Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

Second is usage. If they basically doubled the output then they would likely double the cost of building in bronze.

Bronze equipment is already disgustingly expensive and overpriced.

20 Iron might sound like a lot for a Sword, but a Bronze Sword technically requires more ingots since you need 16 Copper and 8 Tin ingots. Tin is easy to get, but Copper is deadass the hardest metal to acquire in the entire game. Even near-fully mining a Copper rock might net you 40 Copper Ore, which is barely enough to do anything since that's only 20 Bronze.

You need 25 Bronze to make a full armor set and the shield, and each weapon is 8 Bronze, and you're also forced to get five Bronze for the Cultivator, eight Bronze for the Axe, and five more Bronze to have enough nails for two carts and a Karve. On most of my playthroughs nowadays, those three items are the only items I bother making.

♥♥♥♥, I've found Swamp Crypts that yielded over 100 iron scrap. That's enough metal for a full armor set, a shield and a weapon. And don't even get me starting on how laughably easy it is to acquire a large amount of Silver. Transporting it is the only tricky part.

Considering how much easier it is to get the mid- to end-game ores, I think getting two Bronze ingots instead of one from combining three ingots is fantastic.