All about Smithing

[Masakari]

Hi Folks,
as first about me: My english is far away from perfect, so please dont be to hard to me
I love building stuff. And the smithing part in this game can be a really really beatiful part!
The idea is great. The concept is great. The Weapons you can craft can look absolutly beatiful!
But lovely Developers!! Dont forget what you are doing. You build a GAME. And a GAME must be fun.
A Game that has parts in it. Who doesnt make fun. Is a bad Game!
Why is Smithing forced to make no fun right now as it is?

But now the bad news!
As first i add some words now to help other Players searching Informations about smithing.

Smithing right now as it is is:

1. Smithing isnt worth

2. Smithing doesnt work

3. Smithing is by far to expensive

4. Smithing is impossible to Level

5. Smithing is buggy


Why i say that?

I used the Developer Cheat tool to find out if its possible or not to gain a high Smithing level.
And yes it is possible:



And now comes the BUT
To reach 271 in Smithing i used the Developers Cheatertool.
I startet with level 1. Maxed out Endurance and Smithing.
Gave myself 10 Million Gold.
Teleported from City to City and bought only Weapons with a price over 2000 Gold.
Best for Skilling were the 40k Gold Javelin´s.
It took me incredible 4 Years ingame time.



Only teleporting. Regenerating Forging Energy in Cities. Salvaging the Weapons, crafting the Best Steel.
and After i reached 200 Skill Points i crafted 200 Difficulty till 243 Difficulty Weapons, and salvaged them again. Nothing else gave me any exp anymore...

So 4 Years and only SMithing. While IF you skill other skills. You gain less and less XP for Smithing.
So without cheating. Im sure you would need a minimum of 20 ingame Years when you try to focus on smithing.
IF not 40+ or just impossible to reach.

And for what are you doing all that?
For a Masterpiece with less than 2% better Stats!




And here are my suggestions to make Smithing worth and fun. And dont forget. Its a Game!
Dont come with realistic discussions. A Smith in the Year 1000 needed years to craft 1 Masterpiece Weapon!
You cant make this part realistic. So let us make it a fun part!
Why we want to use smithing in this game? To craft us and our friends nice looking beatiful asskicking Weapons.
As more they glow and shine. And as sharper they are. As happier we are!

1 Point: Cut the used Power for crafting to 1/10.
20 Charcoal in 1 Day? A joke. You cant make money with this. Killing 1 Enemy Lord gives more cash in 5% of that time!
Let us craft as much as we have as recources.
Money Prices and so on can be balanced over time in Beta.
2. Point: Crafting really rare Weapons crashes the Game Speed.
Those 2 Swords in my Hands slows down loading the Trade Stash in City to 20 Seconds...and im running a really fast Computer!
3. Point: Work out the ability to Name your weapons. And on that. A Masterpiece have to be 10% better than a normal Weapon. 10% in everything!
And a Legendary 20%. Not 2%! 2% is just nothing. Its not even worth upgrading the Smithing Perk to Level 2....when you can buy even Swords in Cities for 40k Gold!
4. Point: Add Armor Crafting later. Please!!! We want to craft our full Outfit. Everyone from us want that! Please let us do it!

And no. I really like the game how it is atm. Its my new Love. I loved Prophecy of Pendor Mod from Warbands. And i hope the DEvelopers from that Mod will work out a new Mod for Bannerlord ))

 

[Masakari]

Bump!
Nobody seems to like my ideas? ^^
Not everything should be configuered over Mods later...
In my opinion its the work the Devs should do. Or im wrong?

 

[Mazurus]

Ok, its true what you write, leveling smithing its really hard and painfull, and the reward its really sad, I mean, you literally spend hours and perks to be a good smithing and in the end you can make hardly a Sword that look awesome but its cheap to sell and not really more powerfull than the others, so, leveling smithing today is not worth it.

 

[fragonard]

I don't understand this. In my first attempt, after an hour or so with a dedicated character, I'm making 2H swords worth 19K. What's wrong with that?

 

[Ironking]

Actually considering you are meant to play a character for his/her entire lifetime 20+ years to become a master doesn't sound so unrealistic.
I mean sure it needs some tweaks to make it worthwhile but I think generally with skills you are not meant to reach the high numbers just by casually doing the task every now and then.
Like if you want a master smith you need to dedicate you life to smithing, you want a master swordsman dedicate your life to swordsmanship and so on.

 

[Mazurus]

I don't understand this. In my first attempt, after an hour or so with a dedicated character, I'm making 2H swords worth 19K. What's wrong with that?

I dont know what you did, but its not my case.
First, unlocking new parts takes an eternity.
Second, the stamina is killing me (yeah, I know there are some Mods for that).
Third, leveling up smithing its really slow, and thh Two Handed weapons I made are really cheap, I mean, the best one I selled worth about 1700/1900 and the stats are about the same of any sword that worth 15k

 

[Mazurus]

Actually considering you are meant to play a character for his/her entire lifetime 20+ years to become a master doesn't sound so unrealistic.
I mean sure it needs some tweaks to make it worthwhile but I think generally with skills you are not meant to reach the high numbers just by casually doing the task every now and then.
Like if you want a master smith you need to dedicate you life to smithing, you want a master swordsman dedicate your life to swordsmanship and so on.

Yeah, I get that, its true. But you dont even have a master for it. And making charcoal, takes too much stamina, and makes no sense because its basically you ahve to burn the wood (there are diferente methods to do that).

And if you are going to be a master smithing, you would have to learn this from practically child, what is not happening here.

 

[fragonard]

I'm on the beta branch if that makes a difference, never tried it in 1.0.x.

 

[TomaSkTemplar]

you need 7 endurance in beta to reach it much more quickly. 1 perk before it gives you 1 endurance so you have to add 4 either from pre-build to not touch it after that except from perk. Or build with 7 and give 1 and 2h focuses

also, make 2 hander falxes or the one near it with 4,5 cut modifier, cleaver insta 58 k sell price. And corresponding exp. 3 wrought iron for 58 k

unless you hit hard cap, just map ultra expensive items end price, not input. Destroy it, reforge, have some other do the smelting/making materials.

lenghten it, max out damage and speed at the lowest weight.

you are way over your skill cap btw, endurance increases the cap.

all is in the beta branch, not 1.0.11

 

[Seabhac]

I understand the reasoning of making the rewards while interesting not all much better than what you would be able to buy from the market; making crafting optional for players during their characters lives. The system does need some fine tuning but it is fundamentally good imo, would be very interesting to see other forms of crafting such as armor at some point.

 

[Doktor Barber]

ive been trying to level smithing with 5 points in it and 5 endurance and it is PAINFUL its soooooo unbelievably slow
by the time i could make even the most basic crap tier sword without stat penalties i could buy many top tier swords... smithing is awful

 

[neolae]

So +1 for this for alpha, but I didn't realize beta branch may be different now. I'll have to see how it is. I definitely want to realistically smith something I can use before I've conquered the whole world. I mean... ...I'd like to use it to conquer the world if possible.

...well, and armor if possible as much as I know that's a real stretch. Maybe the devs could introduce one piece at a time like smithing customizable helms only at first or something. Dunno.

 

[pada]

I could live with the difficulty/rarity as part of the setting, but as noted, by the time we crest 200 smithing we should be able to make better weapons than we can buy. i have yet to produce a masterwork weapon.

 

[Corvidae]

Smithing with the vanilla version is god awful. Maybe I didn't min/max my character enough, but what is the point in buying a game just to sit in the craft workshop and play with yourself? Smithing should give you much more of a reward otherwise why bother? And no armor/arrows? This has to be something that the devs planned to make but just didn't get around to yet. At the same time, a player shouldn't feel compelled to take the blacksmithing skills. The way the game is set up right now, I'd say blacksmithing is irrelevant at best.

 

[FBohler]

I agree with the OP here, and I like your ideas and suggestions.

 

[Masakari]

Thanks and nice to hear that im not alone with my opinion @FBohler.
I dont understand how there are still Players accepting it how it is.
This is a game....for fun only. And i dont mean winning only is fun. But pure Craft 10 Charcoal, wait 1 Minute, craft 10 Charcoal, wait 1 Minute. That is not fun. That cant be fun for anybody.
If that is fun for somebody. The hell...delete the game and buy Ground in Reallife and build one house by the next. For that work you get a real reward .
Here we want to have fun....

 

[kalinome]

I agree with the OP. Smithing is very difficult to level, and very expensive. Learning new pieces is extremely slow. I am mid game and use smithing every time my stamina permits, and I have not learned any new pieces yet. I did not, however, know there was a mod to help with the stamina. I will look into that. Thanks for that info.

 

[Seabhac]

Using high end items is the way to go for learning smithing, and have 9 in endurance and max focus to get higher than 300. Just get a good pile of high tier materials and keep reforging two handed swords to learn it, then switch it up for new patterns.

 

[scrappy_style]

Don't even get me started with the idea that 5 focus points and 5 or 6 stat points (can't remember exactly) only gets you to a hard cap of skill level 274. Not that masterwork or legendary reportedly is even turned on as a perk yet. The minor gains are just skill level perks from what I'm told.

Smithing is endless gold once you have the right patterns, but that wasn't ever the point for me. Can craft iron javelins with any of my companions regardless of skill level and sell for 50k if I choose the right options. I wanted to craft my own weapons rather than rely on the standard length, dmg, and speed. The hard cap is truly brutal. By my calculations you can get to lvl 22 before you have to earn skill points beyond the hard caps in order to level up. I'm not sure what the theoretical max is as I haven't taken the time to include skill points learned beyond the soft cap and I'm not sure what the number of SP beyond soft cap formula is. I think it is somewhere between lvl 26-30. That sorta makes sense with the highest level soldiers being lvl 31, but very much limits how far character development can go.

Takes way too long to get all the patterns too.

The values of items are so far off right now it isn't even funny. They were all too cheap (except crossbows) at first and now they are too expensive in a lot of cases or certain ones are super cheap while others with pretty much the same stats are super expensive. There doesn't seem to be any consistency and it is going to be hard to balance the gold economy with so many variables changing all the time.

Money wise, smithing is a decent way to build up gold reserves if you have maybe 10-20k in gold at least to start. Again assuming you lucked into the right patterns as only some are profitable. Made 1 or 2 million while working on lvling it up (needed money to buy the hardwood). Then got stuck at 274 and found out masterwork and legendary items don't even exist anyway, so I joined up with a faction and started destroying enemy armies to make another few million gold. The gold amount gets so out of control just from battles against lords with an endless supply of troops that gold has no meaning anymore.

 

[scrappy_style]

Using high end items is the way to go for learning smithing, and have 9 in endurance and max focus to get higher than 300. Just get a good pile of high tier materials and keep reforging two handed swords to learn it, then switch it up for new patterns.

2 hand swords is by far the most xp from what I've seen. Spending that many stat points in something to level up beyond 300 is kind of an issue for me as it means you will suck at most everything else unless using some sort of mods or console.