Blacksmithing

[Chartreuse Floyd]

Ok, I am loving this game so far. I think I'm quite a ways into the game(I'm level 28-29ish). One thing I still don't get about this game is blacksmithing. The main charcter is a blacksmith, but I have yet to find any real use for actually forging anything. Every forge I have visited has better stuff for sale than I can make. Also I don't get the leveling up your blacksmith skill, there doesn't seem to any reason to level it up. It's not like you can fail at forging, or you get better forging skills. Also, how DO you level up blacksmithing? The materials are so rare that there is no way to "grind" up your blacksmithing level. I feel like I'm missing something here.

[Dragon Slumber]

Leveling up your blacksmith level happens when you meet new blacksmiths and when you smith new weapons. You can't fail smithing, but weapons and armor forged when you're a higher level blacksmith makes them a lot more powerful. Since you're so far in the game, I would recommend smithing a bunch of 1 material weapons (using only iron for instance), which'll bring your level up quickly and you'll see those weapons eclipse those sold in stores.

Hope you're enjoying the game, let me know if you have other questions!

[Chartreuse Floyd]

I would, but even iron is not easy to come by. It seems all the crafting materials are finite, so how do you level up smithing if you have no materials? If you could buy iron in a store, this whole thing would make a lot more sense to me. I would have figured out I have to grind up the ability. I guess it's a moot point now, I already blew all my rare materials trying to make good weapons.

Honest opinons: Considering the main charcter is a blacksmith, smithing should be an intrinsic and core part of the game, but if feels undercooked to me. I can see all the love and effort in the art, sound, and combat. Smithing feels over simplified and tacked on. It seems that you could rip out smithing altogether, and some one playing it for the first time wouldn't even notice it was missing.

[Dragon Slumber]

You might be able to find more ore spread around, depending on how much you opened every chest and serched every dresser in towns, but I didn't want to put iron on sale because of the way the leveling of the smithing works (the more you smith, the better you get). It would have been possible to max out too early.

I appreciate your criticism, do you have a smithing system in another game you feel would have been much better in this one? Or just crafting in general. I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Thanks

[Chartreuse Floyd]

I don't know if you've ever played Everquest 2, but it had a really interesting crafting/smithing system. Really the only crafting system that I could do for hours and not be bored. I know it's an MMO, but the system could be adapted to fit better in a jrpg.

[Dragon Slumber]

I've never played it, but I'll definitely look into it, thanks for the suggestion!