Smithies almost never have the iron ore they need to produce armor / weapons

[antred]

I'm sometimes sitting tight in Balgard for a few days, waiting for the smithy there to produce some lordly / legendary armor items, but due to a constant lack of iron ore in the town, the smithy there rarely ever gets to produce anything.

Many times I'll even visit the village north of Balgard, buy all their iron ore and then dump it all on the local market in Balgard. But then a few hours later some friggin' caravan will make a stop in Balgard, buy ALL the iron ore and once again leave the local smithy high & dry. The fact that shortages like this happen so frequently tells me that something is fundamentally broken about the in-game economy. Please fix!

[Zorlond]

I am constantly smelting weapons down and dumping the metal into the warehouse, my smithies don't need ore, I need more smithies because I have waaaaay too much metal.

Of course, they still don't crank out Legendary gear much, but I don't go looking for it anyways, I'm just trying to cover expenses.

But you have a very valid point about the economy being broken. The game devs just haven't really committed to working on it for a long time.

[antred]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

I am constantly smelting weapons down and dumping the metal into the warehouse, my smithies don't need ore, I need more smithies because I have waaaaay too much metal.

I tend to accumulate a ton of crude iron and wrought iron, too, but can smithy workshops use those as input? I was under the impression that they need iron ore specifically, not any of the more processed metals. 🤔

[Zorlond]

Originally posted by antred:

Originally posted by Zorlond:

I am constantly smelting weapons down and dumping the metal into the warehouse, my smithies don't need ore, I need more smithies because I have waaaaay too much metal.

I tend to accumulate a ton of crude iron and wrought iron, too, but can smithy workshops use those as input? I was under the impression that they need iron ore specifically, not any of the more processed metals. 🤔

You have to tell them to use the warehouse for input (under the Clan->Other window), but yeah, they'll use the best metal you leave in there (at least up to Iron, I don't have enough Steel lying around to test), and not spend money on ore, thus increasing profit and output quality.

[antred]

Are you playing with mods, by any chance? Because I tried it out, and the smithies don't use crude iron / wrought iron. I bought a smithy, dumped some of those materials in the warehouse (along with iron ore) and told them to use inputs from the warehouse, and they never touched any of the crude iron / wrought iron, but they did gradually deplete the iron ore I deposited there.

[Tommytools]

Originally posted by antred:

Are you playing with mods, by any chance? Because I tried it out, and the smithies don't use crude iron / wrought iron. I bought a smithy, dumped some of those materials in the warehouse (along with iron ore) and told them to use inputs from the warehouse, and they never touched any of the crude iron / wrought iron, but they did gradually deplete the iron ore I deposited there.

I've never modded this M&B, I have my smithies running on crude iron. You can fit far more crude iron in (0.1 weight/item vs 10 for ore if I recall correct), if you have crude iron and iron ore in there, it will consume the ore first.

Edit: I can build smithies wherever I want, regardless of iron ore sources, as dropping 2-3000 crude iron into the warehouse will keep it going for a very long time (by which time I'm sure to have more to drop in there).

[antred]

Hmm, so maybe my mistake was to put iron ore in the warehouse as well (are they using that first and only then touching the crude iron?)?

[Tommytools]

Originally posted by antred:

Hmm, so maybe my mistake was to put iron ore in the warehouse as well (are they using that first and only then touching the crude iron?)?

Yup, which is probably why folks don't realise you can use the smelted metal.