Which is harder? Mese or steel?

[0gb.us]

So, I was playing in an empty world, using only wooden tools. It was sort of an experiment in how long I could go without using up non-renewable resources. Eventually, I fell in a hole, and decided to go further down, instead of trying to escape. I chanced upon a couple blocks of mese, but found I couldn't harvest them! Of course, this warranted investigation, so I switched to my creative mode world, which has been throughly trashed from all the other experimenting I've done there. Laying down one of every block, I found that only two blocks cannot be harvested by hand, by wooden pick, or, in the case of the cactus, the wooden axe. (This is ignoring the cloud blocks, which cannot be removed at all without exploiting a glitch in the saplings or using a plugin such as worldedit.)

These blocks were of course steel and mese. But heres the odd part. Mese makes a faster pick than steel does, but the steel block cannot be harvested by a stone pick, while mese can. Both can be harvested by the steel and mese picks. So which is it? Is mese harder than steel, or is steel harder than mese?

Note: this isn't really a "looking for an official answer" type of topic, I just want to hear other people's thoughts on the matter.

[tinoesroho]

I think, he says with a smile, that you are in error; I have harvested steel with a stone pick. Mese is definitely _harder_, and in most cases, more _durable_.

[0gb.us]

You havested _iron ore_ with a stone pick, or a steel block with a stone pick? In the case of ore, it's the stone around it that is really being broken with the pick, and you can even use a wooden pick for that task. Try harvesting a steel block with a stone pick. If it works for you, I'll post a video. In my copy of the game, a steel block cannot be harvested with a stone pick.

EDIT: Oh, and I tried again before posting, with the same results.

[Topywo]

I'll give it a shot: steel is harder than mese.

Crafting a steelblock out of 9 steel_ingots changes the structure in a way that makes it harder than the mese block.

Crafting a pick_mese out of 3 mese blocks changes the structure of mese in a way that makes it harder than a pick_steel that is crafted out of 3 steel_ingots.

Looks like crafting ores to a compact state makes it harder.

So I suppose that crafting a steel pick out of 3 steel blocks would make it harder than one crafted out of 3 mese blocks. That's in line with the fact that finding 27 lumps_iron is harder than finding 3 mese blocks.

Fun question :-)

[0gb.us]

I like that answer! So if we used whole steel blocks in our picks, they would be stronger and more durable. Now I want one of these super steel picks!

But no I don't. I'd rather use my steel to build locked chests. If it weren't for the fact that tools wear out, I'd consider using a steel block pick

[james067]

obviousally steel