Ars Metallica

The crafting system is one of Skyrim's better features, but for thieves and archers, there's not much use for the system. Light armor is dead easy to come by in already finished forms, but arrows can sometimes be scarce in the types you may want. Lockpicks have been known to be somewhat scarce too, yet are relatively basic to construct.

Ars Metallica aims to fill in some of the basic issues I had with the crafting system by doing the following:

For vanilla Skyrim:

* Allow archers to forge their own arrows out of the various ore materials, wood, leather strips, and feathers. Indirectly making it somewhat useful to chop wood too.

* Allow thieves to make their own lockpicks out of iron or steel.

* Provide skill advancement for the use of the smelter to melt down ore. After all, that's as important as knowing how to shape it once refined.

* Provide skill advancement for the use of the tanning rack to make leather. That's far more important in my mind than the skill advances from using the leather to make stuff.

* Provide for a small amount of skill advancement from mining the ore itself out of ore veins.

* Provide the ability to melt down existing pieces of armor and some clutter items into ingots so that you can then use those ingots to make missing pieces of a set if you want.

* Allow members of factions to forge equipment appropriate to their guild. Thieves can make guild armor. Assassins can make Brotherhood armor. Legionnaires can make Imperial armor, and so on.

For Dawnguard:

* Modifies the dragonbone arrow recipes and the crossbow bolt recipes to conform to the same formulas as vanilla. Disabled Dawnguard's native recipes.

For Hearthfire:

* Provides smithing experience for using the various workbenches used to construct your homes. The drafting table does not count since nothing is actually built using it.

For Dragonborn:

* Modifies the stalhrim and nordic arrow recipes to conform to the same formulas as the vanilla arrows.

* Adds smelting formulas to recover ore from stalhrim and nordic carved equipment.

* Adds crafting feathers to the Felsaad Tern.

Note that all smelting of metals requires that you know the perk associated with that metal. For example, if you wish to smelt Dwemer scrap, you need to know the Dwemer Smithing perk first. This applies not just to smelting existing goods but also to smelting raw ore. This isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Known Issues

Silver swords and greatswords can be forged but they show up under the MISC category.

Compatibility

Any mod that alters the vanilla mining script, MineOreScript.psc, will be incompatible.

Any mod which alters the base smelter object or the base tanning rack object is incompatible. (Mesh & Texture mods are OK though)

Any mod which alters the recipes for the vanilla ingot formulas will be incompatible.

Any mod adding items to chickens, pheasants, dead hawks, or the DeathItemHagraven leveled list will be incompatible without Wrye Bash.

Any Dawnguard mods that modify the arrow recipes, steel bolt recipe, or dwarven bolt recipe will be incompatible. The magic crossbow bolt recipes have not been altered.

Any Hearthfire mods that modify the carpenter's workbench or the other smaller workbenches in each of the houses will be incompatible.

Any Dragonborn mods that modify the two arrow recipes will be incompatible.

Disclaimer

This mod is not made, guaranteed, or supported by Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.