Blacksmith Master: Tips and Tricks for Blueprints

This is a large guide covering a range of topics to varying degrees of complexity. This is because you can’t talk about blueprints without also talking about design points, the Mastery Tree and trade routes. Many screenshots and a healthy dose of spreadsheets have been used ^^.

The guide is structured around the following topics:

• Navigating the blueprint menus.
• Unlocking, earning and using blueprints and design points.
• The key role the Mastery Tree plays in unlocking blueprints.
• The misleading descriptions of when most blueprints can be “unlocked”.
• The upgrade costs for all blueprints.

Cutting to the chase, to upgrade all 97 blueprints from common quality to legendary will require 750,910 design points. And here’s a sobering through – a max level designer only earns 300 design points per day….yeah…..

And on that bombshell, it’s time to end….get on with it!

The blueprint menu contains several screens which can be a little confusing to understand the first time you navigate through them. The first screen you’ll see includes all the items you can currently make; these are the ones crafted for the merchant offers.

Clicking the New blueprint button on the bottom right will take you to a second screen. Here you’ll see all the items that can be unlocked with blueprints. The number of blueprints you’ve earned is listed on the top right of the screen.

If you click on an item while having no blueprints available you’ll see the following notification.

Clicking the Not available button on the top left will take you to the third screen. Here you’ll see all the blueprints of items you cannot currently make. These items are locked and access to them requires certain skills to be unlocked in the Mastery Tree. Once these skills have been unlocked the blueprint will move from the current locked screen to the previous screen indicating it can be unlocked with a blueprint (i.e. all conditions have been met and you can now unlock it).

The Upgrading Blueprint skill in the Mastery Tree will need to be unlocked before either blueprints can be obtained or design points generated.

• Blueprints are used to unlock new items for your blacksmiths to make.
• Design points are used to upgrade the quality of these items. Similar to the Mastery Tree, the quality tiers for items are common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary. The number of design points needed to upgrade an item increases with each quality tier.

The game will tell you how to upgrade items as soon as the Upgrading Blueprint skill has been unlocked.

The design table will also become available to purchase from the shop for 200g.

After unlocking the Blueprint Upgrades skill in the Mastery Tree, blueprints will start to appear as a possible reward for completing a merchant offer.

The blueprint will be available to use once the order has been completed. The blueprint menu icon will now try to get your attention.

As will the New blueprint button on the first menu.

The counter on the second screen will now show you’ve got a blueprint available to use. Select an item to unlock it. For this example we’ll unlock the longbow blueprint.

An information screen for the item you’ve selected will appear. It may be confusing, but the picture of the oak wood and arrow towards the longbow is what is required to make the item – not what is required to unlock it. Clicking the unlock button will add it to your item list.

Each new item will be added to the list. Merchant orders will now start to include requests for this new item.

The most efficient way to produce design points is to hire one or more blacksmiths skilled in design.

At level 0 the blacksmith produces 10 points per day and each level adds 5 more points. The higher the skill level, the more design points will be produced per day. Even more will be produced if the blacksmith has skills in design and the trait which speeds up design point production by +20%.

• 12 design points produced per day with 0 skill points and the trait.
• 24 design points produced per day with 2 skill points and the trait.
• 48 design points produced per day with 4 skill points and the trait.
• 90 design points produced per day with 6 skill points and the trait.
• 180 design points produced per day with 8 skill points and the trait.
• 300 design points produced per day with 10 skill points and the trait.

Build the design table and while in the staff menu allocate the blacksmith(s) to the design role. Add as many blacksmiths as you want.

Then sit back and watch as design points are produced. The number will be displayed beside your gold.

Items in the blueprints menu will indicate – by way of a green arrow – they can be upgraded once you’ve earned enough design points to do so. It’s important to note that each item individually calculates if it can be upgraded with the design points available; this is not an indication that all items can be upgraded at the same time.

For example, if you have 8 blueprints and each require 50 points to upgrade and you’ve generated 60 design points, then all blueprints will show they can be upgraded, even though there aren’t enough points to go around. This screen can therefore be misleading to follow and does require you to click the individual items to double check how many points are needed.

Following on from the longbow example used previously, clicking on the longbow while a blueprint is available will open the following information panel. Again, the key information is the text at the bottom, not the oak wood and the arrow pointing towards the longbow.

Click the button showing the 40 design points to upgrade the longbow, which is the cost to upgrade the longbow from common to uncommon quality. The blueprint’s border will change colour from brown to light blue, consistent with the colour of uncommon skills in the Mastery Tree. Also note the base price of the longbow has increased from 38g to 41g.

Afterwards you will remain in the upgrade screen which now shows the cost to upgrade from uncommon to rare quality and the button now shows 80 design points. If these points are available the button will be white and clickable, otherwise it will be red and unclickable.

Returning to the blueprint menu you’ll see the uncommon version of the longbow.

The uncommon version will now be requested by merchants. This same process is used to upgrade all 97 item blueprints from common, through uncommon, rare, to epic and finally legendary quality.

At the time of writing this guide 97 item blueprints can be obtained once their unlock conditions have been met:

• 7 items are unlocked and available to craft from the start of the game.
• 6 items are locked but can be unlocked with a blueprint.
• 51 items cannot be accessed until certain skills have been unlocked in the Mastery Tree – down to and including the Sharpening Wheel skill.
• 33 items cannot be accessed until all 4 trade routes have been unlocked.

The game limits the number of blueprints available until certain skills are unlocked in the Mastery Tree, then following this more blueprints can be obtained. The number of blueprints available following the skill unlocks are:

• Blueprint Upgrades – 15 blueprints
• Advanced Metalworking – 7 blueprints
• Smelting 2 – 11 blueprints
• Smelting 3 – 8 blueprints
• Pine Forest – 8 blueprints
• Trade Routes (clay trade route) – 14 blueprints
• Trade Routes (birch woods trade route) – 6 blueprints
• Trade Routes (gold ore trade route) – 6 blueprints
• Trade Routes (gems trade route) – 7 blueprints
• Sharpening Wheel – 15 blueprints

For the entire game every item you can make can be requested by merchants and can therefore earn blueprints. You can quite literally receive all 97 blueprints by completing merchant offers for the starter items (I did!).

A total of 6,143 skill points across the common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary quality tiers need to be collected to unlock the Sharpening Wheel skill. The breakdown of the required skill points per quality tier are shown in the table below.

The following information is shown on the Mastery Tree:

• The skills with a red border need to be unlocked to enable more blueprints to appear as possible rewards for merchant offers.
• Those with a yellow star show the minimum number of skills to be unlocked on the way down to Sharpening Wheel.
• After unlocking Store there are no skills on the right side of the tree that is in the upgrade path to Sharpening Wheel. None of these skills impact your ability to get additional blueprints.

Quick question, what skill in the Mastery Tree unlocks the Pirate Shield?

Is it Silver Mine?

Or Smelting 3?

Or perhaps Trade Routes?

If you answered Silver Mine, Smelting 3 or Trade Routes you’d be incorrect.

Because the correct answer is….

Gold! The gold ore trade route is the *actual* unlock condition to be met before the Pirate Shield becomes accessible and its blueprint unlockable.

Herein lies the problem with the blueprint system in Blacksmith Master. The “unlock” condition for 66 of the 84 inaccessible blueprints is grossly inaccurate and misleading. The goalposts keep shifting and if you’re anything like me you’ll be left wondering what is the actual unlock requirement. You cannot trust what skill you’re led to believe will unlock the blueprints, as for the vast majority of them this is false information. You literally have to unlock Mastery Tree skills then go into your blueprints menu to see what’s changed. I’ve recommended to the developers that the blueprint system should only show the *actual* unlock condition on all items, not the several intermediate ones.

Having fluid skill unlocks like this isn’t great, but at least it would be tolerable if there were no downsides. However, there are downsides, big ones – the size of merchant offers go up significantly as more skills are unlocked and as a result the speed at which you can obtain new blueprints goes down considerably. It is much faster to craft 14 items for a merchant offer and receive a blueprint than what it is to craft 150 items for the same reward. Also, if you don’t have adequate infrastructure, mines, lumberyards and a sizable workforce in place to handle these much larger offers your entire blacksmithing operation will suffer as a whole.

The following lists show the “unlock” requirements and the *actual* unlock requirements of each item blueprint, grouped as per their initial “unlock” skill.

Skills in green *actually* unlock as per their initial description – they do what’s said on the packet. Every other skill has one or more soft “unlock” skills before they eventually become available (I hope this all makes sense ^^).

Take Copper Goblet (above) for example, at the start of the game if you navigate through the blueprint screens and click on it, the message you’ll receive is “This item is locked. To unlock this blueprint, you need ‘Smelting 1’ unlocked“.

Once you’ve subsequently unlocked Smelting 1 and accessed the blueprint again, you’ll then be told “you need ‘Copper Mine’ unlocked“. Unlocking the Copper Mine skill will then subsequently make the Copper Goblet blueprint available.

Now, take Short Hoe (above), at the start of the game if you navigate through the blueprint screens and click on it, the message you’ll receive is “This item is locked. To unlock this blueprint, you need ‘Advanced Metalworking’ unlocked“. Once you’ve subsequently unlocked Advanced Metalworking the Short Hoe blueprint will be available. Brilliant! For this blueprint at least, it does what it says on the packet.

This section lists the upgrade costs for each of the 97 item blueprints from common through to legendary quality. The headline numbers are listed first, followed by the tables which includes the data.

Notes:

• This information is accurate at the time of writing this guide. These numbers may change as the game further develops.
• This information includes the upgrade cost for all item blueprints. (The game wiki is currently missing information on about 15 items and is therefore incomplete)
• For some blueprints the information in the graphs will show different numbers than the game wiki. That’s because the game wiki is incorrect (e.g. the initial upgrade cost of Soulblade is not 6100 as shown on the wiki). I’ve provided feedback to the devs on this.

Ok, with out further ado….

The number of design points required to upgrade all items across the quality tiers is:

• From common to uncommon: 40,630
• From uncommon to rare: 89,440
• From rare to epic: 195,720
• From epic to legendary: 425,120

The amount of design points required to upgrade all blueprints from common to rare quality is: 325,790.

The total amount of design points required to upgrade all blueprints from common to legendary is a whopping 750,910. A jump of 425,120 from rare quality.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3