How to get Pig Iron in Dwarf Fortress
If only you could make bacon from it.
Chris Davenport 
Image via Bay12 Games
In Dwarf Fortress, Pig Iron is a necessary material for creating steel. This brittle material itself must be crafted beforehand, and locking down the necessary production chain is vital to ensuring your dwarves can craft steel at a decent-enough rate to outfit them with armor, weaponry, and even quality-of-life accouterments. It all starts with Pig Iron though, so here’s how to make it in Dwarf Fortress.
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Pig Iron recipe in Dwarf Fortress
In order to make Pig Iron, players will need:
- 1x iron ingot
- 1x flux material
- +1 fuel unit
The fuel itself is part of the necessary reaction for making Pig Iron, so an additional unit of fuel is necessary even if using built-in options such as magma smelters. Thus, two units of fuel are ultimately necessary for one single craft of Pig Iron.
How to craft Pig Iron in Dwarf Fortress
To craft Pig Iron, users must use a smelter production area and have access to all materials listed above. They can then set a new job within the smelter, to craft Pig Iron. Once crafted, is then moved to storage until called upon by various crafting recipes, primarily steel. It’s possible, however, to utilize Pig Iron for studding walls, to decorate rooms for dwarves that prefer the material, and rarely for Strange Moods which require the resource to mitigate the impending death of the moody dwarf.
Beyond being a necessary material for steel, and the errant dwarf that may prefer the item, Pig Iron itself is not entirely a necessary resource for a successful Dwarf Fortress. It would be wise not to stretch too far into its crafting, lest you run through the flux and iron necessary for other, more necessary crafts. Instead, plan out the materials necessary to outfit various members of squads, and manually cease its production once complete.
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