How to Unlock Steel: Steel Ingots, Jack 70 and the Steel Anvil

Steel is the top metal tier for tools, weapons and armour, and the game makes you earn it twice: once with Jack’s friendship, once with an army. There is no steel ore and no smelting recipe at any furnace, so the forge recipes are only half the job. The other half is a monk-run counter under the old Bathhouse that sells ingots to anyone who has fought their way down. The consolation: once you are in, steel is cheap. A Steel Sword with a fixed price of 2 gold 50 silver needs under 3 silver of metal.

Steel at a glance

How to unlock steel in Graveyard Keeper 2, step by step

1. Take Jack to 60. Jack in a Boat pays +20, then Docked and Found, Workshop Hours, Jack’s Back in Business and Give materials pay +10 each.
2. Finish the Village election. Front-of-the-Envelope Calculation opens after Campaign of Thrones. Talk to Jack at his workshop with 60 reputation: his calculations say the workshop needs steel, and the road to it runs through the flooded Water Tunnel.
3. Close the western floodgate. In Water Locked, talk to Herbert in the Barracks, then win Closing the Western Floodgate (56 defense power, Sloth only).
4. Break into the Foundry. Steamy Royal asks for Closing the Eastern Floodgate: Part I (80 power, Sloth), its Part II straight after, then Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement (88 power, any day). Win the last one and you are standing in the Royal Foundry.
5. Ask the Bishop about high-quality steel. That is the first step of Man of Steel, and it opens his steel counter for good.
6. Give Jack 3 Steel Ingots. He talks about a single ingot, but the hand-in takes three. Jack climbs to 70 and you collect 3 Town Gratitude.
7. Open the tech tree. If you own Iron Products, the free Jack 70 gate opens as soon as he reaches 70, and Steel Smithing becomes buyable for 120 red and 15 blue.
8. Build the Steel Anvil in the Yard from 4 Steel Ingot, and place a Hardening Bucket beside it. The four steel tools and the Steel tools set will not start without one.

Jack’s reputation: the road to 70

Reputation with Jack only moves through quest rewards, 10 points per paying step, and the gate node itself costs no tech points. Nothing else raises it, so there is no shortcut, only order.

A reputation gate needs two things at once: the reputation and the technology in front of it. For steel that is Iron Products (90 red, 10 blue), which costs 505 red and 40 blue from scratch through the bronze and iron line. Buy it while you are still fighting toward the Foundry, so the gate opens the moment Jack gets his ingots. The tech priorities guide places it in the research order, and progression blockers covers Jack stalling at 60 or 70.

Reaching the Royal Foundry

Four fights and three defense power checks stand between you and the Bishop, all capped at three squads. Hired mercenaries take one of those squad places.

Steel cannot help you here, since it only arrives once these fights are won. Plan on iron instead: a squad of four zombies in Iron Armor with a Battle Pike or Battle Bow is worth 16, the Merc Leader’s iron upgrade (3 Iron Ingot) lifts the mercenaries from 8 to 16, and tier II barricades and towers add 4 each. The Bathhouse fight is the longest in the game, 364 enemies over 7 minutes 20 seconds, and the game only saves when you sleep, so sleep before you start it. The battles and army guide has full builds for each fight.

Before you leave, check that the Royal Foundry milestone is active. It costs no Faith, the story opens it, and it saves a very long walk every time you need more steel.

Buying Steel Ingots from the Bishop

The Bishop does not open a trade window. You pick a lot in dialogue and pay 1 silver per ingot: 1 for 1 silver, 10 for 10 silver, 50 for 50 silver or 100 for 1 gold. There is no bulk discount: the four lots are fixed offers in his dialogue, not a shop shelf. No trader buys Steel Ingots back, so their 10 silver valuation means nothing at the counter. Buy for a plan.

A first visit that covers Jack, the anvil, a full set of steel tools and the casting setup:

Two lots of 10 cover it for 20 silver; the next trip is for armour, weapons and quest orders. Study your first ingot straight away at the Study Table: 20 red and 25 blue for 3 Science, and you keep the ingot. The science points guide shows how to make that Science.

The steel technologies

Everything below sits in the Metallurgy tab. Prices are for the node alone; every listed prerequisite is required.

The seven crafting nodes from Steel Smithing to Masterwork Equipment cost 1,090 red and 120 blue, on top of the 505 red and 40 blue that reach Iron Products: 1,595 red and 160 blue from scratch. Smithy II and Steel Works add 335 red and 40 blue for the Factory, and Archers Tower III (160 red, 80 green) follows Reinforced Barricades.

Buy Steel Instruments I right after Steel Smithing. The Steel Hammer it unlocks is the single biggest Smithing boost you can carry, and most later steel recipes ask for 11 to 15 Smithing.

Steel Anvil, Casting Table and the other stations

Researching an extension does not place it, so build the Hardening Bucket and the Casting Table yourself. The Casting Table belongs to the furnace, not the anvil: Engineering Details are cast at Furnace II and then carried to the anvil.

Every steel recipe

“Ingots per item” counts the steel inside the parts too, at base batch sizes: a Steel Ingot makes 4 Steel Detail, 8 Steel Screws or 2 Engineering Details.

Three Smithing perks stretch every ingot: Engineer makes 6 Steel Detail instead of 4, Blacksmith 10 Steel Screws instead of 8, and Gear Master 3 Engineering Details instead of 2. Engineering Details are an auto-craft, so start the batch and walk away; just collect it before you expect the next one to start. Alkali and Tannin Liquid come from Laboratory II, or from a tier III Alchemist shop in Town; the rune mixes are in the alchemy guide.

Smithing mastery: the second gate

Owning Steel Smithing does not mean you can use it. A normal recipe will not even start below its Smithing requirement, and steel starts at 10. This is where most “I unlocked steel and nothing works” stories come from.

Only one tool of each kind counts, and both a hammer and a small-tool set feed Smithing, so two tools is the ceiling. A path that works:

1. Day one of steel: Iron Hammer (+4), Iron tools (+2) and four mastery nodes (+4) make exactly 10. That covers Steel Detail and all four steel tools. Reaching the fourth node also means buying Fireman, Miner and Gold Digger, seven red inspiration points in all, and Tempering Expert sits right after it.
2. Forge the Steel Hammer first. With it in the belt you sit at 6 + 2 + 4 = 12, enough for Steel Screws, Engineering Details, Steel tools, the Steel Sword and Steel Armor.
3. Swap in Steel tools and take Tempering Expert, which the Master recipes need anyway: 6 + 4 + 4 = 14, and its +2 on steel work makes 16, past the 15 that master gear asks for. The fifth node, behind Sword Master and War Engineer, is spare margin rather than a requirement.

The talents and inspirations guide maps the Smithing tree. A zombie can also work the Steel Anvil: it needs the same Smithing from its own mastery nodes plus the tool in its hand, and it keeps that craft’s tech points for its own tree.

What steel is used for

Master Armor is the quiet bargain of the list: one ingot’s worth of Steel Detail against five ingots for Steel Armor, and +4 instead of +3, at the price of Smithing 15, the Tempering Expert perk, 6 Fabric and a Tannin Liquid per piece. The factory and automation guide lists every steel-built Factory piece, and the zombies guide explains collars and red skulls.

Four quests ask for steel outright:

The armour order is the big one: plan 5 Steel Armor before you go shopping, and buy the Bishop’s 50 lot to cover it with room to spare.

Is steel worth the silver?

By the time you reach the Foundry, coins are rarely what holds you back: Faith and Likes are, along with mastery and red points. A silver per ingot is cheap, and steel still pays you back three ways.

Coins. The Steel Sword (2.75 ingots) and Steel Armor (5 ingots plus 4 Fabric) both carry a fixed price of 2 gold 50 silver, and a tier III Smithy shop in Town buys both; the Knight’s Spear (1.5 ingots) is fixed at 1 gold. Fixed-price goods ignore the stock curve, so the tenth sword pays like the first. The Smithy’s purse only covers about two swords per trade cycle, but a trade window is settled as one deal, so take goods off his shelf to balance a sale he cannot cover in coins. The same Smithy also buys Steel Detail, Steel Screws and Engineering Details, at about 2 silver 25, 1 silver 12 and 4 silver 50 at his usual stock, each sale lowering the next offer.

Tech points. Studying one of each of the 17 steel items pays 1,140 red, 330 green and 440 blue for 180 Science, against 1,090 red and 120 blue for the seven steel crafting nodes. You keep every item you study.

Craft points. Every steel craft pays the crafter red, the colour the tree never has enough of: +6 for Steel Detail, +7 for Steel Screws, +8 for Engineering Details, +9 for each steel tool, weapon and armour piece, +12 for master gear. Swords, spears, bows and armour also count toward Warmaker, 50 battle items crafted.

Common mistakes

• Hunting for steel ore. There is none, and no furnace recipe either. Only the Bishop sells Steel Ingots.
• Spending the first ingots before Jack gets three. Without Man of Steel, Jack stays at 60 and Steel Smithing stays locked. Buy extra on the first visit so the anvil and Jack are covered together.
• Reaching Jack 70 without Iron Products. The gate needs both, so buy Iron Products before Jack gets his ingots.
• Buying Steel Smithing with Smithing 8. The anvil goes up, then every steel recipe on it refuses to start. Get to 10 first with an Iron Hammer, Iron tools and four mastery nodes.
• Forgetting the Hardening Bucket. The four steel tools and Steel tools need it next to the Steel Anvil. Detail, Screws, weapons and armour do not.
• Looking for Engineering Details at the anvil. They are cast at Furnace II with the Casting Table beside it.
• Forging steel tools to sell. No trader buys the Steel Axe, Pickaxe, Hammer, Shovel or Steel tools. Make them to use and study, and sell swords and armour instead.
• Buying steel parts from tier III shops. Shops price Steel Detail from 3 silver, Steel Screws from 1 silver 50 and Engineering Details from 6 silver. The anvil turns 1 silver of steel into 4 Detail or 8 Screws.
• Building the Steel Anvil on a whim. Demolishing it returns 2 of its 4 ingots. The Casting Table, by contrast, refunds everything.
• Skipping the Study Table. Steel pays more red per study than almost anything else you craft. Study one of each before you sell or hand in.