Quick Costs Chart
| Item | Starting Cost | Completion Cost | Remarks |
| Shovel | 2 Iron | 4 Wood | |
| Carpentry Blade | 1 Iron | Nothing | |
| Hatchet | 3 Iron | 1 Wood | |
| Ritual Blade | 4 Copper | Nothing | Was available during competition only |
| Scythe | 1 Bronze | 4 Wood | Requires Scythe Template in inventory |
| Resin Wedge | 1 Brass | Nothing | |
| Archeology Shovel | 1 Bronze | Nothing | No current uses at this time |
| Diamond Tipped Hatchet | 3 Bronze, 1 Huge Diamond | 1 Wood |
Information on blacksmithing
The Skill
Available From: University of Architecture
Allows construction of blacksmithing tools in a casting box. Allows access to building the project "Anvil."
Anyone can use an anvil with tools to create carpentry blade, shovel, or hatchet.
The Facts
Definitions used throughout this and child pages can be found at Blacksmithing Definitions.The maximum quality of a blade is 9999. This fact comes from the Pharaoh. You obtain 9999 when there are *no* visual blemishes on the blade at all.
The minimum quality for a carpentry blade to be USABLE is 3000. Anything less, when you try to use it, will produce a message saying it is not usable.
There is randomness involved in blacksmithing, in a number of aspects of it.
There can be as many as 3 points worth of dents or 2 points worth of bumps in addition to the correct amount of metal. This is very hard to see until you are working at the 9972+ quality level, when you can easily count the 1-point dents and bumps and realize you have more of one than the other. Yes, metal does dissapear and reappear. Yes, additional metal can appear. (I've seen dents worth 4 points on hatchets, but they are spread out over the metal -Kylas)
Metal is a 2-d array of points. The carpentry blade is cut out of 14x7, I believe. They are offset from eachother to form hexagonal shaped slopes. There is a slight blur (was not there in beta) that makes it harder to see exactly where the points lie -- you may see many smaller triangles at various different angles-that is the blurring method -- but they are there, and can be seen if you pay enough attention.
The tools have certain press patterns (how they press metal down), as well as distribution patterns (in what way the metal is put back after you hit the thing) There is some randomness in the distribution, so there in no ability to make a "click here with this power" guide.
Power increases the amount of metal that gets removed. This is not the same as repeated hits, and it is no "follow-through" -- if you hit power 9 with the ball-peen hammer, it will make a single deep hole, however if you repeatedly hit it, it will make a rather wide deep hole, because the sides of the hammer start to hit the metal as well.
The Tools
There are 4 known tools for working at the anvil. All 4 of these tools are made in any casting box.The three hammers have a similar shape: a hexagon (6 points around the point you click nearest, as well as the point you click nearest). The picture shows the basic faceted shape of the hammers.
Shaping Mallet
costs 2 lead, 2 beeswax, requires 5 minutes to cool
The shaping mallet has 7 points, shaped in a hexagon (6 points around the point you click nearest, as well as the point you click nearest). It is flat, so you will only push metal away from the highest point among the 7 that it could hit (the others will not be hit, as the hammer is flat.) The distribution pushes the metal as far as 4 points away, from the point closest to where you clicked, in any direction.
The large distribution makes it useful for moving metal around on the blank in large quantities, but the round/flat press pattern makes it less useful for detail work. The best blacksmiths in Egypt often shape up to 8-9k quality before working detail, because you do not want too much metal in the wrong area and have to use the peen hammer to move it -- it takes too long. This is a good skill to develop, possibly the only one needed if you don't plan to make your own 9-10k items.
Round Hammer
costs 2 iron, 2 beeswax, requires 5 minutes to cool
The round hammer has the same press pattern as the shaping mallet - 7 spots, flat, hexagon shaped. The distribution is pushing metal in any direction up to 3 points away.
The round hammer has two primary uses. It is the "poor man's" shaper, because it hits more area and pushes more metal than the ball-peen hammer, but it does not have as large a distribution pattern as the shaping mallet. It also allows you to hit metal down on spots that wold otherwise be unreachable by clicking on the point *next* to it, if the point next to it is lower than the target point. So if you have a very high point, and want it to stay there, but a low point next to it and you want that low point lower, you can hit the next point over with the round, and the low point will be hit down.
Ballpeen Hammer
costs 1 iron, 1 beeswax, requires 5 minutes to cool
The ballpeen hammer has an important press pattern. There are 7 press points - similar to the round hammer and shaper mallet - except the center one is ~19 visual "ticks" deeper than the surrounding 6 (that is, the center of the hammer sticks out a bit) -- so if you hit flat metal, only one point will be pushed. If you hit steep-angled metal, you will hit the points surrounding the point you click on as well. Metal may be distributed as far away as 3 points.
This is the only hammer that can push down only the spot you click on in most situations. It is the tool that allows you to do precision work, and get the really high quality. You would use the ball-peen hammer to clean up most of the errors left by the shaper, which it can not manage as well or at all.
Tungsten Chisel
costs 2 tungsten, 2 beeswax, requires 5 minutes to cool
The Tungsten Chisel is useful but not necessary. It's press pattern is 4 points wide at depth, surrounded (by 12 points total) higher up, similar to the points surrounding the center of the ball-peen hammer. The points around the chisel's 4 main points are higher up than the ball-peen's -- so there are some cases (specifically, the back corners of the hatchet) where the chisel allows you to make it perfect, while the ball-peen does not. The chisel's distribution pattern is its most important feature. When you press with the chisel, metal ONLY moves forward or backward. As far as 3 points, like the other non-shaping hammers.
The Tungsten chisel's primary use is the front of blades. It speeds up what you could otherwise do with the ball-peen by pushing the metal directly away from the blade, instead of randomly around. It provides additional functionality in rare cases, due to its sharper slope (largert point difference between the low spots on the hamemr and the high spots), which you can use to your advantage in the back corners of the hatchet.
Blacksmithing Products
Shovel
costs 2 iron to start, 4 wood to complete. The efficiency of a shovel is determined using a piece-wise linear function using quality:- QUALITY <= 2999
- Useless.
- QUALITY <= 9000
- digs 1 deep with ((QUALITY-3000)/6000) chance of digging an extra depth.
- QUALITY <= 9999
- digs 2 deep with ((QUALITY-9000)/1000) chance of digging an extra depth.
Question 1: Like the Hatchet, is it possible (given 50 digs or 100 digs?) to get a couple 2-deep digs with a q3000 shovel?
Question 2: Is the 9999 99.9% likely to dig 3, or 100%? This could take a while to test, but would be good to figure out.
Carpentry Blade
costs 1 iron to start, can complete for free. The number of boards a carpentry blade can cut appears to have a small amount of randomness to it, but the *minimum* number of boards is determinable using the "inspect blade" option, which is available on a carpentry shop if you have the metallurgy skill. The minimum number of boards appears to be ((Quality - 2000) / 3). The actual number of boards is, on average, about 20-30 higher than the minimum.QUESTION 1: Teppy said the quality->usefulness was no longer linear. We have almost no data above 9k -- might it get significantly better above 9k? We need more than the 1 data point we have to determine this, but from 3k to 9k, it's pretty much determined that the equation mentioned is correct.
Hatchet
costs 3 iron to start, 1 wood to complete. When using a hatchet, you multiply how much wood you get from trees, but also multiply the time before they can be pulled again. This allows for efficient use of largest tree runs, but using a 1minute run with a perfect hatchet will still produce the same amount of wood in a given amount of time.The efficiency of a hatchet is determined using a piece-wise lienar function using quality:
- QUALITY <= 2499?
- Useless, 0 efficiency. You will always get 1x wood. (Needs more testing!)
- 2500? <= 5000
- Pulls 1x wood with (QUALITY-2500)/5000 chance of pulling an extra set of wood.
- 5000 <= 7000
- Pulls 1x wood with (QUALITY-3000)/4000 chance of pulling an extra set of wood.
- 7000 <= 9000
- Pulls 2x wood with (QUALITY-7000)/2000 chance of pulling an extra set of wood.
- 9000 <= 9650?
- Pulls 3x wood with (QUALITY-9000)/650 chance of pulling an extra set of wood.
- 9650 <= 9999
- Pulls 4x wood with (QUALITY-9650)/350 chance of pulling an extra set of wood.
QUESTION 1: To those with q9999: Have you EVER pulled 4x? Or is this actually /299 instead of 300?
Answer: Yeah, I've pulled 4x with my 9999 quality one. It's very rare for that to happen, though. -Knives
I get 5 times wood all the time with my q9999-cortex
QUESTION 2: The "+10%" and extra /400 in the first area is kludge -- I get 2x SOMETIMES (about 8-10%) with my 3k hatchet. It might even be 3/7% -- I'll continue testing, in which case, it would simply be QUALITY/7000, even though 3k and less is useless. But I don't think it's 3/7, 'cause that's nearly half, and even the 4k doesn't get half. :/
Reply: Based on Leetah's data I split the 3000-7000 range into two segments. Let's see how this holds up. -Trucidation
QUESTION 3:The 9700 as the "EXACTLY 4x" marker is not tested yet, I will be testing it in the AM. I have the hatchet available, and will do my 100 pulls first thing in the morning, just don't have time right now. But I've done 9600 and I've done 9800, and I'm pretty sure it's 9700.
Reply: Based on my 9707 axe giving me about 14% chance of getting extra wood I'm setting the 4x mark at 9650. -Trucidation
QUESTION 4:Which do you think is better, an "exactly 4x hatchet" or a 4.5x hatchet? The 4.5x, you would need a 5 minute run, but would be wasting time for one minute on half the trees -- seems like extra effort for not much payoff. The 4x, you know you can always use all the trees, no questions... It may end up being that exactly 9k is 'better' than 9100, 'cause you won't randomly miss a few trees in your run because they did 5 minutes instead of 4... what do you all think?
Reply: It depends on how you use your axe. If you continuously harvest a patch of trees a 9000 axe is better than 9100. If you hit the trees only once in a while (say, when going to/from your camp) then I'd say the 9100 axe is better. -Trucidation
Reply 2: At our camp we have a wood run that takes more then 5 mins to run around, so here u can collect continuously with any 9100+ hatchet, so better quality the better here, but of course I can imagine the situation when it isn't. -MecFiGerth
QUESTION 5: Is quality <= 2999 really useless? Hatchets need testing in 2500-2999 range.
Reply: To answer my own question: Hatchet of quality less than 2999 still help you gather more wood. Needs more testing.
Ritual Blade
Must have Ra's Hammer in inventory to have the option to start this. You also need Ra's Hammer in your inventory to work on it. costs 4 copper to start, can complete for free. Ritual blades have no known use outside of the contest they were designed for.
Scythe
Costs 1 bronze to start, 4 wood to complete. You must have a Scythe Template in your inventory to begin this project. There is a 200 hit limit before the metal becomes too brittle to work further (can discard for full metal recovery still).
- QUALITY <= 3000
- Useless, 0 efficiency. You will always get 1x grass.
- 3000(?) <= 5000
- Harvests 1x grass with (QUALITY-????)/???? chance of harvesting an extra deben of grass.
- 5000 <= 8000
- Harvests 2x grass with (QUALITY-5000)/3000 chance of harvesting an extra deben of grass.
- 8000 <= 9000
- Harvests 3x grass with (QUALITY-????)/???? chance of harvesting an extra deben of grass.
- 9000 <= 9???
- Harvests 4x grass with (QUALITY-????)/??? chance of harvesting an extra deben of grass.
- 9??? <= 9999
- Harvests 5x grass with (QUALITY-????)/??? chance of harvesting an extra deben of grass.
The information for scythes is very tentative, as indicated by question marks.
Resin Wedge
Cost is 1 brass. 150 hit limit. Higher quality wedges result in faster resin production. More research is needed to determine timings.
Archeology Shovel
Costs 1 Bronze. There is a hit limit (200?) before you can't work further, though the metal can be retrieved.
Archeology Shovels were used to unearth the eight Monuments. Digging out each monument required the collaborative effort of many people, and took a long period of time.
Diamond Tipped Hatchet
This item is made with 3 bronze and 1 huge diamond (to start), and 1 wood (to complete). There is a 150 hit limit (can discard for full metal recovery still, diamond is returned at discard, not returned at completion). Requires Refined Smithery.
It appears to act like a normal hatchet, but does not affect the respawn timer on the tre e. Preliminary tes ting suggests respawn timer is 0.625x the wood multiplier, vs. 1x for regular hatchets.
Blacksmithing Techniques
Basic Anvil Use
You start a project (deducting the cost from your current inventory), which puts a "blank" on the anvil. You can reclaim the resources as scrap, or call the project "complete" at any point. Completing a project with quality less than 3000 results in an unusable product.
Your blank is "unformed", and your goal is to shape it to resemble the "goal" (which a menu lets you alternate with the blank). At any time, you can check the "quality" of your work, which is a measure of how closely your project resembles the goal. (Note: you must have "Chat appears above player's heads" turned on in order to see the results of the quality check.)
You select a hammer, select a "force level", from 1 (light) to 9 (massive) to use when striking the blank, then click on the blank. (By default, when you change hammers, the force level is reset to 1.) Depending on the hammer you use, a different pattern of change will be applied to the blank, as described above.
As a pointer to those looking to start doing this: when making hatchets, I find myself sticking to the shaping mallet until I have a quality >7000; at this point, the metal distribution is close to what I need (no deep holes anywhere). I can then go in with the ball-peen and round hammers, and slowly iron out the imperfections, bringing it up to 9500+. I managed one at ~9520 (Amanesus' Tree Annihilator) with only the ball-peen and round hammers, but if you use the shaping hammer to get the initial shape, it'll save you a lot of time. -- Amanesus
using a shaping hammer, you can VERY quickly get 3-4k shovels, and with 30 minutes of playing around with it, should be able to get 7-8k shovels in under 4 minutes. The best blacksmiths I know of have managed 8.5-9k shovels in under 5 minutes using only the shaping hammer. If we get a decent number of people doing things like this, we can quickly flood the market with these easy, cheaper shovels to replace slate shovels forever, then slowly work the market up to the better (and eventually, we may hope, the best?) shovels in the game.
30 Second 5.5K Carpentry Blade
Here's a fast and dirty guide on how to make a 5k+ carpentry blade (about 1000-1200 boards). You will need the Wide Tungsten chisel, and BallPeen Hammer.
Here is a Rough diagram of what a carpentry blade looks like unformed.
AAAaA xxxxx xxxxx AaAAA
AAAAAA xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx AAAAAA
AAAAAAxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAAAAAA
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BBBbBxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBbBBB
BBBBBxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBBBBB
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
1) Set the Tool to Wide Tungsten Chisel and Set the Force to 9. Hit the Edge (area marked E) along the entire length, then go over it a 2nd time. This will form a large ridge at the spot marked R. Avoid the temptation to beat it down, this just lowers the quality.
2) Change the Tool to Ball Peen hammer. Set the force to 9. Now you need to make valleys in the 4 sides (marked A & B). Just use the Goal, to find out where the hammer should be placed (roughly where the lower case a's and b's are ). Just hit the Ball Peen hammer 1 time in each spot. (you can hit the a's 2x if you feel like it.) -- the 2nd hit at a each point usually raises the quality of the blade by between 150-200 points for me OldJoe
You should now have a a blade from 5k-5.7k. (averages 5450). Once you get this method down you can churn one out in about 30 seconds tops. --- Takatok
A slight modification to the above for about a 6k blade
1a) Using the same settings as in step 1, hammer across the midpoint of the slope formed in step 1, at the junction between the 2nd and 3rd row of E's. Then hammer across the edge of the blade again. Continue on with step 2 as above. You should get a 600 or 700 points better blade as a result. (OldJoe)
Another slight modification to get another 100-200 points
After completing the steps 1, 1a and 2 you should have a blade between 6000 and 6300 quality.3) Change the Tool to Shaping Mallet. Set force to 3. Hit the points marked by A in the diagram above. You want to lower that edge to match the edge shown in the Goal Display. You can hit each point 2-4 times and raise the quailty several points with each hit. Use the Goal Display to compare your actual results with the desired results. (OldJoe)
First off use the wide chisel at force 7. Make a tunnle by hitting across where there is elevation, or where there is a tip. Then go back through it and hit the far sides until it doesnt stick up on the far side. do this one more time so that its all a bunch of slants. Then hit the 4 special tips (see link above). Right now you should have a blade around 5900. -NianeEasy 6k in a short time with simple instructions-
General Goals
- Determine the function used for the number of boards produced by carpentry blade when quality is over 9k. (or at least verify it)
- Complete definitions and terminology to allow the proper discussion of blacksmithing among smiths, and the construction of an understandable FAQ showing and using said terminology.
- Bring into existence a good tutorial/how-to to get people up and running. A beginner's handbook, and an expert's design book would both be quite nice.
- See if we can determine a system to make named carpentry blades, to test if they have any special qualities. This could require the effort of many of the best blacksmiths in the game.
Other Comments
- Want to see some awesome stuff? Check out Bragging Rights.
- Want to see some raw data? Check out Raw Data.
- Projects in progress on an anvil do not time out. ;)
