Working at the smithy takes a lot of precise work in Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord. For those who want to make weapons without having to loot them off corpses or purchase them in the market, smithing is a great way to do it. You can choose to start with a character who is proficient in smithing or decide to have them focus on it later down the line while you play.
How to start smithing
For those who create a character who starts good at smithing, you want to choose the Urban artisans family to born into, to be noted for your skill with horses, spent most of your time at the docks and building sites when you grew up, you rode with the scouts in Calradia, and make your most significant achievement you invested some money in a workshop. These will provide you with the essential stepping stones to becoming a master smith before you set out in Bannerlord.
While playing Bannerlord, if you don’t create this starting foundation for your character or take up any of these traits, that’s no issue. You can passively have your character work toward becoming a better smith. To do so and practice the smithing skill, you want to visit a town’s smithy to refine materials and smelt old weapons. Rather than pawn off any weapons you’re not using, you can instead refurbish them for materials to use in other projects. You won’t be able to do it by merely visiting the smithy. You need to retrieve some necessary materials, such as hardwood, charcoal, and a variety of different materials of that nature.
Obtaining materials
You can do all of this by speaking to the trader in town. They won’t have charcoal, but you can create it by refining hardwood. Go to the Misc. section of a trader’s offered options, purchase hardwood, take it back to the smithy, and then go to the refine tab. You’ll be able to smelt down the hardwood to create charcoal, enabling you to use it in a majority of your smithing practices. From there, it’s having the right materials, refining them over and over again, and then crafting new armor and weapons for your character to use or to sell in the game.
Crafting the weapons
The actual crafting part takes a little getting used to in the game. On the left side you should see a bar, which displays how difficult it is to craft anything. A small line shows your character’s overall skills with smithing. If that small line is higher than the difficulty of the item, you can craft an expect item or something better, depending on your RNG chances. For those just starting out, most of the weapons and things you craft will be worse, to start off, but you can still train your smithing skill by performing the task.
You can freely modify the type of weapon you’re making and its stats by the right side of the screen. You should see the type of materials and items you’re going to make for it, and you can change those based on what your character knows how to make. For example, for a one-handed simple warblade, it’s made up of four parts: the simple warblade, the ridged northern guard, a wooden one handed grip, and a flat pommel.
If you click any of these items you’ll change the focus on the right screen. These change the stats found on the lower section, such as the weapon’s weight, reach, thrust speed, etc. You can do this by modifying the size of the weapon, too. You can experiment to see what type of weapon size and materials you like to use to craft a wonderful weapon, increasing its quality and making it more powerful your character.
You can’t sit at a smith and craft all day, though. Every character has smithing stamina. You can view it on the lower-left hand corner while you’re in the smithy. Every task you do tasks a little bit of stamina. If you run out, you can choose to do something else for the rest of the day, or rest in town. It’s up to you.
Smithing is relatively straightforward. Make sure to consistently speak to the trader whenever you’re in town and talk to them to see what material they have. If you’re looking for a particular one to craft something, double-check if you can make it by refining it from something else.
