Blacksmithing!!!

[DrMrLordX]

First off, thanks for the feedback on tin ingots. I was too high in skill to know where these lay on the smithing hierarchy when they were patched in. I still don't know any use for them. Goldsmithing maybe? Alchemy? Someone's buying them, so they must be good for something.

Secondly, I want to warn you that using wind crystals on quadav backplates/goblin helms/goblin mail seems to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Yuck. One poster on this board earlier reported near-100% success rates on backplates with wind crystals at 53 skill, but I'm getting about 50% failure rates on them at 54 skill on airsday with advanced image support, and some of the successes yielded highly-undesirable bronze sheets. I'm sticking to lightning crystals on those backplates.

Thirdly, to answer cnick, here's a breakdown of the profit potential of 54 blacksmithing:

selling to NPCs, there is none. The closest I got was iron subligars.

selling to players, it varies. Wildly. If I can find something they'll buy a lot of, I can sell a lot of product, but the most commonly-bought items I can make don't yield much profit.

Example: darksteel ingot. On Midgardsormr, I can sell virtually any number of these for 9k per ingot, or maybe 5-10 per day in Jeuno for 10-11k apiece. It costs me anywhere from 7-8k to make one. That's 2-4k gil profit per ingot. Not bad, until you realize that they pretty much HAVE to be crafted on firesday, thereby limiting the amount of time per rl day I have to make them. AND you have to consider the nightmare of cobbling together that much ore. My biggest run of darksteel yet was 29 ingots. Tha'ts 29 darksteel ore and 87 iron ore. Ye gods. Now, I made all those ingots into sheets for skill, though had I sold the ingots, I would have made 58-106k gil. Not too bad, though it took about two hours to gather components and another 20-30 minutes to smelt it all. I wound up selling the sheets for 8k each, just to move them out of my inventory. I mostly broke even doing that. It should be noted that there's an iron ore shortage on Midgardsormr(we need more miners, help!), so that makes darksteel even more inconvinient.

Example: breastplate. Talk about frustration. fire crystal + 4xiron sheets + 2xsheep leather. The Jeuno AH price on these was around . . . 18? I think? 15k? something like that. They're way down due to being oversold. Cost to produce is around 10k. Bastok blacksmith's guild pays, uh, maybe 7k for them. If I sell to the guild, I'm looking at a big loss.

And don't even get me started on kodachi.

Thus far, the products that have sold in the greatest volume for me, and at the highest speeds, have been ingots. If you can crank those out, you can make some money. If I really put my mind to it, I could probably make decent cash just cranking out iron and steel(I get HQ synths on fire crystal + 4xiron ore once every 3-4 synths now, which yields steel), but there is such a limited supply of ore that I can't really do it all day. All things considered, I'd probably make better money on darksteel, because I can load up on darksteel ore from the AH and, if need be, use iron ore from the guild(yes, at 675 gil per chunk) and still turn a profit. 2-3k per ingot, that is. I'd just have to stop crafting once I ran out of money. Then I could sit around and wait for someone to buy it . . . yipee. That's always fun.

[Bilinear]

nice info, but was wondering if you could possibly mark your money sinks in the guide? like approx how much u spent to get from this skill to this skill, etc, obviously it would almost entirely depend on game economy but your money sink would give a nice approximation of what it might cost some of us. thanks!

[cnick]

Thanks.

I had an idea that nothing really stands out as the huge money maker. Especially considering the higher you go, the less potential buyers you have >_<

[DrMrLordX]

"Money sinks" aren't uniform unless you sell everything that you make to an NPC, and even then, they aren't uniform because non-guild NPCs will pay out based on fame and CHA of the smith. And the cost to make the items in question is based on server economies.

Given the relatively peculiar nature of Midgardsormr's economy, all I can really do is guess when you'll be losing money and when you won't.

Almost all bronze synths, except maybe scale mail suits, will lose you money.

You may lose money on iron and steel scales if nobody will buy them.

You will probably lose money on iron mittens and subligars, albeit not a whole hell of a lot of it.

You might lose money on steel visors if you're impatient.

And . . . that's about it. Oh yeah, you'll lose money on steel cuisses and greaves too, if you make those. I need to revise my list in light of some new discoveries related to darksteel sheets.

[hadokenx]

Ive been managing to make some decent money off of smithing so far ( im only Blacksmith lvl 17). This is almost solely because i do a good bit of mining. I find my own ore and smith ingots to raise my skill. I usually can sell iron ingots for 2.4-2.5k each and i smith my own brass ingots to raise my goldsmithing (these sell decently as a stack on my server; Quetzalcoatl and you can also go further with them to rasie skill BrassIngot> BrassSheet> BrassFlowerpots etc) as well as finding the rare but very nice Darksteel ore which sells for 8K (again on Quetzalcoatl).

So far nothing makes really great money and it takes patience and a good bit of time mining but it will raise your skill a good bit early on and at the very least you should be able to make your money back which is the important thing when just raising skill.

[DrMrLordX]

If you can stomach mining, more power to ya.

I can't, but fortunately, many many others can. I rely upon dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals to provide ore for my hungry smithing machine(as do most of the other regular blacksmiths)

On the plus side, I'm finding that various mythril and darksteel weapons in Jeuno sell nicely. I made some mythril scythes and a darksteel axe that sold well, and I'm selling darksteel ingots by the stack there, now(sheets sell by the stack, but chains do not, at least not on Midgardsormr). There is some reliable profit potential there, though it's nothing shocking. It's not bad considering that I buy all my components off the AH, toss them together, and then sell the result. The trick is to make only one per day, and make a number of different items, rather than to make a large number of the same item over and over. That way you preserve the value of each individual item on the AH.

edit: sadly, some folks did not sell mythril scythes and darksteel axes in moderation on Midgardsormor. Both sell for very little profit now.

[neighbortaru]

wow. very good info.

i would like to request to the powers that be to have this fine post stickied.

[John Doe III]

Hey Dr. Nice info but I have a question. What does Blacksmithing get you? Like weapons? so forth? thanks..Level 50-56 skill = how much money in return?

[Syndicate Corp]

This info IS very helpful, too bad I didn't find this earlier but since then I was able to quickly lvl from 19-25 in a short period.

About to take your advice and do iron chains but after that it brings up a question. You mentioned to do steel sheets for 30+ i think it was. Whats confusing is that I checked other sites for steel ingots and its saying that to make steel ingots you have to be lvl 50+ in smith?

So for those low lvled like me in smith, we are only able to buy steel ingots instead of making our own?

And then we can make steel sheets to lvl up?

Need your help on this one Dr.

[DrMrLordX]

A few answers . . .

#1: Blacksmithing gets you lots of stuff. As a primary skill, it gets you swords, daggers, knives, kukris, scimitars, falchions, two-handed swords, claymores, axes, great axes, baselards, knuckles, claws, baghnaks, some shields(the others are woodworking-based), scale mail, chain mail, plate mail, that funky vest/subligar-type armor, padded armor, and ingots, sheets, chains, and scales made from metal. And some other crap.

As a secondary skill, it's used in various bolts, arrows, lances, spears, and . . . some other stuff. Even a few leatherworking things. And some other stuff I'm probably not thinking of at the moment.

#2: In order to get steel at level 30-odd blacksmithing, you have to get it the slow, cheap way(getting it from gob helms/mail), or the quick, expensive way(buy it off the AH by the stack). I did a little of both. Making steel ingots using the 50-55 skill synths is just a bad, bad idea all around. Anyone at that skill level can make quite a bit of steel as the HQ synth for fire crystal + 4xiron ore. In fact, I get so much steel that way now that it's annoying the hell out of me. I keep winding up with steel that I don't need. I need iron by jove, so give me iron! *)

[Syndicate Corp]

Oh ok thanks for clearing that up.

So for the recipe for the slow cheap way is it:

Fire crystal + gob helms/mail = Steel ingot?

[Socrates]

lightning crystal + gob mail/helm.

i got about 1 steel, 2 irons, bunch of bonze ingots. it's rather random and i get lot of fails. might be better fro you though since you're higher lv smithing.

[Syndicate Corp]

Oh ok thanks for the help and info.

[Rostam]

Dr, thanks so much for the post. I've got somewhat of a gameplay-oriented question for you.

I find myself often scrounging for cash. I'm sure it's something almost everyone else in the game has problems with, and whenever I ask: "How can I make more money?" people respond with: "Crafting." Now, I've got no problems getting on as my 30WAR/15THF and smacking around some low-level gobs for easy gil, and using that formula, I can probably pull in ~8k an hour. Unfortunately, it's time-consuming and ultimately boring as hell. So I thought, why not try smithing? But I'm running into non-stop problems, and it's not really a factor of having trouble raising the skill. (Thanks in part to your guide.) I'm asking myself why I'm even bothering.

Looking at many of the smithing recipes, I don't see big-ticket items. Is it possible to make profit--I mean, REAL profit--from this craft? Your guide is littered with phrases decrying how much money you dumped into the skill--but for what? When I browse over the leathercrafting guide, I see that as soon as level 16 you can start pumping out lizard gear, which sells like wildfire and, judging by the ingredients, won't cost an arm and a leg. So I'm asking someone with experience in this craft: is it worth it? If I level my Smithing to 50, will I see a reward of any type? Is it a money-making craft, or should I take up fishing like everyone keeps telling me?

Secondly, are you only leveling smithing, or have you had to raise other skills simultaneously? Looking over recipe lists, almost 3/4 of the recipes require Woodworking or Leathercraft, and Bonecrafting to a lesser extent?

I don't want to come off as excessively negative, but I just spent an hour mulling over the recipe lists for Smithing, and your post, and I just don't know if this is the right road to go down, if all I want is to make some cash so I can afford halfway decent equipment. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[Socrates]

lol, smithing prolly won't bring you lot of money.

for me, i've been just trying to "break even", but i find having to plan my economics to be a fun aspect of the game. something to do when you get tired of hacking and slashing.

if you want money fast and you need it now....camp NM, kill mobs...

but i'll say this, if you want a money maker craft...do fishing. this rakes in A LOT more money than smithing at low lvs.