Blacksmith Profession Profit Test

[pooplicker]

I've always been of the impression that Blacksmith isn't a very good profession, so I wanted to put it to the test and see if that was true or not

On a test world with ♥♥♥'s mods, I set my mining level to 10 (Miner-Blacksmith professions), I warped to the mine at exactly 6:30am, ate a crab cake and went to mine level 80 over and over again mining gold ore until I passed out

This is the result with the Blacksmith Profession

https://gyazo.com/6bd3ef4336583fd12ac6cff89c0112bf

30,540g without mining any of the gems I saw, I might do another test where I mine the gems, but I wanted to see purely what mining bars with the Blacksmith profession would earn me

This cost me 86 coal in total to smelt, which is worth 5400 from Clint, so if you account for gold lost on coal I would have gained 25,140g in the day

Edit: I did some sort of miscalculation with the coal, it's actually 12900, not 5400, meaning the profit I made in the test is actually around 18,000, which is still pretty reasonable for how consistent and easy it is (you can do it any day with the same results without any effort) You could also use Charcoal Kilns with all you gold you'd get and craft coal for 100g each

The earliest I ever remember getting mining level 10 was around halfway through fall, so if you go the Miner-Blacksmith route, you can start earning 25k+ a day as early as mid fall

Made even better by the fact that ores aren't affected by daily luck, and you don't have to wait for them like you do with the mushroom level

Although do note, for this test I spawned myself an iridium pickaxe (gold breaks in 2 hits) and had speed on the entire time, so if you get Blacksmith around the time you get a Steel Pickaxe, maybe expect about 10% less profits for extra time wasted mining

TL;DR:
Blacksmith is a surprisingly strong and reliable source of income in the mid game, and certainly better than Prospector

[Iron Monkey]

Try it with the skull cavern and Iridium

[pooplicker]

Originally posted by Iron Monkey:

Try it with the skull cavern and Iridium :hee:

Sure!

I'll give myself a fair amount of items and see how much I make

[pooplicker]

Originally posted by Iron Monkey:

Try it with the skull cavern and Iridium :hee:

I gave myself a steel pickaxe, 20 mega bombs, 3 staircases and some spicy eels, which I would consider fair for someone to have in the mid game

This is what I earned from a day in skull cavern with the spirits having the best luck and me mining every ore I saw

https://gyazo.com/623c7246a862ab041caa464a09234b73

Accounting for 25 coal I would have had to buy, I made 18,900 of metal bars

I'm sure if I went in with an inventory of stone to make ladders and 999 mega bombs, I'd make a lot of money with blacksmith, but if you can do that, I doubt you'd need the money

So it's actually more profitable to harvest gold ore from level 80 it would seem

Edit: I also sold all of the gems I got which made me about 6,000 more

[Pixel Peeper]

20 Mega Bombs and no berries isn't anywhere as good as 80 regular Bombs and berries, though.

Also, that's a suspiciously large amount of Copper, Iron and Gold. In Skull Cavern, every time you stop to grab worthless garbage like Gold, that's the same amount of Iridium (and more) that you're not getting later during your run.

I suspect a more optimized run would yield far, far better results.

[pooplicker]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

20 Mega Bombs and no berries isn't anywhere as good as 80 regular Bombs and berries, though.

Also, that's a suspiciously large amount of Copper, Iron and Gold. In Skull Cavern, every time you stop to grab worthless garbage like Gold, that's the same amount of Iridium (and more) that you're not getting later during your run.

I suspect a more optimized run would yield far, far better results.

I always craft take mega bombs with me to skull cavern when I unlock it because I always have left over gold ore and essences

on average (Miner-Blacksmith)

Cooper Node = 54g
Iron Node = 108g
Gold Node = 225g

compared to

Iridium Node = 900g

But yeah, I'm sure it could have been more optimized, I only got to about level 65 too

[pooplicker]

Originally posted by red255:

Of course prospector is marginally more useful because artisan exists and nobody sells metal bars.

To reply to this part directly, I do agree with you, Blacksmith will become near useless once you can start making lots of wine with Artisan

If I do another playthrough I'll go Miner-Blacksmith and should get it around half way through fall, but I doubt I'd ever take advantage of blacksmith in my 2nd year

My point was basically that it's a simple and reliable way to make money in the mid game, would need to be atleast 75% or higher to have real meaning after year 2

And about the coal thing, I just realised I somehow made a miscalculation with the price of it, so it's less profit than I thought

[Pixel Peeper]

Yes, Skull Cavern is all about depth.

Levels 1-70 you get almost nothing.
Levels 70-100 you still only get about one Node per level.

But then Iridium gets more and more common very quickly...

Levels 300+ every single regular stone is an Iridium Node.

You're going to want a run to go above 100 to be considered a success.
Getting above 150 will get you a very high amount of Iridium.
200+ is crazy.

Find 800 Iridium Ore and, with Blacksmith and assuming you've got the Furnaces, that's a quarter mil in a single day (Prismatic Shards and Omni Geodes will more than pay for the Coal).

It's certainly got potential, it's just that people generally don't bother with more intense activities like Mining when crops can pay so damn much without much more work than going to bed around noon every day.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by pooplicker666:

My point was basically that it's a simple and reliable way to make money in the mid game

Yes, it certainly isn't bad. In a playthrough with any emphasis on Mining, it could be your primary source of gold in the mid-game and even a bit into the late game.

In my case, I tend to get to level 10 Mining rather late in the game. It's better for me to use the Gold Bars on Quality Sprinklers and once I have those I'm pretty much making free gold forever.