New smithing guide - Economical Smith Edition 3.0

[Zeralenn]

Thanks to the kind assistance of some of the denizens of these forums for helping me whip this puppy into shape, Edition 3.0 of THE ECONOMICAL SMITH is now online and available.

It's 83 pages long in PDF format, covering nearly everything a person needs to know to progress from beginner to grandmaster. It doesn't contain every smithing recipe known to Norrath, or the location of all the tradeskill goods -- that's covered in other documents on this site. It does, however, cover a variety of things not covered in most other smithing guides.

I hope DenMom will soon consider it worthy of linking it to the Smithing Guides section, but for those of you who want to take a look at it now, here is a link to the page where you can download a copy:

The Economical Smith, Version 3.0

Enjoy. Comments and feedback always welcome.

...Zera

PS. Two minor corrections have already been pointed out to me: I recorded the name of the hammer needed for the velium armor incorrectly, and Erudite clerics may also worship Cazic-Thule. Those corrections have been made in the master copy and will appear in a future edition.

[Mark]

This is the best guide I have ever seen for smithing.

n/t

[Bennan]

Kudos for going to so much work and trouble writing this. I hope I can print it off tonight and read the whole thing.

One comment I would make, is change to this bit (only a suggestion of course);

"You will not get rich quick while learning to smith"

"You are going to lose alot of money, especially if you wanted to obtain 250, if you skip farming greens"

It takes a lot of time and dedication, or up to hundreds of thousands of platinum to get to grandmaster smith. Some grandmaster smiths do sell their wares and make excellent money AFTER attaining high levels close to 250 in smithing, but only after spending from three months to a year learning their craft.

If you are of a sufficent level to kill the mobs in Hollowshade, and Twilight Sea, you can't help but make money. Add to that, if you wish to make money while skilling up, making Acrylia armour is a genuine path to making plat (note making plat its not a good skill up path at all). At least thats my experience on Tarrew Marr.

My Details;

Skill 221 (188 to 221 all done on Shadowscream and Acrylia Plate)
Money spent on smithing 15 to 20k. Thats buying windstones, blocks of Acrylia, lava rocks and mercury for later on.
Money made from smithing (including Acrylia plate, but stuff like Perfect Owlbear pelts and pp drops etc) 70k ish.

I think I started smithing in January (early) again at 188, stopped early march and have just been buying Acrylia components and selling that.

[Salitorn]

Simply Amazing. Great work and Thank You.

[Bitter-Eci]

Sickle Analysis

Great job, very informative and well-written.

Did you forget the hilt mold in the cost analysis on sickles?

I saw curved blade molds and pommel molds listed, but not hilt molds. Weird.

[Zeralenn]

On the hilt mold: it's reflected in the price but I apparently forgot to include them in the list.

So I will be fixing that in the next edition. Thanks for pointing that out.

...Zera

[eqNichola]

This is a really nice piece of work, well done

I particularly like the in-depth pro and con listings of post-188 paths, nice to have all these in one place.

[Silound]

I would like to add something to this that I didn't see, may have missed though. Easy way to keep smithing prices down from 1-120's (max banded trivial). If you are level 15 or higher, you can easily gather ore in various sizes as well as clay that you can use for mastering pottery by killin gmuddites in Gorge of King Xxorbb. At lvl 15 you can get some experience, and all muddites as far as I know drop something, essentially making smithing profitable prior to max banded trivial. This is a good route for younger smiths, beacuse it allows them to actually make a bit of plat to save for later combines when one has to buy more expensive things.

Silound
Minstrel and madly wandering smith of Prexus

[Eleena Transient]

One small addition. Frog Shaman can imbue diamonds for Mith Marr now

[Kalysto]

Prolly a silly question, but Im sorta illiterate on such things.. :roll: Anyone know a free, downloadable programm I can view this with pretty please?

Arcanist Kalysto
Outrider Aubrie
FenninRo

[kiztent]

http://www.adobe.com/

download free acrobat reader.

[Ilona]

It looks great, and I'll definately be printing it out to read properly.

One point, though: the Qeynos human cultural (old style) is called full plate, not royal plate.

[lokel]

nice work-love it

[Kalysto]

Thanks for link! And nice guide.. Will be put to good use here!

Arcanist Kalysto
Outrider Aubrie
FenninRo

[Zeralenn]

Thanks for the corrections -- the more eyes on this thing, the more little bits like that found that need fixing, the better the guide will get over time. Keep 'em coming.

...Zera