Blacksmithing the Best Skill Ever

In KoA:R I find there are a number of ways to equip yourself. Some better than others, some of those ways are similar to games like Torchlight and other dungeon crawlers were you mainly use the best loot and colors indicate how awesome something is. But I find KoA:R is more similar to games were the best equipment is crafted. This means while purple loot is very good it can hurt you stat wise if you use it to long, or if you level your blacksmith skill and know were to get the components to buff the stats you actually want.

A Start to Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is something you can use right after getting out of the tutorial. While in the tutorial you will probably pick up a ton of terrible weapons and armor. If you invested in blacksmithing before getting to the first town you will be able to make your first crafting components, these will most likely just be weak health stat items but if your lucky you will get one or two different armor or weapon components. Just crafting these components without anyothers will give you a vastly improved item that could last you long enough to were you pick up more items to craft into better things and also till you level your blacksmithing high enough to scrap green items which give better components more often.

Next to most forges in most towns and areas are chests that have inside them very basic and low stat components when starting they will be better than nothing but as you go on your options get better. These low level components will also be in most to every overturned wagon in the game so as you go on you will have a surplus of filler components which will mainly just buff your health by 5 or something.



Another thing about components is they don't count for inventory space because they go into the one of three space/time defieing bags you have that store components, alchemy ingrediants, and sagecrafting shards.

Components and Items of Interest

Your main means of getting components will be smelting or scraping down weapons and armor you have crafted or looted, but it isn't the only way you can get components.
One of the best ways of getting cool interesting stated components is from the lowly turtles and deer of the wild. As you start these creatures wont drop to much of interest but always kill and look for loot form them. These animals drop crit chance and % health components wich at any level help almost every class which uses those two stats.



You may not care about it and its not necisarry to have crit chance but as you increase that stat you can eventually crit every attack including magic and abileties. But the flat crit chance components wich are the best and most versitile are very easilly obtained from Turtles.

If you own the Dead Kell DLC you have a crafters paradise all the animals there drop the best components relating to your level. Also its good because you have everything you may want when crafting including a forge, sagecrafting table, merchant, and a small location that is easy to traverse very fast to gather components. Only downside is you cannot fast travel to the mainland and you cannot leave till you reach a certain part of the storry.

Materials and Classification

The system is pretty straightforward in learning, all you need to do is look at something and if the stats are better most likely that is the next material for that level.

With weapons its pretty easy because theres only two kinds of materials metal and wood. Wood weapons include; Staff, Bow, and Septer. Metal weapons Include everything else.

It gets a bit more confusing though when it comes to armor and shields.
Mage armor includes cloth for clothing and prescious metals for the talismon which is the mage shield which blocks magic easier and provides an elemental resist bonus. Cloth armor helps with mana regen but is weak for protection.
Warrior armor is pretty easy because it is all just metal. The warrior shield adds a blocking buff which helps you block faster and more eficiant. Warrior armor helps with blocking and also gives the most protection.
Rogues wear leather armor which gives bonuses to critical damage. They use bucklers which are made of wood. Rogue armor is in the middle when it comes to protection, this is mainly because a rogue is expected to dodge most incoming attacks but also be upclose and personal to do massive damage and poison Damage over Time effects like poison and bleed.

Metal ends with Prismere.
Leather ends with dreadscale.
Cloth ends with Spiritweave.
Wood ends with Ebony.
Precious metals end with Platinum.

Morality and Leveling

When going threw the game you will be tempted to steal and most of the time crime doesn't pay if your hand slips and you mess up with stealth or pickpocketing. But if theres a 0% chance of getting caught steal everything you can scrap into components because they can't take away components of stolen weapons.

I would recomend waiting to go to Rathir or that dock city till you level up after doing everything outside of that city. This is because when you enter the city at a high enough level the merchants will have prismere and sylthite grade weapons stored in chest and stuff. This is when stealing in front of everyone is awesome because those weapons cost a ton of gold and they wont become common untill you cross the sea to fight the Tuatha. The fines also are easy to pay off if you have enough gold a clean record and a high diplomocy skill.

As you level purple armor and weapons become lame. Why not sell them? If you do you will never run out of gold and even with the lowest merchant skill most things you would want to buy are obtainable.

Trainers and Skills

If you sold all your purple loot you will have more money than you can spend. Train with trainers.
Start with the starter area trainers because most trainers have a min skill level and max skill level for training. In this case respecing is a good idea to make all your stats 0 or whatever your initial racial skills are.

As you level though you will notice most skills help blacksmithing either directly threw crafting gems or by allowing you to find hidden loot caches which have more loot to scrap. Depending on your playstyle everystat can help blacksmithing in some way but my favorite include enoughpoints to craft pristine gems and sometimes master gems, stealth for stealing near people, lockpicking once and a while, and detect hidden. This is excluding blacksmithing because I always level that up regardless of what playstyle I'm going for.

That concludes my guide I hope it helps some people out for more information I suggest checking out the KoA:R wiki but I think its fun to try out different stat combonations on your own.

Sad Parts of Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing makes the game way easier. The abilety to clear out your inventorry with ease and create the best equipment in the game makes even hard mode super easy. Every stat that you would ever want when crafted into every part of your gear can make you extremely over powered.

Every enemy even the bosses will be extremely easy to kill even out of reckoning mode. If you enjoy being a god like being this wont bother you.

If you enjoy a challenge I wouldn't go with blacksmithing even on hard mode but if you enjoy having super stats, harvesting and crafting then blacksmithing is for you.

Author's Notes

Most to all of the information in this guide is from my time playing the game.
If you have any advice or suggestions relating to the topic please voice them in the comments.

Extra note:I made this guide a while ago so if you spot any spelling/grammar mistakes I probably already know about them. I just don't really want to take the time to fix all of them.

Extra extra note: Writing this particular comment January 4th 2020 to mostly say that I'm always surprised to see comments on this guide. As with the previous extra note above, I knew at the time I could have done a lot more with the writing and I still think so now; however, it's still nice to see that this guide is either helpful to some people. It's also nice to see people give their own experience with the game in the comments bellow even if that conversation is a very slow going one. Thank you for reading this guide despite its flaws and if you know any information that you think is helpful and relevant to it, drop it in the comments.

[Tadpo]

Yeah, I wrote this nearly seven years ago. There's a lot I'd change, but my priorities in life are in different places at the moment when it comes to writing. It's very interesting seeing new comments with the release of the remaster.

[P4[A]zz]

Hm, the issue is, this is kind of too much text for something that's sorta self-explanatory.

There're a few good bits in here, but I wish this one touched on "what's the exact tier list for materials", what gems should be aimed for when it comes to weapon crafting, what's the most efficient way to get higher level weapons to salvage etc.

Because that's where I am right now. I picked up the game again after seeing the remaster being basically the same and I just kinda threw together stuff, but I can't help but wonder if I should've gone for lifesteal rather than pure damage, if I should buy weapons to dismantle them in hopes for good blade mats, if I should focus more on gems or mats and so on.

[jefrat]

I read a guide once that said sell everything you get until you get to about 200K gold, which should be doable at around level 15. After that, salvage all the weapons and armor you get, to get components. The higher level the piece, the better components you get. I usually try to make at least on piece with health regeneration as soon as I have the blacksmithing and sagecrafting ability to do so. My current character is about level 15 and I'm using crafted weapons that are about twice as good as I'm getting from chests and monster drops. I have about 5 health regen per second from crafted armor.

[Tadpo]

I don't know what specific weapon you're using at the moment. But I would say it could be the quality of ingredients you're using or that the weapon you're using is of a higher tier material base than the materials you have access to. Steel being better than iron for example.

[KitsuNoshi]

I cant relate to this, all weapons I can craft are way weaker than my current weapon. I currently have a 70 dmg greatsword and the greatswords I can craft only has 40 dmg.

[Hill]

I tried this my first playthrough and got bored after 6 hours. I'm playing normally a few years later and this game is miles better.

[kungfuBACON]

I have to agree with the post in that Blacksmithing gives you overpowered gear. You can essentially play through to Klurikon, collect and salvage a set of endgame armor and weapons (prismere, etc.), and then respec to full blacksmithing and sagecraft to make the ultimate set. Also, you can save at a forge before salvaging, and reload until you get the component you want. If you add health regen to several pieces, you become practically invincible. I chose to exclude blacksmithing from my current playthrough for that reason, and because there's a ton of unique and interesting purple and yellow gear throughout the game that I ignored in previous playthroughs due to my crafted gear having dramatically higher stats. Great post.

[rpgfan411]

My advice is make sure to buy damaging gear from Olin Risberg in Dildenhil and Thora Woolstring near the House of Valor. The have bindings and grips and you could convert those to rivets as well with the crafting/salvaging method. Just make sure the piece actually includes rivets.

[Tadpo]

Generally the weapons you loot, steal, or buy that are of a higher grade then what you're equipment is currently or what you're finding most commonly aren't as good overall as crafted stuff, stuff that'd be in a set, or legendary equipment; they might be better is basic stats, but they'll usually be lacking in modifiers when compared to fully crafted stuff.

I do sympathize though as I have a specific memory of stealing a few weapons from the shops which took a while only to find the effort to be wasted on bad materials. But occasionally you get to craft a weapon or piece of armor that boosts your abilities far beyond what the game expects you to have at that point so I'd say it's worth smelting. If you really want to get there sooner, you can also savescum it a bit and reload to right before you smelt down a few things to keep trying for specific materials.

[Professor Knockers]

I've never got more than 3 components from a salvage. I've also salvaged 5 Prismere Greatswords of varying quality in a row, and only got basic/simple wraps/grips, no blades or handles. The inconsistency can get really frustrating at times.