Blacksmith Questions – BODs, etc

[Varak]

I’m trying to figure out if the special items have any value or use in game from BOD’s. The sturdy shovel I assume is just a shovel with more charges? So you can save carrying a few shovels? Or is this purely a decorative item? Doesn’t seem to be much value there.  I assume the same with the sturdy pick axe? What about the prospectors axe?

 
The gargoyle’s pick axe – Does it actually promote the color of the ore? If so, do elementals actually spawn when using them? If so, I might need to get some fighting skill on my miner before equipping one of these...
 
The ancient hammer – Gives a bonus to smithing? If so how much? Sounds quite good actually. I would definitely do this BOD.
 
Basically, I’m trying to figure out if all BOD’s have value and are worth doing. It looks like I can just skip the first couple BOD’s as they don’t seem to get much in the way of a gift. Can someone please confirm?
 
Arms Lore – since a lot of these later concepts have crept into the Smithing world, does Arms Lore have any benefit or is it still worthless as it was in T2A? In the old days it was only worth having if you had a top shelf Hally, so you could delay a couple repairs here and there.

[Blaise]

Sturdy Picks and Shovels have higher durability only, thus they last longer than standard variants.

The Prospector's Tool can be used to 'step up' the level of any ore vein by one level. For example, used on a Dull Copper vein you would then yield Shadow ore until the vein is empty. I have yet to check an hour later to see if the effect is still there on refresh but I doubt it would be.

The gargoyle's pick axe spawns ore elementals that drop a significant amount (25 pieces of ore), based on the ore type of the vein. From what I understand they also upgrade the vein's ore level on use as well (one level).

Ancient Smithing Hammers come in +5/10/15/20 and I think 25 Blacksmithing skill. They are GREAT for filling plate bods or making plate suits for sale, or even large runs of high fail rate weapons (spears as an example). They have finite uses and I use mine practically every time I'm crafting something.

As for what bods are worth doing, it is very subjective. Personally I only do bods that will net me Ancient Hammers, Portable Forges, Braziers or the two rare armor sets. Everything else is fairly undesirable to me. Some folks might be into the armor stands and weapon racks or whatever, it's just nto my bag.

Arms Lore is very useful in this era on this shard, for the reasons you state. Weapons cannot be magically pushed beyond their durability rating. Thus, only repairing top tier weaponry when it NEEDS it, requires AL skill to determine the amount of wear before attempting a repair. You can risk it if you want but I wouldn't. PvM is improved and popular here so expect a lot of folks to be wanting repairs on their silver weapons or potentially other slayers if those get added.