In the world of Dark Age II, its blacksmiths who largely rule the marketplace and bring in the greatest amount of wealth. The landscape of war and hardship make weapons and armor a necessity, and while other options exist, most players will default to those items made by smiths. Blacksmithy is a long task towards becoming a Master or Grandmaster. It requires a large number of ingots and a great deal of patience. But as you progress, the items you will make and the money you will pull in from sales will increase drastically.

The majority of items sold by smiths are weapons and armor used by all forms of warriors. When you just start off, what items you can craft and how well you can craft is dependent upon your skill level. The higher your skill the greater your access to new items. Quality of items, and the difficulty to craft them will be expanded upon later.

There are four categories of weapons:

• Edged (Swordsmanship)
• Pointed (Fencing)
• Blunt (Macefighting)
• Shields (Parrying)

Within armor, there are three categories:

• Chainmail
• Platemail
• Helmets

The raw material for smithing is ingots; refined metal. These can be bought from miners in game, though this guide suggests you take Mining yourself. When you first start off you will find it hard to make money less you go out and hunt for gold. Ingots generally sell at 1 gold crown = 1 ingot, so you’ll need a lot of money to be an efficient smith. However, if you take mining yourself, you can come up with an easy source of initial income to get a shop started and then start selling. Later on, you can give up mining for iron and just buy it from other players, but continue to use your mining to gather rare ores.

The other primary resource is hides used in armor. These are gathered through hunting animals and carving them. A tailor must then cure the hides. If you take 40 or so tailoring, you can get away with curing hides at a good rate of success. Or, if you have a tailor friend, ask them to cure your hides.

Rare ingots and hides will aid in increasing the chance of producing a good quality item. Note, there are no special properties to metals. An exceptional adamant sword is the same as an exceptional iron sword. However, it is easier to craft an exceptional sword with adamant than it is with iron. For more information about this, see the overview.

For a list of rare ingots that exist, see the mining guide. For a list of animals that likely drop unique hides, see the beastiary. How much these items raise the quality of an item, or the difficulty to craft it, will not be revealed.

Though weapons and armor are the meat and potatoes of Blacksmithy, there are many other things that require this skill to make. Several tools needed in other crafts, nails to repair houses, braziers, rings for ringmail armor (ringmail requires tailoring to make), and decorative shields and armor displays.

Smithing is one of the more difficult fields to break into because there are generally a good number of smiths already in the world. Players often find a favorite smith and stick with them through good and bad. When you first start, collect enough gold to buy a vendor. They typically cost 500 crowns. You can earn this money in game through hunting, selling your goods without a vendor, or selling ingots you mine if you took mining.

Most people in game look for above average or exceptional. If you cheat people out on quality, you’ll earn a bad name for yourself. Be careful not to mistakenly put poor quality items up for sale then. Over time you’ll establish a name for yourself and people will come looking to buy goods. When you start out, the easiest way to make sales is LOW PRICES. You have to give people an incentive to switch smiths, cheap goods are a very good incentive.