What is the Blacksmith building

The Blacksmith in Rise of Empires is a special building that lets you make materials and then parts to add to your legions offering a range of improvements. These improvements give upgrades to the performance of the marching armies and affect their function in the game.

Requirements

The Blacksmith building itself becomes available to build when you reach castle level 10. You can then start to use it to produce basic materials and it gives you the ability to craft the parts but you will also need separate buildings to make a special item called Dragonite.

Dragonite is made in the Dragonite workshop buildings which are a production building. These can only be build once you reach level 16. However you can also find Dragonite in the world by killing the Wight enemies. Dragonite will let you upgrade the blacksmith and then craft the parts.

In addition to the buildings there is also a research tree associated with the blacksmith called Accessory Production. You will need to have upgraded the institute building to level 9 to start on this tree though. The research items in here will allow you to unlock additional manufacturing slots and speed up the rate of production. You will also need dragonite to complete the research items here.

Blacksmith Parts

Initially you are able to work towards part for a legion set called Scavenger. These parts will have bonuses to gathering activities. Once you reach blacksmith level 5 you can then craft materials and parts for the several other classes that bring bonuses to speed and attacking for set classes of troops in the legion. Then further parts are unlocked at even higher levels. You can check all of the parts for the different sets and their bonuses under the Craft option of the building.

Materials

To start you need to begin making materials. Each of the sets of parts will require different materials to be produced and combined to craft them. Te materials can be made for free but you will need to queue them up on the blacksmith and wait for the time it teaks for them to be made, although you can use speed ups to rush through them.

In all cases the Materials come in a range of colours similar to heroes, with white being the lowest and gold the highest quality. You can combine several lower level ones to make a higher level item. eg 4 white = 1 green.

You will need to complete research items to let you unlock the creation of the higher level items.

Crafting the parts with the materials will then result in parts of a similar color quality with the better quality parts giving higher bonuses. Getting enough materials for the top quality gold parts will take a very long time but the bonuses will be a major advantage to your legion.

Depot

The depot option let you see the Materials that you have stored and any equipment that you have made from the materials. You can also combine materials here to make higher level ones.