Icarus Guide: How to Craft Gunpowder and Steel

You start Icarus with low-tier materials as though you’re a space explorer whose only learning experience came from the Stone Age. Later, you’ll have the means to create high-end components for armaments. Here’s our Icarus guide to help you craft gunpowder and steel with the Concrete Furnace and Mortar and Pestle.

Note: For more information, check out our Icarus guides and features hub. Likewise, you can take a look at our modern weaponry crafting guides for fuel/grenades and firearms (pistols, shotguns, and rifles).

How to Craft Gunpowder and Steel in Icarus

Before you can craft gunpowder and steel in Icarus, you’ll first need to unlock their corresponding recipes in the Tier 2 panel of the crafting tech tree. Likewise, you have to build the fixtures needed to make them. Here are the requirements:

• Mortar and Pestle (Tier 2/Crafting Bench) – Requires 4x silica ore and stone.
  • Silica – You’ll find silica deposits in various open areas, not inside caves.
  • The gunpowder and steel bloom recipes can be unlocked by spending a point each after obtaining the Mortar and Pestle blueprint.

Crafting Gunpowder in Icarus

Gunpowder is fairly easy to make by using the Mortar and Pestle. For each unit, you’ll need 1x sulfur and 3x charcoal. You can mine sulfur deposits in open areas (they have a yellowish hue). Charcoal, meanwhile, can be quickly obtained by burning wood or sticks (i.e., using these materials as fuel for Campfires).

Crafting Steel in Icarus

The process of crafting steel in Icarus is slightly more complicated. First, you need to make steel blooms by using the Mortar and Pestle. The material requires 1x coal and either 6x iron ore or 3x iron ingot. You’ll find plenty of iron and coal in caves, but you do need to watch out for cave worms.

Next, you’ll need to refine steel blooms into steel ingots by using a Concrete Furnace or Electric Furnace (the former is easier to build):

• Concrete Furnace (Tier 3/Machinist Bench) – Requires 12x iron ingot, 8x rope, 12x epoxy, and 20x concrete mix.
  • Concrete Mix – Created using the Concrete Mixer (Tier 3); requires 1x tree sap, 8x stone, and 4x silica.
  • Concrete Mixer (Tier 3/Machining Bench) – 50x wood, 40x stone, 20x iron ingot, 8x rope, and 8x iron nail.
  • Epoxy – Created using the Mortar and Pestle. This is a Tier 2 material in the same tech tree section as the gunpowder and steel recipes. It requires 2x sulfur and 4x tree sap.
  • Tree Sap – Created using the Mortar and Pestle. The recipe is automatically unlocked, and you’ll need 4x stick for each unit.

Icarus is available via Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.