Smithing

Smithing is a production skill through which players may create a wide variety of metal items from ore and metal bars. It is the companion skill of Mining, which generates all of the raw materials used in Smithing. Ores acquired from Mining are smelted into metal bars at furnaces, and then hammered into items at anvils. Many smithable items are useful in combat, quests, and the training of a number of other skills such as Crafting and Fletching.

Overview
Smithing is divided into two distinct processes: smelting ores into bars, and working the bars into various items. Both processes give Smithing experience.

Smelting ores
Ores obtained from the Mining skill can be refined into metal bars at any furnace in RuneScape. The extreme heat exposure and pressure of a furnace is enough to melt the valuable metals contained within the various ores, separate them from the rock, and pool them into bars, which are extracted from the furnace as the final product.

For free players, the closest furnace to a bank is the furnace in Al Kharid. The Lumbridge furnace may also be used as there is an anvil right next to it. For members, the furnaces on Neitiznot, in Port Phasmatys, and in Edgeville are very close to banks, but each has a requirement. Access to the Neitiznot furnace requires you to be past a certain part of The Fremennik Isles, the Port Phasmatys furnace requires Priest in Peril, and the Edgeville furnace requires that the easy Varrock Tasks be completed. Of these, the Edgeville furnace is closest to a bank and most used by members (unofficial world 83).

For most metals, the smelting success rate is 100%; it is impossible to "fail" a smelting attempt, and so a certain number of ores will always result in a certain number of bars. Iron is the outstanding exception; since it takes only one iron ore to create an iron bar, there is a chance that the iron ore will be too impure to refine, and will be lost, resulting in no bar or experience gained. The chance of a successful forging of iron is 50% at level 15 Smithing, the minimum level for smelting iron ores, and increases incrementally as Smithing levels rise until it reaches an 80% chance of success at 45 Smithing, its highest. The chance of successfully smelting iron can also be increased to 100% by wearing a ring of forging, smelting the ore with the Superheat Item spell, or smelting the iron at the Blast Furnace activity.

Smelting ores into bars - table
Take note that coal plays a significant part in the process of smelting ores, as it is required for all standard metals above iron, in addition to the applicable metal ores.

Forging items

 * For a comprehensive list of smithable items, see this article.

The bars created from smelting ores can be taken to any of the many anvils scattered across RuneScape, and with a hammer, worked into a variety of items. Depending on the item in question, multiple bars of the same metal may be needed to create the item, up to five bars at once for platebodies. Other more mundane items, such as hatchets, require only one bar.

A set amount of Smithing experience is awarded per bar, regardless of the item created. For example, a mithril dagger only requires one mithril bar to make, and gives 50 Smithing experience. Mithril platelegs require three bars and give 150 experience when smithed, three times that of a mithril dagger. Therefore, with respect to experience earned, the specific items created from certain bars do not matter. However, since all items take the same amount of time to smith, concentrating on items which use multiple bars will result in faster experience.

For both free players and members, the closest anvils to a bank are the three anvils just south of Varrock's west bank.

Using a Golden hammer will free up an extra inventory space and so can be used to smith items faster.

Mining
The Mining skill can be used to gather all the resources required to train Smithing, including metal ores and coal. This can significantly increase the amount of time required to train Smithing, but could also result in significant profit, along with Mining experience. (By contrast, simply buying all the ores and/or bars needed to train Smithing will save time, but can be very expensive depending on the resources purchased and their quantity.)

Crafting
Smithing is used to create silver bars and gold bars, both of which can be used to train the Crafting skill. One popular way of training Smithing is to smelt gold ore into gold bars with goldsmithing gauntlets, which leads to a large supply of leftover gold bars which can be made into jewellery for Crafting experience.

Fletching
Several items created through Smithing can be used to train Fletching, such as darts, arrowtips, crossbow limbs, and unfinished crossbow bolts.

Magic
At 43 Magic, the Superheat Item spell becomes available, which allows players to smelt ores into bars without need of a furnace. This spell could potentially make Smithing training more efficient, as travel to and from a furnace becomes unnecessary. Superheat Item grants full Smithing experience for smelting the ores, as well as Magic experience, making it a possible way to simultaneously train both skills. The downside is the nature rune requirement for the spell, which increases the overall cost of training using Superheat Item.

It is possible to combine Mining, Magic and Smithing by mining ores, casting Superheat Item to turn them into bars (thus freeing up inventory space for more ores), banking the bars, and repeating.

Another spell frequently used in conjunction with Smithing is High Level Alchemy, which converts items into coins. Players will often "alch" items smithed from metal bars for Magic experience or profit. When training in this manner, it is generally best to smith items with higher High Alchemy values, as dictated by the table below.

Dungeoneering
With the release of the Dungeoneering skill, Smithing experienced a boost in popularity, as all but the very strongest melee weapons and armour of Daemonheim can be created with a high enough Smithing level. Melee is widely used in Dungeoneering, leading to a demand for players with high Smithing levels who can create powerful equipment for use in dungeons. Some players have gathered together to form Dungeoneering Smithing clans who are willing to assist others in acquiring specific items.

Blast Furnace
The Blast Furnace is an activity located in Keldagrim that closely involves the Smithing skill. Players work together to operate a large furnace with which to smelt ores. While using the Blast Furnace, all bars steel and up have their coal requirements halved, and iron ore has a 100% chance of smelting into iron bars. The official Blast Furnace server is World 58.

Artisans Workshop
The Artisans Workshop is an area located in Falador where players can train Smithing in different ways. All Smithing in the workshop requires Ingots, which are similar to Bars but are not interchangeable. Items such as Burial armour, Ceremonial Swords and Cart Tracks. Players can also earn Respect, a type of currency used to buy rewards including new types of cannons.

Other uses of Smithing

 * Smithing is used to repair Barrows equipment or Ancient armour at an armour stand in a player-owned house. The cost of repairing the equipment is lowered by a percentage determined by Smithing level divided by 2. For example, at 50 Smithing, Barrows equipment will cost 25% less to repair on an armour stand, as opposed to Bob of Bob's Axes or the squire at the Void Knight Outpost, both of whom charge full price. A Smithing level of 100 (obtained by using boosts such operating a Smithing cape) reduces the repair cost by 50%.
 * Levels 20, 40, 60 and 80 Smithing are required to make class 2, 3, 4 and 5 equipment and tools in Stealing Creation, respectively.
 * 60 Smithing and completion of Legends Quest are required to combine a shield left half and shield right half into a dragon square shield.
 * 70 Smithing is needed to repair the ladder in level 38 Wilderness that leads to the Burthope beacon, used in the All Fired Up activity.
 * 80 Smithing is required to combine the three godsword shards into a godsword blade.
 * 85 Smithing is required to attach sigils to blessed spirit shields, along with 90 Prayer and completion of Summer's End.
 * 90 Smithing is required to combine a draconic visage and anti-dragon shield to produce a dragonfire shield.
 * 92 Smithing and completion of While Guthix Sleeps are required to forge the ruined dragon armour lump, ruined dragon armour slice and ruined dragon armour shard into a dragon platebody, using a blast fusion hammer at the Dragon Forge.
 * Smithing is one of the skills used in the ancient effigies Distraction and Diversion. Additionally, as the assist system can be used with Smithing, players can earn up to 30,000 Smithing experience per day assisting others with their effigies.
 * Smithing has become more useful as a skill due to its implementations into activities like Stealing Creation and skills like Dungeoneering.

Money making

 * Main articles: Money making guides for free players and for members

Temporary boosts

 * A dwarven stout will raise Mining and Smithing by 1 level
 * A mature dwarven stout will raise Mining and Smithing by 2 levels
 * An orange spicy stew can temporarily raise Smithing by up to 6; however, it can also decrease it by up to 6.
 * Using the 'Boost' option on a Smithing cape will boost Smithing by 1 level, although 99 Smithing is required.

Cape of Accomplishment
Upon reaching 99 Smithing, players may buy the Smithing Cape of Accomplishment from Thurgo in his house near Mudskipper Point for 99,000 coins.

Smithing is currently ranked #17 out of 25 among skills in which players have level 99. This makes it somewhat rare, possibly due to the large investment of time and/or money required to train the skill.

Trivia

 * In the early days, Smithing was considered one of the best skills for making money. As such, Jagex kept anvils and furnaces far away from each other in an attempt to prevent people from levelling Smithing too quickly. However, this practice has often been considered obsolete ever since banks were able to hold items.
 * In early 2001, Smithing had very different requirements. For example, players needed level 96 Smithing to make steel platebodies rather than level 48.
 * For a time after the release of RuneScape 2 through around 2006, the in-game skill guide for Smithing had a tab for smithing black equipment, although this is not possible.
 * On 5 November 2007, the Smith-X option was released. This allowed more than 10 items to be forged on an anvil at a time.
 * The dwarven city of Keldagrim is recognised as the capital of Mining and Smithing. Because of its large number of Smithing features, it is a popular destination for players to smith, particularly in World 58. Inside Keldagrim, there are five anvils, the Blast Furnace, a bank, armour shops, several mines, a pickaxe shop, the Lava Flow Mine, and the mine cart transportation network.
 * In one Q&A session, it was said that dragon ore may be released. Whether or not Smithing in its current state would be able to accommodate another class of smithable equipment is an open question, considering that 99 Smithing is required to make all rune items.


 * Smithing is one of only 4 noncombat skills wherein reaching level 99 offers more rewards and abilities than simply wearing the Cape of Accomplishment. (The other 3 such skills are Construction, Runecrafting and Dungeoneering.)
 * In 2010, an update placed an anvil in Lumbridge, intended to be useful for new players who want to train Smithing. It marks the first time Jagex placed a furnace, anvil and bank reasonably close to one another.
 * Firing a furnace with extra coal can serve up to 2 purposes. Some types of alloy, such as adamant or runite, require extreme temperatures to melt the ore, and this can be achieved by burning large amounts of coal, which raises the forge's temperature. The other reason is more complex, and related to the molecular structure of the metal itself. For example, iron and steel are both created from the iron ore. Steel, however, is not simply iron which should melt at the same temperature anyway. Steel is actually a crystalline structure made from both carbon and iron; without carbon, it is just an iron bar. The carbon component comes from the coal added to the firing of the iron. In this situation the coal does not simply function to increase the forge's overall temperature, but also acts as an ingredient of the bar. The other higher level types of metal may actually require both functions of coal, similar to steel. This may explain large number of coal used to smith a rune bar.
 * On 8 March 2011, Smithing had a huge revamp which presented ceremonial swords, burial armour, cannon repair and track making.
 * During the January 2011 RuneFest meet Mod Mark stated that the long waited Smithing skill revamp had not been started, and most probably would not start development for quite some time due to the busy development schedules for the development team. Smithing did have a large update on 8 March 2011, but was not the expected revamp.