Blacksmithing by the Numbers

[Varak]

I did a quick down and dirty analysis of blacksmithing to plan out my approach from 87-GM, and thought I would share it with the shard. I consider this a tool, and not a guide. It provides different points of measure, but isn’t in the business of telling you what to make and when. It’s a tool to help you decide what YOU should make and at what times YOU want to switch over.
 
Smithing differs significantly from others shards primarily because other shards I’ve played on had different smelting outcomes. There were two primary goals I am trying to balance. First I want to maximize my chances of a skill gain per attempt. Second, I want to lose as little ingots as possible in that attempt.

It’s all assumptions and math, so let’s get the assumptions over with:

1. It’s widely known the crafting disciplines give the best gains per attempt when you have a 60-80% chance of making the item. I’ve seen nothing on this shard that would make me believe differently. So we will move forward with the intention of keeping the items we make in that range.
   
2. Smelting seems to vary widely on shards. I’m not sure what’s right. I’ve tried making and smelting a lot of different things. It seems I get around a 60% return rate regardless of the item. I did discover two items that give really low returns (I am guessing a bug), but nearly everything seemed to smelt back at the 60% rate with 100 mining (not sure if that impacts the result here). I haven’t tried plate arms or plate gloves at this time, so there is a chance their smelt rates may be very low so just check it before you set off a long macro.
   
3. I used the success change rates off of stratics. I’m hoping they are similar here.
   
4. I am at 87. I started the analysis at 85 but the things to make prior seem to be the same for every shard Cutlass, Kryss, Katana, and Short Spear.  Basically you are using the lowest ingot usage item that gives good gain (the whole point of this guide).
   
5. I am making no adjustments for power hour, as I assume it would impact all items equally. I have no familiarity with the actual calculation, so I didn’t include it in the analysis. Since the goal is to get to GM with as little ingot usage as possible, doing all or most of your grinding during power hour is highly recommended.  
   

Now onto the math:

What complicates the higher tiers is the items in the 60-80% range require a lot more ingots per attempt. The breast plate at 99 gives the best gains by far but requires a cr@p ton of ingots per attempt. So we need to find a way to balance the high ingot usage items, with the best gains, to get to a low ingot usage roadmap.

One quick note. apparently my nice Excel tables aren't coming through appropriately. The first % value is the success rate, and the last value is the ingots burned per 1,000 attempts. Those are the two numbers we concentrate on here.

 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Except. Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

57.20%

0.00%

6568


Short Spear

6 Ingots

79.40%

19.40%

3,141


Spear

12 Ingots

72.00%

12.00%

6,816



 
The burn rate (the last column) is what matters most. To calculate the burn rate you take the resource value multiply by 1,000, then, then multiply by the success chance, and finally multiply by the smelt value to get actual ingots returned. For the spear above it looks like (6816=12000-(12000*0.72*0.6)). That short spear even though it is just about ready to hit that 80%  success rate looks dead sexy at better than half the burn rate per 1,000 attempts. As long as it doesn’t take us twice the attempts for skill gain, we are sticking with the impotent one.
 
At 87, the gorget finally hits the target range:
 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

61.20%

6,672


Short Spear

6 Ingots

82.40%

3,069


Spear

12 Ingots

76.00%

6,448



 
The short spear is now well out of the range. I actually saw the gains trail off pretty rapidly for the short spear after 85. I ended up switching to a mix of gorgets and spears to settle on the next one and wound up doing gorgets from 86 on. Had I done this analysis a bit earlier I likely would have toughed it out to 87 on the short spear. Just keep in mind these are specific data points. Your mileage may vary. These are guides. They are not hard and fast rules to live by. Having looked at this a bit closer, you could easily make and argument for making short spear to 90 (88.4% success rate). I clearly quit on them to early.
 
At 90 it looks like this:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

54.80%

10,068


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

62.20%

7,521


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

67.20%

5,968


Spear

12 Ingots

82.00%

6,096



 
If you are doing some side math at home comparing the spear to the gorget you’ll notice at the gorget had a 4% benefit at 85 that has now shrunk to a 2% benefit. The spear actually gained ground in the ingot usage. Sadly it’s out of the 60-80% range now and it’s clear at 90 you should be using the gorget to level, if you haven’t switched over already.

Notice how our ingot usage per attempt doubled from 85(3140)-90(5968)? You will also notice your ticks per attempt get much farther apart as you move from 85-90. Why do I bring this up? Basically, I’m trying to point out it’s cheap to get a blacksmith to 85. From 85 on, the price of each tick grows very expensive. If you aren’t planning on GM’ing, 85-87 would probably be a good place to stop. You can get blacksmith BOD’s past 70ish real skill. You’ve got enough skill to get some great rewards (colored portable forges, tall braziers, runic hammers, decorative shields, etc). You can make everything but the plate gorget in a dex suit at exceptional level (AR 28 instead of AR29, or use an exceptional studded gorget). You have a very good chance to make a successful repair on your damaged gear.
 
The high ingot usage beyond 85 means you need to really want that GM and that extra point in your dex suit, and the top shelf BOD rewards. All are certainly worthy of attainment, but at what cost?

Things really don’t change much until 95:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

64.80%

9,168


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

57.40%

11,800


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

72.20%

6,801


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

77.20%

5,368



 
The plate gloves are making a play, but they just aren’t quite there yet. The gorgets are close to leveling out of the range. Personally I like the mid 70’s in the 60-80 range, mainly because we can recoup resources only on successful attempts. You get a better ingot return rate while still being “in the zone”.
 
At 97:
 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

68.60%

8,808


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

61.40%

11,368


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

76.20%

6,513


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

81.20%

5,128



 
The gorgets have finally leveled out of the ideal range. The helm and arms aren’t serious contenders. There’s still a nice 1K edge for gorgets, so if you feel like making more gorgets go for it. I’ll most likely be switching over to gloves.

At 99:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Except. Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

72.80%

24.80%

8448


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

65.40%

17.40%

10936.8


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

80.20%

32.20%

6225.6


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

85.20%

37.20%

4888


Platemail Legs

20 Ingots

60.40%

12.40%

12752



 
The platemail gloves are just outside the acceptable range at 80.2%. The gorgets are still a reasonable 85%, with the plate helm in what I consider the sweet spot slightly above 70% since we get resource return. It’s a tough call here by looking at just the numbers. The safest bet is likely platemail gloves. I can see gorgets being made all the way to GM as well. I am usually an early adopter. I tend to move up rather quickly if the gains slow down too much. I can see myself switching over to the helm to keep those ticks fairly frequent.
 
The one thing I learned from this analysis is I likely moved away from short spear way to early going by “feel”. Sometimes it pays to look stuff up and crunch a few numbers.  I also learned the 80’s are good settling point for someone who isn’t serious about setting up a Smith shop and selling to players to earn back some/all of the cost. A carpenter only needs 80 to make the Forge and Anvil house add-ons. He could stop at 85 and also have a healthy business selling higher end blacksmith BOD’s that he can’t complete himself.
 
This guide isn’t for determining the perfect spot to switch. It’s simply a tool to help YOU decide when you should switch. If I had to go by just numbers alone, I’d say switch from short spear to gorget somewhere in the 87-90 range.  Switch to plate gloves in the 96-98 range and probably ride them until the bitter end.

There are some areas of improvement:

1. I’d like to understand precisely how “power hour” affects gains in both successes and failures. If it is the same, then the numbers above hold true. If power hour impacts them differently, we could certainly add in power hour effects to refine the analysis. For instance if you only get the power hour bonus on successes, then you would see a dramatic shift toward high success rate items. I know that’s not true, but differences in treatment would cause the need for an update.
   
2. We could do some indepth work on smelting. I only ran 5-10 of each just to see. Each smelt only varied by 1 so the range of variance is pretty small. A short spear might give me 3 ingots twice and 4 ingots twice. So I didn’t go too deeply into determining  what the “true” impact of smelting is. I just assumed an average of 3.5. The smelt rate of 60% if different wouldn’t change much. However, if smelt rates were different for the various items, it would definitely affect which items you make at which point. Another shard (not to be named here) had a 90% smelt rate on some weapons, with a 60% smelt rate on most armor. Spears were used all the way up to 99 where they stop giving exp to great effect. Smelting rates matter quite a bit if you are trying to use the least amount of ingots.
   
3. This guide assumes you smelt everything. You’ll want to sell some to generate BOD’s. Sale price was not considered at all in this analysis, but could greatly impact what you make. Incorporating average prices would be a good improvement, but very lengthy and time consuming.
   
4. Obviously if I could get the skill gain rates, by success rate % we could figure out what is best to make right down to the .1 skill gain levelJ. I doubt we’ll see that information and will have to rely on this guide, our “feel”, and other anecdotal evidence (other GM smith’s experience). Who really wants that anyway? You’ve got to have a little mystery to keep you on your toes…
   

Good Luck and Happy Smithing!

[Skrap]

I did a quick down and dirty analysis of blacksmithing to plan out my approach from 87-GM, and thought I would share it with the shard. I consider this a tool, and not a guide. It provides different points of measure, but isn’t in the business of telling you what to make and when. It’s a tool to help you decide what YOU should make and at what times YOU want to switch over.
 
Smithing differs significantly from others shards primarily because other shards I’ve played on had different smelting outcomes. There were two primary goals I am trying to balance. First I want to maximize my chances of a skill gain per attempt. Second, I want to lose as little ingots as possible in that attempt.

It’s all assumptions and math, so let’s get the assumptions over with:

1. It’s widely known the crafting disciplines give the best gains per attempt when you have a 60-80% chance of making the item. I’ve seen nothing on this shard that would make me believe differently. So we will move forward with the intention of keeping the items we make in that range.
   
2. Smelting seems to vary widely on shards. I’m not sure what’s right. I’ve tried making and smelting a lot of different things. It seems I get around a 60% return rate regardless of the item. I did discover two items that give really low returns (I am guessing a bug), but nearly everything seemed to smelt back at the 60% rate with 100 mining (not sure if that impacts the result here). I haven’t tried plate arms or plate gloves at this time, so there is a chance their smelt rates may be very low so just check it before you set off a long macro.
   
3. I used the success change rates off of stratics. I’m hoping they are similar here.
   
4. I am at 87. I started the analysis at 85 but the things to make prior seem to be the same for every shard Cutlass, Kryss, Katana, and Short Spear.  Basically you are using the lowest ingot usage item that gives good gain (the whole point of this guide).
   
5. I am making no adjustments for power hour, as I assume it would impact all items equally. I have no familiarity with the actual calculation, so I didn’t include it in the analysis. Since the goal is to get to GM with as little ingot usage as possible, doing all or most of your grinding during power hour is highly recommended.  
   

Now onto the math:

What complicates the higher tiers is the items in the 60-80% range require a lot more ingots per attempt. The breast plate at 99 gives the best gains by far but requires a cr@p ton of ingots per attempt. So we need to find a way to balance the high ingot usage items, with the best gains, to get to a low ingot usage roadmap.

One quick note. apparently my nice Excel tables aren't coming through appropriately. The first % value is the success rate, and the last value is the ingots burned per 1,000 attempts. Those are the two numbers we concentrate on here.

 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Except. Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

57.20%

0.00%

6568


Short Spear

6 Ingots

79.40%

19.40%

3,141


Spear

12 Ingots

72.00%

12.00%

6,816



 
The burn rate (the last column) is what matters most. To calculate the burn rate you take the resource value multiply by 1,000, then, then multiply by the success chance, and finally multiply by the smelt value to get actual ingots returned. For the spear above it looks like (6816=12000-(12000*0.72*0.6)). That short spear even though it is just about ready to hit that 80%  success rate looks dead sexy at better than half the burn rate per 1,000 attempts. As long as it doesn’t take us twice the attempts for skill gain, we are sticking with the impotent one.
 
At 87, the gorget finally hits the target range:
 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

61.20%

6,672


Short Spear

6 Ingots

82.40%

3,069


Spear

12 Ingots

76.00%

6,448



 
The short spear is now well out of the range. I actually saw the gains trail off pretty rapidly for the short spear after 85. I ended up switching to a mix of gorgets and spears to settle on the next one and wound up doing gorgets from 86 on. Had I done this analysis a bit earlier I likely would have toughed it out to 87 on the short spear. Just keep in mind these are specific data points. Your mileage may vary. These are guides. They are not hard and fast rules to live by. Having looked at this a bit closer, you could easily make and argument for making short spear to 90 (88.4% success rate). I clearly quit on them to early.
 
At 90 it looks like this:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

54.80%

10,068


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

62.20%

7,521


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

67.20%

5,968


Spear

12 Ingots

82.00%

6,096



 
If you are doing some side math at home comparing the spear to the gorget you’ll notice at the gorget had a 4% benefit at 85 that has now shrunk to a 2% benefit. The spear actually gained ground in the ingot usage. Sadly it’s out of the 60-80% range now and it’s clear at 90 you should be using the gorget to level, if you haven’t switched over already.

Notice how our ingot usage per attempt doubled from 85(3140)-90(5968)? You will also notice your ticks per attempt get much farther apart as you move from 85-90. Why do I bring this up? Basically, I’m trying to point out it’s cheap to get a blacksmith to 85. From 85 on, the price of each tick grows very expensive. If you aren’t planning on GM’ing, 85-87 would probably be a good place to stop. You can get blacksmith BOD’s past 70ish real skill. You’ve got enough skill to get some great rewards (colored portable forges, tall braziers, runic hammers, decorative shields, etc). You can make everything but the plate gorget in a dex suit at exceptional level (AR 28 instead of AR29, or use an exceptional studded gorget). You have a very good chance to make a successful repair on your damaged gear.
 
The high ingot usage beyond 85 means you need to really want that GM and that extra point in your dex suit, and the top shelf BOD rewards. All are certainly worthy of attainment, but at what cost?

Things really don’t change much until 95:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

64.80%

9,168


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

57.40%

11,800


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

72.20%

6,801


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

77.20%

5,368



 
The plate gloves are making a play, but they just aren’t quite there yet. The gorgets are close to leveling out of the range. Personally I like the mid 70’s in the 60-80 range, mainly because we can recoup resources only on successful attempts. You get a better ingot return rate while still being “in the zone”.
 
At 97:
 
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

68.60%

8,808


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

61.40%

11,368


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

76.20%

6,513


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

81.20%

5,128



 
The gorgets have finally leveled out of the ideal range. The helm and arms aren’t serious contenders. There’s still a nice 1K edge for gorgets, so if you feel like making more gorgets go for it. I’ll most likely be switching over to gloves.

At 99:
Item Name

Resources Needed

Success Chance

Except. Chance

Ingots burned per 1,000 attempts


Plate Helm

15 Ingots

72.80%

24.80%

8448


Platemail Arms

18 Ingots

65.40%

17.40%

10936.8


Platemail Gloves

12 Ingots

80.20%

32.20%

6225.6


Platemail Gorget

10 Ingots

85.20%

37.20%

4888


Platemail Legs

20 Ingots

60.40%

12.40%

12752



 
The platemail gloves are just outside the acceptable range at 80.2%. The gorgets are still a reasonable 85%, with the plate helm in what I consider the sweet spot slightly above 70% since we get resource return. It’s a tough call here by looking at just the numbers. The safest bet is likely platemail gloves. I can see gorgets being made all the way to GM as well. I am usually an early adopter. I tend to move up rather quickly if the gains slow down too much. I can see myself switching over to the helm to keep those ticks fairly frequent.
 
The one thing I learned from this analysis is I likely moved away from short spear way to early going by “feel”. Sometimes it pays to look stuff up and crunch a few numbers.  I also learned the 80’s are good settling point for someone who isn’t serious about setting up a Smith shop and selling to players to earn back some/all of the cost. A carpenter only needs 80 to make the Forge and Anvil house add-ons. He could stop at 85 and also have a healthy business selling higher end blacksmith BOD’s that he can’t complete himself.
 
This guide isn’t for determining the perfect spot to switch. It’s simply a tool to help YOU decide when you should switch. If I had to go by just numbers alone, I’d say switch from short spear to gorget somewhere in the 87-90 range.  Switch to plate gloves in the 96-98 range and probably ride them until the bitter end.

There are some areas of improvement:

1. I’d like to understand precisely how “power hour” affects gains in both successes and failures. If it is the same, then the numbers above hold true. If power hour impacts them differently, we could certainly add in power hour effects to refine the analysis. For instance if you only get the power hour bonus on successes, then you would see a dramatic shift toward high success rate items. I know that’s not true, but differences in treatment would cause the need for an update.
   
2. We could do some indepth work on smelting. I only ran 5-10 of each just to see. Each smelt only varied by 1 so the range of variance is pretty small. A short spear might give me 3 ingots twice and 4 ingots twice. So I didn’t go too deeply into determining  what the “true” impact of smelting is. I just assumed an average of 3.5. The smelt rate of 60% if different wouldn’t change much. However, if smelt rates were different for the various items, it would definitely affect which items you make at which point. Another shard (not to be named here) had a 90% smelt rate on some weapons, with a 60% smelt rate on most armor. Spears were used all the way up to 99 where they stop giving exp to great effect. Smelting rates matter quite a bit if you are trying to use the least amount of ingots.
   
3. This guide assumes you smelt everything. You’ll want to sell some to generate BOD’s. Sale price was not considered at all in this analysis, but could greatly impact what you make. Incorporating average prices would be a good improvement, but very lengthy and time consuming.
   
4. Obviously if I could get the skill gain rates, by success rate % we could figure out what is best to make right down to the .1 skill gain levelJ. I doubt we’ll see that information and will have to rely on this guide, our “feel”, and other anecdotal evidence (other GM smith’s experience). Who really wants that anyway? You’ve got to have a little mystery to keep you on your toes…
   

Good Luck and Happy Smithing!

Great writeup Varak.  +10

[Blyth]

This almost tempts me into making my Smith.

[Veranis]

I just saw this guide now, great write-up, damn man! New players will thank you for your efforts for years to come.

I did smithing a few weeks back when it seemed like every player and their mother was ready to pay 5k per GM Halberd. I didn't do as in-depth of an analysis as you, however I did record ingot usage and approximate time spent, maybe it will help as an estimate to what is needed to GM blacksmithing.



Quick disclaimer: I was pretty diligent recording numbers, but that seems like an anomaly for ingots used during the cutlasses. I may have taken 1k from krysses or something by accident. Regardless, the final tally from 30-GM is correct. Red numbers are estimates when I forgot to record it.

So it took just under 30k ingots from 30-100 skill, and that's smelting everything at GM Mining. If you start at 50 smithy (which most do, I didn't intend on this char being a smith when I made him, so I started with 50 mining rofl), you'll save just under 2k ingots, and some time (1.5h). So really, it's not the end of the world to start from 30 instead of 50.

My main intention was to put as little ingots (read: effort) into this as possible, I didn't care about time (I used 6 daily power hours just to milk those ingots). I didn't do any calculation debating between gorgets or gloves at the end, simply because gorget gains never slowed down significantly enough to warrant it until it was almost too late to notice (<2.3k ingots from 96.1 to 98.4 during power hour on gorgets? I'll take that rate any day.). So perhaps it's recommended to switch to gloves at 98 or 98.5 or so. Even so, 3.5k ingots (using power hours) making gorgets from 98.4-GM instead will not break the bank unless this is your first toon on UOLL.

Thanks morga... I mean Varak for the in depth write-up, heh heh.

[DKS]

Great write up and table Veranis!!

[Varak]

Veranis, you need to teach me how to include the tables properly, heh heh. Thanks for the additional input. Your ingot cost per usage demonstrates clearly what I was trying to articulate. Prior to 88.5 the highest cost per gain was 408.After that point it ranged from 686 to 1815. There is a clear and quick escalation in cost per exp gain once you get into the high 80's ,even with power hours dominating the late smithing cycles.

[Veranis]

I actually just used excel like you, except instead of copying-pasting the cell data I took a screenshot and cropped it. One of the default background fill colours just happens to match the forum post background colour exactly (pure luck, haha). Upload to imgur and use the "<img>image url</img>" to embed it in the post but with square brackets instead of the angle brackets.

[Varak]

For those interested I finally finished blacksmithing. It took 22,503 ingots from 50 real skill. Nearly all of that was done during power hours with 100 mining. It took right around 11K ingots to hit 89 where you really start hitting a wall. As you can see from total it took more to get those last 11 points than it did to get the previous 39. It was certainly a costly endeavor.

I ended up doing gorgets until 96.3. It was just the end of a power hour and started gloves on the next one. I did gloves until 99.4. Plate helms worked great until 99.9. I went through 1K making helms without a tick. So I took over and manually did some plate arms, legs, and chests in between and finally got that last tick. Switching it up probably doesn't matter, but at least I felt like I was trying to stop the waste

Good luck!

[dazedman]

Great information everyone! I appreciate it and I am sure many others will too. I have also gone down the path of the blacksmith and I always do when I am new to a shard. I really enjoy the trade skills the most. I also captured some details but nothing to this extent but could help provide even more information to those going down this path to GM Smith.

The ingots listed below are the starting amount, not to include all smelted items that are successfully created. I did not care to keep track of this because only the "real" amount that I needed was of concern. To get a rough estimate of what I used just take that number and times it by 60% and it will get you pretty close.

The last two records are estimated based on the current point gains I see and the above listed information. I will update with actual figures when I GM tonight or tomorrow.

I started with 50  Blacksmithing and have 100 mining.
(these are all real values)
Cutlass: 50 - 65 - 2300 ingots
Kryss:  65 - 78.2 3700 ingots
Short Spear: 78.2 - 89.2 4500 ingots
Plate Gorget: 89.2 - 97.9 6750 ingots (EDIT: ended up doing this outside of power hour a lot and ate up a bunch of ingots.)
Plate Gloves: 97.9 - 100 ~ 5500 ingots.

[Pringles]

I started with 50 Blacksmithing and kept on going untill I was GM. Had 3x power hour.

50.0-66.7 : 6095 ingots -  cutlass
66.7-77.9 : 6890 ingots -  kryss
77.9-89.4 : 10346 ingots - short spear
89.4-93.1 : 6666 ingots - plate gorget
93.1-94.8 : 4997 ingots - plate gorget
94.8-96.6 : 5006 ingots - plate gorget
96.6-GM : 8800 ingots - plate gorget

Total used 48,8k ingots