Lets talk smithing.

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I wish they just removed the smitihin alltogether. The protagonist is a Bannerlord, not an artisan. Add something else instead, keep the smith in the towns but let us purchase custom made weapons and armor from there that costs a fortune. Add "quests" to the smiths that increase their options what they can create, ie by providing them with thamaskene steel by a fetch quest to get them that resource etc.

The whole smithing part feels a bit unnecessary IMHO. No real leader would ever have the time to actually become a master artisan and you can't be a weaver, a brewer, a potterer or similar, so why can you be a smith? Hell, if I was a leader sitting idle in a town, I'd be a beer brewer ten times out of ten and just pay a smith to forge me things.
Well heres the thing. A weaver, brewer or potterer doesent make a weapon to shank people with; now does he :razz:
 
Totally agree, should pay the town smith to make you things. Current system feels like some browser MMO that's trying to make you buy stamina potions for $1.99 each. I want to play mount and blade not idle clicker 2020.

I disagree (strongly) changing to a town smith system. I very much enjoy playing a roaming blacksmith for my early game. If you don't think it's a good fit for your play style, simply don't use it.

Don't try to throw out optional systems some of us enjoy just because you don't like it. Just ignore its existence. It doesn't hurt you in any way, and you aren't required to use it.

That said, the stamina system definitely needs work (as does the whole crafting system in general), but I think it's a given that this is essentially a basic draft of a feature that'll receive some love later on since there are higher priority things to work on right now.
 
Less talking, more raiding


Edit.: I dont understand why the heck ppl dont use mods!! There is a lot for Bs
It's a gimmick and not fun and I can't wrap my head around why it's in the game, to be brutally honest.

Be...cause it's Early Alpha and the game is nowhere near complete and comparing this game to a complete game is like not even fair at all. Also, because using mods to fix something that literally gets fixed in the next patch is a little bit silly?
 
unlocking time is crazy, i finally snapped an made it 800 from 50 and still only have like 8 blades unlocked after countless hours of clicking.

smithing needs a minigame and a rethink. as it is, id prefer everything unlocked, and more skill means better weapons, at least then i can have FUN.
 
Lets talk about ways smithing could be improved. The grind is way too long right now. Here's what I think.

- Increase stamina
- Increase skill gain
- Refine materials should cost no stamina, smelt cost 1/2 stamina, forge full stamina.
- It could be made so any time that passes counts for stamina regen, and not just resting in town.
- Tie the tiers to skill level (ex: Tier 1 unlocked, T2 unlocks at 50, T3 at 100 and so on.)
~ Add smith-able armor?
~ Using custom weapons in battle increases smithing skill?

How does everyone else feel about smithing, what are your ideas?
I'm gonna copy my smithing test in from another thread. In essence, if you are not doing it for RP, smithing is DOA - it offers nothing that you cannot already get from a standard shop
  1. As you can only make melee weapons (the most expensive melee weapon is <9K gold)
  2. The swords you can make (even at 300 smithing) are not so much better than what you can buy for 9k that they justify the effort required to make them
    1. Hell, the swords you can buy for 9k are not even that much better than what you can get for 1-2k. There is very little vertical item progression in Bannerlord, partly because everyone has such low health, so substantially more damage from even higher tier swords would shake up combat too much, I think.
  3. The top tier weapons already kill everything so fast - particularly polearms - (the ones you can buy) that adding even stronger smithing weapons wouldnt actually add anything material to the game.
This means that if you can scrounge up 9k worth of cash you can already buy something as good as what a master smith can make (and the master smith will spend hours + thousands of gold on materials getting to "master" status), so within 30 mins of gathering cash in a new game [or getting lucky with a tournament reward] you can totally void the product of an entire skill line.

Post follows (Scroll to bottom for my own opinion on improvements)
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So I just decided to do a test
YXPVPdG.png

Then check the stats on the currently most expensive "vanilla" (not smithed) weapon according to cheatmode - the Thamaskene Steel Spathia - a 1h blade
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There isnt a huge difference in weapons performance between a 1.1k gold blade vs a top-end priced blade.

Now we do some smithing. I copy over a load of free resources and enter "crafting.unlock_all_parts" so I can make anything and come up with the following two tier 5 blades (with length maxed out)

Stabby1
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A8RCEgL.png

The weapon portrait bugs out when crafting, it seems..

Stabby2
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Again the portrait bugs out, this time Stabby2 shows Stabby1's weapon icon lol.
I think Stabby2 is a "Fine" blade as it has +1 - weapon quality just seems to add 1 per tier from what I can tell...so at 300 smithing or whatever you have a slim chance to make a legendary weapon which adds ... +5 to it's stats?

Now how do Stabby1 and Stabby2 compare to the Thamaskene Steel Spathia?

Stabby1 VS benchmark
Q4FUZOG.png

Stabby2 VS benchmark
DmOqxQm.png
Now your own builds may vary and I only tested 1h swords here but going off this.

Think about the sheer amount of time you'd need to invest to get to produce a blade like Stabby1 or Stabby2 - a blade with ~240 difficulty.

You need smithing of 240+ to make them...and loads of resources spent grinding to get to this point.... and for what?
These swords are not even better in every statistic than a sword you can pick up from a market for dirt cheap.
The time it takes to make these blades, without cheating, can literally be used to conquer an entire kingdom.

Smithing is a tragedy for this reason, people saying stamina is a good thing have clearly not run the numbers.
Having a stamina system on top of the terrible return on investment (time and gold) that smithing is, turns it from a tragedy into a comedy.


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IMO my possible solutions to smithing are:
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  1. Make low tier (see tempers below for high tier) smithing cheaper
    • Remove charcoal from the requirements
      • this makes it exponentially less expensive to smith in the long run and raises the value proposition
      • (though this still doesn't make it more rewarding to smith),
  2. Make smithing more convenient
    • Remove the stamina cap,
      • it's a contrived limitation without any reasonable basis within the game world, as you can endlessly fight in this game there is not even a stamina system in combat lol. It's laughable to include one out of combat.
      • It feels like it's been ripped out of a Gatcha mobile P2W crap-fest game.
      • It also only further serves to drive you away from an already fringe game system.
  3. Increase the statistical power of Fine/Superior/Legendary/Whatever quality modifiers
    • Right now they add add like +1 or +2 or something pathetic to your "fine" sword.
    • This should be more like +10 for all the work it takes to grind up to this level.
  4. Remove RNG-gating from Weapon quality
    • This only encourages save scumming or spamming out the same weapon repeatedly for a better roll and frankly feels like something ripped out of an MMO.
    • Replace it with a temper systemthat you can buy from marketplaces, or get as quest rewards from NPCs and add to the weapon to set the quality you want (making higher tier/quality blades much more expensive, to reflect their potency)
      • e.g. using a hyper-rare "Moon stone" guarantees a Legendary blade, or whatever in-universe-text you want to give it.
  5. The most contentious one here - add special modifiers to legendary smithed weapons,
    • Rather than justan even bigger stat-buff for legendary weapons (as it's exceedingly easy to kill in this game, and by this point damage numbers stop being as big of a motivator) add modifiers like
      • a "Dense" mace has a chance to knock a target to the floor,
      • or a "serrated" axe will deal a % of its cutting damage as bleeding damage over time, etc.
      • Something minor to give these weapons some more flavour rather than just more inflated numbers.
  6. Remove unlocking designs, instead more tightly bind part-tiers to smithing level and the "smithing difficulty" mechanic
    • I.e. You can make anything you want, but making a higher tier of weapon than your current level would result in a "Poor quality blade"
    • As the moment you include a tier V (for example) weapon part, it would bump the smithing difficulty up to 125 (for example, if each tier unlocks after 25 levels in smithing).
  7. There is no reason why a lord shouldn't be able to find a "mastersmith" NPC in the world to work for them,
    1. This would serve as a late-game gold-sink for players, if they want to find a master smith and move them to a fief they own, on retainer.
    2. This NPC could then be contracted to make legendary weapons if you bring them the resources and they'd come back to you with it done after an ingame week or month whatever -
      • I.e. the Witcher 3's approach (which was both enjoyable and thematically appropriate, if anyone's ever had a chance to work with metal here then you know it's not a craft you pick up quickly, taking a lifetime to master, not the few months it takes to max out in Bannerlord).
Honestly the game has a great weapons parts system, i'm also a little surprised they didn't consider a procedural loot drop mechanic for lords/bandit hideout leaders and other mini-bosses too
  • These notable NPCs would use, and carry around, unique/randomly generated weapons that the player could claim as rewards or trophies after a great battle/by defeating them
  • They could confer renown to whomever holds them (or even add to your daily influence gain)
  • And AIs could even reference some of these unique/legendary blades if you speak to them with one equipped "Oh I've heard of you - you carry Old king Cadog's warsword <<Unintelligible Celtic name>>!".
 
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I disagree (strongly) changing to a town smith system. I very much enjoy playing a roaming blacksmith for my early game. If you don't think it's a good fit for your play style, simply don't use it.

Don't try to throw out optional systems some of us enjoy just because you don't like it. Just ignore its existence. It doesn't hurt you in any way, and you aren't required to use it.
I could say the same thing, if you don't want to pay the smith to do it for you, then go ahead and grind 100 hours clicking a menu button if that's what you enjoy. It doesn't hurt you in any way to let others bypass that, and you aren't required to use it.
 
I could say the same thing, if you don't want to pay the smith to do it for you, then go ahead and grind 100 hours clicking a menu button if that's what you enjoy. It doesn't hurt you in any way to let others bypass that, and you aren't required to use it.

You're conflating two different things.

1)The player directly crafting vs paying someone in town to craft for you (the former doesn't cost money, for one. For two they're conceptually different. The player can be the blacksmith vs the player can be a merchant or a warlord, but not a smith. It limits options unnecessarily).

and

2) The current UX/UI for crafting.

The former is not dependent on the latter, and vice versa.

I'm for keeping the player directly crafting, as opposed to a "custom order and pay me" scheme from an NPC (which is what "town crafting" would be).

The million clicks thing can easily be solved with a bulk crafting UI (allow the player to set how many of a thing to refine, click or hit enter once).

I'm in no way saying the current UX for it is great. It needs work, obviously. It's bare bones, as I said in my previous post. I am saying conceptually it's good, and there's no reason at all to throw it out just because you don't like the concept of it.

If you don't like the concept of the player crafting, don't craft. It's entirely your decision whether to use that feature or ignore it.
 
Right, so here's my idea compiled from posts from this thread:
-Remove stamina, replace with passing of time instead. When you refine something, you select everything you want to refine, press OK, game takes you to the world map view and time passes. Having higher smithing skill reduces the wait time. Same thing with smelting, forging obviously you just craft the one weapon you select.
-Remove charcoal requirement from low grade iron weapons, have it only for steel and higher. Also applies to smelting.
-Smelting weapons should give all the parts the weapon has, perks should increase chance of unlocking an additional random part related to the weapon type.
-Remove RNG reduction of stats, instead do Warband style modifiers like "crude" and so forth.
Then it's just a matter of balancing it so smithing doesn't become the #1 way of grinding to become a millionaire.
 
You're conflating two different things.
I'm not conflating anything. There's no functional difference between paying the smith to do it and "doing it yourself", both are just a menu with buttons that you click. Maybe you're saying there's a rolepaying difference? There is nothing wrong with the UI, it's fine. It lets you design weapons quickly and easily and preview them. It's the systems behind the UI that suck. You could keep all the same UI, and just replace the skill/unlock requirements with gold cost. You could even keep the current way around for people like you who apparently enjoy terrible p2w mobile games. But nobody would actually bother if they could just pay money instead, which funnily enough is the whole concept behind these grindy clicker systems and why they exist at all.

If you add the option to just pay, it would effectively remove the other way even if it was still available since nobody would bother anymore. It would be redundant. But wouldn't have to actually remove it.

If you don't like the concept of the player crafting, don't craft. It's entirely your decision whether to use that feature or ignore it.
You keep repeating this but it's a really poor argument. You can use this argument in defense of pretty much anything, it has no weight. I mean why not put a pink elephant dealer who sells pink elephants? If you don't like the concept, don't buy them. It's entirely your decision whether to use that feature or ignore it. It's a dead argument.

I like the idea of customizing equipment, but I hate the idea of locking it behind forced time-wasting, an interminable grind, and RNG unlocks, all of which are absolutely poisonous, and none of which are required for custom equipment design. I think it is you who is conflating equipment customization with a crappy MMO grind model.

I don't have to wait in town to regain enough stamina for another trading journey through the harsh desert. I don't have to grind up the trading skill in order to buy and sell more expensive goods. I don't have to waste resources and time on actions that don't benefit me (like crafting 1000 crappy hatchets at a loss), the trading skill just increases naturally as I trade, as do all the other skills. Smithing it is an outlier and completely out of place in this game as it currently is. Imagine if you had to cheese the trading system by buying and selling back one unit of grain over and over, to level your trading high enough to buy some olives. That's the type of degenerate system we're faced with here.
 
I'm not conflating anything. There's no functional difference between paying the smith to do it and "doing it yourself", both are just a menu with buttons that you click. Maybe you're saying there's a rolepaying difference? There is nothing wrong with the UI, it's fine. It lets you design weapons quickly and easily and preview them. It's the systems behind the UI that suck. You could keep all the same UI, and just replace the skill/unlock requirements with gold cost. You could even keep the current way around for people like you who apparently enjoy terrible p2w mobile games. But nobody would actually bother if they could just pay money instead, which funnily enough is the whole concept behind these grindy clicker systems and why they exist at all.

If you add the option to just pay, it would effectively remove the other way even if it was still available since nobody would bother anymore. It would be redundant. But wouldn't have to actually remove it.


You keep repeating this but it's a really poor argument. You can use this argument in defense of pretty much anything, it has no weight. I mean why not put a pink elephant dealer who sells pink elephants? If you don't like the concept, don't buy them. It's entirely your decision whether to use that feature or ignore it. It's a dead argument.

I like the idea of customizing equipment, but I hate the idea of locking it behind forced time-wasting, an interminable grind, and RNG unlocks, all of which are absolutely poisonous, and none of which are required for custom equipment design. I think it is you who is conflating equipment customization with a crappy MMO grind model.

I don't have to wait in town to regain enough stamina for another trading journey through the harsh desert. I don't have to grind up the trading skill in order to buy and sell more expensive goods. I don't have to waste resources and time on actions that don't benefit me (like crafting 1000 crappy hatchets at a loss), the trading skill just increases naturally as I trade, as do all the other skills. Smithing it is an outlier and completely out of place in this game as it currently is. Imagine if you had to cheese the trading system by buying and selling back one unit of grain over and over, to level your trading high enough to buy some olives. That's the type of degenerate system we're faced with here.


This "discussion" isn't productive. You clearly breezed through what I typed without actually reading it, as evidenced by your completely overlooking the fact that I agreed from the onset that the current stamina system and clickfest definitely need work (up to and including trying something else, such as the "time-based" system others have mentioned to replace stamina).

So your not-so-sly ad hominem ("people like you who apparently enjoy terrible p2w mobile games") isn't only inaccurate, but shows you're not in a mood to actually hold a conversation, you just want to be "right" on the internet when talking about a subjective topic.

Your entire premise became flawed because you weren't bothering to try and comprehend what I was typing. You saw someone disagreeing with part of what was said, ignored the commonalities, and then built a BS argument around false assumptions.

And through it all...you're still conflating the two things. You're still somehow falsely equating the concept of direct player crafting with the problem areas of the current implementation of a direct player crafting system.

Have a good night dude.
 
That's a lot of words to say absolutely nothing on topic, stop trying to derail the discussion. This is about smithing not how triggered you are that I think grindy progress bar clickfesting is terrible.

-Remove stamina, replace with passing of time instead. When you refine something, you select everything you want to refine, press OK, game takes you to the world map view and time passes. Having higher smithing skill reduces the wait time. Same thing with smelting, forging obviously you just craft the one weapon you select.
So how many hours of real time would I have to stare at the world map "waiting" to get to high smithing level? Your suggestion is a slightly less annoying version of the current setup, less back and forth from menus, so it would be an improvement. But I don't think it addresses the core issues. Think what people would do. They would load up 1000 mules worth of hardwood and iron, set it to be refined, then go to bed, or go mow the lawn or something. How is that a good game design, it is not it is terrible pointless time wasting.
 
- Increase stamina
- Increase skill gain
- Refine materials should cost no stamina, smelt cost 1/2 stamina, forge full stamina.
- It could be made so any time that passes counts for stamina regen, and not just resting in town.
- Tie the tiers to skill level (ex: Tier 1 unlocked, T2 unlocks at 50, T3 at 100 and so on.)
~ Add smith-able armor?
~ Using custom weapons in battle increases smithing skill?

How does everyone else feel about smithing, what are your ideas?

About Stamina, and Stamina regen only by waiting in a settlement (it also works when waiting until night at a hideout).

The idea behind this mechanic seems, for me, to be the simulation of how many hours your character is spending in ingame time working/crafting : as a medieval blacksmith, when your are producing 10 swords, it's not instantly, maybe you have spent one day doing that.

So the game need to make you spend in-game time to represent how much ingame time as passed crafting.
But I don't think the design is nicely done.

I would have prefer no Stamina/Stamina Regen system, but each thing you craft make the in-game clock fast-forward some hours in the world. So while you are crafting 12 swords (=24h of work for exemple), other heroes and lords in the world can also be busy doing their own activities (travelling, sieging), and once you leave the crafting window, for your character 1 day has passed.
 
Lets talk about ways smithing could be improved. The grind is way too long right now. Here's what I think.

- Increase stamina
- Increase skill gain
- Refine materials should cost no stamina, smelt cost 1/2 stamina, forge full stamina.
- It could be made so any time that passes counts for stamina regen, and not just resting in town.
- Tie the tiers to skill level (ex: Tier 1 unlocked, T2 unlocks at 50, T3 at 100 and so on.)
~ Add smith-able armor?
~ Using custom weapons in battle increases smithing skill?

How does everyone else feel about smithing, what are your ideas?

All said and done. I believe we should drop the whole Smithing, its just not realistic. It took a real smith master 20-40 years of experience to become some kind of master. you as a player learning to master smithing in 10 years while off fighting wars and trading and travelling.. well it breaks the immersion for me...

What I do propose is that some towns (or to balance it let every faction have 1 town) with an well-known smith master, where you can place an order. He gives you a quest to gather the materials needed, then you pay a cost and depending on what you want it takes X amount of time and X amount of cash together with the needed materials. When he finishes you get a message that you can send a companion or come pick up the weapon yourself.

An cheap sword, which would be broken after 1 semi-intense sparring session (not even a real battle) already took 1-2 days to make. A well-crafted decorated sword could take MONTHS to make in real medieval times... think about it.

The problem with the current stamina is just a temporory thing to balance the mechanic, because smithing takes time, imagine the game passing 30-60 days just for you to finish your well crafted decorated sword!!! how hard would people cry then? In the time you finished your sword, the whole world changed hands,, borders were changed, maidens were killed lords were executed,, and your sword turned out to be a big fail..
 
So if you want to play a roaming blacksmith... you should accept the consequence that making a good sword SHOULD TAKE MONTHS FOR YOU TO finish...

If you make a cheap sword, that is of very low quality... most like in real life would break after 1 battle.. then that would take you between 1-3 days.

There is a reason that lord's and kings didn't become a smith... it eats all your time away and breaks your back and has an worse effect on your lungs than smoking 10 joints a day.
 
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