Weaponsmithing - Knowledge passed down?

[Eilif 9]

Hey, I am a new Weaponsmith and I've been told a few methods of the madness that goes on in the forges of the craziest players on wurm.

 

One method is the bigger the better.

For instance making a couple hundred 2H Swords and imping them up one at a time.

They give better experience -- at the cost of extra lump.

 

One method is "Let's butcher our minds"

Lol that's what I'm calling it, make 200-400 butchering knives and have at it.

Low skill gain -- Virtually no lump used.

 

I have approximately 20hours of SB saved up in SP's.

I'd like to know what your experience was and what is best for gaining Weaponsmithing, I hope to get good advice.

[LorenaMontana 3,008]

Try wooden spears, no forges needed, no lumps needed, just a log and some carp tools.

[Eilif 9]

Oh ? Sounds fun thank you Lorena.

[whykillme 1,621]

Well using wood you can CoC the logs aswell, can't do that with water.

Myself i simply did 30 of each type to stack up on things

[Sevenless 385]

Bigger items giving better skillgain is a myth as far as I've ever seen.

 

Honestly though, due to the rare system, using iron on things that are valuable rares (any of the primary weapons, butcher knives) is well worth it. Imp what you'd like to get a rare of.

[Noizhead 622]

Weaponsmithing is a long road, so I would recommend you take longevity into account, because this grind can take a heavy toll on your resources.  If you will always have access to enormous amounts improvement-quality iron, bulkier weapons may be for you.  Likewise, if you have similar access to great lumber, wooden spears are viable.  If your supplies are limited, carving knives might be your best bet, weighing only 0.4kg.

 

If you have access to a priest with ludicrous amounts of favor to burn and you decide to grind with metal items, you can have WOA cast on the knives/swords you improve.  This will shorten your timers when tempering, allowing more time to be spent on actions that are/can be boosted by COC.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Noizhead

[Shadz 525]

1) Stock up on coc tools (as high as you can afford, you'll need it)

2) Stock up on as many materials as you can, especially iron if you intend to go high, also peat (never enough peat)

3) Medication (sleep powders)

4) Patience

 

And imho, the most important thing you can have for any successful grind, #5

 

5) People to chat to while you grind, whether it's a lighthearted convo or you're spilling feelings onto someone, either in wurm or rl, it will make the grind so much less of a pain.

 

 

As for best way to get skill, many people swear by different methods, so, ask around and the test each method, see what works best for you.

[Plebian 89]

Longspears are very nice. You can grind weaponsmithing while being a passenger on a boat then as well. This might be a consideration if you plan many Xanadu commutes.

[DKSprocket 412]

In my opinion there's three approaches to grinding skills like weaponsmithing that produces something useful (as opposed to stuff like rope making and toy making where you create useless items):

 

1) Go max out grinding. For weaponsmithing it could be spears, knives or whatever else is cheap/easy to do in mass quantities. Use tools with high CoC and not too high ql. Make sure you max out your queue before running out of stamina (this often involves queuing more actions once you're done with the first ones). Always do water imps as the first action in queue since you can't put CoC on water. Alternatively imp a lot of items at once and turn sleep bonus off when they all need water imping. Your goal is generally to imp as slowly as possible since making more items from scratch is not much skill until you get near your skill range. When you ask for advice on skilling the advice you'll get is usually variations on this method.

 

2) Grind whatever is most useful to you imped. If you think you'll start selling the items once you get to a decent level then make a selection of what you think is most useful. For weaponsmithing this would probably be a lot of carving knives, butchering knives, huge axes, longswords and huge mauls. Add to that some sickles and two handed swords and a few of the other weapon types as well. The two handed weapons will require a lot of iron, but until you're moderately skill the iron shouldn't be too hard to get. If you can afford it get tools with high CoC and moderate/high WoA. Contrary to what most people will tell you the skill gain loss from WoA on tools is relatively small - my testing show somewhere in the 10-20% range with normal use and less if you try to emulate method #1. If you turn sleep bonus off for water imping it's even less than that. Bonus is you'll end up with more useful items + rares and they will actually be useful. Each rare you get will make you happy that what you got was not a rare spear.

 

3) Grind whatever you want to go rare. The popular weapons (huge axe, large mauls, long swords, two handed sword) are probably the most valuable with butchering knives close behind. Going this route is almost the same as #2, except you'll probably want to skip the not-so-popular items. You'll also want to queue up less actions when going this route - two actions seem like a good balance.

 

Since option #2 and #3 are similar and use the same tools they're easily interchangeable. In my experience going for useful/rare items is a lot more rewarding and easily worth the 10-20% slower gains. If you want you can even simulate method #1 with woa tools if you max out your queue (which needs a lot more actions) and turn of sleep bonus for water imps. Gains will be within a few percent of #1 and you're getting more done and more rares. Downside is that it requires queuing more actions so it's a little more stressful.

Edited June 16, 2014 by DKSprocket

[Elen 1,013]

Made it to 64 WS on longswords and streaming movies.

[joedobo 1,187]

Supposedly there are skill training bonuses when you improve an item to a ql 10 points greater then your skill. Now at this level you'd see a lot of failures which don't give any skill gain (or is it just smaller?). But if the buff was enough it could offset the higher failure rate. The idea was to encourage people to grind with less items. 

 

The fact rares can be shattered angers me to no end and I avoid them altogether. I understand higher ql and greater enchant skill reduces shatter chance but I think the difficulty bar is set too high. If i had my way rares would never shatter regardless of skill.

 

I have and will continue to grind wood longspear. I need to research the imp quality above skill buff.

[KanePT 699]

Actually, go for as high tools as you can. Unlike mining and such, you don't want fails in your skill, and the timer isn't that better, so best ql tools means you'll get less fails, so more skill hits, in my experience that works for all improve grinds.

Like Elen i did my BS and WS (only 50 atm, since i needed to switch back to BS - which is above 90 atm), not to mention all other skills i have in multiple chars, grinding stuff watching series or movies, in fact that's the only way to make wurm tolerable and not a boring snore - watching stuff and playing several chars at once.

 

Like Sevenless said, there's no noticeable difference between larger items or smaller, so i do knives, did get a few rares and a supreme, but i'm not cheap enough to sell them, so i have a supreme butchering knife, a rare carving and my brother has a steel rare carving.

 

Like joe mentioned going a bit beyond your skill level in ql is advised since you'll see a bit of extra skill gains due to increased difficulty. As soon as you start failing too much, just give up. Having high ql tools and ore in this area allows you to keep it going. I can easily make ql 60+ weapons without failing much more than usual at 50 skill.

[Druidnature 1,118]

I and my friend that will be hitting 90 hopefully this week normally do 2hs, but not because of the material required = more exp. that is completely false.

The reason you'll see more is because it's a higher difficulty. (Example, look at your chance to make a butcher knife compared to a large maul). And more difficulty = more skill. (Until a certain point, which is becomes so small it's very little if any benefit at all)

Simple way to see for yourself is to make a butcher/carb knife or wtv else, and a large maul, to your WS level and see which gives more exp.

The spears, Imo, are worthless. Leveling WS you are going to make a lot of rare and supremes, and a rare or supreme spear is worthless. Ontop of that, I found them slower (even with 90 CoC logs) then using any other items. But to each there own. WS is a very, very long path. The upper levels will take weeks per level, so do what you enjoy doing most.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Druidnature

[KunAlt 844]

the more material = more exp was stated somewhere by a dev note I think.

[Lau 302]

the more material = more exp was stated somewhere by a dev note I think.

 

Pics or it didn't happen. I have tested it and it is false unless we are talking a difference in the 1-2% range between carving knives and med mauls.

[Kruggan 519]

I make things I want to go rare.  However I would encourage any aspiring weaponsmiths to consider the return on your time investment.  While they are rarer than a blacksmith by far, I think 90ql weapons on the general Freedom cluster go for 1-1.5s max these days.  If you are determined to grind it... do it for the goal itself, not for the economics.  in my humble opinion, for 1-1.5s per 90ql weapon, it's not a good investment for the return unless you're planning on pairing it with a good enchanter.

[belthize 438]

I suspect the material vs XP is a cause and effect issue.  Larger items are typically harder to make so they tend to give better XP but it's really a function of the difficulty to make not the size of the item.  It's certainly seems to be the case that you get better XP from items that are harder to make if the difficulty to make gets you closer to the magic 50% chance.  That's true of everything not just weapons.

 

My WS sucks comparatively but I'm a big fan of grinding things you can sell or use.  You can burn through 50 weapons easy trying to stack high MS, LT, Nimb, CoC etc on them.   You might shatter 90% of them depending on how aggressive you get so making loads of things you can sell is no great loss if you intend to cast on them. 

 

You might as well get something out of all that grinding beyond skill. 

 

I also agree with the above post that grinding WS for economic reasons is a loser, it only makes sense from a personal desire stand point.  You'll never make back the lost revenue you could have been making from basic FC or BS items.

Edited June 16, 2014 by belthize

[joedobo 1,187]

more material = more experience:

 

How would we best go about testing this?  If I get two vastly differently weighted items of about the same creation chance and imp them for an hour or two wouldn't the difference be evident?

[Ruger 610]

Already did the data collection for this a year ago when I first started to 90 WSmithing.

 

I think this was based on an hour imping with sleep bonus and tools.

 

Conclusion: Heavy weapons provide more xp while using more material but for me I decided to stick to butchering knives since if I pop one them rare+ it sells easier then normal weapons Also easier to move around forges, haul, etc. etc. etc.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rgrh7ExhN2puRYg9bW16jsdKlqo1zrtRk1PT5irD3mc/edit?usp=sharing

[Lau 302]

That data is far from conclusive. You fail to take into account the slowdown of skillgain and the sometimes large variations in gained skill per hour stemming from random chance.

[tealc 149]

Also bear in mind the blade smithing vs main weapon smithing skill, have at a few hundred blades does help with a few points of the main skill.

[Ruger 610]

That data is far from conclusive. You fail to take into account the slowdown of skillgain and the sometimes large variations in gained skill per hour stemming from random chance.

By that statement then know data is can be completely conclusive in wurm then because no one knows what the actual skill curve is, when things slow down, at what ql and power levels things affect timers, nutrition levels, affinities, faith bonus, deed bonus, fatigue and anything else I forgot. 

 

So even your statement of 

 

Pics or it didn't happen. I have tested it and it is false unless we are talking a difference in the 1-2% range between carving knives and med mauls.

 

Is far from conclusive because Im 100% sure you didnt take into account all of those factors and I am not sure anyone ever has.

 

So "Mr. Pics or it didn't happen", I showed my data to backup why I decided heavy weapons over butchering knives, where's yours?

Edited June 16, 2014 by Ruger

[Wurmhole 3,650]

definitely want to keep nutrition the same, then imp each for the same amount of time, then rerun the test in reverse order, combine results and see which provided the most skill gain per hour.  To be fair, the amount of ore used for each test group should have the mining/smelting/hauling time added in. Could end up seeing equal or even less skill/hr on the heavy weapons.

 

Different items absolutely give skill gain differently.  On my BS, I find needles take almost double the time to imp as any of my other BS tools.  So imping needles is the worst thing to grind as a BS in my opinion.  I'd imagine similar happens in WS.  For needles, the skill ticks weren't any smaller, I just failed twice as often, so doing tests of skill gain/hr is pretty important.

[joedobo 1,187]

Already did the data collection for this a year ago when I first started to 90 WSmithing.

 

I think this was based on an hour imping with sleep bonus and tools.

 

Conclusion: Heavy weapons provide more xp while using more material but for me I decided to stick to butchering knives since if I pop one them rare+ it sells easier then normal weapons Also easier to move around forges, haul, etc. etc. etc.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rgrh7ExhN2puRYg9bW16jsdKlqo1zrtRk1PT5irD3mc/edit?usp=sharing

I'm gade you did it congrats. I'm still interested in doing my own research. My question was about how to set up a good experiment.

 

Its Interesting because I see something different from your data.

 

1. Item creation difficulty increases the frequency of a skill gain.

2. the magnitude of the gain is not affected by creation difficulty or an item's weight.

 

I wish you had recorded how long the actions where associated with a skill gain. And tool specifics that was used for each skill gain.

[Sevenless 385]

Your skill was low enough that the difference seems easily enough explained by change in skill level to me.

Can't really see a clear pattern off your imps. It looks like you didn't do time consistent imping which makes things harder to read.

 

The one reason why I don't really believe the theory in general: If this were true why would it only apply to WS? Wouldn't you see much larger gains off imping boats in shipbuilding?

Edited June 17, 2014 by Sevenless