Lord of the Rings Online - Overview Of The Metalsmith Crafting Profession for LOTRO

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Getting friendly with the forge

Vocations: Armorer

Metalsmiths produce heavy armor and shields, servicing captains, guardians and champions primarily. It’s an expensive craft to raise, as it relies on ores from prospecting in order to level up. As an added bonus, armorers can repair items in the field if they create an anvil, but it’s on a one day cooldown. It’s quite a useful item to bring along with you to help out your fellowship if their equipment has been beaten up by a hard day hunting the armies of Angmar. Armorsmith is a profession in which you will probably want to at least get to level 45 before really starting to produce armor heavily for the market with it. That’s the minimum level to be able to use a Superior Ancient Steel Smithing Hammer, which gives a +20% bonus to critical chance while crafting.

As with most other crafting abilities, it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to turn a profit selling items that aren’t critical successes. As such, you shouldn’t worry too much about getting them while you’re leveling. See your leveling process as an investment for the returns that you’ll get when you reach grandmaster - it’s the only rational way to look at it. It’ll be difficult to produce armor for your level unless you focus on armorer exclusively while you’re leveling, but if your crafting profession moves at a faster pace than your adventuring, the armor that you’ll get for your level will be a nice side benefit. It can take literally months to make back the gold that you spend on the leveling process. Armorer isn’t a profession for a player that isn’t sure that they’re going to stick with the game for more than a month or two.

Keep in mind that there are few special benefits to being an armorer yourself - you can often get the best equipment that they make on the auction house yourself, without dealing with the headaches of worrying about getting critical successes and so on. If you do want to go through the difficult path of becoming an armorer, you’ll gain the benefit of being able to equip your lower leveled characters and friends when they need it, as well as being able to make a slow but steady profit selling to high level players. It does pay off in terms of the gold and time you spend, but only after a very substantial time investment.

This post is part of the series: LOTRO Crafting Guides

From cooks to jewelers to scholars to wood workers, take a look at this guide to crafting in Lord of the Rings Online.

  1. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Overview
  2. LOTRO Crafting First Step: Choose a Vocation
  3. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Cook
  4. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Woodworker
  5. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Weaponsmith
  6. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Scholar
  7. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Metalsmith
  8. Lord of the Rings Online - Crafting Professions - Jeweler
  9. LOTRO Prospector: There’s Gold (and Orcs) In Them Thar Hills
  10. How to Gather Crafting Resources in LOTRO
  11. Welcome to the LOTRO Crafting Window – Proficiency and Mastery
  12. LOTRO - What Are Vocations?