User:Fynnkaterin/Bessemer Steel Ingot (Guide)

WIP: An edit of the Bessemer Steel Ingot guide, with the incomplete or confusing information stripped out.

Bessemer Steel Ingots (BSI) are the main resource used to advance the Great Hellbound Railway, as they are the primary component of the Railway Steel needed to build tracks.

At around per , and up to on average needed to build toward each station, it ultimately takes up to to complete the Railway. This makes it especially desirable to know the most efficient source of BSI available to you at a given time.

I need HOW many BSI?!

BSI converts to Railway Steel at a rate of 22.5–23 BSI per Steel, depending on which of the manufacturing options you choose:

	Cost		Output	Efficiency
Option		& actions		Actions per 10	per 10	per 10
Make tracks	90	1	4	2.5	225	2.5
Make a lot of tracks	345	3	15	2	230	2.0

As the table shows, Make tracks is slightly more BSI-efficient, while Make a lot of tracks uses fewer Justificande Coins and actions.

Steel per station

The amount of needed to build toward each station varies, with 30 Steel as the minimum and some stations presenting options that require different amounts of Steel.

Station requirements

Station	Steel	BSI
Ealing Gardens	30–40	675–920
Jericho Locks	30	675–690
The Magistracy of the Evenlode	40–60	900–1380
Balmoral	60	1350–1380
Station VIII	32	720–736
Burrow-infra-Mump	30	675–690
Moulin	30	675–690
The Hurlers	30	675–690
Marigold	30	675–690
Total	312–342	7020–7866

Therefore, depending on your choices for Ealing and the Evenlode, and whether or not you make tracks in bulk, you'll need up to and total to build to all nine stations.

Quick list of BSI sources

Your options for grinding BSI, and which method is most efficient, varies depending on a number of factors; e.g., your skill levels, the locations you have access to, and your Lab setup. In general, we'll cover the BSI per action that you can achieve with each method, as well as what that method requires and how you can optimize your returns.

In brief, the sources of BSI are:

• Brawling with Dockers and taking the Iron and Misery crates: 20–25 x  BSI
  • 20 x BSI for Brawling 30 in a group, or 25 x BSI for Brawling 40 if solo.
• Sell your skeleton to an Enthusiast of the Ancient World: (value + bonus)/50 x BSI
  • This Bone Market patron will buy a skeleton with Antiquity, and pays in BSI depending on its value in Pennies.
• Sell an Enthusiast of the Ancient World a Jurassic Thigh Bone: 10 x  BSI
  • You can sell him one Femur of a Jurassic Beast per action.
• Steal from Mr Iron's warehouse: 100 x  BSI
  • A heist done via Parabola, available with base Shadowy at least 200 and costing 15 x An Identity Uncovered!
• Smuggle in industrial materials: 130 x  BSI
  • With access to the Fiddler's Scarlet in Jericho Locks, you can smuggle BSI for a cost of 24 x Preserved Surface Blooms on a high Shadowy challenge, if you have sufficient Train Baggage Accommodations, Banditry, and Renown: Criminals.
• Request Bessemer Steel Ingots as pay: 8 x  BSI
  • When working at L. B. Industries, you can turn in Foreman's Favour 60 for BSI.
• Search the Cloud: 5 x  BSI
  • Concluding a Parabolan hunt for the Storm-Bird this way gets you BSI.

The rest of this guide will cover each of these methods in more detail.

Brawling with dockers

Brawling is one of the easiest sources of BSI. It's available fairly early—as long as you've completed the A Name Scrawled in Blood]] storyline (see Making Your Name) and come to an agreement with the Garrulous Drunk, you have access to this method.

The base efficiency, assuming you can 100% the main challenge (Fight without taking your eye off the goods!), is 4 x  BSI per action.

Brawling with a group

This involves intervening on the side of order, the dockers, or criminals. The main challenge is 125, and you need 209 to 100% it.

Your cashing-out options and their efficiency are as follows:

• Accept a share of the crates destined for Iron and Misery: 20 x  BSI (4 BSI/action) for Brawling 30.
• Accept a share of the large crate stolen from the Bone Market: for Brawling 80, which you can then sell at the Bone Market, netting you 70 x  BSI (4.7 BSI/action).

Brawling solo

If you have 292 or higher, you can 100% the main challenge when brawling for yourself.

• Claim the crates destined for Iron and Misery: 25 x  BSI for Brawling 40 (5 BSI/action).
• Claim the large crate stolen from the Bone Market: for Brawling 110, getting you 120 x  BSI at better than 5 BSI/action.

More efficient Brawling

Depending on your Dangerous and other items or skill levels you may have, you may be able to shorten these grinds by using other options that give more Brawling per action. This includes several Airs-dependent options, as well as options requiring a Honed Ushanka, Vigilant Chitin-Fur Boots, A Hunter's Instinct for Nightmares, or a Special Dispensation. For more information on optimizing your Brawling, consult Brawling with Dockers (Guide).

Selling to an Enthusiast of the Ancient World

In the Bone Market, the Enthusiast of the Ancient World will pay BSI for skeletons with Antiquity, or for Femurs of a Jurassic Beast. To sell to him, you need 3.

Selling him Femurs

Sell him a Jurassic Thigh Bone allows you to unload one per action, in exchange for 10 x  BSI. The efficiency of this method, therefore, depends on your source of Femurs.

• Brawling: As mentioned above, you can cash out Brawling for Femurs, which is more efficient in BSI/action than taking BSI crates. When Brawling in any group and always succeeding at the basic fight option, this works out to 4.7 BSI/action. The efficiency can be improved from there with advanced Brawling strategies.
• Methods besides Brawling tend to be less efficient, but additional sources for Femurs are in the Bone Sources list.

Selling him Skeletons

The Enthusiast will buy any skeleton with at least 1 point of Antiquity. He pays BSI based on the Approximate Value of Your Skeleton in Pennies, with a bonus if the current Bone Market fads are in your favour (check World Qualities to see what these are). The formula for his payout is (Value + Zoological Mania Bonus)/50 = BSI.

Optimizing the value of your skeleton can be a complicated endeavour, with varying requirements depending on the type of skeleton you want, as efficiency dependent on your bone sources. If you're interested in getting the most bang for your buck selling the Enthusiast skeletons, consult Assembling a Skeleton (Guide). For the purposes of this guide, we'll just give you a few options that yield a decent amount of BSI without a lot of hassle.

• Headless Skeleton + Sabre-toothed Skull (Humanoid): 130 x  BSI
  • If you have a ready source of Hinterland Scrip, you can buy a skull off the Enthusiast for 125 Scrip.
  • If you have more Jade Fragments than you know what to do with, you can buy the rest of the skeleton at The Small Stalls for 1000 Jade.
• Thorned Ribcage + Sabre-toothed Skull + 2 Albatross Wings + 2 Ivory Femur (Bird): 460 x  BSI
  • Requires being able to declare a skeleton a bird.

Smuggling industrial materials

Getting access to this method is a bit complicated and requires waiting for a card, but yields 130 x  BSI on success.

• First, you need a , the 25 faction item. See Raising Favours for help getting the favours you'll need to work toward this.
• You'll also need to have discovered the Fiddler's Scarlet in Jericho Locks. See Canal Cruising in Jericho Locks (Guide) for how to do this.
• Your train will need Baggage Accommodations 4 so that you have somewhere to put your spoils. This requires having a Board Meeting to Build more room for baggage on the train, four times. Note that this raises Corporate Debt by an increasing amount per level, enough to hit Corporate Debt 7 if you don't reduce it.
• With the Defenestrating Boots, the card Engage in Some Minor Smuggling can appear in the Upper River. (It replaces Listen to Rumours of Smuggling.)
• The option to Smuggle in industrial materials costs . You can buy these at the Rat Market, or sell a skeleton to the Sculptress, among other sources.
• The challenge is a whopping 420, but this decreases by 50 for each added level of Seeing Banditry in the Upper River.

Stealing from Mr Iron's warehouse

Look for Mr Iron's Warehouse is a Parabola-based heist, which is available from your Base Camp once you have 200. It costs (which is not consumed if you fail the check—and you eventually will, as it would take Shadowy 367 to 100% it). The efficiency, therefore, is based on your source of Identities Uncovered.

Success gets you 100 x  BSI.

Other sources

The remaining sources of BSI are inefficient in terms of BSI per action, but are listed here for completeness.

L. B. Industries

Request Bessemer Steel Ingots as pay at L. B. Industries: 8 x  BSI for Foreman's Favour 60. You also get . This might be a good option if you're grinding Shadowy anyway—there's a Menace-free 178 challenge here (Assist with assembly).

Hunting the Storm-bird

Search the Cloud: 5 x  BSI for concluding your Storm-bird hunt this way. There's no particular benefit to this hunt if you aren't actually looking to capture Storm-birds, though there's a chance of getting a Whirring Contraption or A Miniature Model Ship as an alternative success, if that appeals to you.

Sell an Aged Egg at Whitsun

During Whitsun, you can buy an Aged Egg from the Reliable Eggmonger for and sell it to the Enthusiast for 10 x  BSI. If you find yourself flush with Jade during Whitsun, and you don't have a source of Sabre-toothed Skulls that makes selling him full skeletons efficient, you might do this; otherwise, you'll get more BSI for your Jade by spending it on Headless Skeletons to re-capitate.