Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord smithing: How to forge weapons

How does smithing work in Bannerlord? You can just buy weapons from traders in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, but why would you do that when you can make your own? You'll need to set things up first: get some hardwood to refine into charcoal, loot fallen enemies to learn weapon parts, and so on. But with our help, you'll soon be making wonderfully powerful weapons to massacre your foes with! This guide will show you how to refine materials, how to smelt down loot, and how to craft new, powerful weapons.

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How to craft weapons in Bannerlord

When you have your smithing skill high enough and the required materials needed to construct your weapon, head to the forge tab. You'll notice that there is a difficulty scale on the sword to the left of the screen. This indicates how difficult a weapon is to construct. You'll also see how good your smithing skill is alongside it. To make a weapon, you will need to assign parts to the weapon you wish to create. Here is a step by step guide to how to create a weapon:

1. Choose your weapon type by clicking the top of the menu. This by default says "One Handed Sword".
2. Click the top of the four icons to the left (it's the bit with the dice underneath it) to show the full selection for that weapon part.
3. Check the tier boxes to filter that weapon part by tier. Locked parts are unlocked by smelting looted weapons.
4. Select the part you wish to construct.
5. Repeat steps two to four until you've selected all parts of the weapon to construct. Notice how the difficulty rises and falls depending on the chosen parts, so don't make things too complicated for your smithing skill level.
6. Toggle the size slider to increase/decrease the weapon size.
7. Click "Forge" to make the weapon.

You can make weapons with the difficulty above the smithing skill level, but it will give you debuffs to that weapon. Difficulty is determined by the tier of parts you use, so Tier I parts add ten difficulty points to the construction of the weapon, while Tier V parts add 50. There is also a yellow ring where the current smithy skill level is. Sometimes, if you match the difficulty with the smithy skill level, you'll get a buff to a stat on the weapon. It's unclear why this happens at this time, but it's something to keep in mind.

How to refine materials in Bannerlord

Materials are required to make anything in smithy, and a fair few of it will require you to refine some raw minerals into more advanced materials. At the start, you'll be able to refine the following materials:

• Refine 2x hardwood > 1x charcoal
• Refine 1x charcoal and 1x iron ore > 2x crude iron
• Refine 1x charcoal and 1x crude iron > 1x wrought iron
• Refine 1x charcoal and 2x wrought iron > 1x iron and 1x crude iron

With enough skill points, you'll be able to refine advanced materials: steel, fine steel, and Thamskene steel. You do need to unlock perks to get those. We highly recommend spending some money on hardwood so that you can make a ton of charcoal, ready for some smelting of loot. A small investment into hardwood will mean you shouldn't need to buy much more in the future.

You will need to rest after using the smithy a few times for any reason, though how much you rest for determines how much blacksmith work you can do in your next session behind the anvil. Alternatively, you could also save and quit to the menu, then go back into the game to reset your ability to use the smithy.

How to smelt down loot in Bannerlord

Whenever you finish a fight, make sure you take as much of the loot as is possible. It may be tempting to sell the weapons and tools, but save them for now. You can instead smelt them down into raw materials, ready to be made into something else. Smelting has multiple advantages. Firstly, you get to learn different ways of constructing weapons, unlocking more options later on. The more you do this, the more you learn how to make new parts.

You'll also get smithing skill points that will help you learn how to refine better quality metals. You'll also get more raw materials to make into everything you could possibly want for crafting items and upgrading your smithy skill. Simple tools are usually made of hardwood, so you'll be able to refine it into more charcoal. More advanced gear such as weapons will smelt down into multiple grades of iron and even steel. All of these are useful for forging your new weapon.

Now you should be smelting loot and crafting the best gear in no time! There are plenty more guides in the works, but for now you can check out our other guides for the game, including our picks of the best Bannerlord mods, a full list of Bannerlord cheats and console commands, and more information on resource production using workshops in Bannerlord.