Iron

As scavengers combed through the ruins of the once-great cities, their eyes would gleam with excitement at the sight of an unassuming piece of iron. For in a world ravaged by the Root, iron is far more useful than gold.

The most timeless of metals in the world—a world that has been stripped to its bare bones by the Root.

Iron is a material used to upgrade weapons. It is the first tier of upgrade materials.

Acquisition

• Owners of the Survival Pack will start the game with 10.
• Scattered throughout the world and inside of loot chests at low world levels. Also drop from enemies at intermediate world levels and higher.
• Purchased from Cass in Ward 13 for 20.

Level scaling

What types of Iron can be found will change over the course of the game. When the Traveler enters a new location, the game assigns a drop level to that area. The drop level will be either that location's Minimum World Level, or the Traveler's Weighted Weapon Level—whichever is higher.
Once this level is assigned to the location, it does not increase for the rest of the run—even when the Traveler returns after upgrading their equipment.

Iron drops are decided by two sets of spawn tables, referred to here as "world spawns" and "enemy drops".

World spawns can be found from the very start of the game—being found in most chests (excluding boss rush), from breakables, or simply scattered throughout the area ready to be picked up.
As the level gets higher, lower tiers of Iron are slowly replaced by the higher tiers and eventually stop appearing.

Tier	Iron	Forged	Galvanized	Hardened
Level Range	1 - 7	4 - 12	9 - 17	>14

As the lower tiers are phased out of the world table, they begin to instead appear as enemy drops. Once an Iron tier is made available in this drop table, it will not be replaced, even as higher tiers become available.

Tier	Iron	Forged	Galvanized
Minimum Level	5	10	15

See also

• Forged Iron
• Galvanized Iron
• Hardened Iron
• Simulacrum