Way of the Samurai 4 - Blacksmith Guide

Guide to using the smith effectively and making powerful weapons.

Introduction

Way of the Samurai 4 - Blacksmith Guide v11

The key to beating the higher difficulties in Way of the Samurai 4 is using the Blacksmith to create overpowered weapons. This guide will hopefully help you understand the smith and use it effectively.

Changelog

v1 - release
v2 - updated charms list
v3 - updated weapon inscriptions, weapon creation, ore list, cleaned up guide. Added changelog and special thanks section
v4 - updated forge menu, expanded weapon creation section, added tip to charms, added a new ore, redoing early weapon
v5 - updated early weapon, new notes on bigshot in charms
v6 - updated weapon title section, forge menu, added general tips
v7 - updated weapon creation
v8 - updated ore section, weapon creation, and forge menu
v8a - starting small updates to ore section
v8b - added quick tip in weapon creation and ore list about dlc
v9 - added weapon disassemble section, big update to weapon creation, update to general tips
v10 - renamed ore list section and updated it, rewrote early weapon guide, small updates to most sections
v11 - small guide cleanup

General Tips

Here are some quick tips that don't fit well in any other part of this guide:

• Depending on your actions you can change the current crime rating in Amihama. When the crime rating goes bad all stores increase their prices (this is especially bad when using the smith). Things like working for criminals, looting/kicking dead bodies, sleeping outside, not paying for items, and attacking innocents increase crime rating. To lower it quickly do missions for the law or the homeless, buy expensive items, and sleep in the Inn.
  
• You can fast travel using the map in your menu
  
• Time never changes unless you do a story mission, night crawl. sleep, or get arrested
  
• You can start over at any time by talking to the boatman that first brings you to Amihama
  
• When you die you can also start over, however you will loss all of your money and your equipped weapons will be taken by weapon thieves. You can retrieve your weapons by finding and killing the thieves
  
• The most important item for higher difficulties is medicine, because it automatically refills your health when you would be killed. In other words each medicine you carry acts as an extra life. Probably the easiest way to get medicine is to get your crime rating to great, wait in till the battle tournament opens, and then buy it from either the pharmacist or the hospital.
  
• Speaking of the hospital, having it opened increases the prices of all shops by 10%.

Smith Basics

The smith can be found in the town portion of Amihama.


He is used to improve, repair, melt, and create weapons. You can also buy items and weapon parts from him, and just like any other vendor, sell items to him. His prices are affected by your current crime rating.

Also be aware that close to him is the dojo, there you can store all your weapons and items. Also he will have access to any weapon parts you store in the dojo.

Forge Menu

Forge Menu
-Refine
--Make Stronger - Inceases weapon strength (attack damage)
--Make Harder - Increases weapon durability
--Polish - Repairs weapons, including broken ones

The first two options (make stronger and make harder) use up degradation points. Make harder gives a flat +500 increase and caps at 2000 weapon durability. Make stronger gives a random strength upgrade that improves as you use more degradation points, and it caps at 500. More info on that at the end of this section. Polish is used to repair weapons and can be used indefinitely. Also note that the cost of polish will only change depending on your current crime level, while make stronger and harder's cost will increase with each use and with a higher crime rate.

-Recast
--Make Stronger
--Make Harder

Recast works like reforge but with a few notable differences. First you use ore instead of money to upgrade weapons. This process can upgrade weapons past the degradation cap, and the better the ore you use the less you need to upgrade. Also the price of recast always stays the same, but the strength upgrades stay low.

-Appraise

Lets the smithy examine the weapon to see if he can put an inscription on it, based on the sword's number of kills or amount of points repaired. For example, when you kill 50 enemies with a katana, you can place the Assassin modifier on it to increase it's strength. Each weapon can only have one inscription at a time.

-Extract

Melt weapons down to get ore. Weapons from stronger enemies and higher difficulties give better ore.

-Create

This is where the real magic happens. You can combine three weapon parts (blade, guard, and grip) to get a new weapon with a maximum of three charms. Charms are modifiers that have range of useful effects.

*Special thanks to ♡ 大和 ♡ for pointing out the durability cap and dragnier1 for pointing out the strength cap.

Weapon Disassemble

From the weapons menu in the start screen you can select weapons and disassemble them. Doing this is the key to making the very best weapons, and it can be used to breakdown excess weapons so you can pick more up (even during combat).

When you break down a weapon it splits into three parts: blade, guard, and grip The most important weapon piece is the blade, because it determines the strength, durability, degradation points, and reach of any weapon you make.

Originally posted by Hansuki:

Also, blade length does not affect attack speed. Longer blades have bigger hitboxes with no penalty to you, giving you an advantage. Just be careful around friendlies.

The guard and grip only matter for aesthetics and charms.

When the weapon is disassembled all stats and charms are randomized. The stats you get is decided by the difficulty of the game, so weapons disassembled on harakiri give much better stats than weapons disassembled on easy.

Be aware that the only weapons that can be disassembled are swords and spears.

Weapon Inscriptions

Strength Series	Effect	Unlock
Assassin	+25 Strength	50 Kills
Crazy Eyes	+50 Strength	100 Kills
Bloodbath	+75 Strength	250 Kills
Road to Hell	+120 Strength	500 Kills
Oddity	+250 Strength	1000 Kills

*Strength inscriptions can not exceed the 500 strength cap

Durability Series	Effect	Unlock
Stone Head	10% Less durability decrease	20k Durability Pts. Repaired
Iron Wall	25% Less durability decrease	40k Durability Pts. Repaired
Platinator	50% Less durability decrease	70k Durability Pts. Repaired
Adamantator	75% Less durability decrease	100k Durability Pts. Repaired
Unbreakable	No durability decrease	200k Durability Pts. Repaired

Extraction Series	Effect	Unlock
One Twinkle	Iron pts. +1 during extraction	Retrieve weapon*
Two Articlese	Iron pts. +2 during extraction	Retrieve weapon*
Three Lights	Iron pts. +3 during extraction	Retrieve weapon*
Four Seas	Iron pts. +6 during extraction	Retrieve weapon*
Enlightener	Iron pts. +10 during extraction	Retrieve weapon*

Spring Harvest Series	Effect	Unlock
Razor	Strength during Spring Harvet +20%	30 Kills with Spring Harvest then retrieve weapon*
Westerner	Strength during Spring Harvet +40%	70 Kills with Spring Harvest then retrieve weapon*
Cold Steel	Strength during Spring Harvet +70%	100 Kills with Spring Harvest then retrieve weapon*
Demon Lord	Strength during Spring Harvet +100%	250 Kills with Spring Harvest then retrieve weapon*
Honor Kill	Strength during Spring Harvet +150%	500 Kills with Spring Harvest then retrieve weapon*

Strength and durability inscriptions can be placed on a weapon by having the smith appraise it. For example, earn 50 kills, have the smith appraise the weapon, and then you can put assassin on it.

You can only have one inscription at a time, but they can be swapped in and out (you do have to pay for them each time). Also when you unlock a new inscription you can't use the older one. For example, if you earn enough kills to unlock crazy eyes you can never put assassin on that weapon again (titles may rollback if the strength cap would be exceeded, more info later).

The inscriptions that increase extraction and spring harvest damage can only be placed on a weapon by retrieving it from a weapon thief. I was having trouble getting them, luckily I found this tip from gamefaqs[www.gamefaqs.com] and I can confirm that it works.

Originally posted by Blackdragonwave:

after you are totally sure you have a sword with enough kills to get the spring harvest, that sword should be in the first of the three equip slots, then fill in the last two equip spaces with unused swords, just swords that you would otherwise sell or extract for metal, if you have any swords in your weapon sack store them in the chest, store any other items you are carrying that you want to keep.

save the game before you are ready to get yourself killed, i played on hard or harakiri each time i was going for the honor kill title, i can't say if it increases the chance of getting spring harvest titles but just to be safe, i would recommend trying this at least on hard mode, before you die make sure you are using the sword you want the title on, after you die save on a different or new save file, load that file and start the next game on hard or harakiri.

skip the intro fight, go straight to the town and talk to the blacksmith, when you are about to leave he well tell you he has secret info or something like that tell him yes to see, it is a list with the three swords you were carrying in order, next you need to travel until you encounter a katana thief, the first katana thief you kill will have the first sword you were carrying.

after you kill him, your sword should drop with the new title on it, so you don't need the smith to have it appraised for spring harvest titles, if instead the sword has an extraction title like one twinkle or no new title, leave the game then load the file you saved on before dying and try again.

recovering a sword can lead to extraction title, spring harvest title if you have enough kills or no new title, so there is a chance that you may not get the spring harvest title each time.

Also in the same post there's a guide to easliy obtain the unbreakable title.[www.gamefaqs.com]

Be sure to follow his instructions exactly as getting those inscriptions can be finicky.

The basic principle is to get a fighting style that can be used to hit and push dead bodies around



Then head to town and kill a large group of enemies. The yakuza massacre missions from the magistrate work well for this. Kill the enemies and use your weapon to push all bodies into a corner



Then attack the pile in till your weapon breaks



Repair your weapon at the smith, rinse and repeat in till you get the durability inscription you want. The movestyle and corner I picked in the pictures are not the ideal choices, but hopefully you get the idea.

*Special Thanks to Wigifer for unlock prerequisites

Refine Recast & Ore List

Reforge Table

Reforge Times	STR Minimum	STR Maximum	Strong Cost	Hard Cost
1	8	14	300	600
2	9	15	600	1200
3	10	15	900	1800
4	10	17	1200	2400
5	10	18	1500	3000
6	10	29	1800	3600
7	10	30	2100	4200
8	12	31	2400	4800
9	13	31	2700	5400
10	13	31	3000	6000
11	13	34	3300	6600
12	15	34	3600	7200
13	18	35	3900	7800
14	18	35	4200	8400
15	19	37	4500	9000
16	20	38	4800	9600
*	*	*	5100	10200
*	*	*	*	*

• List is based on rolls with Dojima as smith
  
• STR rolls are based on what I've gotten so far and are not wholly accurate
  
• Durability increase is always 500
  
• Prices are with a great crime rating and the hospital closed

Ore List:

• Scrap Metal - The most common ore, found from extracting most weapons dropped on easy, normal, and hard. Also found from looting and smashing crates.
  
• Ground Metal - Found from extracting end game weapon drops even on easy, becomes more common from weapons dropped in hard mode. Can be dropped by enemies.
  
• Dojima Steel - found from extracting weapons dropped in harakiri mode.
  
• Hihiirogane

Recast Table

Ore	Recast 01	Recast 02	Recast 03	Recast 04	Recast 05	Recast 06	Recast 07	Recast 08	Recast 09	Recast 10	Recast 11	Recast 12	Recast 13	Recast 14	Recast 15
Scrap Metal	10	12	14	17	21	25	30	36	43	52	62	74	89	*	*
Ground Metal	5	6	7	9	10	12	15	18	21	26	31	37	45	*	*
Dojima Steel	2	2	3	3	4	5	6	7	9	10	12	15	18	*	*
Hihiirogane	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

Tip for getting ore:

If you have the rare weapons DLC you can buy boss level weapons at the cemetery during night. These rare weapons only cost 250文 (with great crime rating) and some can be melted down to get dojima steel. More info to come later.

Originally posted by Wigifer:

Short on ore? Kill 50 Yakuza for Sakotsu, found at the magistrates. Short on cash? Kill 50 Yakuza for the magistrates. Want lots of free parts and don't care what they are? Kill 50 Yakuza for the magistrates. Want to kill the original old smithy without doing it yourself? Get 6 of the Yakuza to chase you from this event and swing at you while using him as the proverbial human shield (Just leave him between you and them, in other words).
You may be wondering how this applies when you can only carry 13 swords at most... Well you're never leaving the area, so you can kill everyone and slowly collect their swords, sell/dismantle/smelt down, grab more, rinse, repeat. This IS one of the easiest ways to get lots of lower end ores, however this IS NOT the best way of finding parts if you have 2k cash and care not for sword aesthetics...

Weapon Creation

So to make a weapon you need three parts: Blade, Guard. and Grip. To get these parts you need to disassemble other weapons, buy them from the smith, or loot them from bodies.

To make a powerful weapon you need to understand charms. Each weapon piece has three slots in a row that have a chance to contain a charm. When you assemble a weapon you want to try and match the charms in a tic-tact-toe type fashion and you will get up to three charms on a weapon




You can have a max of three charms and they do stack. This is the easiest way to get three charms


Note: The second guard charm can be on the right or left, just as long as one charm is in the middle

To get charms on the parts you want can be very time consuming depending on what charm combo you are going for, but it is possible. The easiest way to get weapon pieces with the charms you want is by purchasing them from the smith. Each time you go to buy menu the charms will be randomized on each piece, so you can back in and out of the buy menu in till he has the charms you want. This is the best way to get parts for early game weapons.

To get charms on better weapon parts, you will need to do a lot of disassembling. Here's how:

• Farm multiple copies of the weapon with the parts you want (best amount is probably 13, since that's the max you can hold)
  
• The higher the difficulty the better the stats the game rolls when you disassemble, so you may want to restart the game on the highest difficulty setting that you've unlocked (you can skip the battle at the harbor by skirting the crowd or fast traveling to the town).
  
• Head to the dojo and get the weapons out of the chest. Save your game
  
• Mass dismantle them. If you don't get the piece you want then re-load your save and try again. If you do get the piece, then put it away and rebuild your weapons at the smith, and start the process over
  
• Again, this is very time consuming, and if you don't care about aesthetics just do this for the blade and buy the guard and grip from the smith.

Note: If you have the rare weapons DLC you can buy boss level weapons at the cemetery during night. These rare weapons only cost 250文 (with a great crime rating) and can be dismantled for excellent parts.

When the weapon is complete you will need to reforge it, and get a good inscription. Use the reforge table (in the reforge, recast, & ore list section) to help with the process. You will need quite a bit of money to reforge in the higher degradation levels, and you will probably want to save before each upgrade incase you get low strength rolls and want to reload.

Here's my current thoughts on what inscriptions you will want to go for:

• Oddity - An ok early choice. Mainly used to reach the 500 strength cap on earlier weapons, however it can't be used to surpass the cap. So for late game, when you have lots of money and ore, this inscription becomes obsolete.
  
• Unbreakable - A solid choice, and with the trick mentioned in the inscription part of this guide it's not as difficult to obtain as it may first appear. You can always opt for another inscription by making sure your weapon is at max durability before each fight, and using items to repair and protect your weapons. That will of course leave you open to attacks, and use up inventory that could be used for medicine.
  
• Honor Kill - ? - This inscription on a max damage weapon with 3xbig shot must be an amazing sight. I haven't played through harakiri difficulty yet so I'm unsure how necessary that kind of damage would be. Also you would probably need to carry around spring harvest food to get the most out of it.
  
  *Special thanks to Wigifer, Hansuki, and dragnier1 for their suggestions and tips

Charm List

Charms	Effect
Able-Bodied	Slows weapon durability damage
Backwater	Improves strength at low health but decreases strength at high health
Big Shot	Greatly increases the damage of certain attacks*
Darksword	Increases strength at night
Fortune	Chance to revive when receiving a fatal blow
Life&Death	When you stand still it increases vitality, very helpful
Lightsword	Increases stength during the day
Midas	Causes money pouches to contain more money
Pitching	Chance to avoid enemy grabs
Squall	Let's you dodge through certain attacks

*Charms will not work when dual wielding unless both swords have the same charms

*The moves bigshot effects can vary from moveset to moveset.

• It always increases the damage of guardbreaks

• It will sometimes increase the damage of other moves with special modifiers. The low kick (Sokutai) always gets a damage increase from bigshot

• Certain moves such as heat haze also get an increase from bigshot

To find all the moves it effects will require quite a bit of trial and error.

Some more tips on charms:

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

Life and Death while super helpful is not needed on your main sword, its much easier to just make a life and death sword and switch to it when you need vitality back.

Able Bodied is a throwaway skill as most people will go for the Unbreakable Title for swords, as is squall.

The charm effect info comes from a GameFAQs forum post that thoroughly explains the charms, as well as methods for obtaining them and the math behind it. Check it out here and big props to the original poster ReignOfDestiny[www.gamefaqs.com]

Creating Great Early Game Weapons

Do you want some great weapons that can be crafted early game and that will stay relevant even in hard difficulty? Then you've come to the right part of this guide.

• Start out in easy mode
  
• Do some jobs to earn money for the weapon parts you'll need and collect spare weapons along the way.
  
• You want to make two different swords, one with the big shot charm and one with the life&death charm (you could make one weapon with both, but that takes a bit longer). Big shot greatly increases the damage of certain attacks, so that will be your main weapon. Life&death restores vitality when you stand still, so you will switch to that as needed.
  
• Enter/exit the smith's store menu for a basil blade, guard, and grip with the aforementioned charms on them (check the inscription and weapon creation sections for more info).
  
• When you have the parts craft your new weapons.
  
• Use reforge to get the weapon close to the 2000 durability cap, and then reforge strength.
  
• Melt down the spare weapons for ore and further increase weapon strength by recasting.
  
• Lastly appraise your weapon as you earn kills so you can give your weapon titles that will further increase it's strength.

These two weapons will last you intill you enter hard difficulty, and it's at that point you will want to start looking for replacements.

Note:I used to recommend the fortune charm in this section, however fortune's life saving effect with only one charm is too infrequent to be of much use. I now recommend you just carry a few bottles of medicine around at all times, since it works 100% of the time. Check the quick tips section for more info.

Unlocking the Second Smith

The first smith will stay until the evening of the third day. After that the shop will close down and you will have to start a new game to use him again. However you can do a quest line for him and unlock a second smith who will stay the whole time, and will remain smith into new games.

To unlock him first talk to the smith and after you exit his menu he will inform you that he is closing up shop. Continue on with the conversation and pick these answers:

• Why are you closing it down?
  
• Don't you have a successor?
  
• I'd be happy to

Smithy asks you to find his lost apprentice Gunji Dojima.


Talk to him and answer using the following:

• The Smithy's been looking for you.
  
• You need to take over the business.
  
• He's waiting for you.
  
• What happened between you two?
  
• Is this grave somehow involved?

Go back to smithy and ask:

• What happened between you two?

Back to Dojima with:

• This is Hanpei's Grave
  
• Hanpei didn't have an eye for quality.
  
• Why do you think that?
  
• So you tricked your boss...
  
• Why was Hanpei targeted?

And back to Smithy:

• Dojima was deceiving you, old man.
  
• (Insert epic and heartfelt tale here.)
  
• You... Knew?!
  
• Why did Hanpei join the Prajnas?
  
• Dojima blames himself, you know.

And finally back to Dojima:

• Your boss knew about everything.
  
• The boss is waiting for you.
  
• What say we settle this with swords?

You then must Fight Dojima in what will be a difficult battle early game. i recommend fighting him on easy the first time, bringing healing items and upgrading your sword a bit. Also note that you must fight him using the blunt side of your blade so you don't kill him. After you beat him you have a conversation:

• Hanpei had a dream you know.
  
• To save Japan with a Dojima sword.

And there you have it, the second blacksmith unlocked. Be aware that the dialogue options above are the ones I used to unlock him, so you may be able to use other options.

The new smith seems the same as the old one, but his inventory was expanded after I unlocked him, however that may be due to other causes.

Originally posted by Wigifer:

Dojima is more of a crapshoot with reforging/refining, but he's capable of giving even higher numbers past 5 degredation. How does that make it such a gamble? Because he's also capable of giving much lower numbers.

Originally posted by Wigifer:

- Before you finish the playthrough in which you've acquired Dojima, kill the old smithy. Seriously. Get him killed. There's a *very* cheeky way of doing it without harming your Samurai rating, but I'll go over that in a moment. Why kill him? MARTIAL ARTS STYLE! (The name eludes me at this time)

(Check the ore section for the tip on killing Smithy)

Special Thanks

Big props to the following people for their tips and comments:

Hansuki
Wigifer
♡ 大和 ♡
Panic Fire
dragnier1
JerryCrazyWheels
Blackdragonwave from gamefaqs
and ReignOfDestiny from gamefaqs

[TelevisionFoot]

not to be redundant if this is already commented, things that also can pass time include shopping at the clothes store, mindless wandering, and dueling at the dojo, however its not a science i have fully figured out, sometimes they push me into the next time zone, sometimes not. i think the game pauses for most events, making sure you choose the next event carefully, but some are more missable.

[rat]

You can also gain new weapon inscriptions on Tiger/Dragon Claws when you retrieve them from Lost & Found. I got a Westerner Tiger Claw this way.

[Ghost Animals]

If you're here several years later like I am and scroll down far enough to read the comments, I've got a few tips to add:
-When you've got a full sack of weapons to dismantle, take out your weapon and attack. Before the attack animation finishes, pause the game and go to your weapon sack. Because you're in the middle of an attack, the "Equip" option is no longer there and you can just spam the Confirm button without paying attention to dismantle everything.
-When you figure out exactly what kind of weapon you want, You can reroll the charms of specific weapon parts by using them to craft a new weapon and then dismantling that weapon. Every time you dismantle the weapon, the parts will have different stats/charms.
-A Big Shot x2 weapon will carry you through Haraki if the blade has ~100 damage on it. It's boring to only spam the Big Shot boosted moves, but it's incredibly easy, especially if you use Spring Harvest to stunlock high health boss enemies.

[Yian Yan]

It doesn't mean much but it should be pointed out that a longer blade does carry a penalty: your vitality decreases much faster per swing than on shorter blades. However, with any amount of Life & Death this is mostly meaningless and the benefits of the longer blades well outdoes the penalty.

[☭Michael MyeЯs☭]

is it just me or farming charm with Dojima feel way faster than old smithy ???

[yuzaijin]

250文 per weapon with great crime rating

[Immortal Reaver]

Good way to cheese if you have at least 1 weapon DLC is to play on harrakiri and at night buy weapon from DLC Ghost (around 3000 per weapon I think) then melt it, you will get mostly Dojima(White) Steel from them

[Lord Diego]

thanks it´s a big help when i try to get better STR and DR por my swords :D tnx a lot dude

[Tsukana]

Haven't seen anyone mention this anywhere online, so want to point it out: You can carry way more than the max amount of swords by disassembling them. Useful for gathering swords for ore so you don't have to run back and forth for the Yakuza elimination mission, or so you can do other missions and gather ore as well.

[Insanity Claus]

Great guide! Helped answer all of my questions about forging and I learned a lot of stuff that I had no idea about. Thanks!