Forging guide

For those that don't know the difference between nuggets, bars, fragments, lumps, ingots or rocks of any size.

Ok you want to do forging. The forging craft consists of 3 parts. Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, and Armorsmithing. To start with you need these tools:

Required Tools, Instructions, and Materials

• shovel: can get a good one in a Trader shop or a basic one from the Forging Society building or festivals
• forging hammer: can get a good one in a Trader shop or a basic one from the Forging Society building or festivals
• tongs: can get a good one in a Trader shop or a basic one from the Forging Society building or festivals
• stirring rod: can get a good one in a Trader shop or a basic one from the Forging Society building or festivals
• pliers: can get a good one in a Trader shop or a basic one from the Forging Society building or festivals these are only needed in armorsmithing
• bellows: only from the Forging Society building
• wire brush: only from the Forging Society building or festivals
• flux: only from the Forging Society building or festivals
• forging oil: only from the Forging Society building or festivals
• aerated salts: only from the Forging Society building

The only tools above that are expensive are the ones you can get from one of the Trader shops. To start with just get one from the Forging Society building. Each of the tools you can buy for top line are 10-18 platinum Kronars from the Trader shops. Some might be higher for a really rare metal, but you can do fine work with steel tools, covellite tools, etc., as well. Last note about tools: brushes, flux, and oil have limited usage. They do run out, and you have to buy more. The salts get used up the moment you use them. COUNT MY BRUSH will show you how many uses are left, same for oil or flux.

DIR FORGING SOCIETY will get you to the Forging Society building in the Crossing or in Riverhaven. In the room descriptions in the building you will see bookstore, tools, supplies (all in different rooms); use ORDER when you see these rooms.

The bookstore room is where you must be to get a book of instructions. The apprentice book is cheapest but gets you to 200 skill, where you need the more expensive 15 plat or so book called the journeyman book, which should be good at least through 400 skill. Note those skill levels are based on having no techniques in the three craft areas. The more techniques you get, the quicker you have to move up to a more expensive book. So buy the apprentice blacksmithing book to start with so we can show you how things work. If you want to later you can get the apprentice weaponsmithing book and the apprentice armorsmithing book. To start with I will show you how to smelt and refine and then how to make things in blacksmithing.

Getting Started

Please don't choose any techniques yet and don't choose a hobby or a career yet. While techniques can be unlearned (at considerate expense), career and hobby choices are permanent.

So your first goal is to get a blacksmithing book and the tools you don't yet have.

Your second goal is to do something basic to train some forging. In the supplies room if you type ORDER, you will see items you can purchase. I would first buy a huge bronze ingot for 562 Kronars. A huge ingot is 5 volume of bronze. Your first task will be to smelt said ingot and then refine the ingot. You can get to around 75 skill just refining ingots.

Processing the Raw Materials

Explore the rooms in the building and TAP CRUCIBLE, TAP ANVIL, TAP FORGE and you will gradually see how things are arranged. The crucibles are on the west side of the building and you must have a room no one is in. I think there are three there.

Here are the manual steps to smelting and then refining any metal into an ingot usable for forging any items.

Smelting Metal

Smelting is simply the process of melting down the metal and forming it into an ingot. It is the starting point not only for blacksmithing items, but also weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. For now, this process teaches Forging up to about 75 ranks with standard metals. Rare metals, which are harder to come by and really expensive unless you can mine, them will train forging to higher ranks just by smelting and refining.

Begin by placing all the desired components into the crucible (up to 22 ingots/nuggets/etc. OR up to 210 volume -- whichever comes first -- up to eight different types). Then, holding a stirring rod STIR or MIX CRUCIBLE WITH ROD, until a problem occurs. You can get a number of messages such as stirring works perfectly, but the problem messages and what you need to do are as follows:

• If the metal starts forming lumps or cooling in places, TURN the crucible. Then stir crucible with my rod until you get the next problem.
  
• If the fire is unable to consume it's fuel, hold a set of bellows and PUSH them. Then stir crucible with my rod until you get the next problem.
  
• If the fire runs out of fuel, hold a shovel and PUSH FUEL WITH SHOVEL. Then stir crucible with my rod until you get the next problem.
  

The basic theme is to keep stirring until you complete the product and have a cooled ingot in hand. This process is made easier by the Basic Metal Smelting Technique. So even though you don't need the technique to smelt it does help you do better. When smelting multiple items there are a couple important things to know. These are as follows:

1. COUNT CRUCIBLE can be used to see the materials inside the crucible in a more coherent manner.
   
2. Before any other actions occur, if steel, pewter, bronze, or brass can be made from the components, they will be. Brass will take precedence over bronze, and bronze will take precedence over pewter, if multiple alloys are possible. Steel will not form if anything other than iron and charcoal is in the crucible.
   
3. The stats of the resulting metal will be affected depending on which of two ways the metals combine.
   

• If there is one component that composes 67% of the volume or more, then the base stats will be of that material, and the remaining material will only affect the density. Otherwise, stats will be in the form of (<material 1 stat> * <material 1 volume>)+(<material 2 stat> * <material 2 volume> ) / <total volume>, i.e. an average weighted by volume.
  

There is a maximum of eight metals that can be in any one ingot. Once a combination material is made, it cannot be directly altered. For example, mixing low carbon steel with coal will never change it to high carbon or even medium carbon steel.

Note: the only difference between refining and smelting is you add flux to start the process. From that point forward refining metal is exactly like you were smelting it to begin with. However, refining will raise the purity of the metal, but will reduce the volume by 50%. The Proficient Refining Technique will reduce the volume loss to only 20%. Also the quality of the metal is very important. If you have a high quality metal you tend to lose a lot less of the metal in the refining process. The table below shows the results.

How Techniques Affect the Final Quality

Starting Quality	Without Technique	With Technique
37	?	95
41	?	96
44	?	97
55+	?	99

How Techniques Affect the Volume Lost

Starting Quality	Without Technique	With Technique
<71	?	20%
71-80	?	12%
81-90	?	8%
91+	?	5%

Now what does this mean. It means the better you get smelting, the better you get refining, and the less metal you lose. But there is only so much you can do. With a lot of critter drops you will find metal bars. When smelted the metal bars tend to be really high quality metal. These work out really well when you refine them.

Reclaiming Metal From Finished Products

One last note is reclaiming. Lets say you made a shallow bronze cup. Let's say you made three shallow cups. It has one volume of bronze being used and you want to reclaim the metal in three of them. The max number of created items you can put into the crucible to try to reclaim the metal is three. So you put three shallow bronze cups into the crucible to reclaim the metal. Each has one volume so it's three volume of bronze. You then begin to smelt the three cups just like you were smelting nuggets or other metals. The difficulty of this process is approximately the same difficulty as creating the item that is being reclaimed, including additional difficulty due to material.

Note that only fully finished items can be reclaimed, and the resulting volume will be reduced by about 20%. The process is made easier by knowledge of the Expert Metal Reclamation Technique. So you should end up with two volume of bronze after you finish. When I started doing this I was losing 50% of the metal, and on three volume that usually left me with one volume remaining because it rounded down to the lowest volume number rather than 1.5 volume. On rare occasions did I end up with two volume. So if you're going to reclaim a rare metal, you should let someone with a lot of skill do this. Due to the rounding issues, you're better off reclaiming even numbers down so do two cups rather than three at a time. It takes longer but you end up with more volume.

Now step one you are going to smelt and refine an ingot. First ANALYZE CRUCIBLE. If it's not in pristine condition pour salts in crucible and it will be repaired.

Then put the ingot/nugget/bar into the crucible. Have all tools and such in your container make sure you have flux in there too. Then proceed to smelt the ingot by using STIR or MIX CRUCIBLE WITH ROD, the process will then begin to smelt the items into a single ingot. Note the smelting process looses no metal from the process. That will only happen when you refine the ingot. Follow the steps given for problem messages as follows:

• If the metal starts forming lumps or cooling in places, TURN the crucible. Then STIR CRUCIBLE WITH MY ROD until you get the next problem.
  
• If the fire is unable to consume its fuel, hold a set of bellows and PUSH them. Then STIR CRUCIBLE WITH MY ROD until you get the next problem.
  
• If the fire runs out of fuel, hold a shovel and PUSH FUEL WITH SHOVEL. Then STIR CRUCIBLE WITH MY ROD until you get the next problem.

Refining Metal

When it finishes you will have and ingot in hand. So now you must refine it.

1. ANALYZE the crucible and make sure it's still pristine. If it is put the ingot in the crucible
2. Get your flux and POUR FLUX IN CRUCIBLE. This will then start to refine the smelted ingot, and in the process, the ingot will have close to half the volume of the original ingot.
3. Then proceed to stir exactly as you did smelting the ingot until you complete the process.

You should now have a new refined ingot. The ingot you smelted had five volume; the ingot you ended up with refined will usually have two volume but on occasion can have three volume. This is the basis for making anything in forging. First you get a proper ingot through smelting then you refine it as well as you can, and then you can make things from the ingot. Now you have an ingot you can use to make things in blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, or armorsmithing.

Ok now you have a bronze ingot that you refined yourself. If you make a second bronze ingot just like the first, you could put both refined ingots into the crucible and smelt them. That would retain the refined status and combine the two ingots into one with double the size. So now you would have a refined ingot that is usually four volume but can be as much as five or six volume. You can put around 200 volume of nuggets or 20 items into the crucible and smelt it and refine it.

Refining an ingot usually loses about 50 percent of the volume. A final ingot should not be greater than 210 volume. This brings me to another set of items you will need.

When doing forging you have to make a huge trade-off. If you don't have a career or hobby in any part of forging you pretty much will always lose about 50 percent of the material when refining it. That's the trade-off get techniques that allow you to do more things or get the ones that lets you retain most of the metal. Even with the right technique the loss of metal in the refining process will still remove at least 20% of the volume. So you can never get to where you lose none of it.

Deeding Metal

First off, in the Forging Society building there is a clerk. I don't remember which room, wander in there and see. Ask the clerk for register. He will give you a register that you can put deeds in (up to 50). These deeds put the ingot you just made in a deed form and stores it in the register so you can use it later and also don't have to deal with the massive weight of metal ingots.

Second, will need a deed packet. This packet is found in the room that has the description SUPPLIES on it. Use order and you will see they are numbers 13, 14, 15. The small packet has 10 forms, the packet has 50, and the large packet has 100. I normally get the normal packet that has 50. The way this packet works is that if you have your ingot in one hand and the packet in the other and use PUSH MY INGOT WITH MY PACKET, then you have deeded the ingot. Then put the packet away and get the register out.

PUT DEED IN MY REGISTER and then read register. You can turn register to contents or you can turn register to page 1, then READ MY REGISTER and see what you have. This stores the ingot for when you need it. To get the deed out of the register, you TURN REGISTER to the right page number, then PULL MY REGISTER. This will put the deed in your hand. Put the register away. Then TAP MY DEED, and you should have an ingot in your hand ready to use.

Making Metal Items

Forging works the same in blacksmithing as it does in weaponsmithing or armorsmithing. The only difference is most items in armorsmithing take a great deal of volume to make, and you might have to add a part to the item, like a short pole, long pole, handle, hilt, etc.

Forging Items (Blacksmithing)

Now let's continue on with the process of making something from the metal you refined. When you open the blacksmithing book you will find at least six chapters. {{tt|TURN BLACKSMITHING BOOK TO INDEX)). Each chapter is dedicated to specific tools and items. Chapter 1 is Smelting and Other Knowledge, chapter 2 is Forging Tools, chapter 3 is Engineering Tools, chapter 4 is Outfitting Tools, chapter 5 is Alchemy Tools, and chapter 6 is Forged Item Design. You will see that at 0 skill up through 25 skill, about you can do are items that are extremely easy from the book.

Right now the only extremely easy items to make are in chapter 6. They are the shallow cup and the slender rod. So TURN BLACKSMITHING BOOK TO CHAPTER 6 and READ MY BOOK. Then TURN BLACKSMITHING BOOK TO PAGE (whatever the cup is on). Side note when ever something changes in forging items, the page numbers change, so you always have to check the chapter and find what page the item you want to make is on. For your first item to make you're going to forge your bronze ingot into a shallow bronze cup. The cup takes 1 volume of the metal ingot to make so your 2 or even 4 volume ingot is big enough to make at least 2 to 4 cups.

Steps to make the cup are fairly simple. I will walk you through the steps to make the item. Forging basically means you're going to shape the item you want from the metal you have. Right now you're going to make a shallow cup from bronze. Keep in mind bronze is a heavy metal. The weight is about 6 stones per volume. That means the 1 volume cup will weigh in right at 6 stones. Check the crafting materials document, and you will see the density of bronze is 6.2. That means if you used 5 volume to make an item, it would weight in at 5 times 6.2 or 31 stones, which is pretty heavy. But bronze also happens to be really easy to work (workability of 70 where higher numbers are really easy to work). So for this cup we are trading weight for workability. You want to actually make a decent cup here so we use a heavy bronze.

In the Forging Society buildings, the anvil and forge are usually in a different room from where the crucible is located. In the Crossing, the crucibles are on the west side of the building, and the anvils are in another room. What I did is went through each room and did TAP ANVIL until I got used to where they were in the different Forging Society buildings. Find an anvil where no one is in the room, and you can begin the shaping process. There are three arches in the south side that lead to forges and anvils.

1. PUT MY INGOT ON ANVIL. Then get your forging hammer out (usually a diagonal-peen hammer or ball-peen hammer).
2. Get the blacksmithing book out. It should already be turned to the right page; if not TURN it to the right page. Then STUDY MY BOOK. That will study the book in order to make the shallow cup. Then put the blacksmithing book back in your container.
3. POUND INGOT WITH HAMMER. This step will start the process off and if your ingot is too big the remaining part of it will be put in your container.
4. Step three can produce a problem message and each step after can produce a problem message the messages are as follows along with what you need to do if that message happens:

• The fire is unable to consume its fuel - if this happens get bellows and PUSH MY BELLOWS. Then put the bellows up and POUND CUP WITH HAMMER.
• The fire runs out of fuel - Get shovel and PUSH FUEL WITH SHOVEL, then put the shovel up and POUND CUP WITH HAMMER.
• The item needs straightening or detailing - Get tongs and TURN CUP WITH TONGS. then put the tongs up and POUND CUP WITH HAMMER.<

1. When the item is finished being shaped PUSH TUB which will cool it. However for some items you will need a handle (for instance short pole on a hammer, and long pole on a shovel), and it will tell you, you need a handle. Then get short or long pole as needed and ASSEMBLE ITEM WITH POLE.
2. The final step is to POUR OIL ON CUP to finish it off. Thus you will have completed your shallow bronze cup. Analyze the cup and then appraise the cup careful.

Each item in the book is created the same way. The difference is you can only do the ones you have the skill for or in some cases the one just above that level. Please don't try to start out with steel on your first item; you won't have the skill to create an item masterfully with steel yet.

Tempering Tools, Weapons, and Armor

Now if you have the Tool Tempering technique in blacksmithing you can now temper the tool. Please note to get Tool Tempering you need the following techniques in blacksmithing: Basic Metal Smelting, Basic Tool Repair, Advanced Tool Repair, and Tool Tempering. Now without Tool Tempering (or Metal Weapon Tempering or Metal Armor Tempering if you're working on those items) you can't temper metal items. In armorsmithing and weaponsmithing you also need a second technique called Rare-Metal Armor/Weapon Tempering , which allows you to temper rare metals. This means if you have any rare metal in the metal you used for the item you need to be able to temper rare metals. So let's temper your bronze cup just so you know how to do it.

1. You don't need to study the books to temper you just need the technique for each area of forging. First get tongs, make sure you have the item to temper. Put the item to temper on the forge two times to start the process.
2. Turn Item with my tongs. Each time you turn the item with the tongs you can get a number of problem messages that require action to resolve. If you don't get one of these messages you continue to TURN CUP WITH MY TONGS. These messages are as follows and how to respond to them.

• As you finish the fire flickers and is unable to consume its fuel: Get the bellows out and PUSH MY BELLOWS. Then put it up and get the tongs and TURN CUP WITH MY TONGS.
• As you finish working the fire dims and produces less heat from ..: Get the bellows out and PUSH MY BELLOWS. Then put it up and get the tongs and TURN CUP WITH MY TONGS.
• fire dies down and needs more fuel: Get the shovel out and PUSH FUEL WITH MY SHOVEL. Then put it up and get the tongs and TURN CUP WITH MY TONGS.
• fire dies down and appears to need some more fuel: Get the shovel out and PUSH FUEL WITH MY SHOVEL. Then put it up and get the tongs and TURN CUP WITH MY TONGS.
• needs to be cleaned of the clay by pouring oil on it.: This is the final step, get the oil and POUR OIL ON MY CUP.
• metal looks to be in need of some oil to preserve: This is the final step, get the oil and POUR OIL ON MY CUP.

Notice that messages 1 and 2 can both result but both do the same thing. The same for messages 3 and 4, and the same for the messages 5 and 6 which are the last step you perform. Now your item is completed. It's been tempered. Analyze cup and appraise my cup careful. This will show you the details.

Weaponsmithing

Now there are 2 things you can do in weaponsmithing (hone and balance a weapon) and armorsmithing (lighten or reinforce the armor). Obviously you don't want to do that with a cup. But the steps for each are fairly simple. Let's cover those briefly so you can do those if you have the techniques in each area to do them.

Note: a weapon can be honed or balanced, but not both!

Honing Weapons

Honing requires a grindstone, a wire brush, and some oil.

Honing a finished weapon will reduce its weight by 8% (round up), but will not drop the weapon down below its 3-density equivalent, or by more than five stones. This means if your weapon is already at 3 density there is not much reason to hone it. For each stone of weight removed, one point of impact is lost (point, not category).

1. Begin by STUDYing the appropriate page in your weaponsmithing book (chapter 10 and the metal weapon honing page).
   
2. Next TURN GRINDSTONE until it is up to speed (note you usually have to turn it up to 3 times to get it up to speed).
   
3. Next PUSH GRINDSTONE WITH <WEAPON>. Periodically, you may be required to remove the metal shavings by RUBbing the weapon with a wire brush. You will see the message when it needs to happen.

Balancing Weapons

Balancing is an identical process to honing, but it will increase a weapon's balance at the expense of suitability/power.

1. Begin by STUDYing the appropriate page in your weaponsmithing book (chapter 10 and the metal weapon balancing page).
2. Next TURN GRINDSTONE until it is up to speed (note you usually have to turn it up to 3 times to get it up to speed).
3. Next PUSH GRINDSTONE WITH <WEAPON>. Periodically, you may be required to remove the metal shavings by RUBbing the weapon with a wire brush. You will see the message when it needs to happen.

Tweaking the Appearance of Weapons with a Cleaning Cloth

RUBing a weapon with a cleaning cloth will allow you to bring out different aspects. This also works on armor

• a <metal> <weapon>
• a <metal> <weapon> with a tempered blade/head
• a <metal> <weapon> with a <mod> blade/head/design/finish
• a tempered <weapon>
• a tempered <weapon> with a <mod> blade/head/design/finish
• a <mod> <weapon>
• a <mod> <weapon> with a tempered blade/head
• a <weapon> with a tempered blade/head
• a <weapon> with a <mod> blade/head/design/finish
• a <weapon>

In this case <mod> means either "honed" or "balanced."
The blade/head/design/finish depends on weapon type and mod.

Armorsmithing

Unfortunately, all I know about lightening armor and reinforcing armor is what follows, I'm still in the process of filling this in.

• Lightening armor: reduces weight (but not protection or hindrance) of the item by approximately 10%
  
• Reinforcing armor: increases protection, hindrance, and weight
  

Techniques

This part explains some information about techniques and metal properties and how to use them.

Repairing

Note just like armor and weapons, tools degrade over time. Unless you have the tool repair techniques, you will need to take the tools to the Engineering Society building (DIR ENGINEERING SOCIETY) and when you go building, go west. The NPC you find there will repair tools.

Each of the three parts of forging Blacksmithing, Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, have repair techniques. These are used to repair tools, metal weapons, and metal armors.

Tempering

In addition, each discipline has tempering techniques that are needed to harden the items made so they are more durable. Without the tempering techniques you can't make a sword or armor or tool more durable. They still work, but they will become damaged sooner than those that have been hardened by the tempering. Yes, if you make an item and can't temper it right away, you can temper it later.

In blacksmithing, there is one technique for tempering and it will allow you to temper any metal. But in weaponsmithing and armorsmithing you need separate techniques for common and rare metals.

Weapon Enhancements

Weaponsmithing has two techniques that help you modify weapons called honing (Reduces weight without reducing the puncture and slice of an item), and Balancing (used to improve a weapon for high agility rather than strength). You can't change how the weapons you make perform unless you have those techniques.

Armor Enhancements

In armorsmithing there are two techniques, one for lightening and one for reinforcing. You can't modify armor from the basic set without those two techniques. Any other techniques in those three areas will only help you do something a little bit before you have the skill to actually do them. So these techniques are vital for those areas.

Blacksmithing Techniques

Now in blacksmithing techniques, there are a couple that are nice to have. The Master Metallurgy technique allows you to see the metal composition of ingots and forged items such as tools, weapons and armor given enough skill. This means you can look at the items and figure out what metal was used in making it. Or if you made something and you forgot what you did, you can at least see the metal make up of the ingot used to create the item. To do so, simply hold the ingot/item and analyze it, and you'll get a description back like:

The metal appears to be composed of: 2.25% brass, 75.24% bronze, 3.98% high carbon steel, 0.04% oravir, 0.10% gold, 0.00% lead, 6.12% medium carbon steel, and 12.23% silver.

Also the Maker Mark Design technique allows you to make marks that you can use to stamp the item as yours. Without that technique (and it takes 2 other techniques to get it), you can't mark items if that is your desire.

Technique Combinations

What do techniques really do? Most of them allow you to make items sooner than you normally would based on skill. At the higher ends of skill I'm not certain yet what benefit they are if they help at all on the high end of skill. This means you can do everything in most crafts without any techniques at all, but certain things require the techniques.

This makes you have to plan out your future goals for a craft. There are 5 crafts. Magic-primary characters (Cleric, Warrior Mage, and Moon Mage) may want to do work in the enchanting area, and since all magic-primary folks are also lore-secondary, they all get one career and two hobbies. That means most of them will probably save the career to use in enchanting and even maybe one or more of the hobbies. This could leave none to use in the other crafts. So how do you approach a situation like this?

You can work every craft even without careers and hobbies, but you will only gain techniques from your skill, and right now that means a max of 13 techniques by the time you hit 1200 ranks. Most of the techniques you will pick up in the first 300 ranks (8 techniques), that means you need to concentrate on limited areas in the other crafts for the limited techniques you can gain.

I have seen folks work skill in forging simply to get all the repair techniques in each part of forging (4 techniques in blacksmithing, 3 in weaponsmithing, 3 in armorsmithing), that means to repair all the items that can be made in forging took 10 techniques. Those folks then tend to spread the other 5 techniques as they can grow where they want to concentrate for instance putting the last 5 techniques in weaponsmithing or armorsmithing or blacksmithing.

I have seen others get the tool repair techniques in blacksmithing (4), the tempering and special needed techniques in both weaponsmithing and armorsmithing (4 each) for 12 techniques and get the tempering technique in blacksmithing.

I have also seen folks go for just one area but get the tool repair techniques in blacksmithing and then put everything else in either armorsmithing or weaponsmithing.

The good thing about this is if you change your mind you can unlearn techniques but you can't change a career or hobby. So if you decide you want to modify things and go for one part of the forging area, put all 13 techniques into weaponsmithing. Or get 4 in blacksmithing to repair tools and 9 in armorsmithing then you can do that. Just don't choose careers and hobbies until you are absolutely sure what you want to do.

Metallurgy

Workability

Now the last part of this is making items. Making items you need to know certain things about metals. The higher the workability of the metal the easier it is to make the item you're trying to make masterfully. So in the crafting materials document, you see the metals are all shown with normal and rare metals. You will note almost all rare metals have a really low workability. Thus you need more skill to use them. There are a couple exceptions, however, such as darkstone metal which has the highest workability of any of the rare metals. For that reason you will see many folks using tools made from darkstone metal or you will see it in some weapons as well. Darkstone, muracite and kapeda are the only rare metals that have a high workability, and of those three, it turns out muracite is also a really good catalyst for alchemy remedies. I have never seen kapeda myself; it is obtained from the Beyond the Barrier quest.

Mixing Metals to Adjust Density/Weight

There are two types of metal mixing. If you have at least 67% of one metal you end up with that metal with all its properties only modified by density. The second type is called alloys. You get alloys when no metal makes up 67% of the metal or more.

Basic rule of thumb. If your metal used to make an item is not 3.0 density at a minimum, you won't be able to make the item. If it's under 3.0 density, and you hit it with a hammer it will shatter the ingot. You can get the pieces and smelt them back into an ingot but you won't be able to make the item. Now where is that important:

Let's say you want to make a tool for forging like tongs. These require heat resistance and to be as light as possible. You will find that covellite is the most heat resistant normal metal, but its density is 2.0. That means you have to add metal to it to raise the density so it hits at least 3.0 or you can't make the tongs.

So how would you make an ingot that could be used to make tongs? First check the blacksmithing book under forging tools chapter 2. You will find the first tongs you can make are straight metal-type tongs using 10 volume of metal, and they are simple difficulty (200 skill to make with no techniques or maybe 150 skill with certain techniques).

In addition, the books says high resistance to fire and light are key to the best tongs. So covellite is the most heat-resistant metal, but it's only 2.0 density. So we must make it heavier but leave enough covellite so that we are only changing the weight, not the underlying properties of the metal. Any metal ingot that is at least 67% of one metal remains that metal with all its properties. So in this case we need 10 volume. Let's use 8 volume of covellite (80%) and 2 volume of lead (20%), the covellite density is 2.0 x 8 volume = 16. The lead is 8.0 density x 2 volume = 16. Thats 16 + 16 = 32 density of the resulting 10 volume of ingot (8 volume + 2 volume = 10 volume in the final ingot). Taking 32 and divide by the total volume of 10 gives you a final density of the ingot of 3.2. So this mix will work to give you straight covellite tongs at 10 volume with a final weight of 32 stones (3.2 x 10 = 32).

Many items such as weapons can benefit from being heavier or lighter. Right now my primary means of making a metal lighter is to make it with 70% of the main metal (bronze, steel, etc.), and 30% of oravir which has 1.0 density. If I want the weapon heavier like blunts for instance I would use 70% of the main metal and 30% of lead to add weight to the item. The key is getting the right mix with the right results.

I actually know of someone who made some covellite plate armor with a mix of covellite and lead to bring it to exactly 3.0 density. That means the full plate armor for the body came in at 100 volume of metal and a weight of 300 stones. There are a lot of leather, bone and cloth armors out there that come in at 400+ stones. I suspect that armor would be perfect for brand new Paladins coming into the lands to reduce weight on them for hunting.

Mixing Metals to Create Alloys

Alloys are the hardest to work with right now. It's really math-intensive and can be a ton of fun trying things out. Alloys are the only way you can change a metals properties. This means you can change all seven properties of the metal. Stats will be in the form of (<material 1 stat> x <material 1 volume>) + (<material 2 stat> x <material 2 volume> ) / <total volume>, i.e. an average weighted by volume.

What can you do with an alloy. Glad you asked! Lets say you have glaes rare metal (workability 10), and you have darkstone rare metal (workability 75). You do not have the skill yet to actually make anything from glaes because of its low workability number. So you use 50% glaes 25 volume and 50% darkstone 25 volume and what do you end up with? You end up with a glaes alloy or darkstone alloy that has 50 volume and a workability of 42.5 (75 x 25 = 1875, 10 x 25 = 250, 1875+250 = 2125 and 2125 divided by 50 = 42.5). So you have turned a metal into something you might actually be able to work into something even though you did change all the metal's properties.

There are so many possibilities with alloys I have had no time yet to figure them all out. I call alloys the low skilled method of making really good tools, weapons and armor.

Remember if you can make an item masterful in bronze (workability 70), if you use medium carbon steel (workability 50) you might not be able to make the same item masterful. And it goes down from there, the lower the workability number the higher your skill needs to be to make the item and the harder the item is to make. Yes that will teach you better with the harder material.

Work Orders

If you decide to do work orders to get paid for the things you do, then the room with BOOKS in the description is where you purchase a forging work order logbook.

You will ask the society leader for either easy, challenging or hard blacksmithing/weaponsmithing/armorsmithing work. He will give you a task. The goal is to get paid the best and complete the item with as good of a quality as possible.

To do this use the highest workability metal you can use and in addition to actually training the skill, you will get paid to so. It's not always the best item that way, but the quality will be better, and you will get paid more for the work order than you would if you had used other metals.


Unless you have a good source of metal you will also probably have to buy the metal in the shop and bronze usually works good for that.

Prestige

Now work orders generate prestige, and that prestige is used to eventually qualify for a maker's mark. So if you make something and turn it in, you must do so again before 5 days go by or you start to lose prestige again. You also should probably pick a craft (forging, alchemy, enchanting, outfitting, or engineering) where you will do your main work orders in for getting a maker's mark (this is a certain level of prestige build-up; see Crafting).

Everyone does this differently. I know some that do work orders in every craft currently present. They love making the coins. I know some that pick only one craft to do work orders in and the rest they just train in when they can. How you do it is eventually up to you. If your goal is a maker's mark then I would concentrate on one craft. Once you get enough to get the maker's mark then you can have someone make it and you can then branch out and do work orders whenever you want to in as many crafts as you want to.

Doing work orders trains well and pays pretty well. Remember you can study any crafting master in the Forging Society buildings to get syntax on how to ask them things. If you have no techniques and no career or hobby, start with easy work orders. If you have techniques but no career or hobby start with challenging work orders. Hard work orders can be done as you approach the next level of difficulty with top of the line tools around 30-50 ranks before you get there or if you have a career or hobby plus techniques. With good tools my work so far tells me you can do challenging work orders with high workability materials most of the time.