Smithing bugs and rebalance required

[Andthorn]

So, after spending around 15 hours dedicating myself purely to smithing, I've found the following issues with this skill:
1. Bug- Weapons with the same name but different stats are stacked together. If they have different stats, they should be separated.
1.1 Bug - When comparing handcrafted weapons, values dont show in GREEN or RED., making it visually difficult to compare.
1.2 Issue - Strong Smith description is wrong, it says it increases "Strength", but there is no Strength attribute in the game.
2. Rebalance: Leveling up smithing takes too long. 15 hours to get to level 75. Recommendations:
2.1 Double or triple the experience earned for actual forging of weapons
2.2 Stamina cost adds nothing to the game, just makes pointless waiting and waiting. Either remove it completely, or halve the stamina cost for all smithing activities.
3. Smithing is rendered completely pointless by how long it takes to level it up. By the time I reached smithing level 75, I had like 80k out of workshops, caravans and intense trading. Which allows me to buy much better weapons than those I can forge, Even though most of my playthourgh I have dedicated it to leveling up smithing.
4. You should be able to craft steel as a natural part of the smithing leveling skill, not given by choice and sacrificing learning recipees. Why? Because steel is almost non-existant in the game, so the way this skill is set up, you have to either choose to be able to craft steel weapons and use virtually none of the recipees, or learn most of the recipees but not be able to craft them at all. Either is a very bad choice. You should be able to choose between making steel in a more efficient way, or learning more recipees.
5. Armorsmithing would be a great addition to the smithing skill. In fact, I think the smithing choices should be between weaponsmithing vs armorsmithing, not between recipees and raw materials.
6. Besides halving the stamina cost for all smithing activities,If you don'twant to remove it, the stamina reduce perk should be allocated a lot earlier (leading to a quarter of this version's stamina cost).
7. Remaining smithing stamina should be visible when waiting or resting in a place.

Community, what do you think about those ideas? Please share your thoughts AND VOTE ON THE POLL.

 

[Andthorn]

I reposted this under the "balancing" subtopic, and deleted the old post as it was under the wrong subtopic. If you have seen this post before, please share your thouhts and vote on the poll.

 

[thunderstep]

leveling up smithing doesn't take that long if you have the skill points spec for it couple of hours at most to get to 100 skill if you have the points in it.

 

[Grumble314]

I'm more worried about them keeping the stats and names you give them before, then I will worry about having to rest or not.

 

[Cheva1ier]

Some people don't have a couple of hours to raise a single skill to 100 especially when the skill can go 300+. We want to enjoy the game. I'm not asking for it to take 5 minutes, but at the same time you have to appreciate that not everyone is a hardcore gamer that can sit there for 16 hours a day and grind out skill increases.

The smithing already requires that the player be savvy enough to buy the Hardwood component and then using the Refining tab to turn that into charcoal and subsequently buy Iron Ore and use the charcoal, iron ore, and hardwood to produce more advanced components.

If the developers don't want to remove stamina I would ask that they at least implement a "stamina bar" so that I know how much stamina I have total or have left after doing some of the tasks or after resting for a certain amount of time. I'm actually going to make my own forum post for some of the issues I have had with the game and suggestions I might make (whatever the hotfix hasn't addressed yet)

 

[ramzamzam9]

I actualy like the stamina as I like to play my Characters as Characters, not industrialised factories and wielding a hammer for a day is exhausing Steel is indeed hard to come by, but hey, it was in medieval times. But I agree, that Perk choices should be more related. So you could choose between Armorer (yes please!), Weaponsmith or creating the hard to come by but needed raw materials. But whatever I would choose, I would want it to take time. Being the Master of whatever in Mount & Blade after half a year of ingame time - I personaly wouldn't want that. I want to build a dynasty! I want my grandchildren (still have no children... just not found the right one) to unite Calradia and I want storys to be told about the first of his name and how unbeliveable it is, that he started from nothing what later became the New Empire... Something like that Or just a difficulty slider

Maybe, as a last thought, they could add something like the ability to found a dynasty of smiths where recepies are passed on through the generations...

 

[Andthorn]

I realized i didnt submit a possibility in the poll to leave things as they are, so I have included that poll result now.

 

[Andthorn]

I actualy like the stamina as I like to play my Characters as Characters, not industrialised factories and wielding a hammer for a day is exhausing Steel is indeed hard to come by, but hey, it was in medieval times. But I agree, that Perk choices should be more related. So you could choose between Armorer (yes please!), Weaponsmith or creating the hard to come by but needed raw materials. But whatever I would choose, I would want it to take time. Being the Master of whatever in Mount & Blade after half a year of ingame time - I personaly wouldn't want that. I want to build a dynasty! I want my grandchildren (still have no children... just not found the right one) to unite Calradia and I want storys to be told about the first of his name and how unbeliveable it is, that he started from nothing what later became the New Empire... Something like that Or just a difficulty slider

Maybe, as a last thought, they could add something like the ability to found a dynasty of smiths where recepies are passed on through the generations...

I get it, the problem with smithing is that its too grindy, and waiting too much time doing nothing. Also, as I stated, the xp gain from actual forging weapons is too slow, its way faster to refine materials than to do actual forging. That needs to be rebalanced. And as Cheva1ier stated, some people do not have 16 hours a day to be sitting in a computer playing games.
My point is, mechanics that make you wait doing absolutely nothing are bad mechanics, always.

 

[Andthorn]

leveling up smithing doesn't take that long if you have the skill points spec for it couple of hours at most to get to 100 skill if you have the points in it.

Its not that fast. Because you have to take into account you need to have a strong economy, an all those materials required. If I had an infinite amount of resources, then yes, maybe it would take a couple of hours to get to 100. But thats not the case.
And the other problem is,if you have the means to get to lvl 100 smithing in a couple of hours, then you have the means to purchase much better gear than what you can forge. Which, renders smithing useless.Awesome skill, but useless. Its not rewarding in any way until you have the ability to craft legendaries. Which by the time you couldreach that level, you probably won't need a legendary anyway.

 

[ramzamzam9]

My point is, mechanics that make you wait doing absolutely nothing are bad mechanics, always.

Agreed on that one! Also forging indeed is right now not verry rewarding. After 30 hours of playing (obviously I have about 16 hours a day right now ) I mostly smelt cheap weapons to sell raw materials for a little handy coin as the weapeons I forge are neither very personal nor good nor good for sale. That's fine in the beginning but as soon as you grow rich, nobody would wield a hammer anymore. So yes, it could and should be something done about it. Maybe gaining influence/reknown for well made weapons you sell? I just dont want it to be simple. And for a Sandbox game with no "winning" the wizardry lies in entertaining us over a realy long time. That's what I always liked about Mount & Blade, that you needed to be patient (on higher difficulty levels at least), building up relations loosing big battles to come back for revenge, stuff like this. But again, therfore things you do need to be rewarding somehow and forging right now isn't.

 

[Andthorn]

Agreed on that one! Also forging indeed is right now not verry rewarding. After 30 hours of playing (obviously I have about 16 hours a day right now ) I mostly smelt cheap weapons to sell raw materials for a little handy coin as the weapeons I forge are neither very personal nor good nor good for sale. That's fine in the beginning but as soon as you grow rich, nobody would wield a hammer anymore. So yes, it could and should be something done about it. Maybe gaining influence/reknown for well made weapons you sell? I just dont want it to be simple. And for a Sandbox game with no "winning" the wizardry lies in entertaining us over a realy long time. That's what I always liked about Mount & Blade, that you needed to be patient (on higher difficulty levels at least), building up relations loosing big battles to come back for revenge, stuff like this. But again, therfore things you do need to be rewarding somehow and forging right now isn't.

Andthorn loved this reply

 

[ceebee13]

I think that they could modify the stamina mechanic, (like i`ve seen suggested in a few threads like this one) where instead of `stamina` You could choose the amount you want to `forge` and time in the game world passes until that`s done. So.... Forging 100 Swords would take 2 days in game (just spitballing number) of course it would take time to balance but instead of being unable (or be blocked from doing anything in real life time) it simulates game time taking you away from other important missions or things to do for your character (being able to stop progress at any time in order to leave the city during an emergency could be an option. I`m pretty sure you`re not going to keep smithing for 2 days when the castle gets actively sieged and you can`t help defend. Just a few ideas, and i think it`s a good middle ground for both sides.

in regards to skilling up Smithing, it could reduce number of materials, or time taken to forge. Can rework perks to be more in tune with Refining, Smelting, or Crafting the actual things. So if you wanted to specialize in one of the three things, Say be a Legendary refiner, you are able to take many items and create more supplies than others for profit, crafters could speciailze in making those legendary armor and weapon pieces, and legendary smelters are for the warmonger that can quickly smelt down large quantities of weapons from battles to turn a profit. Effectively allowing you to multiclass a bit while in turn not stunting your growth, and being fair to the more casual gamer. The hardcore gamers will have more of a job balancing out what they deem more important for their character... Crafting legendary equipment, or taking the world by trade, or outright force. Mount and Blade has always been a wonderful world to explore and this one is no different.

Just my two cents

 

[4Core]

Smithing isn't worth it unless you want to make some money from breaking down weapons . It is a feature that is not completed unfortunately.

 

[Andthorn]

Smithing isn't worth it unless you want to make some money from breaking down weapons . It is a feature that is not completed unfortunately.

Exactly my point. When one of the most anticipated skills announced in a game "isn't worth it", clearly something is very wrong.

 

[Demoulius]

Yeah smithing defenitly needs some work right now. If I can add my own suggestions here to avoid us from flooding the forums with smithing posts:

1: Make the blueprint items that you can unlock tied to the weapon that you are breaking down. It makes no sense whatsoever to learn more about making say an axe or a javelin when you are smelting down a sword.... So you are smelting a nordic arming sword (is that still a thing in the game? Dont know...) you would unlock blueprints for the nordic arming sword. Smelting a huge 2 handed weapon? Youd have a chance to unlock the blueprints for that.

They could still have the random blueprint chance in there or make it a perk in the smithing tree. But imho dont have everything be randomized... it makes no sense and is inmensely frustrating. You can unlock tier 3 or 4 items while you couldnt reliably forge that item. This way it would be easier to learn blueprints, you can raise the skill easier and you get more milage and fun out of the smithing skill. Imho its also not overpowered. If you want to buy a top tier weapon to learn its perks you can but early game you couldnt do that (or use it) reliably.

2: Make your character rest his smithing stamina when outside of town as well. If you want to keep the system at all. I understand having some sort of realistic system where you cant just craft 100 swords in a row. But the way it is setup now we either waste alot of time resting in town or just forgetting about it and moving on. The wages and food consumption for our party also keeps ticking while we are sitting there with our thumbs up our arses so its overall a pretty big nuisance.

3: Maybe more a request then a suggestion: explain abit more in-depth how the crafting system works. Ive seen a few times that I have actually gotten increased stats as welll as lower stats while leveling my stat but when I make things that are below my skill threshold I dont see those improvements at all.... Is it random? How does it work?

 

[fantodant]

Has anyone actually managed to craft a legendary weapon yet? I cheated my way to Smithing lvl 350 (using infinite stamina and a trainer for crafting supplies) just to see how "worth it" it was. I haven't noticed anything in the way of a special weapon, either of the "masterwork" or "legendary" persuasion. Just an occasional piece with some improved stats that don't seem particularly legendary to me.

 

[kalarhan]

Well my crafting design would have a different take.

Instead of you being the one doing the work, you would pick a worker (or companion), build a workshop, and place orders. Those would them take resources and time.

Want more steel? 50 ingots take xxx coins and 3 days (if there are enough raw materials).
Want make a sword? Place your order (design) and wait a day. Want 10 of that? Depends on the level of your shop (how many craftsman you have). Could take 1-10 days to finish the order.

Essentially you run a weapon shop, instead of being the blacksmith. I have raids to run, I dont have time to sleep by the forge!

 

[Andthorn]

Has anyone actually managed to craft a legendary weapon yet? I cheated my way to Smithing lvl 350 (using infinite stamina and a trainer for crafting supplies) just to see how "worth it" it was. I haven't noticed anything in the way of a special weapon, either of the "masterwork" or "legendary" persuasion. Just an occasional piece with some improved stats that don't seem particularly legendary to me.

It appears most of the skill tree in general isn't actually completely functional. Such as tactics, trading, smithing, roguery, bow, crossbow, riding, between others, have perks that are only for illustration, but do not actually work. It is very likely that "legendary" weapons isn't functional yet.

 

[Andthorn]

Yeah smithing defenitly needs some work right now. If I can add my own suggestions here to avoid us from flooding the forums with smithing posts:

1: Make the blueprint items that you can unlock tied to the weapon that you are breaking down. It makes no sense whatsoever to learn more about making say an axe or a javelin when you are smelting down a sword.... So you are smelting a nordic arming sword (is that still a thing in the game? Dont know...) you would unlock blueprints for the nordic arming sword. Smelting a huge 2 handed weapon? Youd have a chance to unlock the blueprints for that.

They could still have the random blueprint chance in there or make it a perk in the smithing tree. But imho dont have everything be randomized... it makes no sense and is inmensely frustrating. You can unlock tier 3 or 4 items while you couldnt reliably forge that item. This way it would be easier to learn blueprints, you can raise the skill easier and you get more milage and fun out of the smithing skill. Imho its also not overpowered. If you want to buy a top tier weapon to learn its perks you can but early game you couldnt do that (or use it) reliably.

2: Make your character rest his smithing stamina when outside of town as well. If you want to keep the system at all. I understand having some sort of realistic system where you cant just craft 100 swords in a row. But the way it is setup now we either waste alot of time resting in town or just forgetting about it and moving on. The wages and food consumption for our party also keeps ticking while we are sitting there with our thumbs up our arses so its overall a pretty big nuisance.

3: Maybe more a request then a suggestion: explain abit more in-depth how the crafting system works. Ive seen a few times that I have actually gotten increased stats as welll as lower stats while leveling my stat but when I make things that are below my skill threshold I dont see those improvements at all.... Is it random? How does it work?

1. Its probably a bug, smithing hasn't been correctly implemented yet.
2 I totally agree with that. Butyou should be able to smelt and refine a lot of materials before getting tired at least, which is not the case right now.
3. I think its RNG. The higuer the differential between your skill and the level of difficulty of the weapon tou are trying to craft, it is more likely that the RNGwill give lower numbers.
I insist, what bother me about the stamina mechanic is the pontless waiting. doing abolutely nothin.
And after playing a whole lot of more hours, I have verified that smithing is absolutely pointless as it is right now.I'm not saying that itis notrewarding, I'm saying that it is absolutely, positively pointless.People have stated theyhave finished their games before reaching smithing 250. Aw man, this game is so half.cooked for 8 years of development.

 

[ramzamzam9]

Aw man, this game is so half.cooked for 8 years of development.

Yes it is. But hey, there are daily patches. At least that's something, I guess. Maybe they just need the pressure of the community to get it done at some point? And personaly I think, there are many prommising features in it. So let's not loose hope and keep pushing