My experience with the Smithing system.

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Being overly fixated on crafting in any game and probably having a masochistic streak, I jumped in on Smithing ASAP. Here's a brief rundown of my experience :

- First char I made went for the refining perks and tried to smith through refining, mostly. Well... It does not really work. Refining is like playing whack-a-mole, the way it works. You're severely limited by charcoal and stamina (which I find extremely poorly designed and implemented, but enough has been said on that in other threads) plus the way it works (take 2 of this, send one up and one to the BOTTOM of the pile) is an endless treadmill. Plus you get very little XP and almost no unlocks.

-Second char, I decide to take the unlock perks and use companions for refining. We become an intinerant circus circling the whole world for wood. Because you get out of wood, fast. All of the world's wood :smile: I mostly smelt everything gotten in battle, make my companions refine, forge and re-smelt weapons. Progression is ok.

-At some point, something wacky happens : I decide to craft a cutting polearm for myself to up polearm a bit (that char went 2-handed). I get a large boost to smithing xp. When wanting to equip the thing, I look at the price... 58686 Gold Pieces !

- From that point, I went the world around, buying all the wood and emptying the coffers of every city. Craft a bunch of these sort-of-Voulges, sell as many as they could afford, make my companions re-smelt the rest etc... I'm sitting on 4.3 millions Gold Pieces pretty soon, even after buying every high-end piece of equipment I could find and hundreds of horses. I'm also capped at 302 Smithing. (!)

- Speaking about re-smelting those things : They made my companions' smithing skyrocket. The first they smelt often gave 5 to 15 points. Even at more than 100, they would gain a point. More often than not, crafting one would also give me one or two unlocks.

- And here's another out-of-whack thing : If I change that design to a thrusting one (same tier, difficulty somewhat higher) the price goes down to 1028 gold... And it gives very little xp. If I change the design to all high-end tier parts, to around 200 difficulty, the price and xp value goes even lower ! (around 800 GP)

My guess is that the value of the weapon gets calculated mostly from its stats. Since that cutting polearm is very long and does very high cutting damage, it gets an absurd price. And XP / Unlocks are probably predicated on that. So if you go for the longest and hardest hitting thing you can craft, you can probably max smithing and break the economy rather fast. I plan to retry that, as an experiment with a new char.

A few other conclusions :
- Refining is really whack-a-mole. Make one ingot degrade one level and one go up, not fall to the bottom of the pile. Or better, make it just move one up. There's just not enough Hardwood around for more than one smith in the world with that system. Smithing is already a grind without that treadmill. Plus the refining perks are a player trap.

- Prices are utterly ****ed up. You already must have guessed from what I've reported above, right ? I don't know what formula was used, but it's bad. Plus, I suspect, seeing how I ended up with different weapons I tried with the exact same price (58999 now ,with Beta 1.20) , that this goes actually beyond that and I've hit a price cap.

- Too many parts / Not enough unlocks. I'm capped at 302 Smithing with 4.3 million GP. I've smithed hundreds of these high-end weapons. I still lack between half and a third of the parts. And most of those are, in the end, largely cosmetic. Further, since I don't gain xp, I get unlocks only on "fine" or "legendary" weapons.

- Extra bonuses need to be calculated otherwise. Whenever you get bonuses, they're 1 or 2 points, regardless of the stat. Well, going from 101 to 103 speed is a nice boost. Same for length. Going from 149 cut to 150 is absolutely irrelevant.

Here it is. That said, I'm having fun with the game and I will try other things and maybe report on them:smile:
 
I did it on my first few characters, was good money and something to do while healing. In my current game I'm just hoarding wood and weapons in my stashes just in case, but no more smithing until changes... accept to make a longer sword and 2 handed sword....
I wish I could have unlocked a good swing polearm like you did.
 
I did a little smithing not as much as you did, I think I am at like 116 now. The stamina system and amounts of hardwood/charcoal you need is too much. First I think smithing and tanner shops should be able to help out with raw materials. I would like to see more interactions with shops in general but that is another topic.
You end up with a huge amount of raw materials you can`t catch up in using and refining even with like 3 companions helping.
What I would like to see is a system where your smith-shop could be told to refine materials and what not and maybe in return make the progress to level up in smithing faster for your character since he doesn`t refine and smelt as much.
I also noticed my character would make big jumps in leveling up sometimes several "points" crafting two-handed swords for each one, while crafting everything else made little progress on the exp bar you see below your skill-set.

Speaking of smelting, I couldn`t find any concept or system behind unlocking new parts. I got one handed and two handed sword parts most of the time very few mace or axe parts for example although smelting and crafting them, curious if I would get new parts.
I don`t know why smelting and crafting axes will unlock a new sword handle? I was thinking because my character is skilled in one-handed the most, but axes and maces count as one-handed as well, so that doesn`t make sense.
Also certain parts even on tier 1 simply wouldn`t unlock for me. I got fairly early a random tier 6 sword blade unlocked still can`t craft a single thrown knife or polearm because I am missing any polearm handle or throwing knife blade whatsoever to craft them.

For the prices of items it seems as if two-handed swords can often reach insane value for trading while other weapons are not although crafted with the same current difficulty I am able to. I had two-handed swords sometimes reaching 20-30k while a dagger would earn 90 denars. Both crafted with the same smithing skill and having tier 4 parts in it for example.

All in all smithing seems very random to me, I can`t really figure out a concept behind it other than having a huge bias towards sword weapons and two-handed swords especially.
 
I have some similar experience with Smithing. I think it would be better this way:
- One can only access the Smith Window in a town if he actually own a Smith Workshop in this town
- The tier of the outcome should be equal to the lowest part's tier you use
- Unlocking a part should only happen when you melting a weapon that actually has this very same type of part
- In a city that has non-player Smith Workshop, if the higher the city's prosperity was, the higher chance it sells better weapons, and maybe even part's blueprint of higher tiers.
 
When wanting to equip the thing, I look at the price... 58686 Gold Pieces !

shhhhh
Don't tale talesworld. Damn Gonna have to stack on my silver before this gets nerfed so hard that even caravaneers are gonna look down on smiths.

Jokes aside. Yeah I feel you on all your points. Don't forget about javalins, they are probably the most efficient ones to blast out of the furnance to sell cause I think they use less stamina and almost no metal resources?

Well Regardless I agree there should be some better way to unlock specific parts aside from playing the lottery thing and being forces to unlocking a quadrillion dagger pummels and guards before getting our first axe head or javalin shaft. Not to mention Stamina should definetly regen at some rate, ANY rate when travelling across the world tbh. Also in the beta I can't even find cities that accept my 59k+ warrazzors lol. I ended up just selling those bloody razors for half the prices to any poor merchent I come across. I wonder what they all do with those warrazors lol?

Also It would be great if the selected smith/companion didnt constantly change or stayed in game memory so I wouldn't have to reselect or forge my decorated full gold blade for 10 themasken steel with my 25 smithing companion I use for wood burning lol.
 
Tried again with a new char. It seems I was right. Going systematically for the highest (cut) damage gives a ton of XP and unlocks.

I scrounged metal from looters, forged two-handed swords and sold them.

I finally got 3 steel from smelting saexes and forged that into a 2-handed sabre. It was of course severely impacted by my lack of skill, but... It got me from 58 to 64 Smithing .6 points and 6 unlocks !
And the resulting weapon, which is supposed to be badly forged, is worth more than 5000 golds...

The whole system is messed up. Difficulty is only a factor in the relatively slight bonuses/minuses you get. Damage seems to be the most important factor for XP, which is absurd. And damage also seems to be the main factor for price, which does not make much sense either.

With how little the forging result matter (+1/-1) you can be a newbie smith and forge weapons worth thousands of gold provided you get lucky in the unlocks and get your hands on the metal.

Heck, I got some Thamaskene blades unlocks around Smithing 30... And if I could get some Thamaskene, I'm pretty sure I could get some ridiculous amount of money for a newbie-forged thamaskene sword... That does not make sense.

XP should be proportional to difficulty, not weapon damage. Forging a high-end damascene blade knife is more difficult than messing a huge iron axe.

And modifiers should be proportional, not fixed number. Further, they should be proportional to your success or failure margin. Being able to forge a 180 difficulty blade with 50ish skill and get about the same amount of money that a master would get for it is wholly unrealistic.
 
My guess is that the value of the weapon gets calculated mostly from its stats. Since that cutting polearm is very long and does very high cutting damage, it gets an absurd price. And XP / Unlocks are probably predicated on that. So if you go for the longest and hardest hitting thing you can craft, you can probably max smithing and break the economy rather fast. I plan to retry that, as an experiment with a new char.

Stats is a result of modifier of each parts, if you checked the xml files you will realised that all weapon are defined by parts, and this is where the price comes from, the only problem is that these parts does not carry correlated prices, for example, the glaive is extreme cheap, its like 4% of a billhook that is entirely worst than it, the only reason I can think of is the bill part carries too much prices, this could be a result of "balancing"

- Refining is really whack-a-mole. Make one ingot degrade one level and one go up, not fall to the bottom of the pile. Or better, make it just move one up. There's just not enough Hardwood around for more than one smith in the world with that system. Smithing is already a grind without that treadmill. Plus the refining perks are a player trap.

To be honest, real refining does not work this way, crucible steel are made of pig iron and wrought iron, yes you hear me, pig iron and wrought is made into low and high carbon steel with traditional treatment, which you can think as steel and fine steel in game, that is the reality.

Why I am bringing up this is because TW seems to be striving for some sort of realism, but honestly real steel or iron production method doesn't look like this at all, and that's why I am suggesting the introduction of coke and the crucible steel method as a top level perk for more realistic metalworking.

-Second char, I decide to take the unlock perks and use companions for refining. We become an intinerant circus circling the whole world for wood. Because you get out of wood, fast. All of the world's wood :smile: I mostly smelt everything gotten in battle, make my companions refine, forge and re-smelt weapons. Progression is ok.

Before 1.0.11 the metal prices are much higher, and is profitable to sell (usually 100 denar per unit of steel, but to be fair the profit rate is only around 25% due to the immense amount of charcoal needed, most of the goods have a profit of 15 to 150%, sometimes even 300%), and that's why I am looking for the right xml to restore the old metal prices.
 
balancing issues aside, it would also be nice to have the legendary perk work properly :rolleyes:
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:roll:
 
Stats is a result of modifier of each parts, if you checked the xml files you will realised that all weapon are defined by parts, and this is where the price comes from, the only problem is that these parts does not carry correlated prices, for example, the glaive is extreme cheap, its like 4% of a billhook that is entirely worst than it, the only reason I can think of is the bill part carries too much prices, this could be a result of "balancing"
I didn't look at the files, maybe I should. I'm just experimenting and looking at the end result. The end result does not look convincing.
I guess this is the result of taking a piecemeal approach to rules design. Adding components that seem to be logical individually does not result in the desired result. You need to work backwards from the desired end result, otherwise you get bogged down in useless mechanics.

To be honest, real refining does not work this way, crucible steel are made of pig iron and wrought iron, yes you hear me, pig iron and wrought is made into low and high carbon steel with traditional treatment, which you can think as steel and fine steel in game, that is the reality.

Why I am bringing up this is because TW seems to be striving for some sort of realism, but honestly real steel or iron production method doesn't look like this at all, and that's why I am suggesting the introduction of coke and the crucible steel method as a top level perk
I've got some familiarity with ancient metalworking methods. But frankly, most people don't know about crucible, wootz or tamagahane... And don't care .
Further, the point is not to be "realistic", it's to make a working rule system.

If you wanted to be realistic, charcoal was made by quasi-hoboes in every forest in Europe.It was NOT a rare commodity made from rare hardwood. And "smelting" a wooden hammer with charcoal to get wood is... well...
 
Already been there, already done that. In fact I've uncovered a recipe that makes a 63k weapon, I win :razz:

Anyhow, I think the system, for now, should be made easier. Buff xp, force all unlocks up til lvl 200. Doing so they can fix the prices. If not, smithing will be worthless effort (not worth the hassle) if they just nerf these "exploits".

Later on, they should add features revolving around smithing, and allow players to realistically chase unlocks they desire, without a fuss or RNG. Atm smithing is a nightmare if you want a weapon for RP purposes or for your character spec. More often than not you'll unlock ridiculous parts that make absolutely zero sense for the character. Like a "sarranid" unlocking some Norse styled sword parts from smelting a hammer, that just doesn't make sense, and is annoying.

Another thing that irritates me is that they've made in-game level scaling for equipment, AGAIN... It was already bad and hated back in Warband, they've decided to do a round 2. The result is the same as with Warband, items that you simply cannot find for the entirety of a play-through. At least back in Warband we could enable cheats and teleport between towns until we found the ****ing item, in BL we can't do that, so you have to dress the PC as a moronic scavenger.
 
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Jokes aside. Yeah I feel you on all your points. Don't forget about javalins, they are probably the most efficient ones to blast out of the furnance to sell cause I think they use less stamina and almost no metal resources?

Don`t know how good they are for leveling up but I did craft a few fairly simple Javelins which would sell for 20k which isn`t bad for a wooden stick with a pointy end. I used the T2 Harpoon head some T2 grip I had at this point and scaled everything up. This weapon reached something like 113 damage, stacks up to 5 and has a very decent range of also 105 I think. Very handy if you want to use it as a spear switching "mode".

I think smithing is very much work in progress at the moment. I previewed these 2 pommels for Javelins, they have a modifier for length but it doesn`t do anything if you pick them. If you choose a different head in preview for example you haven`t unlocked jet it will show stats changing. Don`t know what`s up with that.


-At some point, something wacky happens : I decide to craft a cutting polearm for myself to up polearm a bit (that char went 2-handed). I get a large boost to smithing xp. When wanting to equip the thing, I look at the price... 58686 Gold Pieces !

As I mentioned in my post before I was at 110 smithing skill, at some point I unlocked a "falx"-blade, it looks like a reversed sabre with a heavy curve to it. Using this specific blade and switching up grip, guard (T4-T5) whenever I felt like doing so I went to 225 smithing within 1 in-game week.
Same result, they all were worth 58k, each sword bumped me up alot in experience.

Tried again with a new char. It seems I was right. Going systematically for the highest (cut) damage gives a ton of XP and unlocks.

I guess I would confirm this since this "falx"-blade has a comparetively huge amount of cutting damage, makes sense for the game these reversed blades are vicious for cutting wounds - not so much for the crafting system.

By the way I came across 2 types of daggers in citys, ludicrously cheap at 90 denar. The name started with P and you could get 1 unit of fine steel out of. They had 20 at stock, so I got 20 fine steel for a penny. The other one is "Xhipos" ? for regular steel.
 
By the way I came across 2 types of daggers in citys, ludicrously cheap at 90 denar. The name started with P and you could get 1 unit of fine steel out of. They had 20 at stock, so I got 20 fine steel for a penny. The other one is "Xhipos" ? for regular steel.
Interesting point. That's quite in line with how the system seems to be set up. The price isn't predicated on cost and work, it's purely on damage. Since those are daggers AND thrusting, they're sold at a loss. I will look for such weapons.

I think smithing is very much work in progress at the moment.
Well, the whole game is. What bothers me is that it seems a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas and systems. The previous game had flaws, but there was a logic to it. This one sounds like it's been designed by committee. But, well, we'll see how it develops. It's still fun.
 
Interesting point. That's quite in line with how the system seems to be set up. The price isn't predicated on cost and work, it's purely on damage. Since those are daggers AND thrusting, they're sold at a loss. I will look for such weapons.


Well, the whole game is. What bothers me is that it seems a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas and systems. The previous game had flaws, but there was a logic to it. This one sounds like it's been designed by committee. But, well, we'll see how it develops. It's still fun.

Can you dwell in those conflicting ideas and systems that you noticed?
 
I finally took the time to try out smithing recently... The stamina system had kept me from doing anything with it till now, so I downloaded a mod to remove it... and boy am I glad I didn't actually spend the intended time on this.

One this is the absoutely insane amount of stuff you need to craft to reach high levels of smithing.... I can't fathom how OP reached 300+ skill with the stamina limit... my I'm having joint pains in myfinger just by reaching 150...

Anyway.. the biggest and most frustrating the thing about smithing is the absoutely laughable rewards you get from spending all that time and money... I can't craft ANYTHING near as good as the heavy executioner axe I just found randomly in a shop... I assumed smithing was supposed to be super cool end game weaponry... but it turns out you can't even craft anything that is significantly better than what you can just stumble across through rng...
 
Well, to elaborate a bit, original M&B was very largely focused on combat. So there was very little trouble with weapons having a price that reflected their combat use. You, as a player, were not involved in the production side of the equation, so you didn't have to bother about production costs, just the use value.
Here, we have a crafting system that focuses on the production side, with prices based on the combat use value. That creates a conflict and horrible side effects.

With the old model, nobody cared whether the smith that created high-end throwing knives could make a living. Those throwing knives gave a very marginal use value, hence they were priced quite low. That made sense in the combat-based rules models, nobody would buy throwing knives for 20000 GPs. (Heck, most people wouldn't use them except for strating up or RP purposes)

But now, this comes to plug in with a production system that follows a completely separate ruleset. So you take the logically-priced throwing knife from the combat ruleset, transfer it to the production "world" and change it to something else... That you plug back in the "combat world". In the process, you gain an absurd quantity of XP and gold.

That's an example of conflicting systems. I think those systems were grafted on each other with very little overall coherency. I feel the leveling system also tries to be several things at once, hence the bizarre side effects.
 
One this is the absoutely insane amount of stuff you need to craft to reach high levels of smithing.... I can't fathom how OP reached 300+ skill with the stamina limit... my I'm having joint pains in myfinger just by reaching 150...
Well it's not that hard once you figured out the flaws in the implementation. Though it took me several tries to understand it. The char I created yesterday is already at 166 Smithing.

XP is predicated on damage, so is gold value. Hence, you forge only the highest damage weapon you can create. You don't lose time refining, that's an useless grind and a money sink. (Except for charcoal ofc. And some ingots from time to time to round up your stock. )
You smelt loot or bought low-damage, high-end stuff and use the metal to craft high-damage equipment.
I suspect you can pretty much reach 300 Smithing with a minimum of combat, only changing towns when they're out of hardwood/ gold pieces/ stuff to disassemble.

The reward is that you can get tier 6+ stuff while accumulating and absurd amount of gold and gear. Not that I find it reasonable. It's broken.
 
Well it's not that hard once you figured out the flaws in the implementation. Though it took me several tries to understand it. The char I created yesterday is already at 166 Smithing.

XP is predicated on damage, so is gold value. Hence, you forge only the highest damage weapon you can create. You don't lose time refining, that's an useless grind and a money sink. (Except for charcoal ofc. And some ingots from time to time to round up your stock. )
You smelt loot or bought low-damage, high-end stuff and use the metal to craft high-damage equipment.
I suspect you can pretty much reach 300 Smithing with a minimum of combat, only changing towns when they're out of hardwood/ gold pieces/ stuff to disassemble.

The reward is that you can get tier 6+ stuff while accumulating and absurd amount of gold and gear. Not that I find it reasonable. It's broken.
I was assuming that the difficulty of the weapon dictated the experience... Yet another system where people have to meta game it for it to work..

How about this idea... Remove the smithing skill entirely, then add smiths in towns who can craft things for you...These blacksmiths have a variety of options unlocked depending on how hightier a smithy is in the town and perhaps your relation to the smith... Now add recipies you can find from winning battles, these recipies can be used at these blacksmiths.. Make high end recipe parts considerably better than what you can find in shops and suddenly you have an end-game goal without all the pointless skill grinding
 
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