I have created a mod called Forged Weapons. It makes iron harder to obtain, while still keeping all the vanilla recipes. The mod is also fully compatible with Create.
The main idea is to remake the basic way of getting iron. Instead of simply smelting it, you now need to forge it.
At the beginning, you will do this by hand on the anvil using a hammer.
Later, once you obtain a Mechanical Press from Create, the press can take over the job.
And at the final stage, as a true master, you will be able to use Crushing Wheels to process ore and smelt it directly into ingots, similar to vanilla.
This mod also adds forged tools. They take longer to craft but are stronger and more durable than regular iron ones. At the same time, I didn’t remove the vanilla recipes — if you need a quick tool, you can still craft the normal iron gear. The goal is to give players a choice: either make vanilla items quickly, or put in more work to obtain a stronger, forged variant.
