Blacksmithy

Blacksmithy is the foundational metalworking craft of Britannia — every plate gauntlet, two-handed sword, ringmail tunic, and viking shield in the realm passes through a smith's forge before it reaches a warrior's hands. The Blacksmith smelts ore into ingots, hammers ingots into arms and armor, enhances finished pieces with special metals, and repairs items damaged in combat. Together with Mining (the gathering arm) and Tailoring (the cloth-and-leather counterpart), Blacksmithy is one of the three pillars of UO's gear economy.

What the smith does

The smith's universal interface is the smith's hammer menu, opened by double-clicking any of the three smith tools. The menu organises craftables into three weapon categories — Bashing, Bladed, and Polearm — plus an Armor section, Shields, and a smelt/enhance/repair tab.

Smelting

Smelting recovers ingots from spent or unwanted metal items. The two pathways:

• Ore piles: stand near a forge, double-click an ore pile, target the forge. Pile size and ore type determine the ingot return.
• Metal items: open the smith's hammer menu, hit the Smelt Item button, target the item. Self-crafted items return half the ingots used to craft them; found items return a smaller fraction. The Salvage Bag and the UOAssist Recycle Agent handle this in bulk — drop a stack of looted weapons in the bag, click Smelt All, ingots back in seconds.

Mining ≥ 50 increases ingot return on smelting; high Mining roughly doubles the recovered material from a smelting pass.

Crafting

Stand near both a forge and an anvil — neither alone works. Open the smith's hammer menu, choose category, pick item. Successful craft yields a normal item; successful and lucky yields an Exceptional, eligible to carry the smith's maker's mark (toggleable in the menu's lower-right). Exceptional items have a flat damage bonus on weapons and a resistance bonus on armor.

An Ancient Hammer (a craft-bonus equippable smith's tool, dropped from Champion Spawns and high-end content) increases the chance of Exceptional results. Treasure Map drops sometimes include Ancient Hammers as well.

Special metals

Above standard iron, the smith works with a hierarchy of colored metals — each ingot type unlocked by Mining at the corresponding skill threshold:

Items crafted in a special metal inherit that metal's elemental and resistance profile. Enhancing applies the same metal's profile to an existing item — but enhancement carries a chance to destroy the item entirely (hence the smith's nickname for the operation: "destroying").

Bulk Order Deeds

Smiths fill Bulk Order Deeds (BODs) — work orders that require crafting a specific item or item set in volume. Filling a BOD turns it in for a reward:

• Smith trainers grant Mining tools (Picaxes, Gargoyle Pickaxes), runic hammers (the smith's analogue of runic kits — a hammer of a special metal that crafts items with that metal's full property roll), leather Power Scrolls, and the staple Tailor BOD trade-in items.
• High-tier BODs (Valorite Plate, Verite Chain) reward Power Scrolls for combat skills, Recipe scrolls for the special Blacksmith craftables, and Ancient Smithy Hammers.

A devoted Blacksmith BOD farmer can build an entire shard's gear economy on the trade.

Recipes and special craftables

A skilled Blacksmith may learn Blacksmith Recipes — taught from the New Haven trainer, dropped from event content, or sold by various NPCs — that unlock crafting of advanced items beyond the base menu:

• Special weapons: Bone Harvester, Crescent Blade, Daisho variants, Lajatang variants
• Magical components: heartwood-style metal alternates
• Set-piece armor: Hunter's Garb metal pieces

Recipes are consumable on use; the unlocked craftable persists permanently on the smith's character.

Training

The fastest known path:

1. 0 → 50 — Run It's Hammer Time! in New Haven. Trainer is George Hephaestus at the Forge and Anvil. The quest grants accelerated skill gain plus the Hammer of Hephaestus reward.
2. 50 → 120 — Iterate craftables in the gain band reported by a Crystal Ball of Knowledge. The recommended progression peaks at Platemail Gorget around the high tiers.

Practical training notes:

• Plate Gorget plateau: Gains slow drastically once Platemail Gorget is the optimal item. Switching periodically to Platemail Gloves helps spread the gain ticks.
• Volume: 120 Blacksmithy from scratch consumes roughly 100,000 ingots and 5 days of non-stop play. Pace yourself.
• Mining ≥ 50 cuts costs dramatically — self-mined ore feeds the forge directly.
• Salvage Bag is essential. Recycling without one is a per-item drag-drop; with the bag, it's one click per pass.
• Tinkering to a basic level lets the smith craft their own smith's hammers and tongs, removing the NPC trip.
• Power Scrolls early: A 105 / 110 / 115 / 120 Blacksmithy Power Scroll raises the success-cap by 2.5 / 5 / 7.5 / 10 points respectively. Used early, the scroll's main value is extending the gain window on each item — a 120-scrolled smith continues to gain on items their unscrolled counterpart has already maxed out on.

Power Scroll cap interaction

Skill gain on any individual item ceases at the point where the smith's chance to craft it reaches 100% — (min skill required) + 50 under the base cap. Power Scrolls extend that window:

Smiths who plan to scroll eventually scroll early: every additional skill-gain tick on every craftable accumulates into faster overall progression.

Repairing

Damaged metal items can be brought back toward maximum durability via the smith's Repair function. Each repair pass restores some current durability but lowers the maximum durability by a small amount, so repeated repairs of an item slowly eat away its lifespan. Smiths often offer repair as a service in player vendor stalls.

The Repair skill check rolls against the smith's level; very low skill smiths can fail repairs and damage the item further. For high-end gear, only trust a GM smith.

Strategy notes

• GM Mining + GM Smithy together. The two skills are co-dependent; running them as a pair on the same character cuts every cost in half.
• Recipe scroll discipline. Learn the high-value recipes — Bone Harvester, Crescent Blade — from the NPC vendors before grinding BODs; the rare-recipe drops compound into a complete craftable set faster.
• Don't enhance gear you can't afford to lose. Enhancement destroy chance is real and unforgiving. Save the Valorite enhances for finished GM-Tailored or runic-hammered pieces, never on a daily-driver.
• BOD inventory management. Don't sit on a stack of low-tier BODs — they take up bank slots. Fill the easy ones immediately, fill the hard ones as raw material accumulates.
• Forge-to-forge teleport. Some smiths keep a recall rune to a Mining cart spot adjacent to a forge — material in, ingots out, craft begins, all without leaving the spot.

See also

Mining, Tailoring, Tinkering, Carpentry, Bulk Order Deeds, Runic Tools, Power Scrolls, Crystal Ball of Knowledge, Ancient Hammer, Hammer of Hephaestus, Salvage Bag, Forge, Anvil, Smith's Hammer, Sledgehammer, Tongs, Iron Ingot, Dull Copper, Shadow Iron, Copper, Bronze, Gold, Agapite, Verite, Valorite.