Smithing in 1.8 is still the easiest money maker

After all the hand wringing about smithing, the devs finally dropped the hammer. For better or worse though, smithing is still by far the easiest way to make money. They did away with random part unlocking, but it's still very easy to build up a character that can craft 15k denarii weapons pretty quickly.

Conceptually, to get a smithing character rolling, the key is to unlock a part that allows you to make valuable weapons as quickly as possible. Because you start with really shitty parts, it would take forever to level up by crafting. The solution is smelting. Because pole arms with swing damage sell for very high prices and stabbing only pole arms are cheap to buy, this is going to be the ideal category to focus on.

When you first start, you will have to hunt down looters and smelt the loot. You'll have to deal in trade goods too for extra income, and you also should be winning tournaments and smelting any weapons you win for the smithing EXP. I recommend 2h swords to start as even the crappy parts you start with sell for around 650 denarii, but the real value is in throwing axes. You start with an axe head and shaft that will sell for about 1500 and uses 3 steel/1 wood. It's also a pretty decent difficulty weapon so you'll quickly unlock all the parts which allows you to craft a 2500 denarii throwing axe for 3 steel/1 wood. This is a good enough sale price to fund your smithing empire.

From there on out, you can wander the map winning tournaments and buying cheap wood. One you have your 2500 denarii axe unlocked, you're going to want to buy pugios and seaxes as they are a cheap source of steel. The fine steel from pugios can sell for more than the actual weapon in some cities, so they're almost free. Use the money you earn from axes to buy fine steel long spears and broad leaf headed spears. These give you 3 steel when smelted for ~1500 denarii, but just as importantly they are tier 3 weapons that you can smelt and level up your pole arm part catalogue. The critical part to unlock is the bill head. Even though the bill head is a tier 3 part, pole arms made with it are tier 5 weapons. You have to play around with the design a little but you'll quickly find that you can craft tier 5 pole arms that sell for 2500 denarii with shitty materials, but you're not going to sell these. Hunker down in a town with a decent wood supply and craft tier 5 pole arms and then immediate smelt them. Smelting a tier 5 pole arm will unlock about one part per item smelted. As soon as you unlock a glaive or volgue you're on your way to crafting 12-15k denarii pole arms with the material you get from 2 pugios and essentially unlimited wealth.

If you want to unlock something specific I recommend just abusing pole arms to fund the purchase of reasonable tier weapons of the target category and smelting them until you unlock enough parts to make the crafting -> smelting positive feedback loop work.

TL;DR Tale worlds didn't fix smithing because they didn't address the actual problem. It would be much better if crafting really expensive weapons required expensive materials, but as long as you can buy weapons for 500 denarii that you can melt and sell for 15,000 it's going to be broken. The prices of weapons and materials needs to be somewhat rational. IMO it would be far cooler if smithing was more a design process where players can customize their weapons and armor but the cost of materials is the main limiting factor rather than a way to make an easy profit. Every smithing piece should come with a specific benefit and trade off; there's zero need for 20 different pommels that all do pretty much the same thing. A little bit of thought could make it a really cool mechanic but they're going to have to fix the concept, not just tweak it.

submitted by /u/WordSalad11
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