Detailed breakdown of Blacksmith behavior.

[idbeholdME 388]

The blacksmith arts behave like items and the Blacksmith skill determines their level. Pushing the skill value past your current maximum usable item level doesn't do anything to scale them further. You can tell when this happens when the smith art is highlighted in red.

Example:

My TG is currently at level 107, according to this table: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Items/Usable_Item_Levels, we can see that the maximum usable item level for him is currently ~135 (it's not exactly 135, but rounded, the blacksmith arts take into account the decimals too).

With Blacksmith at 133, Whet looks like this:

Bumping Blacksmith to 135, which is the current maximum usable item level, Whet looks like this:

And finally, going to 138, which is above the highest usable item level, causes this to happen:

2 things happen:

1) Here we can see, that the blacksmith art values still went up a little bit. If we assume that the highest usable item level was not a whole number, but something like 135.3 (which rounds down for items), the fraction is still used to scale the blacksmith arts.

2) The background turned red to indicate, that the blacksmith art is over the maximum level and that it is not showing you the full potential value. Any additional skill points into blacksmithing past this do nothing to increase the power of the blacksmith arts, only reduce costs and increase the chance to not destroy items when removing.

 

On the other hand, the NPC blacksmiths have static levels in the balance file:

BlacksmithSkillForDiff = {1,20,60,105,150}, (meaning Bronze, Silver, Gold, Plat, Niob)

This is what an NPC blacksmith Whet looks like on Niob (level 150):

The red background indication here is actually false and probably just a side effect of how it behaves with player character Blacksmith skill. All it tells you is that the smith art is higher level than your usable item level, but as it's based on the skill level of the NPC smith, you still see the full values.

The check on whether the art values should be clamped to the maximum usable level is only done once at the blacksmith screen. This means that a high level char can jam blacksmith arts of a massive level into low level gear and pass them on to level 1 characters, because the art doesn't retroactively adjust its values or increases the required level to wear an item depending on the power of the inserted blacksmith arts. Even though the background is red to indicate that it is above your max item level, you can still use it at full power. So even if you enter Niob at level 100, you can still enjoy blacksmith arts as if they were level 150.

The passing of overpowered gear to low level characters could simply be solved by making the arts increase the level required to equip an item (same as rings and amulets do). As in if you put a level 180 smith art into a level 1 item, it would increase the level requirement on the item to 143. It could have been done, but we can be grateful(?) that the developers omitted to do that.

 

Several conclusions can be drawn from this:

1) Your character with Blacksmith needs to be at least level 120 and the skill itself at least at 151 to surpass the power of NPC blacksmiths. So don't bother making a Blacksmith character for Blacksmith arts if you are not going to push it at least to that level range. But a lower level Blacksmith character can still be extremely useful for simply putting amulets into silver and rings into bronze sockets. At Mastery, the level of workable item is character level + Blacksmith level/2.

2) Putting hard points into Blacksmith past mastery is of very little value, as you can just make a Blacksmith gear set to catch up to the highest usable level. The highest you should ever push Blacksmith is 252, which is the maximum usable item level in the game at level 200. Unless you want to also max the price reduction and chance to not destroy when extracting.

Edited May 4, 2022 by idbeholdME