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[dwarfhoplite]

what is best way to train armorer/blacksmith/weaponsmith cheap and fast?
do different items give different xp? what are best items? does material have an effect on experience?

[bobhayes]

what is best way to train armorer/blacksmith/weaponsmith cheap and fast?
do different items give different xp? what are best items? does material have an effect on experience?

The cheap way - and it is cheap - is to have a bunch of dwarves who make one set of bolts, one piece of armor, one piece of metal furniture, and then go about their (non-crafty) lives. Then hope for a mood, and a legendary +1 armorcrafter is yours for the cost of a copper bar. This is fast if it happens fast, or really slow if it doesn't.

The fastest non-exploit way is to have magma and a lot of junk ore, and churn out metal crap by the metric ton. To avoid having your soldiers grow attached to the low-quality copper spears you produce en masse, assign them uniforms that use a different weapon or armor material.

The lucky way is to have a High Master Blacksmith wander onto the map in amongst the usual legendary cheesemakers and grand master food eaters in the migrant waves. The happiest migrant wave I ever had included a master armorsmith and a master weaponsmith...who were promptly slaughtered by the goblin siege that spawned at the same #!%!% time.

So I don't like relying on luck. "Find those copper veins" is my motto.

[Misterstone]

Well if you're going to train weapon smithing by pure repetition, you probably need two things:

1) A robust magma forge and smelter industry
2) Lots of iron ore

Most maps that have iron ore have TONS of iron ore, so if you're on a map like that you're probably in good shape.

However, even if you are not on a map with lots of iron ore, you can always just keep making things and having them melted down, then reuse the iron that you get from the melting-down process.  This however results in a loss of iron after each melting phase, so you might just want to make something you need instead of doing this.  http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Melt_item

In the past, I've found that making iron bolts is a good thing to make tons of, because you can never have enough ammo! 

As for armor training... not sure, probably best to check the melt item page link I post above, and do a forge/melt cycle over and over again.

To be honest, though,  it's not unlikely one of your smiths with get a fey mood and instantly boost up to legendary before you actually train someone up to that point.

[dwarfhoplite]

yeah but i disabled moods so my dward must work his ass off. i just probably have to do a shit ton of copper stuff because we have no iron

[shmelse]

yeah but i disabled moods so my dward must work his ass off. i just probably have to do a shit ton of copper stuff because we have no iron

The article you're looking for on the df wiki is this one: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Melt

Melt gives you info on the yield of melting metal objects. As far as I know, there's no difference in experience gained by crafting any one type of object.

For armor, one armor breastplate returns 0.9 bars of metal. Once the using-multiple-bars-to-create-one-item system is in place, breastplates will be less effecient b/c they will require 3 bars to create.  However, under the current system, crafting and melting breastplates is the most efficient; it will only lose you 0.1 bars per craft (plus fuel).

For weapons, the best you can do is a 50% return by crafting trap weapons. Enormous corkscrews, giant axe blades, and
menacing spikes all have equivalent 50% returns, so make whatever you think you might use the master work versions of - corkscrews if you're going to craft a bunch of pumps or spikes if you're using them for defense.

For blacksmithing, it looks like cages are the best possible return. Wiki indicates that a cage will return 1 bar of metal, giving you a 100% return of the metal. (Note: again, this only applies under the current bugged system of metal bar use. Some mods reinstate a multi-bar requirement so if you're playing a modded game, follow this advice at your own risk.) If you want to level a blacksmith, have him craft cages on repeat; 100% of the metal will be retained and only the fuel will be lost. (Second note: I haven't tried this one, as the map I did level skills like this on, I had a *ton* of metal and no wood, so I had my blacksmith set to making lead bins and barrels on repeat. I've tested weapons and armor myself, but not cages.)

Remember that if you're melting items and reusing metal, your dwarves will be upset if you melt down their masterwork items. I reserved these items for sale to caravans or weapon traps to raise room values.

[Bouchart]

Two comments:

Remember that if you are going to be melting stuff down, do it all in the same furnace.

Also for weaponsmithing, an alternative to making trap components is making crossbow bolts.  Then have your hunters or crossbowdwarves shoot them at things.  A stack of 1 crossbow bolt melts down for as much as a stack of 25, so you can potentially get back more metal this way.

[blizzerd]

i tend to make copper greaves, then melt them again to make some more copper grieves

grieves have good stats for melting them again im told

[Bouchart]

Also another way to train metalsmiths is to build metal supports.

It uses architecture, so you can train an architect this way too.  Then you can deconstruct the supports and do it again.  It's manually intensive, though.

[dwarfhoplite]

i ended up giving copper breastplates to elves for free