TL;DR: (start character at 50.0 Blacksmithy, 10 strength) 50.0 to 75.0 kryss 75.0 to 77.5 short spear 77.5 to 93.7 platemail gorget 93.7 to 95.8 platemail gloves 95.8 to 100.0 platemail arms 40,000 ingots or less used. Total cost of ingots is 320k gold (at 8gp each from blacksmith NPCs if purchased by a character joined to the blacksmith's guild). ----- First, let me start off with what I did, personally, to reach GM Blacksmithy: I started my crafting character with 50.0 Blacksmithy skill. I had already trained my strength up to 100 before starting my Blacksmithy training. I bought most of my ingots from players at 8.5gp to 9gp each. I had already trained my Mining skill up to 90.0. I smelted everything I made, recovering 50% of the ingots for each item along the way. I trained Blacksmithy across 12 play sessions, as follows: From 50.0 to 75.0, I made kryss and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 30 ingots. This took about 7,500 ingots. From 75.0 to 77.5, I made short spear and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 40 ingots. This took about 1,000 ingots. From 77.5 to 82.0, I made platemail gorget and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 65 ingots. This took about 3,000 ingots. From 82.0 to 90.5, I made platemail gorget and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 100 ingots. This took about 8,500 ingots. From 90.5 to 93.0, I made platemail gorget and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 120 ingots. This took about 3,000 ingots. From 93.0 to 93.7, I made platemail gorget and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 150 ingots. This took about 1,000 ingots. From 93.7 to 94.6, I made platemail gorget and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 388 ingots. This took about 3,500 ingots. From 94.6 to 95.8, I made platemail gloves and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 166 ingots. This took about 2,000 ingots. From 95.8 to 96.9, I made platemail arms and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 181 ingots. This took about 2,000 ingots. From 96.9 to 98.8, I made platemail arms and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 280 ingots. This took about 5,316 ingots. From 98.8 to 99.9, I made platemail arms and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 273 ingots. This took about 3,013 ingots. From 99.9 to 100.0, I made platemail arms and gained at a rate of about 0.1 per 190 ingots. This took about 190 ingots. All in all, it cost me about 40,000 ingots to reach GM from 50.0 shown skill in Blacksmithy. Having gone through this once, here's my advice to you if you're going to train Blacksmithy: Start your character with 50.0 Blacksmithy skill. NPCs can train you up to about 30.0, but based on my experience, I estimate it would probably cost about 5,000 ingots or so to reach 50.0 from 30.0. Join the NPC blacksmith's guild, and buy all your ingots from blacksmith NPCs at 8gp each! If I had done this, I could have saved myself about 40k gold. You can buy them up to 999 ingots at a time, so it adds up pretty quickly. It's far more cost-effective to buy ingots than to mine them yourself, but training your Mining skill first will improve your ingots-per-gain ratio by recovering more ingots from smelting. I'd recommend training Mining as high as you can (90.0 or better) before training Blacksmithy. Start your character with 10 strength, and lock it there until you've reached GM. Strength improves your shown Blacksmithy skill, which means your gains will be slower the higher your strength is. For reference, with 100 strength: 50.0 Blacksmithy is effectively 55.0 -- 90.0 Blacksmithy is effectively 92.0. Train with stacks of 1,000 ingots at a time. This will allow you to better monitor your gains and ingot usage. I trained with a stack of 3,500 ingots for way too long on an item and wasted most of that stack on gains that had effectively stopped. Use the following guide for training: From 50.0 to 75.0, make kryss. Expect to gain around 0.1 per 30 ingots. From 75.0 to 77.5, make short spear. Expect to gain around 0.1 per 40 ingots. From 77.5 to 93.7, make platemail gorget. Expect to gain around 0.1 per 65 ingots at first, and toward the end you should be gaining around 0.1 per 150 ingots. From 93.7 to 95.8, make platemail gloves. Expect to gain around 0.1 per 160 ingots. From 95.8 to 100.0, make platemail arms. Expect to gain around 0.1 per 180 ingots at first, and toward the end you should be gaining around 0.1 per 280 ingots. YMMV, but just keep an eye on your ingot usage and your gains. If your gains slow down significantly, it's probably time to switch to the next item.
Just wanted to say this is working like a charm so far. Im not the type to keep track of all this stuff as it just bogs me down but given Ive been buying ingots in checks of 999, your numbers seem to align. Thank you for the guide.
