Of Blade and Pommel

Guide to Weaponsmithing in Lord
of The Rings Online

By Darkgolem



Weaponsmithing in Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) is all about
how to make enough of a profit from sales of your products to get to a
high tier.  You will need to grind products, there is no way
around this, but if you know what to grind, you can make back what you
spend, and end up getting to a high tier quickly.

The Basics

You need to plan to have resources to be a weaponsmith.  It is not
in your interest to purchase resources, if you do purchase your
resources, I guarantee you will not make a profit, and you will be
strapped for cash as you get to a higher tier.  Instead, you
should plan on having a prospector profession at the same time as you
have weaponsmith profession, or you should have a character whom has
prospector before you make a weaponsmith.  This means either have
an Armsman (who has both weaponsmith and prospector) or a Tinker or
Explorer before making a Historian (who has weaponsmith).



href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?full=1&set_albumName=album27&id=Guardian_Fighting_Spider&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="Dwarven Prospector Fighting"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album27/Guardian_Fighting_Spider.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 250px; height: 173px;" align="left">By
having a prospector before or during your work as a weaponsmith, you
can sell precious metals to jewelers for money, which can pay for
tertiary products which go with your weapon making.  In addition,
you don’t have to pay for the ore you need for your weapon making.



One thing you should do once you reach a tier of weaponsmithing,
assuming you have your own prospector, is to find a good route for
prospecting.  You can scout out a good area for finding a
resource, or you can find href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=496">a
guide.  For tier 1, the best place is the Bogwater in the
Shire.  Other places vary from tier to tier.



When making weapons you should decide; are you making weapons for
profit or are you making weapons to gain in expertise.  If your
making weapons for profit, you want to make what is in demand
(obviously).  If your making weapons for expertise, you will need
to decide.. you can make weapons which are easiest to make (often these
don’t get you much profit) so as to gain expertise most quickly, or
your can make items which sell for something, and then take longer to
gain your expertise..  but you won’t bankrupt yourself as much.



Once you have reached tier 3, it is easier to make a profit.. 
tier 2 and up can make you a profit as you gain in expertise, but you
will find that you have out-levelled your ability to mine (I.e. You
will be still working at tier 2, for example, when you are level
appropriate for tier 3 areas).

Grinding and Selling Products

When you want to grind products, you should consider the following:



For tier 1, you really can’t make a profit from items.  It does
not take long to grind through tier 1, so this is not a big problem,
but you will want to keep in mind you can’t make much profit.  You
can sell bronze axes and “packets” of 2 bronze blades (these are used
in crafting quests in Combe).  Heavy and hardened bronze single
handed weapons (especially axes and swords) href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=605">sell
well, too.  For grinding, simply churn out axes and blades and
sell them.



Tier 2 has no crafting quests.  For grinding, you should make
regular iron weapons.  The difference in sale value for heavy
iron, or steel weapons is not enough to justify making these items for
profit.  Once you have reached the mastery of tier 2, blackened
ears are common enough that you can make a fair amount purchasing these
items for the crit bonus and selling the crit items, or just getting
ears yourself from the appropriate creatures.



If you wish to take your time with tier 2 items (something not
recommended), your best bet is with quick traps and double traps. 
Double and quick traps give almost no points toward your expertise, but
they href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=642">sell
like hotcakes, and you can make some of the same cash from selling
small amounts of caltrops, marbles and stun dust.



When selling for Tier 3, your best profit is from class items (traps,
dust, etc.).  Triple and quick traps make good money.  For
weapons, if you are grinding, you will want to use href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=496">bright
steel weapons.  For sale, the crit items for Gondorian weapons
are hard to come by, but the tails for tier 3 bright steel weapons are
less difficult to acquire.  You can probably take your time with
tier 3, it takes a while to get through the levels to the point where
you will find tier 4 items.



href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?full=1&set_albumName=album13&id=Mining_is_difficult_at_the_edge_of_the_wild&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="Mining In the Lone Lands"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album13/Mining_is_difficult_at_the_edge_of_the_wild.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 250px; height: 173px;" align="right">For
Tier 4 and higher, you again wish to focus on traps and weapons. 
Grinding, always go for the cheapest (in ingredient) sword and axe, and
make as many as you can.  Upon reaching mastery level with these
tiers, it is wise to make crit items when you stumble across the
ingredients.  Sales of ore is often much more profitable
otherwise.  Also, sales of blades (of whatever tier) can make some
money, since they are used by woodworkers.  However, blades won’t
sell as much as traps and similar items.

Weaponsmithing Overall

The nice thing about weaponsmithing is that everyone needs a weapon,
and you always have something to sell that someone will want to
buy.  The bad part is, no one will purchase a weapon for a single
range of levels more than once, and weapons are the most common form of
quest reward.  This is not the end of the world, often crafted
items are better than quest items, but it should be kept in mind that
your never going to sell a ton the same item at any one time. 
Traps and similar items will sell, but for grinding these items are not
ideal.  As long as you can accept these limitation, you will like
weaponcrafting a lot.



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