Bessemer Steel Ingot (Guide)

Early Railroad Content and Onwards

Wiki note: The previous version of this guide, with more in-depth calculations of efficiency, can be found at Bessemer Steel Ingot (Guide)/Calculations.

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 23 x Bessemer Steel Ingot per Railway Steel, and up to 11.4 x Railway Steel on average needed to build toward each station, it ultimately takes up to 2360 x Bessemer Steel Ingot 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 Railway Steel needed to build toward each station varies, with around 9 Steel as the minimum and some stations presenting options that require different amounts of Steel. Before the 24th of November 2023, Railway Steel cost 70% more than it currently does.

Station requirements

Station	Steel	BSI
Ealing Gardens	9–12	203–207
Jericho Locks	9	203-207
The Magistracy of the Evenlode	12–18	270–414
Balmoral	18	405-414
Station VIII	10	216–221
Burrow-infra-Mump	9	203–207
Moulin	9	203–207
The Hurlers	9	203–207
Marigold	9	203–207
Total	94–103	2106–2360

Therefore, depending on your choices for Ealing and the Evenlode, and whether or not you make tracks in bulk, you'll need a total of up to 103 x Railway Steel, requiring up to 2360 x Bessemer Steel Ingot, to build to all nine stations.

Other Use

• You will need one extra Railway Steel to raise Watchful to 224.
  • Either Build a Locomotive for Mr Spices or Build a Locomotive for Mr Spices 2
• You can trade Railway Steel for 1 x Favours: Hell with Sell surplus Railway Steel to the Moloch Line

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 sources of the items certain methods require. In general, we'll cover how many BSI each method yields, BSI per action (where this is reasonably straightforward to calculate), and ways of optimizing 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.
• Payment for Services Rendered (In steel): 25 x BSI
  • When performing Professional Activities, you can turn in Approximate Value of Outstanding Invoices in Pennies 1250 for BSI.
• 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.
• Sell him an Aged Egg: 10 x BSI
  • You can sell Aged Eggs to the Enthusiast at Whitsun.
• Enter an agreement for the production of steel: 20 x BSI
  • At The Museum of Prelapsarian History, you can speak with Gebrandt, the Museum Curator and trade 1000 x Curator's Gratitude for BSI.
• Get a consignment of steel as payment from the game of Poison and Delight (a.k.a. Hearts' Game): 100 x BSI
  • In the Gamekeeper's Cottage in Watchmaker's Hill you can request this as a reward for 14 x Hearts' Game: Exploits.

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 (and have, of course, started the Railway), 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 Dangerous 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: 9 x Femur of a Jurassic Beast for Brawling 80, which you can then sell at the Bone Market, netting you 90 x BSI (4.7 BSI/action).

Brawling solo

If you have Dangerous 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: 12 x Femur of a Jurassic Beast 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 Respectable 3.

Selling him Femurs

Sell him a Jurassic Thigh Bone allows you to unload one Femur of a Jurassic Beast 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, and 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.
  • As a Licentiate, using the 7.5 SPA grind of using a victim's skeleton and skull to sell to the Constable provides one Sabre-toothed Skull every 17.67 actions. Using another four actions to make and sell a skeleton consisting of a victim's skeleton and the Sabre-toothed Skull to the Collector turns the whole cycle into an excellent 6 BSI per action grind.
  • 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 Pair of Defenestrating Boots, the Renown: Criminals 25 faction item. See Raising Favours (Guide) 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 24 x Preserved Surface Blooms. You can buy these at the Rat Market, or sell a skeleton to the Sculptress, among other sources.
• The challenge is a whopping Shadowy 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 Shadowy 200. It costs 15 x An Identity Uncovered! (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.

Professional Activities

Claiming payment in steel for Professional Activities is a very efficient source, at 4+ BSI per action. The caveats are:

• They are only available with Tier 3 Professions.
• All actions have two challenges, one based on a Main Attribute and another based on an Advanced Skill, and success requires passing both. (Mathematically, your overall chance of success is Main % * Advanced %; e.g., if you have a 60% chance on both checks, your overall chance of success is .60 * .60 = .36, or 36%.)
• The most profitable activities require A Professional Specialisation (with some action costs to set up initially), and their skill checks are very high: 200 in a Main Attribute and 12 in an Advanced Skill, requiring 334 and 17, respectively, to 100% the check.

Payment In steel grants 25 x BSI in exchange for 1250 x Approximate Value of Outstanding Invoices in Pennies. This means 1 x Invoice Value = 0.02 x BSI, or 1 BSI for every 50 Invoice Value (corresponding to BSI's implicit value of 0.50).

The actions available for each turn of Professional Activities varies with the Airs of Industry randomiser. Action challenges come in three levels of difficulty, with corresponding payouts of 320, 410, and 450 Invoice Value. For all difficulties, failure gains 200 Invoice Value.

Challenge	to 100%	Average		Average
		36%	100%	36%	100%
200/13	334/17	290	450	5.8	9
180/5	300/9	275.6	410	5.5	8.2
140/11	234/15
90/1	150/5	243.2	320	4.9	6.4

Table legend:

The average payout in Invoice Value, and the resulting BSI per action, of the three difficulties of Professional Activity (formatted as Main/Advanced skill levels). The calculations are done both for a 36% overall success chance (i.e., if your Main/Advanced levels exactly equal the challenge levels, giving you a 60% chance on each check and therefore an overall 36% chance of succeeding at both) and for a 100% success chance. BSI for consistent failures (at 200 Invoice Value per action) is 4 BSI per action.

To pick the most profitable action available, please consult this handy chart:

If your skill is as shown, pick the option if your stats are above:

Advanced Skill	Medium (Stats)	Hard (Vs Medium Stat)	Medium (Skill)	Hard (Vs Medium Skill)
4	Easy	Easy	Easy	Easy
5	286	Medium	Easy	Easy
6	245	Medium	Easy	Easy
7	215	Medium	Easy	Easy
8	191	Medium	Easy	Easy
9	172	Medium	Easy	Easy
10	172	Medium	Easy	Easy
11	172	Medium	223	Medium
12	172	Medium	191	Medium
13	172	Medium	167	Medium
14	172	Medium	100	Medium
15	172	Medium	100	Medium
16	172	312	100	312
17	Hard	160	100	280

Curator's Gratitude

At the Museum of Prelapsarian History you can trade 1000 x Curator's Gratitude for 20 x BSI. Gratitude can be grinded in the Osteology Lab in the museum, where completing a monograph on the subject using a Femur of a Jurassic Beast gives 6500 x Curator's Gratitude which is worth 130 x BSI. See The Prelapsarian Museum (Guide) for more detail.

For comparison, the optimal grind comes out at 8.55 BSI/action, but this requires Persuasive 300. A more accessible grind, from Watchful 200, produces 7.59 BSI/action.

The Game of Poison & Delight (a.k.a. Hearts' Game)

You need to be a tier 2 PoSI and have a (modified) Dangerous stat of 200 or higher to unlock this activity. Once you've joined the game, every action, no matter if you succeed or fail a challenge or win or lose a round of the game will reward you 1 x Hearts' Game: Exploits. For 14 Exploits you can choose to get A consignment of steel which will reward 100 x Bessemer Steel Ingot. It takes one action to claim the prize so 15 actions in total. At 6.67 Ingots per action this is quite an efficient source. The main drawback is the very endgame requirements for joining in the first place. See Hearts' Game (Guide) for more detail.

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 7 x Hinterland Scrip. This might be a good option if you're grinding Shadowy anyway—there's a Menace-free Shadowy 178 challenge here (Assist with assembly). It averages somewhat under 2 BSI per action.

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 100 x Jade Fragment 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.

Obtaining Railway Steel directly

Finally, you can completely avoid grinding BSI when you have a source of ready-made Railway Steel. Currently, the only such source is to Involve the Clay Highwayman's gang in industrial steel robbery, which is possible from Balmoral onwards.

The Clay Highwayman's gang

There are two versions of this, depending whether or not you are a Marauder of the Clay Highwayman. You get 10 x Steel for the non-Marauder version, and 11 x Steel if you're a Marauder.

Both versions require a fully-upgraded Cabinet Noir at Balmoral, in order to create a Cover Identity with specific Ties.

Non-Marauder

• On the Trail of the Clay Highwayman 3, which can be raised on the card Who is the Clay Highwayman?
• Cover Identity: Ties 3 (Dispossessed); Credentials, Nuance, and Witnesses 4; Backstory and Elaboration 10

Marauder

• A Marauder of the Clay Highwayman: See The Tale of the Clay Highwayman (Guide) for more information.
• Cover Identity: Ties 2 (Bazaar); Credentials, Nuance, and Witnesses 4; Backstory and Elaboration 10

In terms of efficiency, the Cover Identities Guide has this to say:

Involve the Clay Highwayman's gang in industrial steel robbery costs 32 actions + 1 Favour to receive 10–11 Railway Steel. In order to get 10 Railway Steel from other sources, it takes 2 actions, 230 BSI and 2 Justificande coins. Assuming 2 actions for the coins, and 1 action for the Favour, one would have to get more than roughly 7.9 or 8.7 BSI/action to make it more efficiently through other sources. This is in line with the best sources of Steel.

Therefore, a fully upgraded Cabinet Noir is a viable alternative to any of the high-BSI/action grinding methods for the latter half of the Railway.

Ridding your Bessemer Steel Ingots

You've finished building the last station of your railway. You've overshot the BSI requirement, so you have surplus steel. Or you accidentally took a consignment of steel or whatever, so you have surplus steel. How do you profit from them now?

• Create an Infernal Machine in your lab using 5 ingots at a time (also requires 250 Nevercold Brass Slivers), which takes 500 Lab Research. Then sell the Machine to devils on the Halfway to Hell opportunity card on the Upper River for 6600 Nevercold Brass Slivers.
• Make tracks or make a lot of tracks, and then sell surplus Railway Steel to the Moloch Line on the Under the Statue at Marigold Station opportunity card for 1 Silent Soul and 1 Hell Favour each.