Smithing in MB2 is obviously the best denar making business. Not only it's totally safe that prevent you from getting captured by enemy, but also it's really a denar grab. Way better than fighting a great battle, way better than having a trading route.
What does player need to prepare for smithing? Just need to have around 50 bodyguards and some mules, then you are good to go.
How is the experience of smithing? It repeats, even with the town-NPCs' order feature, it still feels strongly repetitive and making the player irrelative to the rest of the game's feature.
Normally, by the time player clan reaches tier 3, fighting a decent enemy force of 90+ men will yield over 10k denars, but selling a tier 5 2h sword that you craft can also get you that number. How many this tier 5 2h swords player can make per day? Assume the player party has only 1 good blacksmith, then by the time of player's clan reaches tier 3, he can already make about 5 pieces of tier5 2hswords a day. Does the material for making such weapon hard to access? Not really, since player can melt pugios that were bulk sold by traders to get loads and loads of high tier metal materials at very low cost. Don't mention that you don't need to seek out nor hunt down that enemy force if you do 2h sword crafting.
So, in every playthrough a player may have, if the player want to grew its faction fast, then they need to use this Smithing trick to grab denars. Making the all playthroughs basicly similar except for different combat build.
We need to think:
1. Why an owner of blacksmith want to lend their forge and smelter to player?
2. Why player and player's companions need to do all the material grinding task, like making charcoal?
3. Why Smithing skill, along with its crafting system, have so little impact and so little cohesion to the rest of the game?
Maybe we can solve the issues from above by:
1. Player should only be able to access crafting if they were in a settlement that they actually own a blacksmith.
2. The smelt and refine tasks should be migrated to a new UI area for NPCs to do, that player make bulk orders and the blacksmith has its workers fulfill these orders. For example, I order 100 unit of charcoal, the blacksmith will do it in 5 days, for free if I was the owner of this blacksmith and provided needed hardwood, or for an amount of money if I didn't own this blacksmith, then I came back in 5 days, to receive that 100 units of charcoal.
3.
3.1. No more energy cost, use time-passing instead. That if player or a companion want to craft something, let the player team or the companion stay and wait in that settlement and let the time pass, if the required time-passing was finished, then generate that crafted item. If was interrupted by a siege, then don't generate that crafted item. The higher tier the a weapon part was, the longer the time-passing should be, also, the more weapon parts were used, the longer time-passing should be. Such as:
So, if I want to craft a sword with all tier1 weapon parts, then it should take 1hr + 1hr + 1hr + 1hr = 4hrs
if I want to craft an axe with a tier5 axe head and a tier4 axe handle, then it should take 5hrs + 8hrs = 13hrs
3.2. Make Tournament to the same time-passing feature mentioned above. And let each round of match takes half hrs.
3.3. Add a new settlement asset called Warehouse, that allow player to drop goods in there and post guards to prevent getting stolen. Let the crafting process automaticlly access the materials you placed there.
3.4. Allow players to pay money to town's smith to unlock certain weapon part's blueprint.
3.5. Lower the sell price of crafted items.
What does player need to prepare for smithing? Just need to have around 50 bodyguards and some mules, then you are good to go.
How is the experience of smithing? It repeats, even with the town-NPCs' order feature, it still feels strongly repetitive and making the player irrelative to the rest of the game's feature.
Normally, by the time player clan reaches tier 3, fighting a decent enemy force of 90+ men will yield over 10k denars, but selling a tier 5 2h sword that you craft can also get you that number. How many this tier 5 2h swords player can make per day? Assume the player party has only 1 good blacksmith, then by the time of player's clan reaches tier 3, he can already make about 5 pieces of tier5 2hswords a day. Does the material for making such weapon hard to access? Not really, since player can melt pugios that were bulk sold by traders to get loads and loads of high tier metal materials at very low cost. Don't mention that you don't need to seek out nor hunt down that enemy force if you do 2h sword crafting.
So, in every playthrough a player may have, if the player want to grew its faction fast, then they need to use this Smithing trick to grab denars. Making the all playthroughs basicly similar except for different combat build.
We need to think:
1. Why an owner of blacksmith want to lend their forge and smelter to player?
2. Why player and player's companions need to do all the material grinding task, like making charcoal?
3. Why Smithing skill, along with its crafting system, have so little impact and so little cohesion to the rest of the game?
Maybe we can solve the issues from above by:
1. Player should only be able to access crafting if they were in a settlement that they actually own a blacksmith.
2. The smelt and refine tasks should be migrated to a new UI area for NPCs to do, that player make bulk orders and the blacksmith has its workers fulfill these orders. For example, I order 100 unit of charcoal, the blacksmith will do it in 5 days, for free if I was the owner of this blacksmith and provided needed hardwood, or for an amount of money if I didn't own this blacksmith, then I came back in 5 days, to receive that 100 units of charcoal.
3.
3.1. No more energy cost, use time-passing instead. That if player or a companion want to craft something, let the player team or the companion stay and wait in that settlement and let the time pass, if the required time-passing was finished, then generate that crafted item. If was interrupted by a siege, then don't generate that crafted item. The higher tier the a weapon part was, the longer the time-passing should be, also, the more weapon parts were used, the longer time-passing should be. Such as:
weapon part's tier | time-passing added |
tier 1 | 1hr |
tier 2 | 2hrs |
tier 3 | 3hrs |
tier 4 | 5hrs |
tier 5 | 8hrs |
if I want to craft an axe with a tier5 axe head and a tier4 axe handle, then it should take 5hrs + 8hrs = 13hrs
3.2. Make Tournament to the same time-passing feature mentioned above. And let each round of match takes half hrs.
3.3. Add a new settlement asset called Warehouse, that allow player to drop goods in there and post guards to prevent getting stolen. Let the crafting process automaticlly access the materials you placed there.
3.4. Allow players to pay money to town's smith to unlock certain weapon part's blueprint.
3.5. Lower the sell price of crafted items.