The ultimate guide to Bannerlord’s smithing system.
The Basics – What is Smithing?
Smithing, in Bannerlord, is a skill in the Endurance row that allows you to forge and smelt weapons within the game.
The higher your skill, the more options you will have. At the lowest tiers, you will be making mediocre hatchets. At the highest tiers, you will be able to make swords only kings would dream of wielding (a king that you could become!)
The skill tree’s perk options all have to do with modifying some part of the smithing process which we will discuss later in this guide. For example, the first perk you get to choose makes charcoal or iron production more plentiful and resource efficient. More on that later.
Where can I smith?
At every major city, there is a smithy. Click the option in the screenshot below to enter the smithy.
Another significant part of smithing is the smithing cooldown. You can only do a certain amount of actions in the smithy before you will have to wait to smith again. It appears that every day you are able to do one action, and you can stockpile these actions up to three or four – I do not know the extent of this yet, as there is no information on this yet. Just be aware that you cannot smelt an entire arsenal of weapons or craft twelve spears in one trip to the smithy.
Smelting & Resource Procurement
You can’t make a sandwich without bread, and you can’t make a sword without iron. In Bannerlord, there are NINE different resources for smithing. In the screenshot, you can see them in order at the bottom of the screen.
They are…
- Iron Ore
- Crude Iron
- Wrought Iron
- Iron
- Steel
- Fine Steel
- Thamskene Steel
- Hardwood
- Charcoal
In the refine portion of this guide, we will talk more about this resources in depth. However, to get these resources, there are three options:
– Buy them from a town who produces them for cheap OR buy them from a city.
– Ransack them from a caravan
– Smelt weapons down into their original parts.
You can always find hardwood and iron ore in the major cities to start your crafting journey. From there, you should be able to gain some basic levels in smithing.
Let’s take another look at the smelt screen.
On the right-hand side, you can see the weapons you are able to smelt. Here, I have a polearm which I crafted that I do not want anymore (it’s a bad spear). As we can see from the icons next to it, smelting it will give me one crude iron and one hardwood (mouse over the icons in-game to see what those resources are while you are learning the icons). However, to smelt it, I require one charcoal first.
To smelt it, click on the polearm on the right column, then click smelt at the bottom of the screen.
In smelting, you will gain the resources it mentions, but you also will gain experience in smithing and, if you smelt a decently high ranked item, like a tier 2 or 3 sword, you will get a part of a weapon which you can then use in smithing.
The Forge – The Actual Crafting Part
This is the forge tab. This is where you get to make your gear. You can make anything from swords to daggers to javelins and maces. You cannot make armor, shields, or bows/crossbows.
On the forge screen, you will see this meter on the left.
This meter tells us how hard it is to make a weapon. If your smithing skill, displayed on the right of the meter, is higher or equal to the difficulty, you will be able to make a decent or better version of the weapon you desire. If it is higher, you will still be able to try and make said weapon, but you will probably make one that is essentially worthless.
Each weapon has a different difficulty, based on these factors:
Weapon class (axes and spears are very simple to make, swords are far harder)
The tier of the weapon’s components you chose (tier 1 components, like a basic mallet head for a mace, are far easier to make than a tier IV ornate mace head).
The size of the components you chose. The slider for each component, past the middle point, increases the difficulty. A medium or small sized axehead is easy, but making a bigger one increases the difficulty by 1-4 points.
At the bottom of the forge, you will see all of the resources you can use. This axe would expend 2 wrought iron and 1 hardwood, as well as 1 charcoal. Every weapon expends charcoal upon creation.
On the right of the forge you can see the components you have access to when making your weapons. You can filter them by tiers at the top. Currently, I only have one axe handle. You gain components by smelting or forging weapons, and components are gained randomly through these processes. Each component modifies the weapon in a certain way – the change are not just visual. For example, the pickaxe head gives more damage, but is harder to control and is slightly slower than the hatchet head.
Each tier requires different resources. Tier 1 requires wrought iron and/or crude iron, Tier 2 requires wrought iron and/or iron, as does Tier 3, and so on. Each component requires a different resource amount. At later tiers, like tier 5, you may require crude iron, steel, and thamaskene steel to make just one sword.
On the bottom left, you can see a portrait of your character. Click that to change the companion who is crafting the weapon. If you have a companion who is a good smith, make them craft it!
When you click smith, you will see the outcome, and be able to name the weapon if you wish. This outcome will vary based on your skill relative to the difficulty, with stats going up or down based on the difference.
As of 3/31/2020, there is a bug where you cannot make some weapons, like axes, even if you have the components to make them. This should be hotfixed.
Refine
You’ll be in this tab a lot.
The refine tab is where you are able to manipulate the resources you have gathered.
On the right column, you will see many resources. The resources on the right, the ones the arrows are pointing to, are the ones that are crafted from the ones on the left. As you can see, two hardwood can be used to create one charcoal. To create one charcoal, click refine at the bottom of the screen.
As you can see, I cannot refine steel into fine steel or Thamaskane steel in this tab. That is because my smithing level is too low. Eventually, you will be able to choose a perk which allows you to refine those higher quality steels.
You may recall earlier in the smelting tab that we smelted a spear that gave me one hardwood and one crude iron, at the expensive of one charcoal. However, one charcoal is worth two hardwoods. Is it worth it? Consider the following when smelting items…
Are the raw resources worth more than the initial item? (for selling)
Do I need the resources extracted more than I need the charcoal?
Often, the answer will be yes, but remember the smithing cooldown. Would you rather smelt that mediocre spear, or make an awesome sword at this moment? That is up to you.
The Testing Grounds
XP gains, random testing points.
This section is just a mess of everything you all + myself have tested.
Foamslinger:
- 71 XP for a super cheap two handed polearm (40 difficulty, 2 mats)
- 160 for pricier 1h sword (70 difficulty, 6 mats)
