Steel Finally Pays: The Smithing XP Rebalance

Shipped 15 July 2026. Every number in this post is from the live game.

For a long time, Wanderer's smiths have known something was off at the furnace. An Iron Bar — one ore, one pull of the bellows — paid 18 Smithing XP. A Steel Bar, which costs an iron ore plus two coal (three trips to the rock face instead of one), paid… 28. Mine three times the material, earn barely half again the reward. Steel was, per swing of the pickaxe behind it, the worst deal in the game. Players noticed. Players said so. Players were right.

What changed

Smithing XP is now resource-weighted: every recipe's reward is computed from the total mined material behind it — what we call its equivalent ore cost. Bars made from other bars trace their whole chain: a Frost Bar contains a finished Starforged Bar, which itself took five mined units, so a Frost Bar counts six.

One formula now covers everything — smelting, tools and gear:

• More ore, more XP — with diminishing returns. Three times the material pays roughly 2.4× the XP, so bulk recipes reward the gathering without paying out linearly.
• Higher recipes pay more per ore, mirroring how every other skill's rewards grow as you push east.
• Bigger pieces pay like bigger pieces. A body piece takes five bars; its XP finally reflects that. Weapons carry a complexity premium over legs made from identical materials.

The numbers

Iron-tier work is untouched on purpose — it was the calibration anchor — and nearly everything between iron and the endgame got a raise. The one nerf on the board is the Celestial Bar, which had been quietly overpaying per ore.

The fine print smiths will care about

• What's displayed is what's awarded. Every recipe now shows its exact XP at the furnace and anvil — no hidden math, no separate table.
• Online and offline crafting pay identically. The offline forge replays the same recipes with the same values.
• Nothing retroactive. Your Smithing level and history are exactly as they were; the new values apply to every craft from the patch forward.
• In-flight forge orders simply started earning the new values at their next completed craft.

We ran a full progression simulation before shipping: the rebalance speeds mid-game smithing by roughly a third to a half (early smithing rather more — it was brutal), while the long climb stays long. The best recipe at any level is now the ambitious one, not the exploitable one — and no bar pays more than 40% better per ore than the rung below it.

Fire's lit. Bring coal — you'll want more than you think.

Full recipe tables live in the smithing guide; the dated record is in the changelog.