Weapon crafting?

[bilbous]

Is it the blacksmith skill that determines when you can actually start making blades? Creating handles only seems to use that skill so how can it be otherwise unless the book of blades is actually wrong and I can shape blades somehow with training and 0 level skill in the particular weapon. I certaimly do not see shape knife/sword blade in the description of my book of blades.

[Rongar Elani]

Wait, what?

As far as I know, you need to be trained in [weapon]making and blacksmithing before you can start hammering your first blade, since you get experience in both when doing so.

[bilbous]

I have that training but my book of blades only talks about shaping handles not blades from stock. I can apparently work blades if I have them as well but no mention of creating them. I suppose that could be to keep the specific quantity per blade hidden but it might also be an error or depend on the blacksmith level as working the stocks I have had only seems to give blacksmith practice. I have not tried working enough to turn into a blade yet as losing stocks is not fun and might be a risk.

I am not sure if it is a bug or intentional but I have been super-heating my stocks and hammering them for blacksmith practice as they return to normal stock instead of becoming handles. It is a little time consuming and reduces the quality of stock but it is less time consuming than replacing the stocks every time. At the moment my quality is not such that it seems useful to complete a weapon part.

[Rongar Elani]

I'll have to check back on that, but last time I read the book, it said something like: Heat X steelstock to X heated steelstock using forge. Hammer X heat steelstock to [weapon] alpha blade using anvil.

However, it could really be, that the book of blades doesn't reveal all the desired information, until you

a) actually found out about a certain process, like hammer X heated stocks to alpha blade (which would mean that you are the one making notes in the book) or

b) the information gets revealed depending on your skill level.

However, check out hammering heated steel stocks of different amounts, until you made a blade, then look if the information got added in your book of blades.

[bilbous]

Looking at my book, lots of forging, quenching and sharpening, some combining into kits but only shaping handles using the hammer. The book itself is not particularly easy to read as it cannot be widened to a point where each action is on its own line and there are no blank lines between the actions so that they tend to run together without careful inspection.

It is probably because my blacksmith and sword making skills are 3 and 0 respectively. As I said hammering a super heated or red hot stock returns a normal stock with a reduction of quality and some blacksmith practice. This is better than it turning to dust or crumbling. I haven't tried quenching it yet but I suspect that would not do anything useful.

[Rongar Elani]

Even with some moderate skills in blacksmithing, nothing can be done with superheated or red hot heated stocks (yet). It's not good to work on those, and certainly not the best way to train blacksmithing, but if you happen to overheat them by mistake, quenching them would also make their quality drop, so it's not much difference if you hammer or quench them. I think there was once a bug though, that turned steelstock of any amounts into a handle, when being overheated and quenched twice, so i would still recommend hammering such stocks, although I'm not sure if that bug is still up to date.

However, the best way to get practice in blacksmithing is by hammering stocks and blades, because that way you also get practice in weapon making for each step on the way to a delta blade. Once you've reached the status of a delta blade, you can superheat or red hot heat the blade and then hammer it, which gives you back the respective amount of stocks you used for the blade, yet with a lowered quality. This is still the best method to train crafting skills though, and high quality steelstock isn't necessary to have until you are level 30-40 in weapon making anyway.

PS: Yeah, the books are a mess and give you a headache when reading them

[Aiken]

I was making weapons at sword making level 0. The pride when I made a weapon that had the massive quality of 44.

Unless it has been changed the book does not reflect what you can actually do until level 1.

[TomT]

Yes Aiken is correct - you must achieve one level past where things are possible before the secrets of all the processes are revealed.

[bilbous]

Thank you for a definitive answer.