Blip Blog I - Blacksmiths

Smithing in Minecraftia, on its most basic level, is as practiced as hunting or gathering. The denizens of Minecraftia have an almost instinctual ability to craft and create, allowing them to combine materials quicker and quicker as they age, and lead to faster and faster development.

This has allowed for many different cultures to have tools up to pure iron, but the methodology in which they do so changes from culture to culture.

Smithing practices are typically similar if not the exact same as we see in our lives, where the smith will have to bring the metal to temperature, and hammer it down into the shape of the implement that it needs to be, and then temper the metal with liquids, or heat treat it by cooling it off and heating it up repeatedly. Most denizens will find themselves using the most nearby water source in order to create their tools and weapons, but there are benefits to using other liquids.

While making it more fragile, using ice has been found to be a useful way of making weapons quicker than most, tempering the blade quickly and preparing an army faster than others would be ready for. Another method, while unorthodox due to its rarity, Slime was found to give a blade almost a self-healing factor, where it would retain its shape after being dunked in the slime for the first time. It has been assumed that any armor or weapon heat treated in slime would allow it to self-repair quickly, but we have not seen any living examples of slime-armor.

The culture of the Deciples of G'reth tend to avoid magics when they meld the metals of the earth, as to not taint the metals with anything other than what they were given. Many of these hole-in-the-wall towns have internal mines to lava pools, where they use the lava to heat up larger furnaces, and then melt down the iron from there, either tempering the blades with standard river water, or even dipping the sword into the lava, to give the sword a firey strike without requiring enchantments, but sacrificing its durability if not done right.

Other, non-overworld theistic cultures, on the other hand, use plenty of magics in their smithing. Patrons of Godith find themselves using nether magics, typically levitation magics and fire related magics, to pull the gold ore directly out of the veins, and heat them up without having to deal with any external factors. Due to this, many mages that would typically be on the battlefield are instead used in the kingdoms, enfusing their gold armor with ashes from fallen blazes, and creating flame resistent armor and weapons, capable of countering the sweltering heat of the nether.

Many places use the benefits of magic to forge, too. We find remnants of soul soil in Elysian forges, hinting at them using living sacrifices in order to infuse their weapons with the experience of the souls that fueled the fire. This was known to increase the power of the weapons, and in some cases, efficiency and yeild of the tools, giving people the ability to sew bigger harvests, and recover more ore from veins. Wether they used animal souls or sacrificed the souls of their loved ones, we do not know.

Other additions to Smithing through magical means could be achieved by standard enchantments, most societies have a dedicated enchantment table, created by copying the nearby experience of the users, and transferring a copy of that faux experience into the weapon. These are much less powerful than enchantments that are used with real experience, but the enchantments are still powerful on their own compared to nothing.