Blacksmith's Friend v0.1for Dwarf Fortress v0.31.25
NB: This mod requires the
Wanderer's Friend Mod installed first, as it depends on several tools from the mod and was designed as an extension of Wanderer's Friend.
INSTALLATION
Simply unzip item_blacksmith.txt and reaction_wanderer_blacksmith.txt into your Dwarf Fortress/raw/objects folder and generate a new world.
FEATURES
+ Melt down any metal item for scrap!
+ Burn wood for charcoal!
+ Smelt steel, bronze and other alloys from bars!
+ Forge your own weapons, armour and tools!
+ Hone damaged weapons, repair damaged armour!
+ Make leather whips because damn it, metal whips are silly!
COMMENTS
Weapons and armour are usually slightly cheaper (1 bar) in terms of metal to produce than in Fortress Mode, but this is balanced where they usually require a haft/hilt or leather backing instead. Hafts and Hilts can be produced from wood or bone or even metal (if you're feeling needlessly extravagant).
The only weapons you cannot make out of metal are whips and scourges because I scoff at metal whips; there is an added option to make them out of leather instead. Spears and bolts/arrows cannot be made directly from metal; speartips and arrowheads can be made and then constructed via the methods in the Wanderer's Friend mod.
KNOWN BUGS AND EXPLOITS
Major Exploit: Melting down metal bars into more metal bars causes a massive return (of 150 bars) due to a coding hiccough. At this point there is no way around this - I can only ask you to not do this because it will take away a lot of the balance of the mod and thus a lot of the fun. [On the other hand, if you are finding gathering metal to be far too frustrating a task, it makes for an easy cheat!]
Phantom Bars: For inscrutable reasons you will always need one more bar than you actually use when melting or metalworking (this applies to both metal bars and charcoal). Usually the extra bar is not consumed as a result of the reaction, but on rare occasions it may be consumed and produce twice the expected products.
So I was catching up on Wanderer's Friend and came across the concept of salvaging metal items for scrap. This is the logical consequence of that concept - the mod is designed to take advantage of all those goblin and bandit weapons you pick up and give you a decent starting point for making your own weapons and armour. I've also included several smelting reactions (more than you should ever need!) - the most important of which are smelting pig iron and steel. These use flux rocks as part of the reaction, so you can just pick them up off the ground rather than having to think about mining them.