How in depth do you think smithing is going to be? I'm making some armor for SCA combat right now and it isn't easy. I've just finished a set of articulated legs and it took around 10-12 hours of work. Most games have a progress bar or something for crafting. That seems too simplistic and it dumbs it down a lot. Making armor should be more than standing next to an anvil for ten seconds then BAM a cuirass. I think it should involve more tools than just a hammer, and you should have to make all of the pieces.

For example, say you are making a helm you have to cut out a pattern on a sheet of metal(which you could maybe buy, or smelt yourself) with some shears, dish it out with a dishing hammer on a stump, then punch holes and rivet a face plate or nasal of what have you with a ball peen. For things like pauldrons you should have to cut out all of the lames and rivet them together correctly.

Alls I'm saying is smithing should have more to it than making armor from a menu or with a progress bar then its done. It should be a dynamic, intuitive process that takes a while and is at least semi realistic. I don't expect it to be exactly the same as the real thing, but hopefully a step closer to that.

One of the first released videos (I believe it was Todd's tour of the Bethesda studio) strongly suggested that smithing would be limited to FO:NV's type of "get recipe, get ingredients, mush together, get predetermined item" type smithing.
Don't worry, it saddened me too. Perhaps a mod will help? But it's kind of hard to create a new .nif mesh for whatever piece of armor your heart desires..

i say that they just make a minigame where you have to hit the target, the more you hit it the harder it gets but it aslo makes whatever youre smithing that much better

I have a sneaky suspicion that it is going to be the "Bam, a cuirass" method.

If I have to spend ten hours forging a new sword, I'll just pull out the console codes.

I'd rather have a multi-step process than a progress bar though. Smelt the bars, heat them, bash them with the nearest hammer-like object, quenching and sharpening, etc.

While many here will probably flinch at the term, a mini-game of timing and skill-based chance could result in three to five tiers of quality product.

Thats what I'm hoping for. A multi-step mini-game sort of thing that takes long enough that you feel you worked hard, but not so long as you get bored.

No need to copy Fable II.....

This is what I am hoping for.

my little cousin played that minigame for hours, so why not.

Same here.



Minigame? Yeah, see previous response regarding console codes. (flinch hell, try full-on cringe...hehehe)

They just really need to take a simple method from Might and Magic Dark Messiah (why am i quoting so many might and magic references today? )

It might not have been a good game but you could forge swords in real time as you progressed i.e. get the ore, smelt it etc... I don’t know the details but that was more realistic than what I think Bethesda are going to implement.

[censored] im not playing a helmet maker simulator im playing skyrim im not paying 120 dollars for a game that's this focused around such a tedious time consuming minigame i'd rather bethesda spend more time on fixing glitches, graphics and story then spend alot of time on the [censored] minigames like this! i will stick to meh bar!

yea its very likely that this will be a skyrim version of fallout 3 making weapons system, considering that they are bringing a lot of stuff from fallout.

Get recipe,have mats in inventory,walk to a forge,use the forge with a nifty animation and thats it,this would work for me

One of the very few things I liked about Risen was its system to make weapons

We don't know how it will be handled, though at this point, it seems highly likely that it's just the old gather the materials, choose from a list of items and get what you want. If Bethesda wants to go into more detail, they might have seperate steps for smelting the ore, hammering your item into shape on an anvil, and such, but even if they do that, in practice, it would likely come down to essentially the same thing, just with more details shown.

Though I'm not sure if I'd want a fully realistic simulation of smithing anyway, it would get kind of distracting if I have to spend hours on repetitive hammering of metal until it gets into the exact right shape. Though there's certainly room for middle ground between full realism and the basic implementation of crafting seen in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it would be best if Skyrim fell somewhere into that middle ground.



Probably the most accurate simulation I've seen of smithing in any game, though I doubt Skyrim will go into that kind of detail.

I am hoping that there isn't a mini game involved with any of the crafting skills.

As I see it, collecting the gear needed to craft with should be the only requirement for repairing or creating weapons and armor.

I do hope we can make tools of different quality to use for our work at the forge, though.

Maybe master and grand master hammers and tongs being so rare that you'd have to make your own to forge things of the highest quality, or from the most exotic materials.

I really hope it isn't anything as complicated as the op idea. The dark messiah method would be nice. Remember it's a game aimed at a wide audience and not a simulator aimed at a few.

Not very. It just seems like a side thing you can do. :shrug:

If it's anything more than a "gather items, find recipe, click anvil" I'll be surprised. I do hope they at least make a short smithing animation (5-10 seconds shouldn't bore even the most ADD-afflicted players too much) with the item on the anvil, rather than just drop you out of the menu and it's magically added to your inventory. Of course, beating on a piece of leather with a hammer would be a pretty strange way to make armor, and taking a hammer to glass....... :facepalm: