some steel?

First off, you need to put some Iron Nuggets in a Smoker. They need all that smoky delicious carbon to carbonize them up into Sooty Iron Nuggets.

Smoking dem nuggets!

Next you need to take 6 Sooty Iron Nuggets and put them together in a crafting table to make a Sooty Iron Cluster. It's kind of like an Iron Bloom, but more Minecrafty! This number is configurable*, but the default number of 6 lets you create 3 Steel Ingots for every 2 Iron Ingots to provide some efficiency and balance out the extra processing steps required in making them.

Sooty Goodness

Finally you put your Sooty Iron Clusters in a Blast Furnace. It's gotta be a blast furnace as the regular furnace just ain't hot enough to turn your carbonized iron into proper steel.

Then take your Steel Ingots and get to work!

ARE YOU AN ARTIST? Because I am not. I would love for someone to help me make cooler looking steel items. If interested, drop me a note. Thanks

*configuration coming soon