Detailed Blacksmith Creation: Finally, Make Your Own Highest Potential Equipment, Part 1 of 2.

Lately a lot of people have been asking me how to create top notch Blacksmith characters, so I am going to try and make this guide as clear as possible. Now, making a clear guide does not mean a SHORT guide. The process is long and requires much explanation especially if you're new. Let me STRESS- this is not an overnight process, so don't think you can just lvl up a new character and start crafting. If you want to make the BEST equipment you will need to seriously invest time into this process so basically go big or go home.

Secondly, there are 2 ways to do it that I have experienced- the fast(er) way (which will cost you orbs/reset book(s) depending on your goals, and a very slow way which I have zero interest in going into because it is waaaay too slow for my taste. Others may have a different experience; What I share here is what I know works, period.

Thirdly, Upgrading (adding stats), and Refinement will be covered in a separate guide *AND WILL REQUIRE A COMPLETELY SEPARATE BLACKSMITH CHARACTER to be optimally done.

Fourth: Read this whole guide before you begin making the character! I know Toram ppl hate reading, but I urge you to read this through at least once to make sure you have the commitment, the time, and the resources to see this process through and make it work for you!

Lastly, a few reference words and their definitions for newbie blacksmiths.

Potential: Potential is the capacity of a piece of player crafted equipment to have STATS (ex. Dex +4%, or Critical rate +8) added to it. Keeping in mind that the current number of stats that can be added to any player crafted equipment is “3” higher potential simply means that the capacity of the crafted equipment to receive stats,the degree of the stats that can be added (Dex 1% vs Dex 4%), and the probability of actually successfully adding those stats to the equipment will all be higher. Each stat you want to add to an equipment costs Potential points. For instance: Dex 4% costs 40 Potential points. If you craft an equipment with only 20 Potential points you will not be able to add the Dex 4% stat to the equipment. Now there is a process through which you can add Potential points to an equipment even after it is crafted by adding Negative Stats in one of the “Add Stat” slots, leaving you with a higher potential equipment than was originally crafted, but with only 2 “Stat” slots left. We will visit this a little later in the next guide. Long story short the best gear is best/most easily made from the highest Potential crafts. The current highest potential crafted gear is 47 Natural potential. *Please note: Everyone wants slotted gear, so I tell you: If the equipment crafted has a slot it will subtract -1 from max potential. So, the current highest Natural Potential player crafted equipment WITH a slot will only have 46 potential points.

Blacksmith Proficiency Level: This is the foundation of any good Blacksmith. Think of Blacksmith Proficiency level as your Blacksmith’s raw crafting talent. The Proficiency Level of your Blacksmith dictates what equipment you can craft AND the rate of success for the equipment you craft. So as your proficiency level increases you can make higher level gear and make it more successfully. The penultimate goal of this guide is to teach you how to increase this proficiency as quickly as possible so you can start crafting high lvl equipment. The other important lesson about proficiency level is that it is NOT influenced by either the Dex stat or the Tech personal stat insofar as it will not decrease if/when you reset either of those stats. Blacksmith Proficiency level can ONLY increase through actually crafting gear. While tech and dexterity stats will increase your item difficulty level they will absolutely not increase your blacksmith proficiency level. As your blacksmith proficiency level increases, you will have to craft higher level equipment in order for it to continue to increase. Equipment that is too “easy” (low lvl) in relation to your proficiency level will not increase proficiency exp. Currently my blacksmith’s proficiency level is 64 and I get 0% increase even making the highest difficulty item which is the Oracle Robe, so I will confidently say that lvl 64 and change is the highest current blacksmith proficiency level.


Item Difficulty Level: Okay this is not to be confused with Blacksmith Proficiency level. There are 2 types of Item difficulty levels, Blacksmith Item difficulty level and Equipment item difficulty level. Blacksmith Item Difficulty Level is ultimately what determines which equipment you can ACTUALLY make. Each piece of equipment has a specific level of difficulty, and this is referred to as Equipment Item Difficulty Level. As such your blacksmith Item difficulty level MUST be equal to or greater than the required equipment item difficulty level for the piece of equipment you want to make. Obviously the better the equipment, the higher its item difficulty level, and the higher your blacksmith’s item difficulty level must be. Again, let me emphasize your blacksmith’s ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL IS NOT THE SAME AS BLACKSMITH PROFICIENCY LEVEL. Your blacksmith Item difficulty level is an overall combination of your Dexterity stat, your blacksmith proficiency level, and your Personal Tech stat. These three stats operate in tandem to produce your overall item difficulty level, and each will be used at different points in this process to individually build your overall blacksmith item difficulty level. Last note on this: The higher your Blacksmith's Item Difficulty Level is than the Equipment’s Items Difficulty Level the better chance you have at successful creation of that equipment.



Okay, now for the process.


Step 1: Create a new character, learn Blacksmith Skills lvl 1 and 2, and get the character to level 80 (current lvl cap.) Just for brevity learn all the BS skills except refinement, that will be touched on later in the next guide.


*Leveling suggestions follow, if you don't need these skip ahead to the next asterisk symbols.


The leveling will be a pain, but here are a couple methods: Leech your new character to lvl 25 with someone else who has an AOE skill, and then if you have a Mage/Aoe character use them to collect Bitter nuts and turn those in with your new character so the new character receives the exp, and once the new character gets to lvl 27 they can access the Nisel Wood quest as well. Alternatively, and hopefully you have friends to help you lvl at Nisel or New Moon. If you don't have either of the above options it is probably best if you make a Mage character, (so learn mage skills lvls 1-3 ALONG with Blacksmith Skills lvls 1-2 and learn Magic Storm@ lvl70) and with good NPC/boss drop gear (I suggest Elf Flame, or Empress Soul for Nisel) you should eventually be able to lvl yourself in a mage party at Nisel without getting kicked.**

Keep in mind you will have to reset stat points anyway, but basically just make sure you have at least around 120-150 uninvested stat points by character level 80.

Note: I do not recommend trying a “hybrid” character thing. My suggestion is to make dedicated blacksmith characters, and this guide follows that assumption. You will need “Pure” stats to make the highest potential gear, and you will need to invest a considerable amount of skill points into your Blacksmith abilities now and in future updates.

Step 2: At character level 40 you can choose your Personal Stat; in this case choose Tech Stat. Again you will need to put as many of your stat points into Tech as possible, or at least as many as are needed to get your blacksmith’s item difficulty level to around 70-75. I don't know exactly how many points are needed, and honestly in the end it won't matter because you will be resetting these stats later. Find the best balance for yourself between investing stat points into INT for your mage to lvl, but save enough to get blacksmith Item difficulty level to 70-75. Ideally you will put ALL stat points into Tech. I understand each person has a different situation so depending on how you're able to lvl do what works for you, but by character level 80 YOU MUST HAVE YOUR BLACKSMITH ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL to between 70-75, the higher; the better. Only 60 is required for Oracle Robe, but the minimum recommendation I make is 70. To clarify, the purpose of increasing the Tech Stat is that it immediately and significantly increases your blacksmith’s Item Difficulty Level, in this case to a recommended minimum of 70. Again as stated above simply increasing Blacksmith item difficulty level does not affect Blacksmith Proficiency level. It simply allows your blacksmith to create the highest equipment item difficulty level possible despite your Blacksmith proficiency level being extremely low. But keep in mind this equipment will not have much potential, the point of crafting high level equipment at this point in the process is simply to very rapidly increase your Blacksmith Proficiency level.

Step 3: Now things get a little more clear, but still much work to do. At Character level 80 and Blacksmith Item difficulty 70, it is time to start crafting equipment! Start making Rapiers. Making these will increase your Blacksmith Proficiency level by leaps and bounds for a while. The hardest part about making these will be collecting Fine Sand. Keep making these Rapiers until they no longer increase your proficiency level. Alternatively if you feel other materials are easier for you to obtain go for it, look through the recipes and choose something at least equipment item difficulty level 55+ and make it until it no longer increases blacksmith proficiency. ONLY after you fail to gain proficiency crafting Rapiers, or something of an equivalent item difficulty level, it's time to start making Oracle Robes. Oracle Robes have the highest equipment item difficulty currently available and crafting them will help you finish off your blacksmith proficiency level. They are equipment item difficulty level 60. At this point your Blacksmith Item level difficulty will be much higher than 60, the reason being a combination of your personal tech stat and now your blacksmith proficiency level, which has increased like crazy on account of all the Rapiers you made. I suggest crafting Oracle Robes until your blacksmith proficiency level is at least lvl 60.
Continued in next thread.

 

Part 2:
Step 4: If you have made it this far then you're gonna be an awesome blacksmith...MAYBE. Now that your Blacksmith Proficiency level is ~60, and making Oracle Robes isn't increasing proficiency much/or at all 2 very critical things must happen: 1. YOU MUST RESET YOUR STATS (Note you do not have to reset your personal stat,you won't use it so just leave it and reset your stats and leave tech as personal stat)

And: 2. It is time for you to decide: What type of Blacksmith do I want to be? In otherwords, the type of gear you want to specialize in will determine your next step. To make the highest potential equipment you must put ALL of your stat points into a specific stat depending on which type of equipment you want to make. If you want to make 2h swords with High Potential you need to put ALL of your stat points into Str, it you want to make High Potential Armor you need to put ALL of your stat points into Vit, for 1h and Bow/guns all into Dex, and Staff/Devices into Int. Once you have decided this put ALL of your stat points into your desired stat and...Voila, you now have a specialist blacksmith who can make the highest possible potential equipment for whichever stat you chose. You will notice that even after you reset your Tech Stat, amazingly your blacksmith proficiency level remains high, allowing you access to the highest item difficulty level equipment.

*Even if you are not going to specialize in armor I urge you not to shortcut the process and skip making the Oracle Robes just because your blacksmith proficiency level is high enough for you to make whatever equipment you want to specialize in, because once you reset that Tech Stat your Blacksmith Item Difficulty Level will depend SOLELY on your Blacksmith Proficiency Level so it is imperative to get that Blacksmith Proficiency level as high as possible BEFORE you reset your stats! This will also set your Blacksmith up for future updates; when new items are added you can start crafting them immediately!*

A final note on crafting: As stated earlier, crafting equipment is more successful the higher your blacksmith’s item difficulty level is than the Equipment item difficulty level, and a quick way to increase your Blacksmith’s Item Difficulty Level is to equip your Blacksmith with +Dex Equipment when crafting equipment: it will raise your blacksmith Item difficulty level a bit and help with more successful crafts. **Only use +Dex equipment/Xtal not +Dex% equipment/Xtal.

Edit: As Kornwall points out in his reply below *Pure Dex (Bow[gun], and 1h specialized crafters) apparently CAN benefit from Dex % equipment. This applies *ONLY to pure Dex blacksmiths. (Ty Kornwall)

Finally, I want to thank my good friends Kupokupo and Chopsticks from my old guild who helped tremendously in making this guide!
I will make a separate guide for creating an UPGRADING AND REFINEMENT blacksmith next. Until then, Happy Crafting

 

This is a very detailed and clear guide, awesome work! Looking forward to Part 2!

 

Hey nova it Bow-guy ^~^, good to see you on the forum dude! An awesome bs guide, its well written an concise!
I've actually finally decided to live up to my name an craft bows= bs prof only 20 tho T.T.

 

Thanks bud I hope it helps I will start on the next one soon.

 

Hyia Bow thanks man. Glad to see you get into smithing you'll have quite an advantage making bows because a pure Dex build will not only allow you to make 1h swords and bows, but you will naturally have a higher blacksmith item difficulty level due to the Dex stat's effect, so that's a great choice to start to with good luck!

 

Nice guide. If you are a pure Dex Bs Dex% gear does work though. I have a bowgun that is dex4% dex5 w a Dex xtal it raises my Dex bs 3 difficulty lvls

 

Very helpful

 

I will have to take your word for that, however I am not certain how the % works then. I use the following gear on my non-Dex craft blacksmith: Rock staff +8Dex +2Dex Xtal, Oracle Robe +8Dex +2Dex Xtal, Fighter Chigon Cap +5Dex +2Dex Xtal, and Dexterity talisman II which is +4Dex +2 Dex Xtal. This equipment raises my blacksmith item difficulty 5 levels from 64 to 69. If you are full Dex and you use % with a +5 stat I would assume it would raise your blacksmith item difficulty more than 3 levels, but I would be interested to see the results if you used Dex% Dex + Armor as well for comparison purposes. Also if the %'s work for pure Dex build then you can introduce Ganglef Xtal into the mix as well to truly maximize the difficulty level buff. If you or anyone can confirm that I would be very interested to know.

 

I got a little risky and tried to make Dex4% Dex6 slot armor the other day but it failed so the one I use right now is only an old Dex4% Dex1 ns I had some screen shots of this to show my guildie it works anyways.
This is without the armor

This is with Dex4% Dex1

And then when I add Dex4%Dex5 +Dex xtal

 

Kudos to you sir for making an awesome guide! It'll help us alot. Keep up the Good work!

 

Its quite a good guide but for the leeching part.... It is OK if you do it within guildies or among friends but many people out there drag strangers into their leeching party without even asking if one of them can leech in that party or not. This always happen to me especially at nisel farm and I really not very happy about it. If I'm able to raise my no stats and no skills character from level 1 to level 15 within 1 hour without leeching so why can't the others? And from level 15 you just need 120 piece of small articles to get to level 25 and the bitter nut quest will be available to you. So I'm begging the others out there, if you want to leech please don't drag strangers or at least ask their permission first. I'm sorry for my rant here it just that I feel it necessary to let it out.

 

Very clear. Thank you. But for those who are lazy and afraid of long paragraphs they wont read this. hehehe.
Just looking at it will make you dizzy.
Maybe some numbers will help. But that would be work again. Still it is very clear I read it until the end. Thank you.

 

Clear and concise. My favorite writer here ^•^

 

Just wanna ask if %stat on equips does have an effect to raise pot? Thanks. Correct me if i'm wrong but base on my research, 4 main stat=1 pot? I crafted separate item while equiping 2 different equips to test the difference but it's no use. I used vit+1% while the other vit+5% but the result are the same. Still pot49.

 

It's 1 pot per 10 points for main stat with everything except bows/1h/magic device it is 1 pot per 20. Then you get 1 or 2 extra sometimes from the one skill in the bs skill tree. Only goes off of base stats. The only time % equips works is for a Dex BS and that just raises difficulty level because the Dex stat adds a little to tech. Any other stat bs should use straight Dex equips +8 Dex and Dex +2 xtal raises difficulty lvl. Doesn't add Pot.

 

So you mean i go on full stat? Like for example pure vit stat and have a dex set of equips?

 

Just tell which skills to up and how much

 

Level up every blacksmith skill to 10... including the new ones comming lut in the next update...

 

I don't get it. I followed the steps, and put points in tech so I could craft rapiers. I had lvl 1 proficiency as haven't crafted anything yet. So I crafted a rapier, and it only gave me 28% prof. I then tried a shorts word and that gave me 25... How is rapier only 3% more than shortsword. Am I doing something wrong?