Heisen-Hunter's Blacksmithy/Salvaging/Arms Lore/Mining Guide

Note - due to significant changes in crafting in LoU, this guide contains some out of date information.
Blacksmithy has always been the staple of crafting skills in any MMORPG and even more so, in Ultima Online. Blacksmithy is responsible for almost all of the gear that will equip warriors. It's a long, arduous journey but well worth it in the end when you can arm your entire guild for days of battle. Most UO Veteran Blacksmiths remember evenings, standing around the West Britain Blacksmith Shop, aiding travelers in need of metal-work. In LoU, it's no different. Grab your pick in one hand and your hammer in the other and begin your journey with a few pointers from this guide. Core skills you will be needing for a successful Blacksmith are:


 * Blacksmithing
 * Arms Lore
 * Mining

Blacksmithing
Blacksmithy is your main skill that determines your success rate on various items you wish to craft. (more on this)

Arms Lore
Arms lore is a skill that accompanies weapon/armor crafting skills and is used by opening the skill menu and using the Arms Lore icon then targeting a piece of armor or a weapon. This will show you specific details about its durability and what class of item it is. To gain Arms Lore skill, all you have to do is inspect the same item over and over until 100. It's time-consuming but easy and relatively free. Some opt to train Arms Lore after Blacksmithy, for more chances to gain skill off failing, but not confirmed on whether Arms Lore aids in success of the item itself or only for the 'Exceptional Quality' benefit.

Arms lore will also help in crafting 'Exceptional Quality' items. Most of the items you craft will be of normal quality but every once in a while you will get lucky and craft one of Exceptional Quality. Exceptional Quality items are a step above regular crafted items, in that they will have higher attack or armor ratings. The higher your Arms Lore skill, the better chance you have to craft exceptional items. These such items will be created with text on them, reading 'Exceptional Quality' below the weapon name.

To compare crafted Exceptional with Identified magic items:


 * Exceptional Weapons = Power magic weapons
 * Exceptional Armor = Fortification Armor

Mining
Mining is optional to have on your Blacksmith, as you can create a separate character for gathering, but for convenience, it's a nice thing to have on your crafter. There are many crafting skills that use ingots such as Tinkering and Carpentry. Some also prefer to keep ONLY crafting skills on their crafters and leave all other survival skills to other characters as those skill points would be better used on another character, given limited the character creation slots and limited skill points (700 per character).

Purchase mining picks from the NPC Tinker shop, or save gold by having them created by a player Tinker. If you spread out your mining, you should never run out of ore nodes to mine. If you start at 30 skill, getting iron will seem very slow around 30-45 but it will pick up from there. Note that if you fail to gather ore, it is most likely because your skill is too low to mine the ore there. You will easily GM mining while gathering materials for Blacksmithy.

Find yourself a mining spot (look for the ridgelines on the main map). Start on one end of a ridgeline and make your way to the other end, never staying in one area too long. You want to give the ore some time to spawn before returning back to try to mine it again. A good way to start, is to have a rune marked on one end of the ridgeline, mine your way to the other end, then by the time you are done, you can recall back to your original spot and mine the same area again.

Two great assets to any miner is a pack horse (bought at stable), Giant Beetle and Fire beetle. Pack animals such as horses and Giant Beetles are great for lugging ore to the forge, or you can even go one step further and smelt your ore on the back of a Fire Beetle! For efficiency, you can bring both of them with you, as well as a horse, while you mine. This way you can smelt ore on the go, conserve space and mine more ingots, per run. You will need the assistance from a player Animal Tamer to purchase or tame your beetles for you. Right click the fire beetle for the mining menu.

Salvaging
One thing that will save you a lot of time, is grabbing yourself a pouch from the Trader NPC. Right click the pouch and choose 'toggle crafting bag.' This will ensure that all the items you craft, go into that pouch for easy salvaging. You can salvage all items in a pouch by using the salvaging ability on the pouch itself. To do this, equip a mining pick and use the 'E' smelting ability on the container or item you desire to salvage. Note that salvaging does not return the full amount of ingots used to create the item and also has the chance of no return at all.

Here is a list of things to make to GM Blacksmithy. During this process, we will be crafting tools and weapons only, as they take the least amount of ingots to create. The goal is to keep your success rate between 30-60% while crafting various items on the list. Failing is ok. Failing a lot still results in good skill gain. The weapons we will be creating take 5 ingots each to create, regardless of metal color. In this guide, we will be advising to make 'Shiv' fencing weapons, but it doesn't hurt to alternate with sword or mace, 5-ingot weapons, to have a variation.

(Start the next tier when you can successfully craft the items at 25% success and move onto the next tier when you reach 80-90% success)

Note: this training guide is completely obsolete; the Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile no longer exists


 * 0-30: Buy skill book from skill trainer or
 * 0-50: Start with 50 skill on a new character
 * 30-50: IRON 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile'
 * 40-55: DULL COPPER 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile' and 'Shiv' fencing weapons (start saving your IRON)
 * 55-65: Keep making more DULL COPPER 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile' and 'Shiv' fencing weapon. As you near 65, start alternating making some SHADOW 'Shiv' fencing weapons.
 * 65-75: SHADOW 'Shiv' fencing weapons and start alternating some BRONZE 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile,' the higher your skill gets to 75.
 * 75-85: As you reach near 75, start alternating some COPPER and GOLD 'Shiv' fencing weapons as well as keep creating BRONZE 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile.' 85-90: Start creating some AGAPITE 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile' as well as AGAPITE 'Shiv' fencing weapons.
 * 90-100: You want to use those precious IRON ingots you've been saving and craft the highest skill, lowest ingot, IRON weapon which is the 'Undeath' or the 'Silence' one handed fencing weapon. You can also alternate between some AGAPITE and VERITE 'Dilettantish Anti Husbandry Projectile' but try to conserve, as this metal is hard to come by and very expensive.

Around 80 skill you will start to run out of ingots (if you pre-mined a bunch to train with) and may have to spend around 200,000-500,000 gold on ingots, if you're too impatient to mine more.

Gold is your friend.

Alternative Skilling options:

50-  IRON 'Hanging Cage Deed'