Plate armor smithing or plate smithing for short is a difficult proficiency to master as it requires steel for the base material instead of the typical iron used in the other smithing proficiencies. The creating of steel is a hard task that requires a lot of manual labor and time to become skilled enough before you can make steel of high enough quality.
How to Make Steel in Wurm
To make steel in Wurm Online you need both iron and coal preferably of high quality.
Mining for Iron
- In Wurm Online, iron is plentiful and is found in mines all around the lands. The main thing to mention is that high quality iron is paramount for steel making as the quality of the steel created depends on the quality of the iron used. So iron quality used = max steel quality created.
- The quality of the iron mined depends on your own mining skill and also the quality of the iron vein. So if a iron vein has a quality of say 50 then the max quality of the iron mined will be 50 no matter how high your mining skill is. The max quality of iron mined is also equal to your own skill level. This means that it is best to mine iron veins that have the same quality or lower than your mining skill and save the better ones for later.
- If there is for some reason no iron on or near your deed you can usually just ask in local if there is an open iron vein nearby that you can use.
Gathering or Making Coal
- By creating coal piles. This method requires a lot of wood and is time-consuming. To create a coal pile, you start by adding together a wood log and kindling to get the initial pile. You then need to add additional wood logs and dirt to the pile until it is ready and then light it with your steel and flint. The amount of coal and quality depends on the quality rating of the pile, so using high-quality wood and dirt is paramount. Gathering high-quality wood and dirt requires high skills in woodcutting and digging. You also need good coal-making skills to get the most out of your pile.
- By killing lava-spiders. If you are lucky enough to live near a lava field you can either lure Lava spiders onto your deed and have a spirit warden kill them, or go hunting them for yourself. When skinned, lava spiders often drop coal of decent quality.
- Buying them from other players. If you have silver to spare you can probably get some for a reasonable price is you ask about in the chat.
- If you know of any other methods to gather coal I would appreciate being told in the comments below.
Making Steel with Metallurgy
- To create steel, you need to heat up your iron in a forge and mix it with your coal to create the steel. As mentioned before the maximum steel quality depends on the iron quality, however your chance of success depends on the coal quality and your metallurgy skill. Higher skill and coal quality will therefore result is more successes and better average quality of steel created, as the quality of steel created will sometimes have a lesser value than the iron used depending on the “skill roll”.
Crafting the Plate Armor
Now that you have steel you can start creating your plate armor set in your forge. There are 9 pieces that need to be created to get a whole set of plate armor. The helmet, two gauntlets, 2 vambraces, the breastplate, the leggings and two sabatons.
You need to heat a steel lump and use your anvil to create your steel armor piece. You should always use low quality steel to create your pieces and then improve them with higher quality steel. This process can be time-consuming as each individual piece needs to be improved to the desired level. A rule of thumb when improving is to improve an item to about +10 of your skill level for best results.
Making and improving plate armor increases your plate armor skill which is also used to create dragon scale armor.
So there you have it. A complete guide on plate armor smithing in Wurm Online. Now if you liked this guide then be sure to share it with your friends and allies and feel free to check out my other Wurm Online guides.