I've always been a huge fan of the creative act of crafting, personally. Unfortunately in most games it's more of a chore than anything fun. In games where crafting does exist its a necessary evil, someone must make the weapons and armor to facillitate combat. The only true creation available in many games is the creating of descriptions for that which you craft. When designing Lithmeria it was always a goal for me to make the actual act of using crafting skills something enjoyable, a game where skill matters as much as it does for crafting as it does in determining the outcome of a fight, and where a crafter skilled in their art will be renowned across the game. To that end let me unveil the preview of the first crafting skill, Smithing.

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"Well, as you can imagine, dragon claws are extremely rare in this day and age, so when we found one.. what? Sell it to the Tower? For research? Ha! No, no no. We forged it into a sword!" -- Foundry Chief Ravgal

In a world where the primary methods of offense are made of metal, and the primary means of defending against them are also metal, it stands to reason that some people may become experts in the crafting of such. The ancestors of the Teladiri were the first true virtuosos in the art of blacksmithing, having access to a vast array of natural materials, and their tribal nature led to a number of advances solely in the name of gaining an advantage in trade - or battle - over their rivals. Today, their lineage of skilled smiths continues - and with extremely reliable mines fielding consistently high-quality ores, the guards of the Accord continue to find themselves extremely well-equipped.

The Aspalarians were comparatively sluggish in the field of metalworking, mastering the art of simple weapons and armor and rarely reaching out beyond that, lacking both the resources and the inclination to spend time working the forge when their very lives were under constant threat. Though the rise of the Sovereignty has brought their skill up to par and given them immense production capability due to the ability to turn its magical might towards industry, their smiths have still lacked the innovative spark of their eastern rivals, and even where they are able they lack materials - relying on a few hard-working mines and whatever they can claim in the east as their own.

The influence of magic upon this trade has been noticable - it was the Paragon Circle who first identified the peculiar trait exhibited by many crystals and gemstones that allows them to amplify magical power in potent and unpredictable ways. Through secretive testing and careful refinement of these, they were able to create the first focusing arrays - a sudden advancement that led to several decisive Accord victories in battle. Soon Teladiri smiths were able to mount the otherwise unwieldy and fragile arrays into more easily manipulated vessels - daggers. While these 'focusing blades' allowed for much easier use in battle, it had an unfortunate side effect.

The Ebon Tower put out a bounty on them, collecting several of them from fallen Callers and Shaman, and quickly unlocked their secrets. Soon, the eccentricities of both sides led to refinements of various worth - now spiritualists and incanters on both sides of the conflict are found with focusing blades in often peculiar forms. Ornate rapiers, crude broadswords, and more than a few have taken to setting them into staves instead, disdaining the use of typical 'soldier's weapons'.

A more recent advancement has found smiths of both the Sovereignty and the Accord forging small amounts of various peculiar items into blades - claws and feathers of mystical beasts, magically enchanted gems unsuitable for focusing arrays, and supernatural metals otherwise lacking in the ability to withstand the stress of battle. Weapons crafted with such rare and potent additions possess powers linked to these items, though they are rarely seen in the present age due to a combination of expense and difficulty to forge. How these techniques were found is unknown, and most smiths capable of forging them guard the secret very closely.

"The Grip? Friend, that's a dangerous place. A profitable place to be certain, but dangerous. The tunnels there hold goblins and worse, and they all think the metal belongs to them and them alone." -- Prospector Nahlern to a nameless adventurer who was never seen again

NoGFX Log: http://nogfx.org/logs/665

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The process of smithing, whether you are making weapons or armor, can be broken down into three primary steps: Choosing materials, forging a base item, and then improving that which you forged.

The materials you choose to forge with will greatly effect the finished product, and is one of the most important choices to make when forging a weapon or armor. You can smith from either a single metal or from an alloy of two metals, generally alloys being the stronger choice, but each weapon design is unique. When alloying two metals the resulting alloy will take traits from both of them, but weighted in favor of the better metal for each stat. For example if you alloy a metal that increases damage by 20% with one that reduces it by 20% the resulting alloy will slightly increase damage (about 7% I believe). There are a wide variety of metals, each having their own effects on the various weapon and armor stats as well as many of them having more unique properties.

After having chosen the metal(s) to use in forging, there is the choice of which weapon type or armor type to forge to get the desired resultant item. Armor comes in varying weights, and weapons come in many, many varieties. Choosing a specific type for armor is primarily a tradeoff between protection and weight. The heavier the armor the greater the penalty to balance recovery the armor carries with it. However, the choices for weapons are more varied. Different weapon types focus on different stats allowing each different type to have a unique purpose in the smith's arsenal.

Now that you have the basic forged item, comes the matter of improving it as you will. The most basic way to improve a forged item is to refine it. Refining a weapon can improve damage, speed, or precision while refining armor can improve it protection versuses slashing and blunt damage, as well as help it fit better and lessen its balance penalty. How effective refining a particular stat is depends on the weapon type being refined and whether it favors that particular stat or not. In general favored stats get a 60% increase when being refined.

In addition to refining, there are other ways to improve that which you have smithed. The other main two revealed in this update are setting gemstones and folding magic items into the metal. Setting a gemstone requires 2 "forgings" (the unit mesasuring how much more an item can be improved) and on a weapon creates a magical array and on armor provides elemental and magical resistances. A magical array is used by mages and helps to empower their spells. Magical resistances on the other hand are clearly useful to all. Folding magical items into metal has a much wider range of effects and costs. Each item has a unique impact on the final result and requires its own number of forgings, all of which can be determined by an examination from a skilled smith. For a sample of folding a magical item please check out the log.

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FORGE
Syntax: FORGE <item> FROM <metal>
Syntax: FORGEABLES [item]

The forgeables command enables you to see what items are available for you to forge, and by specifiying a specific item type it will enable you to see more in-depth information on it. The forge command will enable you forge the item type you desire from the metal you choose, assuming you have enough of the metal in your inventory. A weapon or suit of armor must be made entirely from the same metal or alloy.


REFINE
Syntax: REFINE <weapon> FOR <DAMAGE/PRECISION/SPEED>
Syntax: REFINE <armor> FOR <SLASHING/BLUNT/FIT>

Refining is the main way to increase the base physical stats of anything smithed. Refining always uses up a single forging from the item and increases the desired stat. Improving fit on a suit of armor decreases that armor's overall action penalty which slows balance recovery. Any given property can only be refined 10 times, regardless of available forgings.


EVALUATE
Syntax: EVALUATE <weapon/armor>

By subjecting a smithed item to a variety of tests and comparing that against the Smith's Standard you can get a very accurate representation of the stats of an item, as well as discovering any special properties it may have.


SETTING
Syntax: SET <gem/symbol> INTO <weapon/armor>

Setting a gemstone into a smithed item requires two available forgings on the item, and an appropriate gemstone to be set into the item. The exact effect of each gem is different, but when set into a weapon they create a magical array used to boost the power of magic-users that wield it, while set into armor it will help create magical and elemental defences within the metal.


ALLOY
Syntax: ALLOY <amount> <first metal> WITH <second metal>

Any two metals can be alloyed, though you will require an equal amount of both of them to create the alloy. Alloying produces a number of ingots equal to the number of each ingot going in. For exame 3 iron ingots alloyed with 3 silver ingots will create 3 ingots of iron-silver alloy, NOT 6. Alloys take characteristics from both of their component metals but will always average out in favor of the metal that has the better value for each characteristic making alloys usually the predominant choice for weapons of quality. Special properties of metals will usually be weakened somewhat by being alloyed to a metal and in some cases will not survive the alloying process at all.


EXAMINE
Syntax: EXAMINE <item> [WEAPON/ARMOR]

This ability lets you carefully examine a metal ingot or magical items. You may specify, if you so choose, to only view those properties that apply to weapons or armors, leaving the optional argument off will show all properties. Examining an ingot will show all the changes it makes to the stats of a smithed item as well as any special properties it may have. Examining a magical item will reveal the bonus it gives to an item it is folded into as well as how many forgings it will use to do so.


STYLING
Syntax: STYLE <weapon> AS <new type>
Syntax: STYLINGS <weapon>
Syntax: ALTER <weapon/armor> <SHORT/LONG/ROOM> <description>

Styling lets you change a smithed item's appearance. The main command to actually change the actual description of an item is ALTER, which will let you change the short, long, or room description of the item. This can only be done once per item unless an administrator deems the weapon needing of a description change. The change will take place instantly but will be reviewed for approval and reverted if inapporpriate. The stylings command enables you to see what other "styles" of weapon a specific weapon can be changed to. Changing a weapon's style changes what word it can be reffered to by and what name it appears as in both II and IH. For example a cutlass could be styled as a scimitar and then treated and described as one, due to the similarity between those two types of sword.
Note: Innapropriate alterations will result in loss of this ability.


FOLDING
Syntax: FOLD <magic item> INTO <weapon/armor>

Folding a magical item will use up a variable number of forgings dependant on the specific magical item being folded and add a special property to the item also based on the specific magical item being folded, One would have to EXAMINE the item to find out the exact forging cost and effect.

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METALS

You turn over an ingot of silver in your hand, examining it carefully.
The ingot modifies weapon damage by -15%.
The ingot modifies weapon precision by -10%.
The ingot modifies weapon speed by 10%.
The ingot modifies available forgings by 2.

You turn over an ingot of lead in your hand, examining it carefully.
The ingot modifies weapon damage by 40%.
The ingot modifies weapon speed by -20%.
The ingot modifies slashing protection by 15%.
The ingot modifies blunt protection by 15%.
The ingot modifies armor penalty by 15%.

You turn over an ingot of pyritis in your hand, examining it carefully.
The ingot modifies weapon precision by -10%.
The ingot modifies available forgings by -2.
The metal burns with an internal heat and any weapon made from it will inflict fire damage.

You turn over an ingot of ebonsteel in your hand, examining it carefully.
The ingot modifies weapon damage by -10%.
The ingot modifies weapon precision by 15%.
The ingot modifies weapon speed by 10%.
The ingot modifies slashing protection by 10%.
The ingot modifies armor penalty by -10%.
Physicals wounds inflicted by a weapon made of this metal will take longer than usual to mend.

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Next week is the second part of our racial preview, showing off the races of Lithmeria, this time focusing more on those not affiliated with either of the factions. We'll see you then!

Very cool. The wide range of possibilities is very appealing and will be a refreshing change from weapons that only change in base stats.

I may have missed this somewhere, but are crafting abilities like Smithing available to all classes and alignments?

Also, will there be folding-type benefits for magic based classes as well (I'm assuming Arcanists and Shamans, thus far)?

Thank you for your comments on the smithing system, we quite like it. To answer your questions. Firstly, the crafting skills are available to all classes; they are common skills which all classes and factions have access to. And we will definitely have folding of items that benefit all classes. Just as the viper gland benefits primarily those who use the sword to hit things really hard until they stop twitching, there will also be magical items that affect incantations or a spiritualist's evocations. Basically, folding will be useful to all classes and play-styles.

Where a weapon has '100%' in a given stat, does that indicate a general 100%, or 100% for that given weapon type? That is, is a falchions 100% damage equal to a broadswords 100%?

100% is always the same value regardless of weapon types. The weapon types that favor stats differently will get more of a percent increase per refine depending on which stat(s) they favor.

In reality 100% means a weapon stat of 100. It is represented ICly when evaluating as testing it against some sort of universal standard, because we know from experience that players like to refer to weapon stats by number when discussing their weapons but normally stats lack an IC context. By representing them as a carefully tested percent of this universal standard then players can use the numbers in conversation without it becoming OOC.

Does this mean that a dagger made of the same materials would be the equal of a claymore? This isn't necessarily a bad thing if so it would mean that weapon selection was more about image and style than about power-gaming, I'm just trying to clarify.

Stat-wise a dagger and one-handed sword of equivalent types made with the same materials and improvements are essentially identical. However, the damage formula for attacking with a sword uses your strength to determine base damage while the formula for attacking with a dagger uses approximately half of your dexterity to determine its base damage. Of course each different attack is unique and has its own modifiers, but that is the general baseline that the majority of weapon-based attacks follow.

As far as a claymore goes, two-hander swords have slightly better stats to accomodate for the fact that you can't take advantage of having a free hand for a shield or other things.

How do you plan on regulating/supplying the various 'standard' ingots? Will we see mining as a skillset? Or npc production?

There are varied ways to get the ores in the game, but the rarer the metal the more effort is required by the player to get it. Some of the more common metals will be sold in villages, and there are things players can do to facilitate the village's production of raw material. Most metals can be gained in some fashion by direct work of the player at the source, whether that source is in a mine or not will vary. As with all things in Lithmeria, we are making sure that the process of acquiring materials is interesting in and of itself. It's a game, not a job.

Is smithing something that everyone will be able to perform at its fullest extent at character creation, or will skillpoints need to be invested to access some of the abilities?