Smithing Stones are too rare

[Zehm]

...at least for the common weapons. You can find enough to level up two weapons at most, and even then, one of your weapons will be lagging behind by a tier. While the bells exist, they're always at a significantly lower level than the area you find them in, so any new weapon will preform worse than what you have been using thus far. It really hurts experimentation and incentivises you to keep on using the same weapons throughout your whole playthrough. Often I feel like I'm suck with gear from Limgrave while all sorts of cool new weapons are cluttering my inventory. It's not until the Godskin Duo drops the final bell that ability to freely swap out weapons becomes a real possibility, but that's basically the end of the game. It's a real problem in my eyes.

[Silyon]

Explore mines for a ton just lying around. Which, conveniently enough, are also where you get the early bell bearings for unlimited smithing stones. Can also kill soldiers and knights for regular smithing stones, or hands for sombers. They're legitimately all over the place, can throw a dart pretty much anywhere on the map and find some either lying on the ground waiting to be picked up or being dropped by some enemy. Not to mention the extras you can buy from Nomads and the troll smith Iji.

By time you hit Leyndell, even if you haven't turned in any bell bearings, you should have enough stones to level 4 or 5 weapons to +14, or +5 on Sombers. Which is perfectly serviceable for the content and about when you should be settling into your long-term weapon types anyway. Once you get the other bell bearings as well, the only thing stopping you from leveling every single weapon to +9 somber or +24 normal is the amount of time you want to invest. Ancient smithing stones for that final level are the only limited resource, and you never need that many of them.

[rabureta]

Originally posted by Silyon:

Explore mines for a ton just lying around. Which, conveniently enough, are also where you get the early bell bearings for unlimited smithing stones. Can also kill soldiers and knights for regular smithing stones, or hands for sombers. They're legitimately all over the place, can throw a dart pretty much anywhere on the map and find some either lying on the ground waiting to be picked up or being dropped by some enemy. Not to mention the extras you can buy from Nomads and the troll smith Iji.

By time you hit Leyndell, even if you haven't turned in any bell bearings, you should have enough stones to level 4 or 5 weapons to +14, or +5 on Sombers. Which is perfectly serviceable for the content and about when you should be settling into your long-term weapon types anyway. Once you get the other bell bearings as well, the only thing stopping you from leveling every single weapon to +9 somber or +24 normal is the amount of time you want to invest. Ancient smithing stones for that final level are the only limited resource, and you never need that many of them.

Even if you clear literally everything you can only get two, maybe three weapons to +24 prior to Faram Azula and the last bell bearing, and that's by doing Snowfield/Haligtree. This has been a complaint since day one: you can't actually experiment with weapons you find before endgame because the (normal) smithing stones aren't there.

Somber stones, meanwhile, are a joke and basically impossible to run out of at any point.

[ShivaX]

Honestly the Bell Bearing things for the purchasable stones should've be in the mines.

Instead they just in random places for the most part.

[cheetah1546]

i only have two of the highest somber but that's my fault

[Silyon]

Originally posted by rabureta:

Even if you clear literally everything you can only get two, maybe three weapons to +24 prior to Faram Azula and the last bell bearing, and that's by doing Snowfield/Haligtree. This has been a complaint since day one: you can't actually experiment with weapons you find before endgame because the (normal) smithing stones aren't there.

Somber stones, meanwhile, are a joke and basically impossible to run out of at any point.

I mean, you do realize you can try out a weapon without investing your stones into it, right? See if you like the attack patterns and speed, see how it changes with different ashes or if the unique ash is any good, stuff like that. A +0 weapon's only difference from a +24 weapon is the damage being dealt, and you can get a good idea of what stats the weapon uses for it's damage scaling from it's base requirements even if you don't want to bring meta-knowledge like wikis into play.

Seems sensible to only invest your "limited" stones into the handful of weapons you actually want to use for your build, rather than leveling every random PoS you pick up. But that's just me.

[NeoVICT]

You can buy almost all the smithing stones at the blacksmith up to lvl 9 ?
The only ones you can't buy are the ones that finalize the level of the weapon so all you have to be selective about is what weapons you fully upgrade to the last level. I never had an issue with smithing stones, if I needed some more I grinded runes and bought them.

[rabureta]

Originally posted by Silyon:

Originally posted by rabureta:

Even if you clear literally everything you can only get two, maybe three weapons to +24 prior to Faram Azula and the last bell bearing, and that's by doing Snowfield/Haligtree. This has been a complaint since day one: you can't actually experiment with weapons you find before endgame because the (normal) smithing stones aren't there.

Somber stones, meanwhile, are a joke and basically impossible to run out of at any point.

I mean, you do realize you can try out a weapon without investing your stones into it, right? See if you like the attack patterns and speed, see how it changes with different ashes or if the unique ash is any good, stuff like that. A +0 weapon's only difference from a +24 weapon is the damage being dealt, and you can get a good idea of what stats the weapon uses for it's damage scaling from it's base requirements even if you don't want to bring meta-knowledge like wikis into play.

Seems sensible to only invest your "limited" stones into the handful of weapons you actually want to use for your build, rather than leveling every random PoS you pick up. But that's just me.

So you go to a new area, find a new weapon and decide you like the moveset, try to upgrade it, and realize you don't have the smithing stones because you used them to upgrade the weapons you used to get there. See the problem?
Three weapons means your main hand, your offhand (whether it's a shield or a powerstanced weapon), and likely a talisman/catalyst. You don't have room to say "hey, I was using the greatclub, but now I found the greatmace! hey, I found the great stars! hey, I found the second great stars!" unless you read a wiki and grab both great stars at the start of the game.

[rparham685]

Basically, yeah. Except in your case, sounds to me more like "hey, I'm too lazy to find the Bell Bearing I need to be able to buy the stones I need to continue upgrading my weapon"
Sorry in advance if I offend. o7

[nbean16]

Originally posted by rabureta:

Originally posted by Silyon:

I mean, you do realize you can try out a weapon without investing your stones into it, right? See if you like the attack patterns and speed, see how it changes with different ashes or if the unique ash is any good, stuff like that. A +0 weapon's only difference from a +24 weapon is the damage being dealt, and you can get a good idea of what stats the weapon uses for it's damage scaling from it's base requirements even if you don't want to bring meta-knowledge like wikis into play.

Seems sensible to only invest your "limited" stones into the handful of weapons you actually want to use for your build, rather than leveling every random PoS you pick up. But that's just me.

So you go to a new area, find a new weapon and decide you like the moveset, try to upgrade it, and realize you don't have the smithing stones because you used them to upgrade the weapons you used to get there. See the problem?
Three weapons means your main hand, your offhand (whether it's a shield or a powerstanced weapon), and likely a talisman/catalyst. You don't have room to say "hey, I was using the greatclub, but now I found the greatmace! hey, I found the great stars! hey, I found the second great stars!" unless you read a wiki and grab both great stars at the start of the game.

No you just buy the smithing stones.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

I feel like in practice this was never too much of an issue. I kept track of what enemies were dropping. And I'd be hesitant on using my best shards (at the time) until I felt like I was gonna use a weapon for a while.

[Zehm]

Originally posted by NeoVICT:

You can buy almost all the smithing stones at the blacksmith up to lvl 9 ?
The only ones you can't buy are the ones that finalize the level of the weapon so all you have to be selective about is what weapons you fully upgrade to the last level. I never had an issue with smithing stones, if I needed some more I grinded runes and bought them.

Yeah, you can buy them if you are at the end of the game. What about when your playing through it. In my current game, I started out by using a Shamshir and Scimitar, I'm in Altus now and they are at +19 and +15 respectively. That is using all the stones I have found. I have a few left over of different tiers, but not enough to upgrade anything. So lets say that I want to use the Antspur Rapier and Clean Rot Sword that I've just found, well the only stones that are available to me are +4 from the bell, so the best I can hope for is +12 weapons which are a significant downgrade from my starter curved swords. And that's not counting that I also might want to upgrade my talisman, perhaps a bow, or maybe even a blunt weapon for taking out those rock guys. To upgrade all of that I'd need 60 stones at each tier, while in reality I have like 2 or 3.

[palacentes]

thats how it is... you have one weapon of choice that will trump any weapon you get, until you find the smithing bell bearings which unlock the rocks in shops. While I dont feel that anymore, it would have been nice to get access to smith stones easily, like its based on how many demi gods you beat.

[AYAYA]

You're definitely right. I was excessively thorough in my playthrough and I only found enough stones for three or four weapons. It'd be a lot better if the bell bearings were at least one area earlier in progression. Or they made twice as many.
I actually spent most of the game power stancing identical weapons and one of them always lagged behind the other by around four levels.

[Foxrun]

Originally posted by Zehm:

...at least for the common weapons. You can find enough to level up two weapons at most, and even then, one of your weapons will be lagging behind by a tier. While the bells exist, they're always at a significantly lower level than the area you find them in, so any new weapon will preform worse than what you have been using thus far. It really hurts experimentation and incentivises you to keep on using the same weapons throughout your whole playthrough. Often I feel like I'm suck with gear from Limgrave while all sorts of cool new weapons are cluttering my inventory. It's not until the Godskin Duo drops the final bell that ability to freely swap out weapons becomes a real possibility, but that's basically the end of the game. It's a real problem in my eyes.

They’ve been “rare” in all of their game.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by rabureta:

So you go to a new area, find a new weapon and decide you like the moveset, try to upgrade it, and realize you don't have the smithing stones because you used them to upgrade the weapons you used to get there. See the problem?
Three weapons means your main hand, your offhand (whether it's a shield or a powerstanced weapon), and likely a talisman/catalyst. You don't have room to say "hey, I was using the greatclub, but now I found the greatmace! hey, I found the great stars! hey, I found the second great stars!" unless you read a wiki and grab both great stars at the start of the game.

Frankly, no. I don't see the problem. The bell bearings to get the smithing stones you need exist, the caves containing them pre-marked on the map as points of interest like the minor erdtrees, and the few late-game ones that arn't just sitting in caves are found in ruins or from bosses that are literally in the way of progressing the game. You have to TRY to not pick them up.

Even IF you wanna be hardcore about it and never buy a smithing stone from any vendor, you can still collect every tier of every stone except Ancients by farming specific respawning enemies across the game, generally the soldiers and knights that are everywhere anyway. Godricks give 1's and 2's, Redmanes 3's and 4's, Leyndell 5's and 6's, Haligtree 7's and 8's. Hand-spiders drop somber stones with the same general pattern, with the ones on the mountiantop near the Fire Giant dropping the 7 and 8 sombers.

The problem you're talking about doesn't exist. Elden Ring is far more generous with the smithing mats than any other Fromsoft game and you don't have to ration your titanite at all. Need more, go out and get more. It's everywhere.