Smithing in JADE

[Tannis]

I never did a lot of smithing in ADOM. For one thing, collecting ore and the act of smithing took a lot of time, unless you were an actual weaponsmith, and I always like to beat ADOM before day 65 or so. If you weren't lucky enough to find a forge in the UD or have Dwarftown spawn before D:10, smithing would also involve a bit of corruption, which I'm never a fan of. Finally, I never saw the point of wasting so much time doing something that a blessed scroll of defense or protection could do just as well.

Time constraints and finding corruption free forges won't be a problem in JADE, which addresses two of my issues right off the bat. The last issue is making smithing more interesting than a scroll of protection. Here's a few of my thoughts, and I've love to see yours.

The Smith Guild

I think Guild's are the coolest thing ever, as you might have seen in my mindcrafting thread, and I hope there's a guild to be found for every possible profession. There's absolutely no way the game could exclude a smithing guild.

For a fee, the guild would teach the PC how to smith, and for another fee one could have access to a force and smithing equipment like anvils and leather aprons when needed. But for a character interested in doing more, advanced smithing techniques could be taught as well.

Gem Encrusting

A character with a high level in both smithing and gemology should be able to learn the art of affixing precious gems to the pommel of weapons or perhaps in armor as well. When encrusting a normal gem like a sapphire or ruby into an item it could raise its sale value, making this a lucrative way to make money. Armor embedded with gems could also raise the character's appearance (and perhaps make him more likely to be robbed).

This gets interesting when you begin to encrust magic gems. A gem of fire could add fire damage to a weapon, while a crystal of learning in a helmet could transform it into a helm of mental stability. There are few types of magical gems currently in ADOM, so you can add loads more to allow for different magical effects and modifiers.

For balance issues, there should of course be a cap on how many gems can be encrusted onto an item. It should also probably be impossible to add magical gems to an artifact since the power of the object is too strong to be enhanced by a piddly gem.

Artifact gems that could add multiple modifiers when embedded in a weapon could also be a possibility.

Item Creation

This is the main reason I would say for joining the smithing guild: they would teach a character how to create his own weapons. For balance issues, this should be a skill reserved for very experienced smiths. The first step would be learning how to create a basic item class, such as an ordinary polearm or a helm.

The second step could be learning how to forge weapons from rarer ore like adamantium.

The final level of item creation should be making your own magical items. This would best function like a more complex version of alchemy in ADOM. Each item "recipe" if you will would be based on variables like ore required, smithing skill, items such as herbs, gems, and monster body parts, and other skills like gemology and even magic.

For example, a simple recipe like a sword of speed could require mithril ore or better, smithing of 75, and the bones of a quickling. A really nifty item like a mace of devastation could require eternium, smithing at 100, magic at 80, demon daises, the skull of a swamp hydra, and the powdered bones of a black dragon. Or something like that.

Liek alchemy, the recipes could be randomly generated. So the smithing recipe for a sword of speed would always be relatively simple, but constantly different so that you could never plan too far ahead to get the desired weapon.

Different smithing guilds could of course offer different skills and recipes to learn. A chaotic smithing guild could teach you how to make vampiric weapons for example, which would require in addition to anything else proficiency in Necromancy.

Smithing and Artifacts

I personally don't think you should be able to modify, let only create, artifacts, but perhaps others have ideas for implementing this in a balanced way.

Any thoughts or item recipes you'd like to suggest?

[reich]

Yeah, creating your own weapons and armor was one of the things ADOM sorely missed, especially if there was Weaponsmith character class.

Applying the skill, you'd maybe get a list of items availbe for creation, like:

a) short sword
b) long sword
c) two-handed sword
etc, and the list would expand as the PC gains levels. After manufacturing the item, our smith could then proceed to give it magical proporties via re-forging it with some sort of special ingredients.

[F50]

Magical gems, hmmm. Magical gems should be pretty common for weaponsmiths (just like books are for wizards in ADOM). A gem of fire should do about as much damage as fire bolt and have to be thrown, using it up. Weaponsmiths should be able to make these gems have a lasting effect. This effect would be somewhat weak and require several gems to make it strong. Gem smithing should require mana and be an alternative to arcane and clerical magic.

I suppose this would make the weaponsmiths more like artificers, but I like it.

[theotherhiveking]

Artifacts?


The idea is to create your own item with the very best materials and then use youe uber smithing skill to keep improving it until it is powerful enought to be an artifact.

[F50]

not really artifacts, just magical items. Even if it could be called an artifact it would not be an artifact under the definition in ADOM.

[Ars]

Item Creation

This is the main reason I would say for joining the smithing guild: they would teach a character how to create his own weapons. For balance issues, this should be a skill reserved for very experienced smiths. The first step would be learning how to create a basic item class, such as an ordinary polearm or a helm.

The second step could be learning how to forge weapons from rarer ore like adamantium.

The final level of item creation should be making your own magical items. This would best function like a more complex version of alchemy in ADOM. Each item "recipe" if you will would be based on variables like ore required, smithing skill, items such as herbs, gems, and monster body parts, and other skills like gemology and even magic.

For example, a simple recipe like a sword of speed could require mithril ore or better, smithing of 75, and the bones of a quickling. A really nifty item like a mace of devastation could require eternium, smithing at 100, magic at 80, demon daises, the skull of a swamp hydra, and the powdered bones of a black dragon. Or something like that.

Liek alchemy, the recipes could be randomly generated. So the smithing recipe for a sword of speed would always be relatively simple, but constantly different so that you could never plan too far ahead to get the desired weapon.

Different smithing guilds could of course offer different skills and recipes to learn. A chaotic smithing guild could teach you how to make vampiric weapons for example, which would require in addition to anything else proficiency in Necromancy.

Smithing and Artifacts

I personally don't think you should be able to modify, let only create, artifacts, but perhaps others have ideas for implementing this in a balanced way.

Any thoughts or item recipes you'd like to suggest?

How would creating weapons be for very experienced smiths only? Its the first step of learning smithing, in real life too. Making 1d8dmg long swords and [+1,+1] metal helmets is hardly game-breaking, and that's where you should begin your training. When you get better, from the same materials you could make things like 1d8+5 swords and [+2,+3] helmets eventually. With experience you could start working on better metals also as you said. I'm undecided whether I like your take on making magic weapons or not, but magical smithing should be separated from normal smithing in that it's not just the next step of smithing but something different in essence. Keep in mind that eternium items can be REALLY nice even without magical touches. Magical additions could be learned like spells and use a recipe system like you described or something else. One idea I thought of is draining the PCs powers, ie. stats, like necromancy in ADOM.

Also I don't see it completely game-breaking that the PC could make artifacts - that's essentially making an item indestructible (and so preventing further modification) and giving it a name.

Also smithing services should be buyable! Like buying items, but requesting an exact item instead of just choosing from whats in the shop right now. Also most basic encrusting jobs could be bought.

[rmcin329]

Hmmn i see a lot of nice ideas here, but i wonder, which of them(if any) TB will decide to use.

[Worst Player... ever]

Smithing can easily unbalance this game. It didn't in ADOM, because time is a bit of a factor in ADOM, and it's generally a pain in the a** to get all the necessary gear together. In JADE, you can take your sweet time and eventually have all artifact gear, or [+9, +9] adamantium or eternium stuff. I like the idea of making lesser items first, but eventually any smith will get a 100 smithing score.

I hope that if it does get put in, that it's limited to the weaponsmith character class... kinda like Necromancy is limited to Necromancers (and possibly bards). And even then, I'd have an 'only one artifact per lifetime' rule, if artifact creation is allowed at all.

Also, if buying smithing services is put in, then I think there should be a gradual degradation of item quality over time to compensate for this. Otherwise things might really run amok. A weapon/armor with a ton of pluses should be much harder to maintain for a non-weaponsmith, like a +9, +9 item would lose pluses much faster than a +1, +1.

[ABCGi]

I prefer comments from players like "Worst Player... ever" - instead of accommodating the 5 percent of players that excel at ADOM it should really be aimed at the masses (graphical tiles as a default are a must for one, it is 2011 and it is in Java!).

The usual problem with suggestions in these kind of threads is they are over-powering and ruin the game balance - and these are why they are mostly rejected by game designers, even if they like the "good idea".

Smithing clearly needs to give something that is not overpowering but can not be achieved in any other way (but is also not essential to have) - something like when wielding your own weapon you are able to reach a higher weapon proficiency, or some other such idea.

Anyway that's my two cents...

--
ABCGi

[CloudKing]

when I first started playing ADOM I had assumed that making my own weapons was what I would be doing if I rolled a weapon smith. I was somewhat disappointed when I found out this was not the case.
There are some good ideas here and I do hope that TB does decide on implementing some form of weapon forging.