Could be an age thing with the steel, at least in my case. I remember the first mountain bikes and they were all steel. My first road bikes were steel. Aluminum was the new thing, then came carbon and so on. Today, of course, if you want steel, you have to go looking for it. Not much in local bike shops. Those of us who grew up on steel understand and appreciate it for what it is, but marketing is always pushing lighter, more high tech and so on. I'm just grateful we have a down to earth company like Surly that offers steel bikes at an affordable price. Otherwise, I'd have to go looking custom and that gets expensive in a hurry.
As for your situation, we know that it's always cheaper to buy a complete bike, but only as long as it has the components you want or at least components you can live with. Otherwise, you may as well just go frameset and build the way you want.
The current Krampus now has solid 40mm Alex MD rims. No rabbit hole 50mm rims as on my Trek Stashe. That'll mean slightly narrower tire width with the same tires, but that might be a plus for some road work. We'll see.