The loudest shop in town and the most popular. Every fighter in Britannia is wearing somebody's work, and the smith who makes the best plate never has to ask for gold again.
A blacksmith turns ingots into the gear everybody else fights in: plate, chain, ring, helmets, shields, swords, axes, maces. You stand at an anvil next to a forge with a smith's hammer, you pick something off a menu, and either it comes out fine or you lose the metal. Higher skill means fewer losses and better results.
The word that matters is exceptional. A good smith doesn't just make a breastplate, they make an exceptional one — stronger, worth far more, and stamped with your character's name on it forever. That signature is the whole social game of being a smith on a family shard. People ask for your plate by name.
You also own repair, which sounds dull and is actually your retainer. Armour wears out constantly, nobody else can fix it, and a smith with a house full of tools becomes the person every fighter in the family has to be nice to. The trade-off is that you need raw material in bulk — which is why half the sheet below is about getting your own.
You get 700 skill points in total, which is seven skills at 100 (Grandmaster). Here is a sheet that works, and why each line is on it. You can load this exact spread on the hero sheet in the magazine and slide the numbers around.
| Skill | Points | Why it's here |
|---|---|---|
| Blacksmithy | 100 | The craft itself, plus repair on everything metal. Nothing else on this sheet matters without it. |
| Mining | 100 | Your own ore and your own smelting. A smith who buys all their ingots works for the miner; a smith who digs works for themselves. |
| Arms Lore | 100 | Raises the chance of an exceptional result and the bonus it carries. This is the line that separates a smith people seek out from one they tolerate. |
| Tinkering | 100 | Smith's hammers, tongs, sewing kits, pickaxes — you become the shard's tool supply, and you stop paying for your own. |
| Carpentry | 100 | Wooden shields, furniture and the house add-ons. Metal and wood together is what makes a one-stop shop. |
| Tailoring | 100 | Leather and studded armour for the characters who'd rather be fast than armoured, plus endless bandages for the ones who wouldn't. |
| Magery | 100 | Mark and Recall. A crafter's life is hauling heavy things between a mine, a forge and a bank, and this is the shortcut. |
| Total | 700 | of 700 |
Blacksmithy, Tailoring, Carpentry and Tinkering on one character means the family never needs a second crafter. If you'd rather go deep than wide, drop Carpentry and Tailoring for Meditation and Lumberjacking, or just hand those two trades to somebody else and enjoy a shorter shopping list.
NPC smiths hand out BODs — requests for a quantity of a specific item. Fill them and the rewards include runic hammers, powder of fortifying and ancient smithy hammers, which are how legendary gear gets made. Start collecting them the day you hit Grandmaster; the small ones are worth doing while you train.
Skills go up by using them, and they go up fastest on a task that is just barely hard for you. Climb the rungs in order — each one stops paying off, and that's your cue to move up.
An NPC blacksmith trains you to 30 and sells you ingots in the same conversation. Don't mine yet — just buy cheap iron and get your hands moving.
Skill goes up on attempts, not on masterpieces. Hammer out hundreds of the simplest items, and smelt the failures straight back into ingots so almost nothing is wasted. Do this standing next to a forge with a full ore chest and it costs you nearly nothing.
Make something that's just barely hard for you — when the successes get boring, pick a harder item. Meanwhile get Mining going, because from here your ingot bill starts to hurt if you're buying it.
Platemail is the sweet spot for training and the thing people actually want. Exceptional results start appearing, and Arms Lore makes them appear more. Keep the good pieces, smelt the rest.
The last ten points are slow for every crafter. Spend them making full plate suits and shields you can sell or hand to the family, and start filling bulk order deeds so the grind comes with a reward attached at the end of it.
Buy this before you do anything else. Total damage to your purse is small, and every item on the list earns itself back in an hour.
| What | Where | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| A smith's hammer | Any blacksmith | The tool. Buy several — they wear out, and a shop trip mid-project is a mood killer. Tinkering replaces this purchase permanently. |
| Tongs | Blacksmith or provisioner | The other half of the toolkit. Same advice: buy spares now, tinker them later. |
| A few thousand iron ingots | NPC blacksmith | Training fuel. Cheap in bulk, and failures smelt back down, so the real cost is far lower than the sticker price. |
| A forge and an anvil | House add-on deeds | Both, at home, next to each other and next to your ore chest. Working out of a public forge in town is how you lose an evening to walking. |
| A runebook | Mage shop | Runes to the house, the mine and the bank. That's the whole commute. |
| A big strong box or chest | Carpenter or provisioner | Ingots, tools and finished goods want separate containers. Sounds fussy; saves hours. |
The right room makes training three times faster. These are the spots worth a rune.
Ore in the hills, a forge in town, smith trainers on the street. The classic smith's home town for a reason.
The big bank and the busiest street in Britannia. If you want to actually sell to people rather than to shopkeepers, be near the traffic.
Forge, anvil, ore chest, tool chest, all in one room. Every serious smith ends up here — it turns a twenty-minute cycle into a two-minute one.
Not for the goods — for the bulk order deeds. Collect them whenever you pass; the rewards are the best gear in the trade.
A failed item usually returns some of its metal if you smelt it. New smiths throw failures away or let them pile up in a corner. Keep a forge within reach and your effective material cost drops dramatically.
It is the difference between occasionally making something exceptional and reliably making it. Fighters are told to never buy Arms Lore; smiths should never skip it. Same skill, opposite advice.
Coloured ingots are precious and your failure rate at 40 skill is brutal. Train on plain iron until you're high enough to deserve the good stuff. Burning valorite at 50 Blacksmithy is the single most expensive mistake in the trade.
Exceptional items carry your character's name. That's lovely when the work is good and permanent when it isn't — so don't hand out the mediocre pieces with your mark on them. Smelt them and make another.
Britannia runs on favours. These are the people you want in your party and on your friends list.