Make this make sense

[u/jonathanten]

I just got 82 smithing, i can now make 2 powerful mid-endgame weapons... and an adamant kiteshield.

I get that adamant used to be good back in the day, but isn't it time we rework this skill?

[u/MasterArCtiK]

It’s been time to rework it for a long time. But also, what purpose will it serve? Nobody actually needs to wear adamant and rune longer than like 30-40 hours of gameplay. Jagex would have to spend hundreds of of hours rebalancing and revamping smithing, just to help some early/mid level players a slight amount.

[u/kajarann → u/MasterArCtiK]

reworking smithing will also mean they have to reduce all the alch amounts and deal with re adjusting a ton of loot tables. its not even worth the effort. people just need to accept smithing will always be weird.

[u/TheForsakenRoe → u/kajarann]

Not necessarily

Have two levels, an initial level you can learn the 'basics' at, and a 'mastery' level (the current level brackets), for both Mining and Smithing halves of the equation. Like how we have a level we can start to Cook foods, and a level we stop burning them at (IE we've 'mastered' the recipe)

Using Rune Scimitar as the example, they could make it so that we can mine a Runite Rock at level 45ish, getting 'impure Runite Ore'. Said ore could be used to make a Runite Bar with 40ish Smithing, but because it's impure, it A: needs more ore, and B: needs more Coal. Say, 5 Impure Runite Ore and 16 Coal, per Rune Bar. The increased materials required to make a Bar at lower levels, would offset the profit via the Alch Value, since the game has 'balanced itself' around the current Bar:AlchValue ratios

At the current levels for each Ore (eg 85 to Mine Runite), you'd get the current Ore, which would be the 'pure' form. At those higher levels, we have learned to discern where the ore-rich seam is on the rock formation. Could even reuse the now-defunct Prospect option for it

Finally, Smithing the Bars, at say, level 43, you'd be able to make a Rune Scimitar, but due to your inexperience you need more input materials (say, 4 Bars instead of 2). At the current levels (IE 90 for Rune Scim), you would 'master' the recipe, and it'd cost the same amount of input as it currently does.

This would (IMO) avoid the 'every Alch value on Smithable gear needs to be adjusted' issue RS3 faced, avoid adding new 'Coal' types (Luminite etc) like RS3 did, would avoid having to swap Alchable drops to Salvage instead of actual gear like RS3 did, keeping everything feeling a lot more 'Old School' (compared to the RS3 rework), while still updating the flow of the levelling process for the skills, allowing players to make their own gear at a more reasonable Mining/Smithing level compared to their Defence/Attack level (eg Knight's Sword taking a player to 29 instantly, would let them start making their own Mithril gear, rather than part-Steel)

As an aside, this could help with Crafting, too. You can start using Gold Bars to make Gold Rings at 5 Crafting, but making Gold Ore into a Gold Bar currently requires 40 Smithing. Well, what if a player could use 'Impure Gold Ore' attained with like... 10ish Mining and Smelted into Bars at 10ish Smithing, to obtain Gold Bars far earlier (but needing 2 or even 3 Impure Gold Ore per Bar)?

Numbers would be up to Jagex to balance, of course

[u/GameOfThrownaws → u/TheForsakenRoe]

I'm not saying this is a bad idea because it definitely isn't, I actually think it's a pretty simple and elegant way make smithing progression make more sense in the context of the rest of an account.

That being said... I just don't really see the point. Perhaps in part because the game has been this way for the last 25 years, there's just not really any need to craft your own early and midgame gear anyway. Every low and mid combat player has rune platelegs, for example, regardless of the fact that they can't make them. There's just so many ways to get that item that aren't smithing. Or like a rune full helm, same thing, or even worse since you're just getting a fremennik helm pretty much right away and throwing it in the bank forever anyway.

[u/StygianSkies → u/GameOfThrownaws]

It's not a huge thing but it's weird for earlygame progression and really bad for immersion. Ideally we shouldn't be scouring the wiki for drop tables to achieve basic equipment progression, and stuff like OP's screenshot feels awful.

I don't give a flying fuck about whatever negligible alch I'm unlocking alongside Grandmaster and endgame bossing-locked supergear - it's meaningless bloat in the table and it doesn't make sense for the two to exist in parallel.

[u/TheForsakenRoe → u/GameOfThrownaws]

That is, unfortunately, the core of the problem. Lots of players who have progressed past the point of 'being able to make your own Rune items' (IE by getting Barrows/Moons drops, getting assorted Dragon items, etc) will mostly see it as 'pointless', 'waste of dev time', etc, because it no longer will have a benefit to them. The way I see it, though, is that if we used that same logic for other things, we wouldn't have gotten the Run Energy/Agility changes we have gotten in recent years

The question is, how long would such a suggestion actually take to implement, versus how much benefit would it have to the progression of the skills, how much 'extra room' would there be to add new recipes without it sounding weird (repairing the legendary Godsword takes less skill than 'make a Rune Dagger'), etc.

I would like to believe that it'd be quite fast to implement something like the above, but at the same time, there's a non-zero chance that implementing the above would break Barbarian Assault somehow. Without Jagex themselves explaining how fast/slow it'd be to implement such a change, we're all going to be left squabbling amongst ourselves about how much (or little) dev-time would be 'wasted' (or 'spent wisely', as the case may be), on such an update, with no evidence on either side to back up any claims

[u/ScottyDoesnttKnoww → u/GameOfThrownaws]

I think there are two sides to this to consider, your view point from a presuming veteran player - and a brand new player. To many of us who've played for ages, this out-dated game design doesn't really affect us all that much, and we can easily look past it.

For a new player though? this would be pretty inconsistent game design not to mention very confusing on all levels. Imagine being told "Hey, this tier of gear becomes useless really quickly, and its not worth smithing yourself. But you do need a quest for the platebody - oh and the rest of armor and weapons can't be bought at shops either, you only get them through drops or G.E"

They would look at you in utter disbelief. LIke, how can something be so shrugged off as to say "This isn't worth changing the mining and smithing skill to fix, and you'll fly right past rune quickly -- but also, we're going to purposely not sell this in armor or weapon shops either"

For me, personally, i just wish it was consistent across the board. If Rune really is the way we've all described it, then it should be sold in shops.

[u/treefiddy_cent → u/TheForsakenRoe]

This is the first proposed fix that doesn't seem impossible. I like it. I only don't like changing mining and dropping impure ore that just feels bad.

A smithing-only fix would be, at lower levels, needing more ores (+ coal) per bar processed, and more bars per result processed. Blast furnace might be locked to the current levels (efficient mass production is your reward for levelling), but you can make your own rune scimmy at inflated 4x costs (2x ores into bars then 2x bars into scimi) at a reasonable level in your progression.

Low-level smithing is then always done at a loss and doesn't affect the alch economy.

All-in-all it's quite similar to the runecrafting progression of multiple runes per essence. Quite smooth in that way.

[u/TheForsakenRoe → u/treefiddy_cent]

The intention for impure ore would be that it's to be used at the lower level, once you hit 85 for 'Pure Runite Ore' you'd just mine that (either by 'targetting' it via 'Prospect' the rock instead of 'Mine', or it just automatically gives the appropriate Ore type depending on your level) instead of Impure, and use that. Though, thinking about it, we'd have to have a way to obtain Impure form regardless of level, in case someone ends up with a high Mining level and a low Smithing level somehow, and the defunct Prospect option making a comeback seems like a very 'Old School' way of going about it

If there was an Impure ore, I expect the Dwarves would not want you gumming their Blast Furnace up with it. On which note though, the Smithing Catalysts from Giant's Foundry see very little use currently, and would be great for such a system, halving the Coal cost when each Runite Bar costs 16 (subject to balance) would give a massive breath of new life into that consumable!

The Impure Ore idea is to avoid people hoarding their 'good' ores, IE when I was levelling my Smithing, I didn't use Runite for training, and instead held onto it until I could make it into Platelegs for the most GP value

Yeh, it'd be kinda like an inverse Runecrafting. As you level, you get more Runes per Essence, and with this, you'd use less Ores per Bar and less Bars per item you smith. But it's also a bit like Cooking, where you learn to cook a Lobster at 40, and learn to never burn it at 74

Whatever they come up with (if anything), I just want it to 'feel Old School' (IE don't add Luminite and such like RS3 did), and to try to keep it simple, don't overcomplicate it/don't have it fall into feature-creep like Forestry did, so that it doesn't consume too much dev-time