Iron Before Steel: Smelting, Sawmills and Eight New Tools
OCTOBER 12-26, 2026 / DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
Stone to electric should feel like a journey with useful stops. The iron and lumber updates add two optional production chains, then give early metalworking a reason to exist through eight wrought-iron tools. They offer a new route through colony industry without requiring every player to switch on both systems.
Choose the chains you want
Iron smelting and lumber milling have separate settings. Both started ON in .114, but .118 changed new defaults to OFF and applied a one-time migration to older settings. Later individual choices are remembered. In the current package, enable the systems you want through Tool Progression's Mod options before planning the new workshops.
Turning a chain off stops its new production and construction while retaining saved resources, buildings, research and bill settings. Finished iron tools remain usable. Re-enabling the setting lets the chain resume. The option does not need to erase a colony's work to make the system optional.
Give ore a destination
The smelting chain adds occasional iron-ore finds during completed player mining, wrought iron, a stone bloomery and a fuelled bellows furnace. The electric smelter gains ore and refining bills, followed by advanced bulk-processing research and bills. Smelt any ore appears first in the bill menu after the .116 usability update.
Wrought-iron tools arrive in .117: pickaxe, axe, building hammer, shovel, hoe, sickle, knife and chisel. Research Smithing and use a fuelled or electric smithy. When tool requirements are enabled, a carried stone or bone hammer can start the chain by making the first iron hammer. Steel-tool recipes remain at the machining table.
At equal quality and maker skill, the documented speed steps are stone or bone at 1.0, wrought iron at 1.1 and steel at 1.25. Iron's base working life is seven full days of active work, between stone's four and steel's ten. These are work-time values, not promises about how many calendar days an item survives every colony.
Make the timber count
Lumber progresses through a hewing bench, hand sawmill, electric sawmill and precision lumber mill. The system preserves ordinary and Bio-Arbor wood identities in generated lumber definitions, so processing does not flatten every tree into an anonymous material. Finished lumber can serve as wooden building or furniture material.
The stations improve speed and material recovery as the chain advances. Already processed lumber cannot circulate through the mills to create an endless material loop. Saw any logs helps keep the bill list manageable. A later power correction addresses the electric sawmill and precision mill, so their powered behavior belongs in a live test after installation.
Keep the first run small
Enable one chain, check its research, and process a modest batch. For iron, follow ore through a bloomery and into one smithy tool. For lumber, compare the input material, output identity and resulting construction choice. Existing toolbelts, storage, quality and wear systems apply to iron tools. Automated checks support the packaged implementation; fuel handling, power, hauling and full production still need confirmation in a running colony.