This is very open for discussion

Blacksmithing:

Standard progression of weedwood-bone-syrmorite/octine-valonite won't work as such.
Weedwood tools and bone tools can still be made the same in a crafting table as usual (for natural progression), but their variations can't be made yet.

New utility blocks:

• Forging table
• Anvil
• Grindstone
• Smith's Workbench

New items:

• Blade/head types
• Pommels
• Guards
• Moulds
• Smithing hammer
• Upgraded armours

Crafting with the new utility blocks:

In the new blacksmithing system tools are made up of different parts:

Swords are made out of a blade, guard, pommel, and handle (stick or bone)
Pickaxes are made out of a pickaxe head, handle, and pommel (optional)
Axes are made out of an axe head, handle, and pommel (optional)
Shovels are made out of a spade, handle, and pommel (optional)

All parts, except for the handle, are made at the Forging Table.
The Forging Table requires three items to produce an output:

• Fuel
• One or more ingots
• A mould (will be expanded on later)

When all three items are in place, the Forging Table will heat up (liquify) the material and pour it in the placed mould. (Perhaps items freshly obtained from a mould should be put in a Purifier first before you can craft with them, yay more uses for Purifiers)

Once you have your parts you can put them together at the Smith's Workbench. This Workbench works like a crafting table for smithing related items. It can be used for more things than just tools later on. Crafting recipes with nuggets could work, perhaps to make small components that will be used in other general crafting recipes. The Smith's Workbench can also be used to deconstruct tools again. This could return some damaged parts (based on tool duration). This is useful for when the player found a tool with a unique part through loot (see loot part).

Armour parts and shields are made on the Anvil (Needs more work. An idea could that different plate parts could be made, depending on how the player hits the Anvil with a hammer. These parts would be used to craft armour and shields, but it might be too complicated/unecessary)

Finally there is the Grindstone. Using your weapons/tools on a Grindstones slightly restores a bit of durability and corrosion. Perhaps using a Grindstone could also allow for a Sharpness effect for an
X amount of uses. The stone on the Grindstone needs replacing after an X amount of uses.

Moulds and blade/guard/pommel types:

Moulds are made with three mud blocks and a part of a tool. In a crafting bench, put three block of mud on a horizontal line, and put a part above it in the middle. This will result in an unbaked or soft mould. Soft moulds can be crafted into variations again.

In the case of this example, let's agree that there are four known blade variations for the player:
To craft his first mould, the player will have to use 'vanilla' parts. The general parts than can already be obtained from deconstructing either a weedwood or a bone tool. When a basic mould is made (with the vanilla parts) it can be put in a crafting table again to change the variation of it, going through all the four variations in order, just like how carved scabyst blocks work.
Alternatively, crafting a mould by using a specific variation of a part will automatically already result in the mould having that variation, but will still be able to be changed.
Some variations cannot be crafted like this though. Some variations of mould can only be crafted by using the specific part. These will be unique variations (see Loot for more info).
When the player is happy with the mould, they can put it in a furnace to bake it and make the shape definite. A hardened mould is used on the Forging Table and will produce the part that correlates to the mould.

The variations of the parts will have different stats. Let's take an octine blade for example. The 'normal' blade type that we know from Vanilla would do 6 damage in general. But when a player makes variations of it, let's say a one edged blade, or a jagged blade, the stats will change. It could for example now do 7 damage to undead mobs, but does 5.5 or 5 damage in general.
With these variations players could specialise their weapons and prepare better for the adventure they want to embark on.
A pommel could afffect swing speed and recharge, or even deal a bit of extra damage at the cost of swing speed. The same goes for guards or other parts.

Loot:

The new blacksmithing system could allow for some interesting loot. Players could find special moulds they wouldn't be able to make themselves, or find unique tools or weapons what hold special buffs
or special parts. By deconstructing them they could still use the different parts to their liking, and it would involve some crafting with the loot.

Upgraded Armours:

Since I haven't really expanded on the use of the Anvil (needs some discussion still) I can;t really expand on the crafting of the upgraded armours. But the idea was that each armour type would have a
version of a higher tier (maybe multiple in the future). Aside from just being a bit stronger, they would have specific effects or buffs. This way even weaker armours could become more useful again when used in the right situation.

Some ideas:

Bone armour would increase sneak/reduce the spotting range of mobs. Perhaps faster movement through bushes and other cover as well.
Lurkerskin armour already has benefits in water, these could be improved upon.
Syrmorite armour could be tanky, reducing knockback received (or suck power from Tar Beasts for example)
Valonite armour could work with the projectile deflection the shield has too.

Strange Alloy armour is unsure yet, since we have not implemented it. But with having these variations in armour it could be interesting to work with more materials.

All in all blacksmithing could allow for a fun crafting experience like Herblore, and players would be able to specialise their gear according to their plans.
Specialised gear could also allow for us to add more strongly themed dungeons, basically demanding the use of certain gear or tools (stealth based dungeon anyone?).
With blacksmithing we could add new building components involving metals and ores for more interesting crafting of other blocks and items unrelated to tools or armours.

[shameless self plug] I see this being done a lot recently (custom gear), Taoism has one such implementation (a bit more generalized because I also wanted to fit polearms and hand weapons in the same item ID). It's not very well optimized (models baked as needed and refreshed every 5 minutes), but it could be of some reference value. With some NBT manipulation it isn't as hard as it might appear. I'm also all for a slimy bone sink to have swamp hag encounters remain a "ooooh" event rather than a "ugh" event.
Some notes: in the real world metal is usually not melted before forging, because oxidation and the chance of uneven pouring/cooling leading to trapped bubbles and warping, respectively. Armor is cold forged to shape before adding the details too. In terms of mod materials, only syrmorite and octine need to actually be heated up first: lurker skin is tanned, weedwood/slimy bone/angler tooth is carved, valonite is chipped and ground. And a clean fire in a forge just looks weird to me in a humid, dark place like BL. Of course, you can always invoke poetic license...
Custom equipment is a really, really deep rabbit hole that is already partially fulfilled by TiC, so don't forget the extra pinch of magic that you guys always add to your work! Thanks for making one of the most immersive experiences I've had in a while!

O no

O no? :lanny:

This looks like a lot of work!

That's what I do, bully the programmers

o yas

sounds like o a pain to code, tho... (hehehe)