Blacksmithing ranks determine what level of metalworking you can buy. Metalworking determines what ore types you can use to make gear... from iron at 1/9 metalworking to voidstone at 9/9.

The types of ore you are using determines the minimum character level needed to wear gear made from that type of ore. For example, voidstone needs VR 9 or higher. While you can make a set of heavy armor from voidstone at any level (assuming you have metalworking 9/9), you won't be able to equip it until VR 9. You can, of course, wear lower quality gear at higher levels. So your VR 9 character can use armor made from iron ingots but that would be insane.

Both blacksmithing and metalworking (actually, all crafting skills) have nothing to do with overall character level. You can have a level 3 character with rank 50 in blacksmithing and all blacksmithing skills bought (just need to find enough skyshards to get the skillpoints).

So keep on making and deconstructing armor/weapons to increase your blacksmithing rank and then buy the next level in metalworking once you get to the needed blacksmithing rank. Then you'll be able to make the next tier gear.

I replaced my gear every 2 character levels as I progressed up to level 50. It was a way to continuously have the best possible crafted gear for myself (thus making the game easier), reduce cost on repairing armor (I didn't spend a single gold piece on repair until after VR1), and gain some blacksmithing exp as well.

ArRashid wrote: »

It's just REALLY bad that we can't learn "rare" styles before getting to rank 8/9 with at least one of these crafting professions.
I had to reroll from my useless NB at VR2, and now I can't learn Ancient Elves on my new character, because:
1) too low level of professions
2) nodes are REALLY hard to find after 1.1.2 node changes and continued botcalypse

"Botcalypse". That is funny. I do like that term.

But being in the mid level maps myself, the bot problem seems to be strictly focused on metal ore. I have no problem locating wood or cloth nodes but spend an hour out in the game world and I would be lucky to find enough metal nodes to even do a single extraction.

I don't know if it is sad or funny that I get more metal ore from deconstructing items than I do from gathering resources out in the game world now.

I think that wood and cloth are easier to find because they're not as popular professions as blacksmithing. I believe its as simple as that. Higher demand for ore deposits=higher scarcity of ore deposits.