The Smithy

The Smithy is the one shop in town whose tool trade runs in a single direction. He has a counter for every axe, pickaxe and shovel in the game, he will buy all of them at any grade, and he will not sell you one at any tier.

What he stocks instead is the fighting half of a forge, plus the cheapest building material in town. A hammer, a sword, a suit of armor and a pike sit on his shelf one grade at a time, and behind them are nails at a single coin each.

His yard is empty until Artisans I

The Smithy is not in town at the start of a run. His plot is one of the artisan yards rather than a market stall, and the ground stays bare until Artisans I is researched.

That node costs 75 and 25, with 327, 62 and 40 in the branch behind it. The node directly under it costs no spheres and opens at 50 reputation with Jack, so the foreman gates the forge the same way he gates the Alchemist and the Jeweler later on.

Artisans I opens the Builder alongside him, and both sit in the cheapest build band: 4 Building Kit I, 3 Wooden Kit I and 1 Iron Kit I. That makes the Smithy one of the first two shops available once Jack is satisfied, and half the cost of the alchemy and jewelry stalls at the far end of the tree.

Both upgrades ask for things he sells, which is the pattern across the whole town. Six Advanced Detail and four Marble Kit raise him to his second tier, and twelve Steel Screws with 8 Furniture Kit II and 4 Building Kit II take him to his third. Raising any shop pays 2 village reputation.

Nobody in town sells an axe or a pickaxe

This is the thing worth knowing before you go looking. Every grade of axe and pickaxe exists, the Smithy has a row for each, and not one of them is ever on sale. The shovels are a near miss: he will not sell those either, and the only counter in town that does is the Vegetable Stand, which carries one grade per tier up to a Steel Shovel at 14,500 coins.

Tools carry mastery rather than raw speed, and the ladder is even. Each grade adds two more, so a Rusty tool is +1, Bronze is +2, Iron is +4 and Steel is +6, and carrying one of each family stacks because the game adds up the whole tool inventory.

So the answer to a worn out Iron Axe is an anvil, not a shop. An Iron Anvil in your own yard makes the iron grade and a Steel Anvil makes steel, and a Steel Axe is the clearest case of the two routes diverging: it is worth 12,000 coins and no vendor in the game has ever stocked one.

What he does sell, one grade at a time

His combat shelf moves up with his tier and holds exactly one of each. A pike, a sword, a suit of armor and a hammer appear at bronze, then iron, then steel, so a fully upgraded Smithy has all three grades of all four standing side by side.

Steel Sword and Steel Armor at 25,000 apiece are among the dearest things on any shelf in town, level with the Golden Talisman. Every one of them is priced flat rather than on a curve, so the shelf of one he carries is what you pay and upgrading him does not move it.

Above those sit Master Sword and Master Armor, which no shop has ever stocked and none will buy. They are forge work and they are the reason the Alchemist keeps Alkali and Tannin Liquid on his counter, one bottle feeding each. If you are equipping for a siege, the top of the ladder is not for sale.

A worn tool always fetches its base price

Selling to him is the simplest arithmetic in the game. A sale is capped at the item base price, and a flat priced item is already at or above that cap however many he holds, so quantity, stock and tier all make no difference at all.

Two things he will not take. The top hammer on his own shelf is refused at every tier, so he sells you a Steel Hammer and then declines to buy it back, and the same holds for the bronze and iron ones at their tiers. Steel Axe, Steel Pickaxe and Steel Shovel have no buyer anywhere.

Copper Trinkets are the odd line out. He holds ten, never sells one, and buys them at 220 on the ordinary curve, which makes him a second outlet for them beside the Trademaster. The Tool bag at 500 is the reverse: he sells it and will not buy it back.

The cheapest counter in town

Underneath the weapons is the reason to visit him weekly. Bronze Nails cost a single coin, Bronze Detail two, Bronze Scrap six and Bronze Ingot ten, in stacks of twenty to fifty, which undercuts the time it takes to smelt your own by a margin nothing else in town matches.

Three shops carry the nails and screws between them, so the Builder and the Furniture Maker are worth checking on the same walk. Polished Bronze at 75 and Bronze Gear at 120 are the two that overlap with the Jeweler, whose shelf holds the same bronze at the same prices.

He takes materials for town happiness rather than coins as well, at a better rate than most: forty Bronze Scrap or twenty Bronze Ingot pay four smiles each, rising to twenty Iron Detail or Advanced Detail at his second tier and a hundred Steel Screws or forty Engineering Details at his third. His standing order is a supply crate of building materials, then Engineering Mechanisms at his third tier, which sit with the rest on town orders.