[2023] How on earth do you get clay???

Dig up clay soil from the ground, Melt clay soil in the forge. "Clay" is the 'molten' form of clay soil, and is only used in forge recipes in the forge.

Originally posted by Tahnval:

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

No problem. The forge confuses many newcomers. I'm used to it, but I guess a tutorial or better interface would help.

I think it confuses many newcomers because the process makes no sense and it's using the wrong word. Smelting is a chemical reaction to reduce metal compounds in ore to pure (ish) metal. None of the things "smelted" in 7DTD can be smelted. The whole meaning of the word simply doesn't apply. The process itself makes no sense either. For example, you don't make steel by heating and cooling iron and then heating and cooling clay and then mixing the two together. The two step process doesn't make sense for any of the things made in the forge in 7DTD. The OP (and many others) are confused about not being able to use materials from their inventory because we should be able to. It's made worse because the materials and the somehow transformed materials you can use to make stuff in the forge are given the same name. You need iron and clay, not iron and clay. Like that makes sense.

If I was tasked with creating a recipe for confusion regarding forging, I'd be proud to come up with the current system because it's very well designed for the purpose of confusing players.

A better system that would leave the current mechanics intact would be a simple relabelling - you need to process raw materials into processed materials that are used for crafting. So iron put in the forge becomes processed iron, which you can use for making forged iron (or whatever). Although that's not really what forging is.

You don't craft things with cold metal scraps, either.

Melting materials into the forge is the equivalent of preparing it for use- And you don't mix clay into things, but you DO make Molds to shape molten metals.

The only thing particularly lacking about the existing forge is that the steel should technically include some kind of carbon like coal coke.