It seems smithing has improved a lot since the last time I’ve played. Disappointed that stamina still only regenerates while waiting in towns tho, it seriously slows the flow of gameplay when you have to sit in a town for several hours to smelt all your stuff.
Yeah it's really come a long way from javelin crafting lol those were crazy days! Yeah the stamina is really annoying to deal with, but I'm not sure how else they can deal with it. I feel like it would be super OP if it didn't take actual time to do. It's pretty easy to get hundreds of crafting materials each and just go wild lol I mean you can still do it with companions right now... bah who knows lol
@@Strat-Guides I think a good alternative would be to allow the player to set up their goal for material, and that each action cost times and not stamina that you have to refill. The result would be the same, that it takes time to Smith, but the player can do something else in the meantime.
@@st4rk1113r That's a really good idea. You could leave a companion in a town to finish up jobs you queue up for them as well instead of having to be there with your entire army, waiting to craft a couple things. I really like that suggestion and it wouldn't be that hard to implement (I think anyhow lol I don't know how to program)
@@Strat-Guides me neither but I like to blame developers when I don't get features I want 😁 No seriously I think it's a conscious choice from them, but I have to say it's a boring one, so I wish they'd took the less boring action.
@@st4rk1113r Haha fair play :D It probably is for them and without knowing their full working roadmap (the actual one, not the one they try to sell to everyone that will be cut up before full release) it's so hard to say what the end goal is. Either way, It's still a fun game and I'm glad they have smithing in the first place.
Man, do you know how difficult it is to find a guide, this complete yet so succinct? The fact you show the math is just the cherry on top, great work man, thank you.
I'm still working on the succinct part... I tend to put stuff that I think is funny but irrelevant (but can't help myself lol). I appreciate the kind words. Math is awesome! I actually have a Pi tattoo to back that theory up.
@@Strat-Guides As someone new to your content, I'd say keep the funny if irrelevant, it helps keep the statistics engaging, and the video length is great, others don't give the same clarity and take longer getting there too.
Got it, I think maybe a good compromise is to include little snippets (as opposed to 25s diversion) just to keep the flow of the video going smoothly. I appreciate the feedback, will keep the memes rolling lol
A few hints from me, working as of July 2023: 0. As is mentioned in the video, there's a particular dagger and throwing daggers that are cheap as heck and give all metal types up to fine steel. There are also many cheap weapons that yield multiple pieces of crude iron, wrought iron and iron upon smelting. 1. The wooden hammer and (normal) pitchfork yield 3 hardwood each when smelted. With the charcoal perk that turns 2 wood into 3 charcoal, you can use these to generate obscene amounts of charcoal without ever procuring wood (as long as you have the 1 initial charcoal to smelt the first wooden hammer, you generate enough charcoal to smelt three more). 2. There is a combination of a Tier4 blade/guard/pommel and Tier3 handle components for a 2H Sword that only uses wrought iron and iron. No steel, or fine steel, as could be expected of tier 3/4 components. And it sells for 14.400 gold. Combining the points above means that you can walk into town with 1 charcoal and 500 gold and make any amount of money you want. Also: 3. The randomize button is great for filling orders. Just smash the button as fast as you can, paying attention to the numbers flickering green/red on the right. If you catch a glimpse of a randomization result that yielded most numbers in green, stop clicking, use the undo button to return to that setup (because you will have most likely clicked a few more times before you realized you had a good candidate), and then tailor that setup to match the order. It's much more convenient than picking every single component from scratch I think.
@@brogod751 1. Take Steel 3 perk in smithing tree (100) on your character or a companion 2. Smelt certain weapons. You'll have to experiment which ones yield what. Pugio are notorious for being cheap, abundant and giving lots of higher end metals.
"lord gairos here is that weapon you ordered." *Hands him a hunk of slag with a handle sticking out* "well this isn't quite what I ordered, but here's 500 denars."
Thank you for a very informative video. Without exaggeration, this is the most informative video on smithing (and I have watched about a dozen and read many guides) Thank you for the time and effort on this video. The format and “scientific method” is very much appreciated. The video also clarifies some misconceptions (e.g. that 2-handed handles must be used for max.sale price and not 1H-2H as per your (and my) findings).
Thanks! I studied physics in University so I was trained to think this way - I guess I can finally say I've used my degree for something lol because I have not used it otherwise... I appreciate your support and very glad to hear both of our data match on the 2H grips!
Thank you so much for watching this guide! Please let me know if you see any errors or mistakes - my brain is now mush after 40+ hours of work on this beast so I'm sure there are some. Don't forget to leave me some feedback on how I can continue to improve the quality of these guides. My goal is to have the best/most useful guides for Bannerlord on UA-cam and your help is much needed. I appreciate all of you!!
Hahaha "SPEIILLENNNNN!!!" That was a legit game back in the day too. Did you ever play starsiege tribes? That was one of my favorites too from around that time.
@@Strat-Guides sadly i had never heard of that before. will check out what i missed there tho. :D just for clarification(for those who dont know): that clip played at the start of the vid was a popular meme (in germany) way before the term was even properly coined. the Kid was trying to start UT and was raging cause his potato took to long starting it. pretty sure it was staged with the kid doing some other(unrelated) bits but that was very early YT (not even sure if it wasn't one of these LAN-party videos at the start and only later got on YT) so i cant even remember....
Bro your guide is way more legendary than the lv275 smithing perk. Even after playing 800+ hrs of bannerlord I still learned a lot. I've been making strategy guides on Chinese forums and getting some views but my quality is nowhere near your level... You truly deserve more my man. Subbed + Liked all your videos.
Dang now that's a legit compliment! Xie Xie! I learn a ton making these guides as well. It's funny how many things I think I know going into it, only to find out I was totally wrong... I appreciate the support. I would ask for your channel too but my Mandarin is crap and Canto non-existent lol send me the link anyhow and I'll sub back!
@@Strat-Guides Lol it's actually just a text-image based guide that I wrote a year ago (which I paused on updating due to other obligations of life). Link is here if you'd like to see what it is. It's on a forum called Zhihu which is kinda like Quora but Chinese version. It's quite lengthy with 500+ images so don't click on it unless you are connected to wifi.. www.zhihu.com/question/371310148/answer/1143313807 There is a pretty large M&B player base in China as well. I personally got very into medieval history playing warband since 2011 so it's always nice to see people across the world enjoying the same content. Things like this are what bring people closer as a whole.
@@JayJay-wf2oe The only thing harder than learning to speak Chinese is... Learning to read Chinese lol I tried to do both at the same time for a few months and it was brutal! I'll definitely check it out though. For sure, it's such an interesting time in history. I grew up playing the age of empires franchise and have always loved the historical games. It's just so cool to get an idea of what battle was like back then from 1st person.
Great job again! I've also spent countless hours smithing, and i will just add some very basic stuff for beginners: Using your companion for smithing is a great way to improve your production (and their stats) therefore your revenues! First thing to do is to make them craft the highest possible xp winning weapon so they will level up at light speed! The point is to allow them to climb up to the perk where you have to choose between spending less stamina for refining or for smelting (I don't remember the skill number though), and then to create your "team smelting" and your "team refining"... make them work haha! NEVER sell the wooden hammers and the pitchforks! They are a great reserve of hardwood! There are indeed some weapon better for smelting than for selling, and the two you gave (pugio dagger and tribesman throwing dagger) are by far the best price/material deal. Also, for me, anything that gives at least 2 hardwood when smelted, is good to be smelted... it's only a win. I think (I'm really not sure though) that when you craft a weapon for a customer through the crafting order tab, this weapon will be added to this PNJ inventory and therefore could be used against you (once again not sure, but I think I recognized a weapon I crafted for a band leader in a town, at the moment this band leader was hitting me with it.... "hey I know this weap... *Bonk* oh shit!")... clearly something to be checked, it could have been just a coincidence! When you name the weapon you have crafted, you can go with fancy names (I saw an "early retirement" one in the vid haha) like widowmaker and stuff... I prefer to use a naming system from D&D and give a sufficiently descriptive name of the weapon AND the bonus / malus that comes with it. Example: Tamaskeene two handed sword +5 (the weapon gained +5 on the stats thanks to the perks). Also, when I craft a weapon for a companion, I prefer to name it sword of "X", "X" being the name of the companion, so if you have to change this companion equipment for a single battle, you will find it back easily and it will avoid you to sell it carelessly at the next town after the battle. eeeeh... I have nothing more to add right now, the video covered about everything!
These are all great points and I completely agree with each! Especially the companion part. I did a 25 day challenge after making this guide and did pretty well (or so I thought lol) until I saw Flesson19 nearly double my output because he hired companions early. I was shocked at how much difference it made! That's hilarious about the weapons being used against you! We should just make a TON of meme builds that are terrible and see if they end up being use lol. Like a Two Handed Polearm with max length and the slowest parts possible, it would be like fighting against a sloth. Or a teeny-tiny sword that does almost no damage. Could be a funny video in the making! I use a similar naming system too! Lol I have a bunch of "112/90/125/90 2H SWD" tags floating around my game now, but at least I don't have to guess what the stats are : )
@@Strat-Guides "112/90/125/90 2H SWD"... I get the practical part, but such a name lacks romance a little bit haha "You re going to Mordor Frodo? YOU HAVE MY AXE!" - And MY BOW! - And my "112/90/125/90 2H SWD! ... what?" xD
@@jawascrapper6277 LOL trust me I know, but I can't help it! I'm a numbers nerd and my brain isn't all the creative : ) They should add in a random name generator. Maybe it could spit some cool ones out, like "Derthert's Bane" or something like that.
someone said it before, but i highly appreciate the scientific method and multiple-test-runs that you do to back your data up i also really dig the consistency in how you lay out your banner lord guide videos, and the time stamps. **oh yes, those time stamps** very solid - and just in time as i get back into bannerlord!
Without all the tests it would be impossible to decode the TaleWorlds Blackbox lol I appreciate the support! Yes the time stamps, I hate it when people don't put timestamps! I think some don't include it because they think it will hurt their metrics or ad revenue or something, but the problem with that thinking is it puts the business before the customer. You guys come first, everything else is secondary :) Welcome back to Bannerlord and good luck on your playthrough!
Never knew most of the things you mention in the video. I have played the game for 200+ hours and when I thought I had finally grasped the essence of the game it turned out I was merely scratching the surface...
I laugh so hard about the save summing xD I alt f4 out of rage in my first Ironman playthrough and got such a nice surprise when I go back to my game! Alt f4 is now my new mantra. I then pretend myself my char as good sense of events to come and dodge all those bigs armies.
This tutorial is super helpful- I always ignored the order system in past runs, but no longer 🤣 also, the RNG seed that Bannerlord uses to calculate RNG instances is reset every time you enter/leave a town. This is the only way to cheese speech dialog successes bc otherwise it will give you the same results every time
I'm glad it was helpful! Interesting, I always thought it was from loading the game. Someone mentioned that they calculate RNG from a central "stack" that resets each time you load a new save, which locks the results in with each load. I'm not smart enough to look into the code and confirm it though :(
Thank you for watching! The crafting systems needs a lot of work still, but I 100% agree with you, they put a TON of effort into this and even with all it's warts, I absolutely love crafting and the game in general.
get the stamina regen while walking mod, really makes sense, your party manages to march onwards while wounded, they most well add in battle stamina if they have crafting stamina the way it is, makes no sense to have to sleep in a town to regen it
No problem! When I'm going for XP, I just completely ignore the crafting order itself and just make the most expensive weapon I can. They usually give me 50% reward anyways so it's still not bad lol
Honestly the exact content I'm after. Very stat based. Maybe some opinions wouldn't go astray as I'd call you a reliable source at this point! Like whether to advance smithing for main character, or companions? More a subjective than objective thing. Love your work
Thank you! I definitely try to let the math do the talking, but when I do have an opinion it's usually based on the stats. I can't help it, it's how my brain is wired I guess. I appreciate the support :D
Fantastic video. I should also mention that Smithing stamina seems to recover from all resting and waiting actions, to some degree. Waiting at a village to ambush Poachers, waiting at a Bandit Camp until midnight, sieging a town - a good rule is that anywhere you can get your wife pregnant, you can recover Smithing stamina*.
that string of actions you are talking about is basically how RNG calcs work. They do a string. You will see this on most games. A good example is pokemon actually. Using save states can reveal this. Trying to get different results but getting same ones.
@@Strat-Guides It is how all games work, even slot machines in a casino actually. There is a string of numbers (often called seeds) which are referenced by various RNG calls which interpret the called number in various ways (In Doom it could be for the spread of your shotgun blast, the damage, enemy flinch chance, etc). Catching the right seed is what nets you the biggest damage on your BFG shot or getting the right bonuses to your Legendary SatanDethForkReaverBladeofDoomSlayer9001ing. I suspect (but can't prove) the luck improvements from having a higher Smithing skill really just enables more of the pre-programmed seed triggers for the bonuses.
My launch day main character crafts and I can tell you its bonkers the stuff you can craft. The problem is remembering how you crafted what you did. I am so very impressed with how TW did the crafting physics that this alone has possibly kept me logging over double hours than I have otherwise. The weight and balance make a massive difference. I have screenshots. After my experience with crafting I think the game needs some RNG buyable/lootable equipment because when you know how to tailor your crafted weapons they are easily near double and for sure %50 better than pre set. I will always have a crafter even if in is not my character and as it sits I almost always ought roll an END character every time. If TW can get it where I had to choose between END and SOC they would be on to something.
Yeah for sure, there are SO many parts! I can't recall the exact number, but I think it was close to 1500! That's a staggering amount of work on their part. And I can only imagine balancing that many parts would be mentally taxing to say the least lol. I usually end up the same with a strong endurance character, it's hard to get away from the +4 attribute points from the perks!
Absolutely fantastic guide. I've got 100+hours in this game and I still had no idea how smithing really worked until now. Since the latest patch (e1.6.2) the legendary exploit doesn't seem to work consistently anymore.
Thank you for watching! I used to run smithing on all my characters for hundred of hours and I was still learning things when I did all the research for this guide lol it's crazy how much work they put into it. I'll have to double check that, I made the guide in 1.6.2 when it was in Beta branch but it's possible they patched it out. I heard from someone that the devs were watching the guides... I hope they don't have a target on my back lol sniping all my videos!!
So I just loaded up my save file from the guide - I was able to get it to work. Let's try to figure out what the problem is. So what level is your smith? And what perks do you have that give bonus rolls? *I'm in 1.6.3 Beta branch right now*
@@Strat-Guides I wouldn't be surprised if the devs watched your videos. Your videos are likely a tutorial for this game. The devs should take notes! My smithing level is 288. I've got perks in Experienced Smith, Master Smith and Legendary Smith. I saved, then smithed 1h swords until I think I got a legendary smith (+10 stats on top of normal stats), I counted how many items to get there (28 in my case) , re-loaded and smithed what I actually wanted to be a legendary weapon but no luck. I tried a few times. Some of the master and experienced bonuses that were within 1-10 items worked consistently. Maybe it's not consistent after 20 items?
@@Orhanu1 Interesting... I didn't test it beyond 6 or 7 if I recall so that may be the case. Try this, smith 10 at a time and if you don't get one, save it and keep going. Once you get to the point where your legendary roll is within that 10 mark, reload the recent save and see if that works? I have my test character at 330 capped out so the rolls are pretty frequent. Once you get above 300 the frequency increases really fast. Maybe I should make the videos a little crappier so the devs will leave our exploits alone... lol :)
@@Strat-Guides Just watched the Engineering strat video and am currently finishing up the 25 day smiting video, the direct and to the point format is great! Plus the break downs on just about everything. Thank you! From running thousands of battles to days spent in the forge. The content is appreciated.
@@I3uddzo I'm glad you like it! I've been working on different types of videos so feedback like this helps. I'm planning on doing longer videos that take maybe 10+ hours or so and distill it into 20 - 30 minutes highlighting specific things like "how to farm 275 medicine" or "how to start a kingdom fast" etc. Not sure if that would appeal to you?
About the legendary exploit: after some testing, it seems the quality string of smithed weapon is not saved in your save file, but rather kept in the memory. The easiest way to clean the memory and reroll the quality is just to reboot the game. I tested for several times and this worked.
Interesting, that makes sense! So my understanding is that TW has a central RNG that they pull from for all RNG events in the game. The issue is when you reload, it keeps track of the the RNG at that specific time so you get the same "random" results lol Thanks for sharing this!
@@Strat-Guides The only thing I would change is the intro, I'd say at the moment it's a tad "much". Other than that your videos are great, I already watched all of your other guides lol.
Yes I think so too, on my most recent guide I fought the urge to put a long intro and just got right into it. I appreciate the feedback, comments like these make a HUGE difference.
It is worth adding that the forging stamina is also restored when waiting for darkness in the lairs of robbers, so it is worth alternating pumping blacksmithing with cleaning the shelters of bandits.
That's a great point - do you know if waiting on the campaign map out in the open regens stamina as well? Or is it only in town for bandit hideout? Interesting that they would do that, but GREAT info there, thank you for that :)
@@Strat-Guides No, waiting on the map does not restore stamina, we need to check if recovery still works during sieges of cities and castles. I didn't pay attention to it, because by the time you storm cities, it's not so important anymore. And the bandits' shelters are probably considered by the game as a settlement - they are equated with a city. Perhaps there will be a nerf in the future, as has already been done with restoring the health of the wounded while waiting there.
@@RemGaffer Yeah when you said that it recovers stamina that's what I figured would be the case. It's a shame we can't take the hideouts over like a city lol
Good video, I have a character with 301 blacksmithing and likewise and learned things here. And so I can also add some useful information. The difficulty is probably with wrong values, that is, a factor of demand from the buyer, I do not know. But I have gone from having 2-handed hammers with a requirement of 300 and also hitting the order because I use the head and the handle that met the exact values requested by the client, there is not much to miss, there are 2 types of each piece for 2-hand hammers. All orders correspond to the creation of a weapon without modifying the measurements of the parts. If you take the time you can find exactly the weapon that the client wanted. That is why one can fail an order, even passing the threshold of difficulty, because that value, as I said before, is wrong or is something else. A pity that the client does not show exactly what he wants and one must improvise if he does not have the parts unlocked, and hope that the client is satisfied, even that they reject the weapon for being a disastrous job. Blacksmith orders are a consumer scam, you must pay and be happy about it.
Thank you for watching! That's a great analysis. It makes sense that they would pick un-edited parts for the crafting orders and that deviating from that by too much would cause the order to fail in some instances. I'm sure they have more changes coming for smithing, so it will be back to the drawing board soon enough lol!
@@Strat-Guides So, I want to expand this comment because I have made a most interesting discovery. As I said before, the orders correspond to weapons without modifying their standard size, so it is a question of finding the exact part. I have noticed that many times the difficulty and the weight do not agree with the objective. But what I do notice and is very good is that the orders are not random! The value of the order may vary, but they will be ordering the exact same model randomly several times. An example of 1-handed hatchet information that I have collected: denars approx head piece handle piece $240 1-1* 1-1 $1397 2-1 2-2 $3507 3-1 3-6 $6686 4-1 4-5 * The first number corresponds to the level of the piece, the second number to its position in the list (head level 1 / first head on the list) Try in a game, look for orders of one-handed axes and follow my instructions if any of the orders has the same approximate value, the orders vary by a few hundred denars. I made a small list, mainly maces, axes and javelins. the other weapons make me lazy. Now instead of wasting time looking for the part, I look in my list of approximations and I have the exact order at the moment. By the way, that 130k order for a polearm must have been in error, I found its exact parts, I think, and I'm not making the customer happy.
Very interesting find! It makes me wonder how they programmed these orders. I thought originally it was just an RNG picking out stuff around that level of difficulty, but from my data and confirmed by your testing it seems they picked very specific ones AND they repeat. Next time I run a smithy, I'll have to consult back to this comment. By the way, you should make a video on smithing as your data collection is legit! Or at least type something up for the forums or reddit. Thanks for letting me know! About the 130k polearm, I've seen that same order in several towns and it always passed even though I didn't reach specs every time. I've seen the same pattern with others where it will fail 100% no matter what I did (even when meeting all requirements). I think what you said is probably the explanation - that they picked unedited parts. There must be some "tolerance" to the pass fail though because you can pass even after editing to different specs. Maybe it only has a minimum and any edits above that pass? Who knows - TaleWorlds BlackboxTM lol
@@Strat-Guides I entrust you with a second part of the blacksmith guide. My English and my laziness surpass me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I add more data that I gather: 2-handed ax $ 3306 2-2 2-1 $ 11669 3-1 3-2 $ 63197 4-1 4-3 one-handed mace $ 791 1-1 1-2 $ 4304 3-3 3-1 $ 14980 4-7 4-4 javelin $ 1846 2-1 2-1 2-2 5-1 $ 2726 3-1 3-1 4-1 $ 10296 4-2 4-1 2-2 5-1 Regarding the 130k imfame, I did something that I did not think about before, I made one for myself, it is worth about 46k. Perhaps another possibility of the error is that the reward is very high for its real value, it will never agree to pay 130k for something that is worth 46k and receive 65k for it, well, as a blacksmith the dissatisfaction of the client is humiliating, but for the pockets it is not lol.
@@fabf77 lol fair enough! When I update the guide for a big patch or something I'll be sure to cover all of this. It's okay, my English isn't that great always either and it's my first language lol
Best bannerlord guides on youtube. Pacing is great, bookmarks are helpful. Most other channels I need to play at 2x speed to get through fluff. Keep it up. Would love to see what you can do with other games as well.
Thank you! I know what you mean about speeding up, I do the same thing. It's been a learning experience though, if you watch my first couple of guides they are pretty rough lol thank you for watching! *I forgot to ask what other games you had in mind? I have to get the channel to a certain size before venturing out, but at some point I'll be looking to add other games into the mix!
Liked, subscribed, you literally saved me irl hours on trying to figure this out for myself. Not to mention the time and cost it would take to mix and match every piece with my easily forgetful mind. Thank you!
Thanks for watching! I just released an updated one for 1.0 in case you wanted to see what's changed since this video was released. A lot of the info here is still valid, but some things like needing to unlock all parts of a specific tier first or selling price being nerfed have changed.
I said I was going to watch all of these videos when I got the chance, and I gave them all a preliminary viewing before I had access to my game itself. I have got to ask, do you have a community discord or anything like that? I really enjoy your content and I would love to be a more active than a youtube view! Either way, keep up the great videos. I have over 100 hours in Bannerlord and these have taught me more in 1 hour than I gained in all that time
I'm glad you got some value for the time spent! I'll admit, I have close to 1000 hours into the game and I learned a fair bit doing these guides. I guess it helps when you're deliberate about learning everything rather than just playing for fun. Great question, it's on my agenda for next month actually! I plan on getting a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and discord going. Frankly, I wasn't sure I would even get a single view when I started a few weeks ago so my goal was to just spit videos out lol but it seems there is demand for now so I will definitely get on that. Thanks again!
@@Strat-Guides Curious if the Discord took off actually. Would be awesome to interact with a community centered around the informative content you produce. These guides have been the lifeblood of my Bannerlord experience lol
@@The_Riot It's pretty crazy, first month had only a handful - maybe 40 or so? Then it just blew up and it's in the several hundreds now. Not everyone is active and I think a lot just wanted the database/spreadsheets and stuff but there are quite a few chatting on there and asking questions etc. Very helpful I think!
@@Strat-Guides I was more talking on the lines of a link I could use to join xD The link in the description is apparently invalid or expired according to Discord
so to recap; for part unlock; order crafting 3-5X > smelting 2X > crafting (non orders) 1X, curious perks doubles the rates smelting top tier weapons gives more part unlocks. Unlock rate for parts is not tied to EXP gain, but weapon value is linked to EXP gain. craft two handers and swingable polearms for highest EXP pick the higest tier blade you can with the most reach and swing damage pick highest tier parts except for twohanded handle, that needs to have 1h option modify part length for more swing damage, but not if it loses overal more points. for orders, you can ignore weight and reach requirements, as it will still pass, order difficulty is inconsistent for pass or fail. You'll still get EXP and part unlocks if you fail, just not full payment. when crafting 2H sword, pick a blade that matches thrust damage first, as it can't be changed by part size or other parts.
- Yeah that's pretty much spot on. Unlocks aren't tied to XP in a 1 to 1 ratio, but something similar because crafting/smelting more valuable weapons gives more parts but something that is 2x more valuable won't give 2x more parts (hopefully that made sense). - Right on again, 2H swords are my preference, but if you can get the right swingable polearm parts then they can be just as good in the early-mid game. - I later learned that it's a bit more nuanced than that, but that will get you 95% of the way there lol so I don't think the extra 5% is even worth bothering over :) Everything else there is perfect!
Thank you for noticing, yes they do take some time! A lot of it has to do with me being a noob lol I'm still learning how all this stuff works. I appreciate the support!
I totally underestimated how much time it would take (or overestimated my abilities lol). Thank you for noticing that. It's crazy that some data points took 1 sentence to explain, but took hours to collect and analyze. I learned a lot going through it and seems like others are getting value from it so totally worth it! Thanks again for watching, I appreciate it
Thank you, amazing guide and a lot of work put in. Please keep going, it was a joy to watch and everything works as you explained. Cheers to the future growth of the channel.
Thank you for the support! It's crazy how fast it's grown in only a month and a half. I was expecting a year and a half to hit 1000 but we will be there in under 2 months it looks like. I've never been so happy to be wrong lol. More importantly, everyone who has been following and commenting has been very mature, no trolls, insightful etc. This game has a great community around it and I'm happy I can contribute back to it in some way!
I found with min-maxing stats while smithing going full size isn't the answer but slightly below is for the best stats as it let's you scrape away small bits of weight, while also in most cases increasing damage.
Interesting, I didn't notice that when I was doing my testing. Although I didn't spend a ton of time min/maxing per se, but I usually do that on my play throughs since I like to get as much as I can out of my weapons :) Thank you for the tip!!
Keep it up, videos are awesome! Somehow I always find them when I have a test the next day. I might dot be able to draw a NDFA but man can I make some cool virtual swords!
Lol I remember playing X2 Terran Conflict back in the day and skipping several lectures because of it. Those were the good days, not that I recommend messing up your grades for a game, BUT I look back on them now with great memories!
I really appreciate the effort you give to these videos! Its obvious you spend a lot of time on these and care about the quality of the outcome. I dont know if you realize, but if you branch out to some less niche games (that you like), there is a big audience that would really enjoy this type of content.
Thank you! This video is a few months old at this point and I've really spent a lot of time learning how to edit better so the newer videos are bit better :) I appreciate you noticing though, I do put a lot of time and effort into these guides. Yeah I'm still trying to figure out which other game(s) to cover - I was thinking about some of the Paradox games since those are my favorites! But I also bought Elden Ring recently too, although I don't see myself playing it much past a couple hundred hours. Any ideas for what you would like to see? I can do some research :)
@@Strat-Guides Well it depends of what are we talking about. Paradox games would be great, as there is so much space for this kind of content. It gets tiresome sometimes to theory craft in these games myself, sometimes I feel like I spend more time on it, then on playing them. :D But then again, I like doing that, so I dont mind. :) Or Factorio community could also benefit from this kind of elaborate videos, and the community is a bunch of people that really like diving in this type of content. But that is quite a twist and a different type of game. There is for sure many more games that I cant come up with right now, that would work. But if we talk exposure to this channel the obvious answer is something like Minecraft guides, even though I cant say I play it myself, there is also big potential to grow this channel in this way. It all depends on what you enjoy, as that is the most important thing. All and all if you pick a game that you enjoy, people will for sure follow, as there are not that many people that are willing to spend so much effort into so elaborate guides that are strait to the point. I cant say I have watched many of your gameplay videos, as I have found out about this channel just recently, just one right now so I am not just making things up, but if your gameplays would be less descriptive of what is happening on the screen and more.. how to put it? Lets say as I see it, its more entertaining to watch gameplay where the commentary is more of a story behind the video, that adds a fun element to it. But you sure could make even gameplay videos work as it is clear that you care a lot about what you put out. :) edit: There for sure are actually many people that care a lot about the content that they put out, but you seem to have a lot of talent and potential to grow this channel out if you wish for it and enjoy doing so. :)
@@XtreeterX Yeah I've noticed there is a real lack of effort for a lot of gaming guides in general, so it should be that difficult to crack open any of them as long as the effort is still there. I'm certainly not the most talented (probably average at best) lol but there aren't too many that can out-work me :D Oooh I forgot about factorio, that was such an amazing game back in the day! I have not played it in years though. Rimworld is another one that comes to mind. Hehe Minecraft was really fun back when it first came out but I got bored of it quickly. It's cool to be able to build up amazing structures, but then to have no function from them and be able to put that hard work to use was a big let-down for me. Same thing with Valheim, it's mostly for asthetics. And when it comes to asthetics - I have over 5k hours into DOTA2 and I've spent exactly $0 on cosmetics in that time (to give you an idea of how much I value them). As far as gameplay from this channel, I would recommend watching the WC series as it's a mix. It's all highly edited stuff though, so like 3 - 5 hours of gameplay cut down to the most interesting 15 - 20 minutes. I'm still working on that side of things though, I'm much more comfortable with the guides lol it matches my science background as I need to develop my "creative side". Thank you! I appreciate the kind words :) I do enjoy it and wanted to see if I can turn it into a legit business while the real estate market is going bonkers. It's definitely a long-term play though because I could earn 10x - 20x what I'm making now if I put this time into one of my other businesses. However, I really would like to diversify into something less "business-y" for lack of a better word lol
About 2 minutes in I subscribed as I could already see the effort you had put in well done young man 🤗 pretty sure your subscriber list will grow quickly as well 👍
Thank you for noticing, that means a lot! I'm still new to this whole UA-cam creator thing so I have no clue what's a good or bad growth rate, but I hope you're right. I'll keep my focus on improving the quality and let the UA-cam Gods decide the rest lol.
Thanks for that vid, really helpful. Was struggling with smithing too and got some helpful stuff out of this. Not sure if i should watch this leg exploit though....don't wan't to watch it and then discover that it was patched. :)
Yeah they finally patched this one lol I do have some more updated smithing videos you can watch, one is for 1.0 release and at the end there's a link to the full 1 hour long walk through.
I think they had plans to do that when they first started, but have heard since then that they are going to skip that so they can focus on getting to full release. I could be wrong there, but I recall hearing something about that from a reliable source.
very nice video. i suggest also to use a mod called "smithing value" , this mod will show u the value of the thing u will craft, below the handling indicator. u would be surprised to find out that sometimes lower tier parts are more valuable than higher tier parts.
Aw man I wish I knew that last week! I wasn't aware there was such a mod, but that's very handy. I'm sure I'll have to redo this when they patch smithing down the line. Do you know if it works with the beta branch or just stable branch? Thanks for the heads up!
@@Strat-Guides its not updated since 1.6 but works still great. i used this mod since 1.6 beta and im still using it in 1.6.1 stable. its one of the best quality of life mods for smithing out there. give it a try.
@@horror11 thanks, I was thinking if there was a way to get yo know the XP, I found a good recipe for a 2H sword, but is using only tier 3 items. so I want to find a new recipe with better xp.
As someone who has brought 4 different characters to 300+ smithing, I'd throw in that generally speaking Thamaskene steel isn't worth it. It requires plenty more base resources for only a relatively minor increase in sell prize. Even with just fine steel + steel (or only steel) weapons, you can easily buyout an entire town, smelt it all down (with your companions mostly) and craft 2-handed swords for 100k. I usually end up just buying all melee and thrown weapons in every town, because it's not worth my time to distiniguish. Use the overflow (say a town's stuff amounts to 470k and you want to get all their denars with 5 swords of 100k each - so you have 30k overflow) to buy cheap bolts and armor - you can donate those to your troops with the relevant perks. It makes sense to also get 300 trade, otherwise there's nowhere to put all that money.
That's a great point about Thamaskene steel. If you have someone with the perk to convert, it's not quite as bad, but I agree with you that it's generally not worth it. That's why my favorite weapon is the Falx :D Great damage and speed, no thamaskene steel. I'm sure they will get smithing to a point where it's not overkill. It's gotten better since the javelin spam days at least haha Thanks for the valuable input!
@@Strat-Guides Checked my notes, I settled on: Long Falx Blade (T4), Bronze Falx Guard (T5), Imperial Steel Reinforced Two-Handed Grip (T4), Fian's Pommel (T5) - all at 100%. It puts me at around 90k sell value for 2 steel and 5 fine steel. I've not exhausted every single option, but all deviations from that recipe were worth less or cost too much in extra ressources. Sure, there's infinite charcoal if you smelt down all the crappy wooden weapons you buy, and there's something to be said for waiting a lot in towns (planting seeds, if you catch my drift), but even with a mod that makes smithing easier, Thamaskene is still a bunch of hassle.
@@DrZaius3141 totally agree with you, the only time I use Thameskene is for a weapon I plan to use or for my companions. Or for the sexy looking civilian ones for the flex value lol
Thank you! I'm finishing up the trade guide right now and it should be ready sometime tomorrow so stay tuned. It's got so much info, my head is spinning lol but most of it is really useful.
Top quality guide as usual. Wish all guides were as thorough, comprehensive and yet as brief as yours. Makes me curious as to what is your RL profession. On a side note, you mention that when crafting 2h swords for leveling, we should pick the handles that give both 1 handed and 2 handed options. May I ask why is that?
So I studied Physics and Astrophysics in school, but then I worked in sales and management when I graduated (great use of the degree, I know lol). I used all my earnings to build up a couple businesses on the side and so now I've been self employed for a few years now and mostly in investment real estate and eCommerce. I try to take the same systematic and data driven approach to most things I do, which seems to help a lot with complex games like this one :D So for the combo handles that can be 1H and 2H, they give better XP and sell for more. I'm not sure why TW did this and I suspect it's a mistake/bug, but if you craft the same weapon with a T5 handle and compare to T4 with combo grip, it's a pretty big difference in favor of the T4 combo.
I tested a bit around over the past few days and i am not even close to the mathemathics you do, so i can only tell what my observations are. Thanks to your guide i digged into smithing orders. I am now 100% sure that you always fail an order if you are under the difficulty rating of the order even if all other reqirements are met. it makes sense because if you order a high quality rifle in cal. 50 you expect to get one out of finest materials and not one made out of cast iron and plastic. i am not sure but how much you get fined seems to be the % difference between order difficulty and actual difficulty. so for a simple example: order 200 diff actual diff 100 = 50% money oh and i got a hillarious bug where my own char generated a crafting order. i believe it happens when there are less than 6 notables in town when new orders are generated.
Yeah the order system still needs a little more work, but it's much better now than previously when you could sell cheap javelins for 100k lol I've seen that too! But when I clicked on it and crafted, it crashed my game lol I guess you can't fulfill your own orders :(
I use a long hide grip that is only tier 2 and cost only 2 wrought iron. Hand guard and pommels are of the type that extend range and swing damage. Then pick the best blade available for the balance between swing damage and handling for the max profit. I created ridiculously unpractical "orcish" two handers that sell for retarded amount of cash. Some of them only need wrought iron as ingredients.
Yeah there is a T4 blade that uses wrought iron that always sells for a ton, I think that's the one you're referring to. Haha it does look like I imagine an orc sword would look like :D There are a couple parts like that - A t4 pommel that uses wrought iron and A handle that uses cheaper materials than it should. I'll probably do another video someday about good crafting weapons to see.
Thanks for watching! This video is a bit older, from several patches ago and a few things have changed since then. The highlighted stats should be working again now. It was bugged for a couple patches but I think 1.9 got them back again.
Interesting about the legendary exploit, I noticed that string of actions also when trying to marry someone, if you reload them immediately goto sway them again it's the same results, had to go walk around the map for a couple secs for those actions to pass or whatever
Oooh that's really good info! I had noticed it with chat checks before as well but didn't know that walking around cleared it up. I'm working on the tactics section of my cunning guide and when I do auto calc battles, the casualties will vary for 2-5 battles and then eventually become a static outcome for 10+ in a row (probably infinite but I'm not willing to test that lol). It's very bizarre. I'll have to check to see if allowing time to pass changes the results. Much appreciated with the clutch info
@@Strat-Guides np man happy to help! you seem to know a lot more about this then I do but my theory was that the chances of things happen is probably predetermined for a certain period of time, maybe like a second or 2, and then it resets afterwards and a new set of outcomes is created
@@andobtw8046 I don't know anything about programming, but I imagine the only reason to do this is to save computing power? Otherwise why not randomize each event? Who knows, it's well above my pay grade lol
Thank you! I'm working on endurance perks next - this week I'm finishing up throwing perks and will have the video ready by Friday! For smithing these are usually how I pick: 125 - Depends on focus of this smith, usually smelt with my main character though 150 - controlled for more ranged focus, vigorous smith for melee focus (I usually go vigorous) 175 - Practical Smith (the extra money is not worth it since towns don't have enough money to buy our stuff anyways) 200 - master smith only option here 225 - Enduring smith (Attribute points are harder to come by so I prefer this one over focus points) 250 - Sharpened edge (I mostly use swing damage, but if you use a lot of thrust then the other can be god) 275 - Legendary smith only option
this is gold, Jerry, GOLD! Ty for a very detailed guide. Do you or anyone else by any chance have a smelting weapon ingredient spreadsheet? I want to know which weapons to buy to get the ingredients I want. I made one awhile ago for my thamaskeen smithing, but I lost it :(
That's a great question! Why didn't I think of that before lol I'm adding it to my list :) I don't know of anyone else that does this kinda stuff. I'll let you know if/when it's done!
This guide is fantastic. It's too bad now that 1.7 came out my T6 two handed swords sell for 15k and my unlocks are coming considerably slower. Time for a new way to make money I guess
Yeah they really nerfed smithing hard in the last patch. I can't say i'm too sad about it though, I can't remember the last time I actually had to worry about money because of how broken smithing was lol so this should be a fresh look at alternative!
The 2H axes aren't that bad, but yeah compared to Polearm and 2H sword it would have saved you some time. I had someone comment saying "the TaleWorlds black box" which I thought was perfect lol there's no way of knowing what the heck they are doing behind the scenes and all we can do it guesstimate!
Great video! However, one thing I think I might disagree on is your imperative to always craft the highest tech weapons at about 5:30. This is the way to go if the time spent making weapons, and overall profit are not the concern, but rather making higher value items (and leveling the skill faster) are most important priorities. If the primary motive is pure profit, then in my somewhat limited experience, a mid-tier item may actually offer a better return on investment. ADDIT: now that I've watched the whole video and see the "tricks" to doing the orders, maybe orders are just the best overall thing to do because they can yield profit and the best XP. But without knowing those "tricks," this was not very clear. I assessed the sell values for the commodities involved (hardwood, charcoal, crude iron, wrought iron, iron, steel, fine steel, tham steel) at one town. Obviously this is just a snap shot, as the party leaders trade skill will have raised, and the economy in the game is quite fluid. But redoing this analysis constantly is of questionable merit, so I concluded that: as long as I always rely on those original numbers, and as long as the relative values for the commodities all change proportionally (meaning, there is not a dramatic increase in one but a decrease in others) then these numbers collected from early game should be relatively strongly correlated with the actual sales prices at any later time in the game. Based on these sales values, I calculated production cost for each of the 2nd and higher order commodities. I used sales values because the point of this analysis is to quantify the opportunity cost of using the materials to make higher order products, i.e., what potential gain is being foregone in order to use the material to make something more sophisticated. The purchase prices for the raw materials could certainly be used, but this would be more instructive of the overall profit of the operation, not so much the relative profit of individual produced items, and in any event I doubt the values would vary that much between the sales values and the purchase prices. It was also just plain easier to collect all the numbers from one game pane! Using these production costs for each of the refined building materials (charcoal and all the metals), it is a simple matter to calculate the production costs for any given item in the game and then to compare that production cost to the sales value for the item and derive a profit margin for each item constructed. I would not say that I've been exhaustive in looking at a wide range of weapons and particularly limited on the highest tier ones (my lead Smith is still only about Level 190 or so), but with that caveat noted: what I've concluded is that the most profitable weapon for me to make was not the most advanced one I could make at least at one time point several game seasons ago. I periodically made the most advanced weapon I could and compared it to the earlier ones; generally I'd look at about every 25 levels. I also only looked at 2-handed swords, even though I've unlocked a lot of parts for other weapon types by now thanks to smelting. What I found was that from the simplest T1 weapon up to about T3 models the profit increased: "Coalbiter1" 326% (my lead smith is a Coalbiter NPC); Coalbiter2 277%; Coalbiter3 385%; Coalbiter4 330%; Coalbiter5 902%; Coalbiter6 970%; Bulblong 1649% . . . However, when I got to T4 or T5 weapons it seems that the additional cost for producing steel caused the increase profit to plateau: Kasakara1 1143%. So I explored making weapons that required simpler materials (no steel at all) but which used T4 parts. I discovered a T4 Falchion 2hander that sold consistently for 6700D (versus the ~11,000D of Kasakara1). But whereas the more advanced sword had a profit margin of 1143% (which was actually slightly less than the earlier "Bulblong" sword that included mostly T3 7068D and 1649% profit) the less advanced T4 sword had a profit of 2779%. The more profitable sword used only 5 wrought iron + 1 iron + 1 charcoal, whereas the more advanced one used 3 steel + 3 fine steel + 1 charcoal. A couple of other things I've noted, and I bet you are aware, but not sure if you mention it in your video: (1) unlocks are not character specific, they are shared by all party members. I think this is the right way for the game to function, but it saddens me that TW decided to make smithing work this way but not trade. Meaning: there is no benefit to having a high Trade skill NPC in the players party. (2) Apparently, the max tier of weapon which can be produced (at least for mid-tier weapons) is also shared. My whole party of clan members is about nine at this point and Smithing skill ranges from about 30 to 190 or so. When a new model of sword is produced by the main smith, some copies will seem to be flawed in some way and the price they command will be a bit lower. But apparently the design gets "perfected" over time, and the sales value becomes highly consistent. Moreover, I have used my low skill party members to produce literally scores or hundreds of that same T4 Falcion 2-hander design, and ALL the weapons always sell for the same amount. This means that: after the lead smith has made 10 or 15 copies of a particular design and the price fluctuations have abated, you can use your entire clan to spam dozens of that design for exactly the same profit as if the lead smith had produced it. ADDIT: it is up to Autumn 1091 in the same campaign in which I did the analyses described above. I've just rechecked the sales prices for the commodities at another town (Seonon, whereas I think the original town was either Poros or Zeonica). As expected pretty much all the sales prices were different. Hardwood and Charcoal were 15% and 12.5% higher sales prices respectively. Every other commodity was in the -22% lower sales price, but the steels had dropped the most steel -23%; fine steel -25%; thamaskene -30%. Despite all of those changes, the relative relation between the three most profitable swords remained about the same: Bulblong (mostly T3 sword): 7,068 and 1545% (vs.1649% based on original numbers ); Kasakara1 11,092 and 998% (vs. 1143% originally); T4 Falchion 2754% (vs 2779% originally). One last thing of note: Once a design has been "perfected" and all copies are of identical quality (even when they are produced by lower skill smiths), it appears that the value of the sold weapons becomes less variant overall. Going from town to town to sell my gigantic inventories of "T4 Falchions" (which btw, is an absolute retarded looking sword that uses that ridiculous "cleaver blade 3" thing with the serrations) they would generally always ALL sell for the same thing: about 6,078 Denariis. I don't consider any of this to be the final word by any means. But it does suggest to me that: other than doing orders, making "mid-tier weapons" which use less expensive refined materials (and use up less cycles of smithing stamina depletion) might be the "most profitable" means of spamming Smithy Wealth. Maybe spark some ideas for you to do a new video on Smithing and wealth based on latest update.
How much that sword from the beggining costs? Maybe its gold dependent. 1000 pitchforks costs around 80k - same as 2H crafted sword and in my experience it could be it. So it would be around 1000 smelted gold for 1 part?
That's an interesting theory, I had not considered that! I would have to go back and check, but your numbers sound about right. Good catch, you might be onto something here :D So each unlock level has a specific number of parts and XP per unlock. Once you level it up, XP per part increases, so it starts around the 1K mark and goes up from there. I'm not sure what it ends at, but it takes a while to unlock in the last level!
@@Strat-Guides thank u. i think many will appreciate it because i will tell u the truth i searched every where for some good weapon craft builds and i cant find it anywhere.
@@Okidoki258 I just finished building them all and testing them, I just need to do some editing and write a script for it, but I think it turned out okay :) I'll try my best to finish it up tomorrow and release it.
Aside from taking the perk, the only others way are to smelt T steel weapons or clearing gangs from inside the town. Sometimes you can buy them from a town but they are super expensive. Getting them as a drop from gangs isn't 100%, but maybe every 3 or 4 times you will get 1.
@@decadunce9205 Yeah that's what I usually do. It's not too far up the perk tree so 3 focus points and 2 attribute will get you there or if they have 3 endurance then you only need 2 focus points into smithing :)
Welcome back! 1.7.0 is a great patch to get back into things with :) Crafting orders are basically nobles or notables that want you to make a weapon for them. On the smithing screen, between the crafting and refining tab there is a tab for orders. They give really good XP and the higher tier ones can potentially give good money too!
So all smelting materials come from two things: Either by perks (turning 2 lower tier materials into 1 higher tier, like 2 steel into 1 fine steel etc.) or by smelting weapons that were made of the materials you wish to obtain. So if you want steel, you can take the perk like you suggested OR you can find weapons that contain those materials and smelt them. If you go to Empire towns, you can buy Pugio daggers for cheap and smelt them down for all crafting materials except thamaskene steel. It's very imbalanced, but a great way to get lot's of crafting materials. You can also buy tribesman daggers at most cities, try those 2 out. Look at this part of the video that explains it: @4:06.
Check out the new Top 10 Smithed Weapons guide here! ua-cam.com/video/U6ak7Tw2oKE/v-deo.html
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It seems smithing has improved a lot since the last time I’ve played. Disappointed that stamina still only regenerates while waiting in towns tho, it seriously slows the flow of gameplay when you have to sit in a town for several hours to smelt all your stuff.
Yeah it's really come a long way from javelin crafting lol those were crazy days!
Yeah the stamina is really annoying to deal with, but I'm not sure how else they can deal with it. I feel like it would be super OP if it didn't take actual time to do. It's pretty easy to get hundreds of crafting materials each and just go wild lol I mean you can still do it with companions right now... bah who knows lol
@@Strat-Guides I think a good alternative would be to allow the player to set up their goal for material, and that each action cost times and not stamina that you have to refill. The result would be the same, that it takes time to Smith, but the player can do something else in the meantime.
@@st4rk1113r That's a really good idea. You could leave a companion in a town to finish up jobs you queue up for them as well instead of having to be there with your entire army, waiting to craft a couple things. I really like that suggestion and it wouldn't be that hard to implement (I think anyhow lol I don't know how to program)
@@Strat-Guides me neither but I like to blame developers when I don't get features I want 😁
No seriously I think it's a conscious choice from them, but I have to say it's a boring one, so I wish they'd took the less boring action.
@@st4rk1113r Haha fair play :D It probably is for them and without knowing their full working roadmap (the actual one, not the one they try to sell to everyone that will be cut up before full release) it's so hard to say what the end goal is. Either way, It's still a fun game and I'm glad they have smithing in the first place.
Man, do you know how difficult it is to find a guide, this complete yet so succinct?
The fact you show the math is just the cherry on top, great work man, thank you.
I'm still working on the succinct part... I tend to put stuff that I think is funny but irrelevant (but can't help myself lol).
I appreciate the kind words. Math is awesome! I actually have a Pi tattoo to back that theory up.
@@Strat-Guides As someone new to your content, I'd say keep the funny if irrelevant, it helps keep the statistics engaging, and the video length is great, others don't give the same clarity and take longer getting there too.
Got it, I think maybe a good compromise is to include little snippets (as opposed to 25s diversion) just to keep the flow of the video going smoothly. I appreciate the feedback, will keep the memes rolling lol
A few hints from me, working as of July 2023:
0. As is mentioned in the video, there's a particular dagger and throwing daggers that are cheap as heck and give all metal types up to fine steel. There are also many cheap weapons that yield multiple pieces of crude iron, wrought iron and iron upon smelting.
1. The wooden hammer and (normal) pitchfork yield 3 hardwood each when smelted. With the charcoal perk that turns 2 wood into 3 charcoal, you can use these to generate obscene amounts of charcoal without ever procuring wood (as long as you have the 1 initial charcoal to smelt the first wooden hammer, you generate enough charcoal to smelt three more).
2. There is a combination of a Tier4 blade/guard/pommel and Tier3 handle components for a 2H Sword that only uses wrought iron and iron. No steel, or fine steel, as could be expected of tier 3/4 components. And it sells for 14.400 gold.
Combining the points above means that you can walk into town with 1 charcoal and 500 gold and make any amount of money you want.
Also:
3. The randomize button is great for filling orders. Just smash the button as fast as you can, paying attention to the numbers flickering green/red on the right. If you catch a glimpse of a randomization result that yielded most numbers in green, stop clicking, use the undo button to return to that setup (because you will have most likely clicked a few more times before you realized you had a good candidate), and then tailor that setup to match the order. It's much more convenient than picking every single component from scratch I think.
Thank you!
How do I get thamaskene steel?
@@brogod751
1. Take Steel 3 perk in smithing tree (100) on your character or a companion
2. Smelt certain weapons. You'll have to experiment which ones yield what. Pugio are notorious for being cheap, abundant and giving lots of higher end metals.
"lord gairos here is that weapon you ordered." *Hands him a hunk of slag with a handle sticking out* "well this isn't quite what I ordered, but here's 500 denars."
Lol reminds me of kid's art projects that get stuck to the fridge. They are ugly, but you gotta take it and smile :)
don't forget getting reputation somehow still despite butchering his order
@@brandonhall5142 Lol true! I wish it was like that IRL :P
At least that kinda makes sense. Better than grabbing a few tree branches (javelins) with a hunk of slag on the end and them trading them for a town.
@@S2Tubes LOL that's a good way of putting it :)
Thank you for a very informative video.
Without exaggeration, this is the most informative video on smithing (and I have watched about a dozen and read many guides)
Thank you for the time and effort on this video. The format and “scientific method” is very much appreciated. The video also clarifies some misconceptions (e.g. that 2-handed handles must be used for max.sale price and not 1H-2H as per your (and my) findings).
Thanks! I studied physics in University so I was trained to think this way - I guess I can finally say I've used my degree for something lol because I have not used it otherwise...
I appreciate your support and very glad to hear both of our data match on the 2H grips!
As I understand you must pick the handle with 1H-2H option, then choose the 2H option for max sale, is that correct?
Thank you so much for watching this guide! Please let me know if you see any errors or mistakes - my brain is now mush after 40+ hours of work on this beast so I'm sure there are some. Don't forget to leave me some feedback on how I can continue to improve the quality of these guides. My goal is to have the best/most useful guides for Bannerlord on UA-cam and your help is much needed. I appreciate all of you!!
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thanks for that throwback at the start.... now i want to play unreal tournament....
Hahaha "SPEIILLENNNNN!!!" That was a legit game back in the day too. Did you ever play starsiege tribes? That was one of my favorites too from around that time.
@@Strat-Guides sadly i had never heard of that before. will check out what i missed there tho. :D
just for clarification(for those who dont know):
that clip played at the start of the vid was a popular meme (in germany) way before the term was even properly coined. the Kid was trying to start UT and was raging cause his potato took to long starting it.
pretty sure it was staged with the kid doing some other(unrelated) bits but that was very early YT (not even sure if it wasn't one of these LAN-party videos at the start and only later got on YT) so i cant even remember....
Bro your guide is way more legendary than the lv275 smithing perk. Even after playing 800+ hrs of bannerlord I still learned a lot.
I've been making strategy guides on Chinese forums and getting some views but my quality is nowhere near your level... You truly deserve more my man.
Subbed + Liked all your videos.
Dang now that's a legit compliment! Xie Xie! I learn a ton making these guides as well. It's funny how many things I think I know going into it, only to find out I was totally wrong...
I appreciate the support. I would ask for your channel too but my Mandarin is crap and Canto non-existent lol send me the link anyhow and I'll sub back!
@@Strat-Guides Lol it's actually just a text-image based guide that I wrote a year ago (which I paused on updating due to other obligations of life). Link is here if you'd like to see what it is. It's on a forum called Zhihu which is kinda like Quora but Chinese version. It's quite lengthy with 500+ images so don't click on it unless you are connected to wifi..
www.zhihu.com/question/371310148/answer/1143313807
There is a pretty large M&B player base in China as well. I personally got very into medieval history playing warband since 2011 so it's always nice to see people across the world enjoying the same content. Things like this are what bring people closer as a whole.
@@JayJay-wf2oe The only thing harder than learning to speak Chinese is... Learning to read Chinese lol I tried to do both at the same time for a few months and it was brutal! I'll definitely check it out though. For sure, it's such an interesting time in history. I grew up playing the age of empires franchise and have always loved the historical games. It's just so cool to get an idea of what battle was like back then from 1st person.
Great job again! I've also spent countless hours smithing, and i will just add some very basic stuff for beginners:
Using your companion for smithing is a great way to improve your production (and their stats) therefore your revenues! First thing to do is to make them craft the highest possible xp winning weapon so they will level up at light speed! The point is to allow them to climb up to the perk where you have to choose between spending less stamina for refining or for smelting (I don't remember the skill number though), and then to create your "team smelting" and your "team refining"... make them work haha!
NEVER sell the wooden hammers and the pitchforks! They are a great reserve of hardwood! There are indeed some weapon better for smelting than for selling, and the two you gave (pugio dagger and tribesman throwing dagger) are by far the best price/material deal. Also, for me, anything that gives at least 2 hardwood when smelted, is good to be smelted... it's only a win.
I think (I'm really not sure though) that when you craft a weapon for a customer through the crafting order tab, this weapon will be added to this PNJ inventory and therefore could be used against you (once again not sure, but I think I recognized a weapon I crafted for a band leader in a town, at the moment this band leader was hitting me with it.... "hey I know this weap... *Bonk* oh shit!")... clearly something to be checked, it could have been just a coincidence!
When you name the weapon you have crafted, you can go with fancy names (I saw an "early retirement" one in the vid haha) like widowmaker and stuff... I prefer to use a naming system from D&D and give a sufficiently descriptive name of the weapon AND the bonus / malus that comes with it. Example: Tamaskeene two handed sword +5 (the weapon gained +5 on the stats thanks to the perks). Also, when I craft a weapon for a companion, I prefer to name it sword of "X", "X" being the name of the companion, so if you have to change this companion equipment for a single battle, you will find it back easily and it will avoid you to sell it carelessly at the next town after the battle.
eeeeh... I have nothing more to add right now, the video covered about everything!
These are all great points and I completely agree with each! Especially the companion part. I did a 25 day challenge after making this guide and did pretty well (or so I thought lol) until I saw Flesson19 nearly double my output because he hired companions early. I was shocked at how much difference it made!
That's hilarious about the weapons being used against you! We should just make a TON of meme builds that are terrible and see if they end up being use lol. Like a Two Handed Polearm with max length and the slowest parts possible, it would be like fighting against a sloth. Or a teeny-tiny sword that does almost no damage. Could be a funny video in the making!
I use a similar naming system too! Lol I have a bunch of "112/90/125/90 2H SWD" tags floating around my game now, but at least I don't have to guess what the stats are : )
@@Strat-Guides
"112/90/125/90 2H SWD"... I get the practical part, but such a name lacks romance a little bit haha
"You re going to Mordor Frodo? YOU HAVE MY AXE!"
- And MY BOW!
- And my "112/90/125/90 2H SWD!
...
what?"
xD
@@jawascrapper6277 LOL trust me I know, but I can't help it! I'm a numbers nerd and my brain isn't all the creative : )
They should add in a random name generator. Maybe it could spit some cool ones out, like "Derthert's Bane" or something like that.
@@Strat-Guides I like the random name generator for the weapon! It would be cool and fun!!
I just got into Bannerlord recently, and your videos have a weird monopoly of my guide selection! Well done and thank you!
My plan is working :D Thank you for watching my videos!
someone said it before, but i highly appreciate the scientific method and multiple-test-runs that you do to back your data up
i also really dig the consistency in how you lay out your banner lord guide videos, and the time stamps. **oh yes, those time stamps**
very solid - and just in time as i get back into bannerlord!
Without all the tests it would be impossible to decode the TaleWorlds Blackbox lol I appreciate the support!
Yes the time stamps, I hate it when people don't put timestamps! I think some don't include it because they think it will hurt their metrics or ad revenue or something, but the problem with that thinking is it puts the business before the customer. You guys come first, everything else is secondary :)
Welcome back to Bannerlord and good luck on your playthrough!
Never knew most of the things you mention in the video. I have played the game for 200+ hours and when I thought I had finally grasped the essence of the game it turned out I was merely scratching the surface...
Yeah it's a pretty deep game with multiple layers :) I'm happy to help!
I laugh so hard about the save summing xD I alt f4 out of rage in my first Ironman playthrough and got such a nice surprise when I go back to my game! Alt f4 is now my new mantra. I then pretend myself my char as good sense of events to come and dodge all those bigs armies.
Haha yeah, good ole time traveling and being able to see into the future :) I just see them as self-imposed bonuses!
This tutorial is super helpful- I always ignored the order system in past runs, but no longer 🤣 also, the RNG seed that Bannerlord uses to calculate RNG instances is reset every time you enter/leave a town. This is the only way to cheese speech dialog successes bc otherwise it will give you the same results every time
I'm glad it was helpful! Interesting, I always thought it was from loading the game. Someone mentioned that they calculate RNG from a central "stack" that resets each time you load a new save, which locks the results in with each load. I'm not smart enough to look into the code and confirm it though :(
This explains my failing to savescum some speech checks. Thank you super helpful
I haven't played it but just by watching videos on it, I can tell the dev made a good job
Thank you for watching! The crafting systems needs a lot of work still, but I 100% agree with you, they put a TON of effort into this and even with all it's warts, I absolutely love crafting and the game in general.
get the stamina regen while walking mod, really makes sense, your party manages to march onwards while wounded, they most well add in battle stamina if they have crafting stamina the way it is, makes no sense to have to sleep in a town to regen it
Dayumn. I figured out that weapon reach can be ignored, but i didn't know about weight. Thank you!
No problem! When I'm going for XP, I just completely ignore the crafting order itself and just make the most expensive weapon I can. They usually give me 50% reward anyways so it's still not bad lol
This guide is fantastic, thank you for all of the hard work you put into it. Your effort and thought shows.
I'm glad it's been helpful and thank you so much for watching!
Honestly the exact content I'm after. Very stat based. Maybe some opinions wouldn't go astray as I'd call you a reliable source at this point! Like whether to advance smithing for main character, or companions? More a subjective than objective thing. Love your work
Thank you! I definitely try to let the math do the talking, but when I do have an opinion it's usually based on the stats. I can't help it, it's how my brain is wired I guess.
I appreciate the support :D
watching this made me realize focus points exist and that i haven't been using them for my whole campaign
:O
Exactly what I needed. Came back to the game 2 days ago and stumbled upon the Crafting Order tab earlier today. Thanks!
Totally agree, smithing is way better now since the addition of crafting orders. Thanks for watching!
Fantastic video. I should also mention that Smithing stamina seems to recover from all resting and waiting actions, to some degree. Waiting at a village to ambush Poachers, waiting at a Bandit Camp until midnight, sieging a town - a good rule is that anywhere you can get your wife pregnant, you can recover Smithing stamina*.
Good point! I should have clarified that, thank you.
OMG that intro.... Dude, I hadn't see that video in years, what a trip to the past!
Hahaha yeah the good ole memes :D
that string of actions you are talking about is basically how RNG calcs work. They do a string. You will see this on most games. A good example is pokemon actually. Using save states can reveal this. Trying to get different results but getting same ones.
Oh interesting, so this is commong among other games too then? It sounds like a structural issue then
@@Strat-Guides It is how all games work, even slot machines in a casino actually. There is a string of numbers (often called seeds) which are referenced by various RNG calls which interpret the called number in various ways (In Doom it could be for the spread of your shotgun blast, the damage, enemy flinch chance, etc). Catching the right seed is what nets you the biggest damage on your BFG shot or getting the right bonuses to your Legendary SatanDethForkReaverBladeofDoomSlayer9001ing. I suspect (but can't prove) the luck improvements from having a higher Smithing skill really just enables more of the pre-programmed seed triggers for the bonuses.
My launch day main character crafts and I can tell you its bonkers the stuff you can craft. The problem is remembering how you crafted what you did. I am so very impressed with how TW did the crafting physics that this alone has possibly kept me logging over double hours than I have otherwise.
The weight and balance make a massive difference. I have screenshots.
After my experience with crafting I think the game needs some RNG buyable/lootable equipment because when you know how to tailor your crafted weapons they are easily near double and for sure %50 better than pre set. I will always have a crafter even if in is not my character and as it sits I almost always ought roll an END character every time.
If TW can get it where I had to choose between END and SOC they would be on to something.
Yeah for sure, there are SO many parts! I can't recall the exact number, but I think it was close to 1500! That's a staggering amount of work on their part. And I can only imagine balancing that many parts would be mentally taxing to say the least lol.
I usually end up the same with a strong endurance character, it's hard to get away from the +4 attribute points from the perks!
Wondering why this doesnt have at least 500k views, its pure gold
Thank you! Hopefully it will get there someday. We just need youtube to squirt a little algorithm sauce on it...
Absolutely fantastic guide. I've got 100+hours in this game and I still had no idea how smithing really worked until now. Since the latest patch (e1.6.2) the legendary exploit doesn't seem to work consistently anymore.
Thank you for watching! I used to run smithing on all my characters for hundred of hours and I was still learning things when I did all the research for this guide lol it's crazy how much work they put into it.
I'll have to double check that, I made the guide in 1.6.2 when it was in Beta branch but it's possible they patched it out. I heard from someone that the devs were watching the guides... I hope they don't have a target on my back lol sniping all my videos!!
So I just loaded up my save file from the guide - I was able to get it to work. Let's try to figure out what the problem is. So what level is your smith? And what perks do you have that give bonus rolls?
*I'm in 1.6.3 Beta branch right now*
@@Strat-Guides I wouldn't be surprised if the devs watched your videos. Your videos are likely a tutorial for this game. The devs should take notes!
My smithing level is 288. I've got perks in Experienced Smith, Master Smith and Legendary Smith. I saved, then smithed 1h swords until I think I got a legendary smith (+10 stats on top of normal stats), I counted how many items to get there (28 in my case) , re-loaded and smithed what I actually wanted to be a legendary weapon but no luck. I tried a few times. Some of the master and experienced bonuses that were within 1-10 items worked consistently. Maybe it's not consistent after 20 items?
@@Orhanu1 Interesting... I didn't test it beyond 6 or 7 if I recall so that may be the case. Try this, smith 10 at a time and if you don't get one, save it and keep going. Once you get to the point where your legendary roll is within that 10 mark, reload the recent save and see if that works? I have my test character at 330 capped out so the rolls are pretty frequent. Once you get above 300 the frequency increases really fast.
Maybe I should make the videos a little crappier so the devs will leave our exploits alone... lol :)
Thanks man, deffinatly provided at tip or two! Thumbs up'ed and subbed.
Thank you and welcome to the channel! :D
@@Strat-Guides Just watched the Engineering strat video and am currently finishing up the 25 day smiting video, the direct and to the point format is great! Plus the break downs on just about everything. Thank you! From running thousands of battles to days spent in the forge. The content is appreciated.
@@I3uddzo I'm glad you like it! I've been working on different types of videos so feedback like this helps. I'm planning on doing longer videos that take maybe 10+ hours or so and distill it into 20 - 30 minutes highlighting specific things like "how to farm 275 medicine" or "how to start a kingdom fast" etc. Not sure if that would appeal to you?
About the legendary exploit: after some testing, it seems the quality string of smithed weapon is not saved in your save file, but rather kept in the memory. The easiest way to clean the memory and reroll the quality is just to reboot the game. I tested for several times and this worked.
Interesting, that makes sense! So my understanding is that TW has a central RNG that they pull from for all RNG events in the game. The issue is when you reload, it keeps track of the the RNG at that specific time so you get the same "random" results lol Thanks for sharing this!
Instant like for the intro
Haha it's a classic! :)
This is one of the best guides I've seen so far. If you keep this up, I'm sure you'll blow up eventually.
Dang, talk about an ego boost. The only thing about to blow up is my ego right now... lol joking, Thank you so much for the support!
@@Strat-Guides The only thing I would change is the intro, I'd say at the moment it's a tad "much". Other than that your videos are great, I already watched all of your other guides lol.
Yes I think so too, on my most recent guide I fought the urge to put a long intro and just got right into it. I appreciate the feedback, comments like these make a HUGE difference.
It is worth adding that the forging stamina is also restored when waiting for darkness in the lairs of robbers, so it is worth alternating pumping blacksmithing with cleaning the shelters of bandits.
That's a great point - do you know if waiting on the campaign map out in the open regens stamina as well? Or is it only in town for bandit hideout? Interesting that they would do that, but GREAT info there, thank you for that :)
@@Strat-Guides No, waiting on the map does not restore stamina, we need to check if recovery still works during sieges of cities and castles. I didn't pay attention to it, because by the time you storm cities, it's not so important anymore.
And the bandits' shelters are probably considered by the game as a settlement - they are equated with a city. Perhaps there will be a nerf in the future, as has already been done with restoring the health of the wounded while waiting there.
@@RemGaffer Yeah when you said that it recovers stamina that's what I figured would be the case. It's a shame we can't take the hideouts over like a city lol
I imagine the main character is just chilling in the sun while someone else is keeping watch then :D
My new favourite channel,
Thank you!!
best bannerlord guide format ever. Without useless chit-chattery or repeating yourself over again- thank you Sir, liked and subbed for more.
Lol I know what you mean, I use a script line by line to make sure I don't ramble. Thank you for the support!
Good video, I have a character with 301 blacksmithing and likewise and learned things here. And so I can also add some useful information.
The difficulty is probably with wrong values, that is, a factor of demand from the buyer, I do not know. But I have gone from having 2-handed hammers with a requirement of 300 and also hitting the order because I use the head and the handle that met the exact values requested by the client, there is not much to miss, there are 2 types of each piece for 2-hand hammers.
All orders correspond to the creation of a weapon without modifying the measurements of the parts. If you take the time you can find exactly the weapon that the client wanted. That is why one can fail an order, even passing the threshold of difficulty, because that value, as I said before, is wrong or is something else. A pity that the client does not show exactly what he wants and one must improvise if he does not have the parts unlocked, and hope that the client is satisfied, even that they reject the weapon for being a disastrous job. Blacksmith orders are a consumer scam, you must pay and be happy about it.
Thank you for watching! That's a great analysis. It makes sense that they would pick un-edited parts for the crafting orders and that deviating from that by too much would cause the order to fail in some instances. I'm sure they have more changes coming for smithing, so it will be back to the drawing board soon enough lol!
@@Strat-Guides So, I want to expand this comment because I have made a most interesting discovery.
As I said before, the orders correspond to weapons without modifying their standard size, so it is a question of finding the exact part. I have noticed that many times the difficulty and the weight do not agree with the objective. But what I do notice and is very good is that the orders are not random! The value of the order may vary, but they will be ordering the exact same model randomly several times.
An example of 1-handed hatchet information that I have collected:
denars approx head piece handle piece
$240 1-1* 1-1
$1397 2-1 2-2
$3507 3-1 3-6
$6686 4-1 4-5
* The first number corresponds to the level of the piece, the second number to its position in the list (head level 1 / first head on the list)
Try in a game, look for orders of one-handed axes and follow my instructions if any of the orders has the same approximate value, the orders vary by a few hundred denars.
I made a small list, mainly maces, axes and javelins. the other weapons make me lazy. Now instead of wasting time looking for the part, I look in my list of approximations and I have the exact order at the moment.
By the way, that 130k order for a polearm must have been in error, I found its exact parts, I think, and I'm not making the customer happy.
Very interesting find! It makes me wonder how they programmed these orders. I thought originally it was just an RNG picking out stuff around that level of difficulty, but from my data and confirmed by your testing it seems they picked very specific ones AND they repeat. Next time I run a smithy, I'll have to consult back to this comment.
By the way, you should make a video on smithing as your data collection is legit! Or at least type something up for the forums or reddit. Thanks for letting me know!
About the 130k polearm, I've seen that same order in several towns and it always passed even though I didn't reach specs every time. I've seen the same pattern with others where it will fail 100% no matter what I did (even when meeting all requirements). I think what you said is probably the explanation - that they picked unedited parts. There must be some "tolerance" to the pass fail though because you can pass even after editing to different specs. Maybe it only has a minimum and any edits above that pass? Who knows - TaleWorlds BlackboxTM lol
@@Strat-Guides
I entrust you with a second part of the blacksmith guide. My English and my laziness surpass me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I add more data that I gather:
2-handed ax
$ 3306 2-2 2-1
$ 11669 3-1 3-2
$ 63197 4-1 4-3
one-handed mace
$ 791 1-1 1-2
$ 4304 3-3 3-1
$ 14980 4-7 4-4
javelin
$ 1846 2-1 2-1 2-2 5-1
$ 2726 3-1 3-1 4-1
$ 10296 4-2 4-1 2-2 5-1
Regarding the 130k imfame, I did something that I did not think about before, I made one for myself, it is worth about 46k. Perhaps another possibility of the error is that the reward is very high for its real value, it will never agree to pay 130k for something that is worth 46k and receive 65k for it, well, as a blacksmith the dissatisfaction of the client is humiliating, but for the pockets it is not lol.
@@fabf77 lol fair enough! When I update the guide for a big patch or something I'll be sure to cover all of this.
It's okay, my English isn't that great always either and it's my first language lol
Wow! That is one amazing, information filled guide. Great job!
Best bannerlord guides on youtube. Pacing is great, bookmarks are helpful. Most other channels I need to play at 2x speed to get through fluff. Keep it up. Would love to see what you can do with other games as well.
Thank you! I know what you mean about speeding up, I do the same thing. It's been a learning experience though, if you watch my first couple of guides they are pretty rough lol thank you for watching!
*I forgot to ask what other games you had in mind? I have to get the channel to a certain size before venturing out, but at some point I'll be looking to add other games into the mix!
@@Strat-Guides Diablo 2 came out not too long ago and is getting a lot of attention, perhaps the algorithm could be in your favor.
@@victorkelante420 interesting... I'm definitely not complaining!
Liked, subscribed, you literally saved me irl hours on trying to figure this out for myself. Not to mention the time and cost it would take to mix and match every piece with my easily forgetful mind. Thank you!
Thanks for watching! I just released an updated one for 1.0 in case you wanted to see what's changed since this video was released. A lot of the info here is still valid, but some things like needing to unlock all parts of a specific tier first or selling price being nerfed have changed.
I said I was going to watch all of these videos when I got the chance, and I gave them all a preliminary viewing before I had access to my game itself. I have got to ask, do you have a community discord or anything like that? I really enjoy your content and I would love to be a more active than a youtube view! Either way, keep up the great videos. I have over 100 hours in Bannerlord and these have taught me more in 1 hour than I gained in all that time
I'm glad you got some value for the time spent! I'll admit, I have close to 1000 hours into the game and I learned a fair bit doing these guides. I guess it helps when you're deliberate about learning everything rather than just playing for fun.
Great question, it's on my agenda for next month actually! I plan on getting a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and discord going. Frankly, I wasn't sure I would even get a single view when I started a few weeks ago so my goal was to just spit videos out lol but it seems there is demand for now so I will definitely get on that.
Thanks again!
@@Strat-Guides Curious if the Discord took off actually. Would be awesome to interact with a community centered around the informative content you produce. These guides have been the lifeblood of my Bannerlord experience lol
@@The_Riot It's pretty crazy, first month had only a handful - maybe 40 or so? Then it just blew up and it's in the several hundreds now. Not everyone is active and I think a lot just wanted the database/spreadsheets and stuff but there are quite a few chatting on there and asking questions etc. Very helpful I think!
@@Strat-Guides I was more talking on the lines of a link I could use to join xD The link in the description is apparently invalid or expired according to Discord
@@The_Riot Lol I'm an idiot, sorry :) discord.gg/M8qrxWpr2D This one should be permanent!
so to recap;
for part unlock; order crafting 3-5X > smelting 2X > crafting (non orders) 1X, curious perks doubles the rates
smelting top tier weapons gives more part unlocks.
Unlock rate for parts is not tied to EXP gain, but weapon value is linked to EXP gain.
craft two handers and swingable polearms for highest EXP
pick the higest tier blade you can with the most reach and swing damage
pick highest tier parts except for twohanded handle, that needs to have 1h option
modify part length for more swing damage, but not if it loses overal more points.
for orders, you can ignore weight and reach requirements, as it will still pass, order difficulty is inconsistent for pass or fail.
You'll still get EXP and part unlocks if you fail, just not full payment.
when crafting 2H sword, pick a blade that matches thrust damage first, as it can't be changed by part size or other parts.
- Yeah that's pretty much spot on. Unlocks aren't tied to XP in a 1 to 1 ratio, but something similar because crafting/smelting more valuable weapons gives more parts but something that is 2x more valuable won't give 2x more parts (hopefully that made sense).
- Right on again, 2H swords are my preference, but if you can get the right swingable polearm parts then they can be just as good in the early-mid game.
- I later learned that it's a bit more nuanced than that, but that will get you 95% of the way there lol so I don't think the extra 5% is even worth bothering over :) Everything else there is perfect!
huge thanks for this detailed in-depth guide.
I appreciate it :D
Great video. Thank you, It is clear that you put sooo much time and work into it
Thank you for noticing, yes they do take some time! A lot of it has to do with me being a noob lol I'm still learning how all this stuff works. I appreciate the support!
This vid was a huge amount of work, and it is really great! 👍
I totally underestimated how much time it would take (or overestimated my abilities lol). Thank you for noticing that. It's crazy that some data points took 1 sentence to explain, but took hours to collect and analyze. I learned a lot going through it and seems like others are getting value from it so totally worth it! Thanks again for watching, I appreciate it
Thank you, amazing guide and a lot of work put in. Please keep going, it was a joy to watch and everything works as you explained.
Cheers to the future growth of the channel.
Thank you for the support! It's crazy how fast it's grown in only a month and a half. I was expecting a year and a half to hit 1000 but we will be there in under 2 months it looks like. I've never been so happy to be wrong lol. More importantly, everyone who has been following and commenting has been very mature, no trolls, insightful etc. This game has a great community around it and I'm happy I can contribute back to it in some way!
Changed the game for me man, awesome work.
Nice, I'm glad it helped! Thanks for the support!
I found with min-maxing stats while smithing going full size isn't the answer but slightly below is for the best stats as it let's you scrape away small bits of weight, while also in most cases increasing damage.
Interesting, I didn't notice that when I was doing my testing. Although I didn't spend a ton of time min/maxing per se, but I usually do that on my play throughs since I like to get as much as I can out of my weapons :)
Thank you for the tip!!
Keep it up, videos are awesome! Somehow I always find them when I have a test the next day. I might dot be able to draw a NDFA but man can I make some cool virtual swords!
Lol I remember playing X2 Terran Conflict back in the day and skipping several lectures because of it. Those were the good days, not that I recommend messing up your grades for a game, BUT I look back on them now with great memories!
Your video and detailed explanation convinced me to buy the game. I love crafting in games.
More like "Stat Gaming" amirite?
Puns aside, this was some high quality stuff. Thanks man
Oooh it's so true though lol It's one of the few times I can say I've used my uni degree!
I appreciate it and thanks so much for watching.
@@Strat-Guides :)
More like high quality staff.
I really appreciate the effort you give to these videos! Its obvious you spend a lot of time on these and care about the quality of the outcome. I dont know if you realize, but if you branch out to some less niche games (that you like), there is a big audience that would really enjoy this type of content.
Thank you! This video is a few months old at this point and I've really spent a lot of time learning how to edit better so the newer videos are bit better :) I appreciate you noticing though, I do put a lot of time and effort into these guides.
Yeah I'm still trying to figure out which other game(s) to cover - I was thinking about some of the Paradox games since those are my favorites! But I also bought Elden Ring recently too, although I don't see myself playing it much past a couple hundred hours. Any ideas for what you would like to see? I can do some research :)
@@Strat-Guides Well it depends of what are we talking about. Paradox games would be great, as there is so much space for this kind of content. It gets tiresome sometimes to theory craft in these games myself, sometimes I feel like I spend more time on it, then on playing them. :D But then again, I like doing that, so I dont mind. :) Or Factorio community could also benefit from this kind of elaborate videos, and the community is a bunch of people that really like diving in this type of content. But that is quite a twist and a different type of game. There is for sure many more games that I cant come up with right now, that would work.
But if we talk exposure to this channel the obvious answer is something like Minecraft guides, even though I cant say I play it myself, there is also big potential to grow this channel in this way. It all depends on what you enjoy, as that is the most important thing. All and all if you pick a game that you enjoy, people will for sure follow, as there are not that many people that are willing to spend so much effort into so elaborate guides that are strait to the point.
I cant say I have watched many of your gameplay videos, as I have found out about this channel just recently, just one right now so I am not just making things up, but if your gameplays would be less descriptive of what is happening on the screen and more.. how to put it? Lets say as I see it, its more entertaining to watch gameplay where the commentary is more of a story behind the video, that adds a fun element to it. But you sure could make even gameplay videos work as it is clear that you care a lot about what you put out. :)
edit: There for sure are actually many people that care a lot about the content that they put out, but you seem to have a lot of talent and potential to grow this channel out if you wish for it and enjoy doing so. :)
@@XtreeterX Yeah I've noticed there is a real lack of effort for a lot of gaming guides in general, so it should be that difficult to crack open any of them as long as the effort is still there. I'm certainly not the most talented (probably average at best) lol but there aren't too many that can out-work me :D
Oooh I forgot about factorio, that was such an amazing game back in the day! I have not played it in years though. Rimworld is another one that comes to mind.
Hehe Minecraft was really fun back when it first came out but I got bored of it quickly. It's cool to be able to build up amazing structures, but then to have no function from them and be able to put that hard work to use was a big let-down for me. Same thing with Valheim, it's mostly for asthetics. And when it comes to asthetics - I have over 5k hours into DOTA2 and I've spent exactly $0 on cosmetics in that time (to give you an idea of how much I value them).
As far as gameplay from this channel, I would recommend watching the WC series as it's a mix. It's all highly edited stuff though, so like 3 - 5 hours of gameplay cut down to the most interesting 15 - 20 minutes. I'm still working on that side of things though, I'm much more comfortable with the guides lol it matches my science background as I need to develop my "creative side".
Thank you! I appreciate the kind words :) I do enjoy it and wanted to see if I can turn it into a legit business while the real estate market is going bonkers. It's definitely a long-term play though because I could earn 10x - 20x what I'm making now if I put this time into one of my other businesses. However, I really would like to diversify into something less "business-y" for lack of a better word lol
Great video, and thanks again for the quick reply on the reddit thread!
Woohoo, more comments to help defeat the UA-cam algorithm! Lol for sure, thanks for your help in fluffing up the video's metrics.
Well done! Quality content, I'll subscribe and hope to see more guides and tips for Bannerlord :)
Thank you! Almost done with the Cunning skills guide and it will be ready by Friday. Some very interesting results so stay tuned!
About 2 minutes in I subscribed as I could already see the effort you had put in well done young man 🤗 pretty sure your subscriber list will grow quickly as well 👍
Thank you for noticing, that means a lot! I'm still new to this whole UA-cam creator thing so I have no clue what's a good or bad growth rate, but I hope you're right. I'll keep my focus on improving the quality and let the UA-cam Gods decide the rest lol.
Very useful and well put together! Thank you!
I appreciate that and thanks for watching! I'm finishing up the steward guide so keep an eye out for that on Friday!
Insane work in this video. Thank you.
Thank you! Yeah this one took a while to make, but it turned out okay :D
Thanks for that vid, really helpful. Was struggling with smithing too and got some helpful stuff out of this. Not sure if i should watch this leg exploit though....don't wan't to watch it and then discover that it was patched. :)
Yeah they finally patched this one lol I do have some more updated smithing videos you can watch, one is for 1.0 release and at the end there's a link to the full 1 hour long walk through.
oh shit I had no idea you could adjust the individual sizes of the parts I thought it was for the whole weapon
It opens a whole new level of min/max OCD goodness!
Thanks! This is epic, so much detail
Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching
I seriously hope they expand on this to include crafting of armours and saddles.
I think they had plans to do that when they first started, but have heard since then that they are going to skip that so they can focus on getting to full release. I could be wrong there, but I recall hearing something about that from a reliable source.
@@Strat-Guides Oh well..., only means we have to wait a bit longer until the Creation Kit is released, then the modding community will get on it.
11:45 "I love this game" This made me laugh so hard man.
I might have to walk that comment back now that they nerfed smithing pretty hard! Insert "Look what they did to my boy meme" :)
Thanks for your effort. Very educational
Thank you!!
much info. big thanks. good vid
Glad it was helpful and thank you for watching! I'm planning on doing my top 10 favorite weapons to smith, so keep an eye out for that!
Merci à toi pour ce contenu d'une rare précision ^^
Je vais de ce pas regarder les autres vidéos de ta chaine !
et + 1 sub ^^
De rien! J'espère que google translate fonctionnera bien donc je ne dis pas de bêtises comme "tu es gentil comme un chou" lol Merci beaucoup
very nice video.
i suggest also to use a mod called "smithing value" , this mod will show u the value of the thing u will craft, below the handling indicator.
u would be surprised to find out that sometimes lower tier parts are more valuable than higher tier parts.
Aw man I wish I knew that last week! I wasn't aware there was such a mod, but that's very handy. I'm sure I'll have to redo this when they patch smithing down the line. Do you know if it works with the beta branch or just stable branch? Thanks for the heads up!
@@Strat-Guides
its not updated since 1.6 but works still great.
i used this mod since 1.6 beta and im still using it in 1.6.1 stable.
its one of the best quality of life mods for smithing out there.
give it a try.
@@horror11 thanks, I was thinking if there was a way to get yo know the XP, I found a good recipe for a 2H sword, but is using only tier 3 items. so I want to find a new recipe with better xp.
As someone who has brought 4 different characters to 300+ smithing, I'd throw in that generally speaking Thamaskene steel isn't worth it. It requires plenty more base resources for only a relatively minor increase in sell prize. Even with just fine steel + steel (or only steel) weapons, you can easily buyout an entire town, smelt it all down (with your companions mostly) and craft 2-handed swords for 100k. I usually end up just buying all melee and thrown weapons in every town, because it's not worth my time to distiniguish. Use the overflow (say a town's stuff amounts to 470k and you want to get all their denars with 5 swords of 100k each - so you have 30k overflow) to buy cheap bolts and armor - you can donate those to your troops with the relevant perks.
It makes sense to also get 300 trade, otherwise there's nowhere to put all that money.
That's a great point about Thamaskene steel. If you have someone with the perk to convert, it's not quite as bad, but I agree with you that it's generally not worth it. That's why my favorite weapon is the Falx :D Great damage and speed, no thamaskene steel. I'm sure they will get smithing to a point where it's not overkill. It's gotten better since the javelin spam days at least haha
Thanks for the valuable input!
@@Strat-Guides Checked my notes, I settled on:
Long Falx Blade (T4), Bronze Falx Guard (T5), Imperial Steel Reinforced Two-Handed Grip (T4), Fian's Pommel (T5) - all at 100%. It puts me at around 90k sell value for 2 steel and 5 fine steel. I've not exhausted every single option, but all deviations from that recipe were worth less or cost too much in extra ressources. Sure, there's infinite charcoal if you smelt down all the crappy wooden weapons you buy, and there's something to be said for waiting a lot in towns (planting seeds, if you catch my drift), but even with a mod that makes smithing easier, Thamaskene is still a bunch of hassle.
@@DrZaius3141 totally agree with you, the only time I use Thameskene is for a weapon I plan to use or for my companions. Or for the sexy looking civilian ones for the flex value lol
Great video. I needed this, thx.
Anything to help reduce the grind!
Nice guide!
Thank you! I'm finishing up the trade guide right now and it should be ready sometime tomorrow so stay tuned. It's got so much info, my head is spinning lol but most of it is really useful.
@@Strat-Guides Awesome, I only ever ventured into learning how to smith to get recipes *and cheese the game with money*. Never touched trading!
@@DeOnlyChi Once they patch smithing, I think trading will become the go-to for big money. It's not as fast as smithing, but it's very reliable!
@@Strat-Guides RIP, Less talking more RAIDING!
thanks man you got a sub
Thank you, I appreciate it! I won't let you down :D
Top quality guide as usual. Wish all guides were as thorough, comprehensive and yet as brief as yours. Makes me curious as to what is your RL profession.
On a side note, you mention that when crafting 2h swords for leveling, we should pick the handles that give both 1 handed and 2 handed options. May I ask why is that?
So I studied Physics and Astrophysics in school, but then I worked in sales and management when I graduated (great use of the degree, I know lol). I used all my earnings to build up a couple businesses on the side and so now I've been self employed for a few years now and mostly in investment real estate and eCommerce. I try to take the same systematic and data driven approach to most things I do, which seems to help a lot with complex games like this one :D
So for the combo handles that can be 1H and 2H, they give better XP and sell for more. I'm not sure why TW did this and I suspect it's a mistake/bug, but if you craft the same weapon with a T5 handle and compare to T4 with combo grip, it's a pretty big difference in favor of the T4 combo.
Now, THAT'S a guide
Thank you for support!
Very useful
Thank you for watching!
Also, collect noble lances and thamaskene pikes and smelt those they give 1 o 2 fine steel, and 1 steel plus wood
I tested a bit around over the past few days and i am not even close to the mathemathics you do, so i can only tell what my observations are.
Thanks to your guide i digged into smithing orders. I am now 100% sure that you always fail an order if you are under the difficulty rating of the order even if all other reqirements are met. it makes sense because if you order a high quality rifle in cal. 50 you expect to get one out of finest materials and not one made out of cast iron and plastic. i am not sure but how much you get fined seems to be the % difference between order difficulty and actual difficulty. so for a simple example:
order 200 diff
actual diff 100
= 50% money
oh and i got a hillarious bug where my own char generated a crafting order. i believe it happens when there are less than 6 notables in town when new orders are generated.
Yeah the order system still needs a little more work, but it's much better now than previously when you could sell cheap javelins for 100k lol
I've seen that too! But when I clicked on it and crafted, it crashed my game lol I guess you can't fulfill your own orders :(
@@Strat-Guides good thing that i did not craft that order. i do not want a crash.
Sad that the legendary counting no longer works...
Guess, like with the babies, I just have to reload when I'm out of materials...
Great stuff here. Tale worlds math best math
Lol yeah, they got some of that flat earth math going on
I use a long hide grip that is only tier 2 and cost only 2 wrought iron. Hand guard and pommels are of the type that extend range and swing damage. Then pick the best blade available for the balance between swing damage and handling for the max profit. I created ridiculously unpractical "orcish" two handers that sell for retarded amount of cash. Some of them only need wrought iron as ingredients.
Yeah there is a T4 blade that uses wrought iron that always sells for a ton, I think that's the one you're referring to. Haha it does look like I imagine an orc sword would look like :D
There are a couple parts like that - A t4 pommel that uses wrought iron and A handle that uses cheaper materials than it should. I'll probably do another video someday about good crafting weapons to see.
I'm late to the party but still awesome video Strat!
Are the highlighted stats for weapon orders from a mod?
Thanks for watching! This video is a bit older, from several patches ago and a few things have changed since then. The highlighted stats should be working again now. It was bugged for a couple patches but I think 1.9 got them back again.
@@Strat-Guides Thank you for the quick reply.
Have a good one!
Interesting about the legendary exploit, I noticed that string of actions also when trying to marry someone, if you reload them immediately goto sway them again it's the same results, had to go walk around the map for a couple secs for those actions to pass or whatever
Oooh that's really good info! I had noticed it with chat checks before as well but didn't know that walking around cleared it up. I'm working on the tactics section of my cunning guide and when I do auto calc battles, the casualties will vary for 2-5 battles and then eventually become a static outcome for 10+ in a row (probably infinite but I'm not willing to test that lol). It's very bizarre. I'll have to check to see if allowing time to pass changes the results. Much appreciated with the clutch info
@@Strat-Guides np man happy to help! you seem to know a lot more about this then I do but my theory was that the chances of things happen is probably predetermined for a certain period of time, maybe like a second or 2, and then it resets afterwards and a new set of outcomes is created
@@andobtw8046 I don't know anything about programming, but I imagine the only reason to do this is to save computing power? Otherwise why not randomize each event? Who knows, it's well above my pay grade lol
great videos thank you ... iam looking for advice on the best choices for smiting perks to pick from ... especially from level 125 and up
Thank you! I'm working on endurance perks next - this week I'm finishing up throwing perks and will have the video ready by Friday!
For smithing these are usually how I pick:
125 - Depends on focus of this smith, usually smelt with my main character though
150 - controlled for more ranged focus, vigorous smith for melee focus (I usually go vigorous)
175 - Practical Smith (the extra money is not worth it since towns don't have enough money to buy our stuff anyways)
200 - master smith only option here
225 - Enduring smith (Attribute points are harder to come by so I prefer this one over focus points)
250 - Sharpened edge (I mostly use swing damage, but if you use a lot of thrust then the other can be god)
275 - Legendary smith only option
@@Strat-Guides thank you got it ...
Liked and subbed thanks for the vid
Quality content 👌
Thank you for watching and the kind words!
this is gold, Jerry, GOLD! Ty for a very detailed guide. Do you or anyone else by any chance have a smelting weapon ingredient spreadsheet? I want to know which weapons to buy to get the ingredients I want. I made one awhile ago for my thamaskeen smithing, but I lost it :(
That's a great question! Why didn't I think of that before lol I'm adding it to my list :) I don't know of anyone else that does this kinda stuff. I'll let you know if/when it's done!
This guide is fantastic. It's too bad now that 1.7 came out my T6 two handed swords sell for 15k and my unlocks are coming considerably slower. Time for a new way to make money I guess
Yeah they really nerfed smithing hard in the last patch. I can't say i'm too sad about it though, I can't remember the last time I actually had to worry about money because of how broken smithing was lol so this should be a fresh look at alternative!
Wow I should of watched this before. I got most of my crafting XP from 2H T3 Axe
The 2H axes aren't that bad, but yeah compared to Polearm and 2H sword it would have saved you some time. I had someone comment saying "the TaleWorlds black box" which I thought was perfect lol there's no way of knowing what the heck they are doing behind the scenes and all we can do it guesstimate!
Great video! However, one thing I think I might disagree on is your imperative to always craft the highest tech weapons at about 5:30. This is the way to go if the time spent making weapons, and overall profit are not the concern, but rather making higher value items (and leveling the skill faster) are most important priorities.
If the primary motive is pure profit, then in my somewhat limited experience, a mid-tier item may actually offer a better return on investment. ADDIT: now that I've watched the whole video and see the "tricks" to doing the orders, maybe orders are just the best overall thing to do because they can yield profit and the best XP. But without knowing those "tricks," this was not very clear.
I assessed the sell values for the commodities involved (hardwood, charcoal, crude iron, wrought iron, iron, steel, fine steel, tham steel) at one town. Obviously this is just a snap shot, as the party leaders trade skill will have raised, and the economy in the game is quite fluid. But redoing this analysis constantly is of questionable merit, so I concluded that: as long as I always rely on those original numbers, and as long as the relative values for the commodities all change proportionally (meaning, there is not a dramatic increase in one but a decrease in others) then these numbers collected from early game should be relatively strongly correlated with the actual sales prices at any later time in the game.
Based on these sales values, I calculated production cost for each of the 2nd and higher order commodities. I used sales values because the point of this analysis is to quantify the opportunity cost of using the materials to make higher order products, i.e., what potential gain is being foregone in order to use the material to make something more sophisticated. The purchase prices for the raw materials could certainly be used, but this would be more instructive of the overall profit of the operation, not so much the relative profit of individual produced items, and in any event I doubt the values would vary that much between the sales values and the purchase prices. It was also just plain easier to collect all the numbers from one game pane!
Using these production costs for each of the refined building materials (charcoal and all the metals), it is a simple matter to calculate the production costs for any given item in the game and then to compare that production cost to the sales value for the item and derive a profit margin for each item constructed.
I would not say that I've been exhaustive in looking at a wide range of weapons and particularly limited on the highest tier ones (my lead Smith is still only about Level 190 or so), but with that caveat noted: what I've concluded is that the most profitable weapon for me to make was not the most advanced one I could make at least at one time point several game seasons ago. I periodically made the most advanced weapon I could and compared it to the earlier ones; generally I'd look at about every 25 levels. I also only looked at 2-handed swords, even though I've unlocked a lot of parts for other weapon types by now thanks to smelting. What I found was that from the simplest T1 weapon up to about T3 models the profit increased: "Coalbiter1" 326% (my lead smith is a Coalbiter NPC); Coalbiter2 277%; Coalbiter3 385%; Coalbiter4 330%; Coalbiter5 902%; Coalbiter6 970%; Bulblong 1649% . . . However, when I got to T4 or T5 weapons it seems that the additional cost for producing steel caused the increase profit to plateau: Kasakara1 1143%. So I explored making weapons that required simpler materials (no steel at all) but which used T4 parts. I discovered a T4 Falchion 2hander that sold consistently for 6700D (versus the ~11,000D of Kasakara1). But whereas the more advanced sword had a profit margin of 1143% (which was actually slightly less than the earlier "Bulblong" sword that included mostly T3 7068D and 1649% profit) the less advanced T4 sword had a profit of 2779%.
The more profitable sword used only 5 wrought iron + 1 iron + 1 charcoal, whereas the more advanced one used 3 steel + 3 fine steel + 1 charcoal.
A couple of other things I've noted, and I bet you are aware, but not sure if you mention it in your video: (1) unlocks are not character specific, they are shared by all party members. I think this is the right way for the game to function, but it saddens me that TW decided to make smithing work this way but not trade. Meaning: there is no benefit to having a high Trade skill NPC in the players party.
(2) Apparently, the max tier of weapon which can be produced (at least for mid-tier weapons) is also shared. My whole party of clan members is about nine at this point and Smithing skill ranges from about 30 to 190 or so. When a new model of sword is produced by the main smith, some copies will seem to be flawed in some way and the price they command will be a bit lower. But apparently the design gets "perfected" over time, and the sales value becomes highly consistent. Moreover, I have used my low skill party members to produce literally scores or hundreds of that same T4 Falcion 2-hander design, and ALL the weapons always sell for the same amount. This means that: after the lead smith has made 10 or 15 copies of a particular design and the price fluctuations have abated, you can use your entire clan to spam dozens of that design for exactly the same profit as if the lead smith had produced it.
ADDIT: it is up to Autumn 1091 in the same campaign in which I did the analyses described above. I've just rechecked the sales prices for the commodities at another town (Seonon, whereas I think the original town was either Poros or Zeonica). As expected pretty much all the sales prices were different. Hardwood and Charcoal were 15% and 12.5% higher sales prices respectively. Every other commodity was in the -22% lower sales price, but the steels had dropped the most steel -23%; fine steel -25%; thamaskene -30%.
Despite all of those changes, the relative relation between the three most profitable swords remained about the same:
Bulblong (mostly T3 sword): 7,068 and 1545% (vs.1649% based on original numbers ); Kasakara1 11,092 and 998% (vs. 1143% originally); T4 Falchion 2754% (vs 2779% originally).
One last thing of note: Once a design has been "perfected" and all copies are of identical quality (even when they are produced by lower skill smiths), it appears that the value of the sold weapons becomes less variant overall. Going from town to town to sell my gigantic inventories of "T4 Falchions" (which btw, is an absolute retarded looking sword that uses that ridiculous "cleaver blade 3" thing with the serrations) they would generally always ALL sell for the same thing: about 6,078 Denariis.
I don't consider any of this to be the final word by any means. But it does suggest to me that: other than doing orders, making "mid-tier weapons" which use less expensive refined materials (and use up less cycles of smithing stamina depletion) might be the "most profitable" means of spamming Smithy Wealth. Maybe spark some ideas for you to do a new video on Smithing and wealth based on latest update.
Highest crafting is polearm T5 all, glaive, oak shaft, and spike butt.
Kinda wish this said where to find specific types of weapons more often or which faction to go after
I am totally subbing to the StratFrat
LOL We're going streaking through the quad and into the gymnasium!!
ua-cam.com/video/AutCYC3dH-E/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Joshua24fan
Ty
Awesome...all the way superb! How does one know when u get a LEGENDARY Roll?🧐
It's all RNG so you just have to get lucky :)
Thanks
Thank you for watching!
How much that sword from the beggining costs? Maybe its gold dependent. 1000 pitchforks costs around 80k - same as 2H crafted sword and in my experience it could be it. So it would be around 1000 smelted gold for 1 part?
That's an interesting theory, I had not considered that! I would have to go back and check, but your numbers sound about right. Good catch, you might be onto something here :D
So each unlock level has a specific number of parts and XP per unlock. Once you level it up, XP per part increases, so it starts around the 1K mark and goes up from there. I'm not sure what it ends at, but it takes a while to unlock in the last level!
you can maybe make a list for the best weapons you can craft for each type ?
That's a great idea, I actually have that on my list of projects to do soon! Ill probably show how to craft it as well as it being used in a battle.
@@Strat-Guides thank u. i think many will appreciate it because i will tell u the truth i searched every where for some good weapon craft builds and i cant find it anywhere.
@@Okidoki258 I just finished building them all and testing them, I just need to do some editing and write a script for it, but I think it turned out okay :) I'll try my best to finish it up tomorrow and release it.
Dont suppose theres a good way to get Thaskene steel?
Aside from taking the perk, the only others way are to smelt T steel weapons or clearing gangs from inside the town. Sometimes you can buy them from a town but they are super expensive. Getting them as a drop from gangs isn't 100%, but maybe every 3 or 4 times you will get 1.
@@Strat-Guides Ah right, i'll just get another bsmith companion with the perk then
@@decadunce9205 Yeah that's what I usually do. It's not too far up the perk tree so 3 focus points and 2 attribute will get you there or if they have 3 endurance then you only need 2 focus points into smithing :)
I still don't really know how you got the materials in the first place. Do need to buy them or melt down my loot?
Smelting looted weapons is usually my goto, but you can also buy weapons to smelt or buy iron ore and refine that up.
I just came back to the game recently. What're crafting orders? I'll check it today.
Welcome back! 1.7.0 is a great patch to get back into things with :) Crafting orders are basically nobles or notables that want you to make a weapon for them. On the smithing screen, between the crafting and refining tab there is a tab for orders. They give really good XP and the higher tier ones can potentially give good money too!
How do I get steel? Only from smelting and the 2nd perk? I
So all smelting materials come from two things: Either by perks (turning 2 lower tier materials into 1 higher tier, like 2 steel into 1 fine steel etc.) or by smelting weapons that were made of the materials you wish to obtain. So if you want steel, you can take the perk like you suggested OR you can find weapons that contain those materials and smelt them. If you go to Empire towns, you can buy Pugio daggers for cheap and smelt them down for all crafting materials except thamaskene steel. It's very imbalanced, but a great way to get lot's of crafting materials. You can also buy tribesman daggers at most cities, try those 2 out. Look at this part of the video that explains it: @4:06.
1 year later but: tribesmen daggers are found everywhere but BATTANIA and Khuzait, Valandia has them
Easy as music theory!