I have more money than I can handle, I could buy a stack of Bolts of Mass Destruction since armor is worth a reasonable amount (or just refined bars). The problem is, smithing is worthless past level 5, and starting a little earlier if you get the drops. The bonuses to traps and damage are nice, but the core skill itself will not give you anything worth wearing that you can't find something better of just lying around at that point. I maxed it out, found some good recipes but now I'm basically hoarding bars on the off chance it's worth it, which checking the wiki, doesn't look promising. This is mainly because there is no way to really enhance armor other than anvils, and past that level all I really need to increase are my resistance stats and get better weapons. There is almost NO resistance armor whatsoever and I found a better weapon on dungeon level 3, 4 and 5 than the top tier weapon you can craft (sword). That's not even getting into shields or chest armor which by the time you can craft it is totally worthless. Helmets and boots are "meh" if you can get them early, but then you're wasting points which are more useful for early battle skills. In short, there should be some type of recipe(s) useful past level 5, because armor absorption and block only go so far. Even if I had to combine it with my alchemy skill that would acceptable (which is ENDLESSLY useful, not sarcastic).
Just FYI, there's more smithing recipes than currently show up in the wiki. Look in craftDB.xml to find them, it should be easy enough to figure out. But yeah, Smithing primarily gives you a (large) boost in the early game, and then doesn't do much the rest of the time. It needs some active abilities, or the ability to make useful consumables like Alchemy or Tinkering. Personally I'm a fan of moving the Ancient Kronian Ritual into Smithing 5, and moving stuff around in Archaeology so that it has a Lutefisk or Inconsequentia statue recharge skill.
Yup, Smithing is useless at the moment. Whatever early bonus you get from those weapons and armors are lost by you actually having to put points in the skill. I can just put points on my primary offensive skill instead for similar level of kick ass in dungeon 1-5, and they won't haunt me later on as a skill point sink.
I wonder if Smithing would be more useful if corrupting weapons either happened more frequently or were more devastating to the weapon's stats?
Highly doubt it. Not like you can out smith high end weapon/armor than the amount of corruption blobs at dungeon 10. You better off investing the 4 point somewhere else to prevent getting your equipment corrupted entirely.
ugh, smithing is not useless. What you're getting is a strong BEGINNING survival skill. It's vastly overpowered in the first 5 floors because you're making end-game equipment. But after the first 5 floors, it sucks. So why would you get smithing? If you have a "strong" end game build that's weak in the beginning, then you can get smithing to even out your build.
It seems like some people want every skill to be identical. It's okay if they're not all the same. Smithing is fine. (Actually, smithing is broken because of the bug that causes skills to not give stat points, but that's another issue)
@mellow You don't get "beginning" survival skill. You get survivability after finding parts and putting a bunch of skillpoints in. You still struggling dungeon 1 for the first two level like everyone else. You then also get messed up past dungeon 5. From there onward you will always be 4 levels and 1 skill tree behind. Most other build that only invest in their core skills can get rolling by level 10, which can be achieved by the end of dungeon 3 if they are playing it safe, then simply skip those mid level dungeons. So what do you get? You survive "better" in dungeon 2 - 3, then pay it back for the rest of the game.
Why not grant each lvl of smithing corruption resistance and let max level smiths be immune to corruption.
@123stw Every skill (except for fungal arts) struggles on floor 1. And the only reason why fungal doesn't struggle is because you get a 0mp summon for the 2nd skill. But smithing does not "struggle" on floor 1 like other skills. You are always guaranteed a coal, iron, and iron deposit on every floor. You can easily craft a good weapon or armor if you manage to find the smithing room. You survive better from floor 1 to 5. If you're struggling to survive on floor 4 and 5, then I question your ability to craft. Or at the very least, I question your skill choices because you should have VERY good gear by now. You don't need 4 pts invested, you only need 3 to get to skill level 4, and you only need level 5 smithing later. I think the main problem here is that enemies get strong very fast. By floor 6, they'll be hitting for much more than armor or weapons can handle. But this is a problem for MELEE players in general. All melee players have that problem on floor 6+. Smithing is fine. Also, making you immune to corruption is OP.
@mellow What I was saying is that no melee character are really having problem with 4 and 5 to begin with. You could of just max your primary weapon and berserk and you should be fine. Likewise, pure melee with no support spell cannot afford to sacrifice late game. You are no better off in dungeon 4 or 5 either because that's when you start the grinding to "pay back" before being able to continue to dungeon 6.
Smithing has worked for me so far. I'm on level six with two fabulous swords, the serpent embossed plate, the winged aluminum boots, and two rings of thorns, all of them heavily enchanted. Yup. I like smithing. But I agree that it could use a high level boost. There's only five levels of it, so looks to me like there's room for one more skill. Once the fix the stat bug, I expect it will get even more useful, though.
Care to explain what you mean by "heavily enchanted"? I do like the idea of having a final level where you can make craft specific weapons and armor that are both stronger than normal and cannot be picked up from normal drops. 5 points investment should deserve something special.
I mean that I've managed to use the Anvil multiple times on each one to add enchantments, and the TTIAW skill to reroll them until I got something more appropriate to my build. The swords, of course, have a ridiculous amount of damage mods due to the bug there, but that will go away soon enough. I got lucky and got a pair of rocket boots from the Lutefisk God which negated half of the Block impairment from my Serpentine Plate armor, and a lucky roll got another two ponts removed from the armor itself.
@123stw "What I was saying is that no melee character are really having problem with 4 and 5 to begin with. You could of just max your primary weapon and berserk and you should be fine." What are you talking about here? Pure melee suffers on Dungeon level 4 and 5 due to the damage output of the monsters. Not to mention the bugged Kleptoblobby attacks. If anything, without Smithing and Archaeology for me, I don't think I'd ever have gotten past level 5. Level 7 is usually where I get stuck by Big Blues. And besides, why would anyone skip levels in this game. You need the experience and items, and Krong Enchantments for the later levels. Skipping levels is a bad thing.
@davidb1111 I thought about it. And while I don't use any of the defense skills anymore and just use psionic to stun, I suppose Smithing might actually be the best direct defense skill there is. It is at least a lot better than Master of Arms and if combine with Archaeology should provide some decent direct protection that doesn't suck later on. If you spend points on just Smithing and Archaeology, you can max both out before dungeon 5 and anvil grind for some seriously awesome gears before moving on. Edit: Oh I just notice it can craft a Jingly Jangly Staff of Crystals, that's like totally awesome. Edit2: Just saw how Smithing can craft Ring of Iron Thorn, that's probably more awesome than all the armors that can be crafted.
I know. But there are so many changes and planned changes for next patch that I don't want to plan for it until it actually come out and I can see exactly in the XML what changed. It's like how archeology might not even be that good next patch if it can't remove negative buff in some way. I mean, staves might not even be as good as now if they change the way vampirism works.
