Smithing, again

[ripforareason]

After another smithing start in which I found 2 of my 4 earlygame smithing items (Mail Corslet of Protection and Round Shield of Deflection [+2, 1d3]) on the ground early on, I'm wondering if one way to make smithing viable as a "playstyle" and not just a means of winning more on an overpowered character, would be to remove the Artistry skill and just let players add bonuses to their armor. You will still fall a little behind a regular character by about 15k experience if you have around 13 smithing and want to go for Artifice and Masterpiece, which is good for 4-5 points of mid-late game Melee/Evasion. You can recoup some of this with Artistry, but it's a lot of experience, and as of 1.3 I find that things like a Cloak of Protection [+2, 1d1], Mail Corslet of Protection (-1)[-3, 2d5], Helm of Brilliance [-1, 1d3] and the like are not all that rare. As far as I can tell, there's also less experience in 1.3 compared to older versions where the biggest smithing abuses happened, with some help from dual-wielded smithing warhammers and artefact cloaks of grace.

This might make smithers insufficiently weak mid-game for their lategame power, I'm not sure.

[ripforareason]

So, how is one supposed to play a Song of Mastery smithing-type character, anyway? I feel like I have the warrior and archer archetypes down, in that I know more or less what I want to make and when I want it. But I'm not so sure about a singing smith with a lot of +grace items. On a normal warrior-ish character I make something like:

Artefact loremaster + eye for detail crown
Artefact shield with rPois and rFear
Artefact crown with resists, light, song or true sight
Artefact boots and cloak to boost my melee and evasion and free action
Artefact gloves with melee abilities
Artefact permahaste robe
Hammer of Smithing
Masterpiece longsword

I guess I would replace the permahaste robe with a robe of grace<+3>, make a crown of grace <+3> (or +2 with mastery) instead, Feanorian lamp of grace <+2>, amulet of grace <+2>, take both points of Grace in the smithing and song trees, and then make use of Mastery? Then use floor items for my boot, glove, and cloak slots? I guess I just don't know when to take Mastery or how much Song I need for non-throne room areas.

edit: It would be really nice if we could make generic Feanorian lamps of Grace and crowns of Grace higher than <+1>, if for no reason other than to cut down the inventory juggling just a little. Otherwise, I actually thinking Smithing, at least with artifice, is okay in power level. You just have to know what to make and when.

[Infinitum]

I believe the normal progression is
->Armorsmith + Enhantment
->Crown of Command + Gloves of Smithing/Armor of Protection + Shield of Deflection at first forge
->Pump Song instead of Evasion, rely on protection score initially
->Die horribly

[ripforareason]

I tried exactly that and got exactly the result you said.

[Infinitum]

Good. Now iterate until you somehow fail the last step and start winning instead. Avoid meleeing red D's when out of Con due to boots of true speed. Good luck!

[Grognor]

I don't have any concrete complaints, I just know that I tried a ton of smithing builds in 1.2.1 and never managed to make any progress. Smithing felt not just underpowered, but deeply so; I felt I needed 20k more starting experience to be as powerful as my no-brainer fighter builds. And in 1.3.0 the stuff you just find is better, and there's less exp? I will never try smithing again.

But maybe that's just me. I'm pretty terrible at this game.

[petiso]

But maybe that's just me. I'm pretty terrible at this game.

that's exactly my feeling when i deviate 0.002 degrees from the archer build that regularly gets me to 550 or so.
it's also why i love the game

[ripforareason]

I don't have any concrete complaints, I just know that I tried a ton of smithing builds in 1.2.1 and never managed to make any progress. Smithing felt not just underpowered, but deeply so; I felt I needed 20k more starting experience to be as powerful as my no-brainer fighter builds. And in 1.3.0 the stuff you just find is better, and there's less exp? I will never try smithing again.

But maybe that's just me. I'm pretty terrible at this game.

You can actually start making things better than what you typically find pretty early. A round of shield of deflection [+2,1d3] is better than almost any shield you will find in the game, for instance. The key is knowing what to make, and not getting derailed by a 2-use forge, which you don't really have any control over. Nothing ruins a smither like a 2-use forge, especially when you are supposed to make your Loremaster crown at said forge...

But, even by the time you hit ~20 in smithing you have a few good options for artefacts, like a dwarf mask with rFear and Clarity, a round shield [+1,1d4] with rPois and rFear, Feanorian lamps of Brightness, rings of accuracy and evasion [+3], etc.
A Robe of Idril copy, which is pretty close to an insta-win item, is only 25 difficulty.

[Pete Mack]

Ooh, I never thought of a loremaster crown. Lovely.

[wobbly]

If you can get to 15 with the spare 1000xp you can squeeze Song of Aule on to a loremaster crown as well.

[ripforareason]

If you can get to 15 with the spare 1000xp you can squeeze Song of Aule on to a loremaster crown as well.

Taking the ability normally is actually better since it branches into Sharpness, which can help with the powerlevel issues in the mid-game. I find I don't usually have the XP for Loremaster + another ability, though I like Loremaster + Song of Freedom or Loremaster + eye for detail (but the E4D crown is kind of tedious, I just take the ability normally to avoid false floors)