Blacksmithy
Whether sweating over a fiery forge to create a masterpiece or hammering dents and polishing scratches from a favored piece of plate mail, the blacksmith of Britannia is a skilled craftsman who often finds his or her services in high demand.
The skill of Blacksmithy involves: smelting metal items and ores; crafting arms and armaments; enhancing certain metal items; and repairing applicable items.
There is a special collection of Bulk Order Deeds available for Smiths to fill out. Returning these provides special mining tools and other items as rewards. For the Smith in training, these can help speed the time it takes to acquire more ingots - For advanced players, Power Scrolls and Runic Hammers may be earned.
A skilled character may learn special Blacksmithy Recipes in order to create yet more powerful weapons.
Smelting
The process for smelting ores and recycling metal items into their constituent ingots differs.
Ores
Metal Items
The manual, or old school, method of smelting, or recycling, metal items into their constituent ingots involves:
- Double-click a smith’s hammer, tongs, or sledgehammer that is located in your backpack.
- A menu will appear.
- Select the Smelt Item button in the lower left-hand corner.
- Target the item you wish to melt into ingots.
The UOAssist Recycle Agent feature and the Salvage Bag have made the above process far easier.
Crafting
To create an item using the Blacksmithy skill:
- Stand near a forge and anvil (either, alone is insufficient).
- Double-click a smith’s hammer, tongs, or sledgehammer that is located in your backpack.
- A menu will appear displaying the different categories of items you can craft.
- Select a category and click on the button next to the item you wish to craft.
For arms, there are three categories: Bashing, Bladed, and Polearm.
If successful, the crafted item will appear in your backpack. If successful and lucky, the crafted item will be exceptional. A Blacksmith can opt to include his or her maker’s mark on such exceptional items. The crafting menu contains a toggle in the lower right-hand corner to turn the maker’s mark option on or off.
A blacksmith may increase his or her chances by using an Ancient Hammer.
Enhancing Arms & Armaments
To enhance an item using the Blacksmithy skill:
- Stand near a forge and anvil (either, alone is insufficient).
- Stock you backpack with the metal type you wish to utilize.
- Double-click a smith’s hammer, tongs, or sledgehammer that is located in your backpack.
- A crafting menu will appear.
- Select the appropriate metal type and click on the Enhance Item button located in the lower-right of the menu.
- Target the item you wish to enhance.
Instead of "enhancing", many Blacksmiths refer to this process as "destroying".
Repairing
Temporary link, see the Increasing Current Durability section of the Durability article.
Training
See George Hephaestus, the Blacksmith Instructor, at the Forge And Anvil in New Haven. The New Player Quest entitled It's Hammer Time! will allow a character to train Blacksmithing to 50 (and get the sweet reward, Hammer of Hephaestus). The New Player Quests use accelerated skillgain.
- 47.5 - 53.0: Kryss
- 53.0 - 57.5: War Axe
- 57.5 - 59.5: Katana
- 59.5 - 70.5: Spear
- 70.5 - 106.4: Platemail Gorget (Note: Gains are tremendously slow from here on out. It may help to switch from the Platemail Gorget to the Platemail Gloves every now and then.)
- 106.4 - 108.9: Platemail Gloves
- 108.9 - 116.3: Platemail Arms
- 116.3 - 118.8: Platemail Legs
- 118.8 - 120: Platemail Tunics
- It takes about five days of non-stop game play and over 100,000 ingots to gain 120 Blacksmithy skill points using this technique, so take a break from time to time. You're not a machine! Items produced during training are smelted, or recycled, into ingots for further training.
- Mining of over 50.0 will help cut costs a lot because it allows you to smelt and mine your own ore. Higher levels of mining also increase your return when salvaging.
- Using a Salvage Bag is absolutely crucial, as it both speeds up recycling (recycling everything inside within a second) as well as giving one extra ingot per item recycled, which can represent a monumental return on items that only take a few ingots to make in the first place.
- A modicum of Tinkering will allow you to craft your own Blacksmithy tools.
Using a power scroll to increase your Blacksmithing skill early in your progression can improve your 'rate of return' when salvaging items by extending the range at which you can gain skill on any individual item. Normally, your skill gain ceases at the point where your chance to create the item reaches 100%, which corresponds to 50 points above the minimum skill needed to create the item. If X is that skill level, then this point is (X + 50). The power scrolls raise this cap in direct correlation to their strength. Thus, a 105 power scroll rases the cap to 105% (X + 52.5); a 110 scroll to 110% (X + 55); a 115 scroll to 115% (X + 57.5); and a 120 scroll to 120% (X + 60).
Thus, if your character has used a Legendary Scroll of Blacksmithy early in their career (and if you have the expansions installed), you may instead consider this alternate progression chart designed to maximize your skill return per ingot:
- 47.5 - 75.0: Kryss
- 75.1 - 89.9: Shuriken (requires the Samurai Empire expansion)
- 90.0 - 100: Circlet (requires the Mondain's Legacy expansion)
- 100.1 - 120: Royal Circlet (requires the Mondain's Legacy expansion)
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