The Forge & Anvil is where raw metal becomes something useful. It is the smith’s bench, and almost every tool another profession depends on passes across it at some point.
Bring a hammer
You cannot work this station without a smith’s hammer on you. It is a tool with fifty uses in it and every craft spends one, so it wears out and needs replacing — buy one, or make your own once you are a smith.
You do not have to be a smith, but it costs you
Anyone can walk up and use the forge. What being a smith changes:
| Smith | Everyone else | |
|---|---|---|
| Level 0 recipes | yes | yes |
| Anything above level 0 | yes | no |
| Recipes saved to your book | yes | no — re-enter the ingredients each time |
| Crafting experience | yes | none |
That gate bites harder here than almost anywhere, because of how deep the catalogue goes.
84 recipes, and most of them are high
| Level | Recipes |
|---|---|
| 0 | 8 |
| 1 | 11 |
| 2 | 21 |
| 3 | 37 |
| 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 1 |
A non-smith sees eight rows out of eighty-four. If you intend to work metal at all seriously, take the profession.
What goes in
Most work starts from an iron ingot or from metal scraps, and the level 0 conversion between them is the first thing everybody makes:
1 iron ingot → 5 metal scraps · level 0 · 1 minute
Ingots come from the smelter, so a smith is only ever as productive as the smelter feeding them. The higher tiers want copper, and copper wants a miner.
Two things about the heat
Crafting several at once does not batch. Ask for two and it takes twice as long. You do earn more experience for it, but you are not saving any time.
You have sixty seconds to pull it out. When a piece is ready it sits in the heat, and if you leave it there it is ruined. This is not a bench to start and wander away from — unlike the tanner or the compost bin, the forge wants you standing at it.