These are my 2 cents :
1. As i\'ve mentioned in my post about economy, i think smithes actually aquiring the ore is simply a terrible and childish thing.
If you can\'t find anyone to sell you metal ignots, you should just buy them from npc\'s, this will still yield a nice profit, plus if anyone read the post about mining, decent mining wouldn\'t be as simple as point and click.
2. The original post mentioned making a sword would take as long as 1-2 hours, in my opinion i agree it shouldn\'t take a few seconds like must of the games we know, however i think that the bigger and heavier a sword is the more time it should take, where it ranges from 5 minutes up to even 1-2 hours.
I have said so in one of the roles i posted about economy, if a weapon takes quick to produce, you flood the market with it, instead if you devide it to different stages and make it longer, you both compensate the skill demand and you somehow raise the profit of weapons and lower the quantities.
simply said, i think the must basic weapon, a simple knife, would take around 5-10 minutes to make, will require very few stages to make and short time for each one, most of the medium weapons in the game should take around 15-25 minutes in my opinion, whereas the very heavy ones (gigantic dragon slasher 2-handed broad sword - berserk style ^^) would be made of many different stages and will take a great deal of time to make, and will both worth a lot and be quite rare.
3. as for the stages, i think there should be something that shows the smith the \"shape\" of the sword, for example if he/she hammers it, it will give warnings that the blade is starting to dull, and the smith will know therefore that he/she needs to heat it, other than that, instead of working on a plan, he can simple take a few slabs of ore the more he takes the bigger weapon it will be, and he\'ll decide the shape (nothing fancy, but just a blade/axe-blade/spear-blade sort of thing).
again, it\'s not anything complicated, but it seems less robotic.
some stages get mixed or so :
- hammering and the occasional heating up
- sharpening/cleaning stage (which are more complex the sharper (\"better\" ) the blade is)
- finishing stage which evolve cooling down and flat polishing.
- taking care of workshop equipment - making sure the forge stays heating up throughout the first stage, making sure there\'s always a bucket with a fresh supply of water, and making sure the equipment is in a proper condition.
I always linked armor making with weapon making, and since they are seperated it means that each have to be complex or we\'re up to some dull jobs ^^