Hard Metal

[thechop96]

As someone just getting hard metal for the first time, what should I do with it? i was able to scavenge a anvil so I already have that.

[Arcanist]

meat grinder, cauldron, steel

Then after you have steel for a brick wall, make curios

[Emina]

if you havent allready lerned iron nuggets, i would suggest make nuggets out of it one time and then turn it back in to a bar before you use it, to hopefully open up some new recepies in your menu.

[min_the_fair]

Scythe, metal plow, shovel. Pickaxe if you want to do a lot of paving, but a low q pickaxe is unlikely to be of much use for mining.

If it's iron, the first bar of wrought makes a metal saw, then the next bar of cast is another shovel so that someone can help you make bricks, because you can now build a wall with all the rest of the wrought.

Oh, and you made the smithy hammer first, right?

[thechop96]

Its cast iron. I also haven made anything just yet

[LadyV]

My list would be smithy hammer, anvil ( so you know the quality), pickaxe, cauldron, meat grinder, metal plow, shovel. Beyond that you can start making chests to store and carry items in.

[min_the_fair]

... anvil ( so you know the quality)....

Smithy's hammer Quality = (AvgMetalQ*3 +AnvilQ)/4 softcapped by sqrt(Strength * Smithing)
So at this level, make sure your hammer isn't going to be capped by your sqrt str*smithing, if possible with a bit of extra there in case the anvil is superfantastic (highly unlikely, but at this stage of the world you never know). Make the hammer. If it comes out lower q than the input iron, put 'new anvil' on your shopping list, otherwise just remember to keep an eye on it f your base iron q goes up (with better kiln, charcoal, smelter etc).

Which reminds me that I forgot to put 'build finery forge' on that list of things to do with iron. So yeah, you'll want one of them.