Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26980722-20160507121617

I highly believe that the system for crafting of weapons is way too simplistic an lacks any real depth. Placing a couple of ingots and a stick on a criss-cross table is not immersive and somewhat not Lore friendly.

My suggestion:

Each race (not faction) should have it's own furnace so they all make their own steel ingot as it highly annoyes me that Elven players have to find a special forge and smelt iron with coal to make steel which is then used to make armor which protects just as much as a Gondorian armor which was made with nothing more than just iron.

A smithing hammer could be used to activate an anvil which has an interface where the player can select to make an equipment piece BUT NOT THE ENTIRE ITEM so that he/she would have to make pouldrons with two ingots, then the chestpiece with six ingots and finally put them together to make a chastplate. Similarly, the player could make a sword blade or a spear tip seperately followed by (still on the anvil or a special block) having to select a spear handle template and carving it out of a block of planks instead of two sticks and then fusing them together in some way be it in inventory or the anvil. Of course this means that everything is more time-taking and may require more materials so durability (which I find to be a huge issue in this mod: one invasion was all it took for my new Ranger boots and hood to get destroyed) could also be improved.

Bows could be made on a seperate workbench where they are carved from a block of planks and multiple strings would have to be intertwined to make them stronger so that it makes sense on why LOTR bows are bigger and better than vanilla. And maybe arrows would be crafted with steel rather than flint and make 8 instead of 4.

Each race/faction could have a special enchating/refining/repairing/engraving table where they use runes or whetstones or whatever to give their weapons an extra boost eg. Elven weapons shouldn't glow because the first best player who had an alignment of +1 put a few items on a crafting bench; they should be quite mundane until they have runes placed on them on the aforementioned enchanting/refining/reparing/engraving block. The other blocks could be used to repair and improve weapons in other ways although to keep everything balanced a weapon should only be able to be improved/enchanted two times so they don't become too OP (not all buffs have to be about damage, like I said Elven weapons could be improved to glow when orcs are nearby)

Finally, an improvement which does not count towards the limit I mentioned above would be asthetic. For example, a Bow of Mirkwood could be lined with silver slivers for decoration or maybe helmets and chestplates could have adornments and capes respectively which could be taken on and off them in a simple crafting table. How about a High Elven helmet with a golden crown/circlet instead of the thing (cannot remember what they're called) to show for your higher status. And maybe capes craften on their faction's anvil or whatever could display this emblem.

Those were my ideas on how to make crafting in LOTR mod a tad bit more interesting and be viewed as a valid profession.  