The purpose of this document is to give an overview of the forging process, but isn't an exhaustive study on the subject. There won't be any 'real' mixes listed here even though some are well known.

Through the use of the forging system, players are able to make weapons and armor which can be substantially better than their store bought counterparts. Almost all players who reach a certain plateau in their career will eventually want the benefits of a forged weapon, hoping to take advantage of a piece that will outperform anything bought through NPCs. The process of actually creating a blade is a difficult one and is, for all practical purposes, restricted to Barbarians. Although anyone can enter public forges and try their hand at it, they won't be able to get the same quality weapon that a highly skilled barbarian will. Forging can be fun, even for those unable to make the highest quality weapons and is an excellent way to learn Mechanical Lore and eventually the metal working or forging skill.

The first step in creating a weapon is to get a mix. The mix is the list of needed materials and the formula for putting these items together in order to make an ingot. One of the important questions is, of course: How do I get a mix? Well, that's a surprisingly difficult task, but there are several means to that end. You can go and search the boards for one, or ask one of your Barbarian friends, or you can even pay a Barbarian for one. We'll go on the assumption you've gotten a mix and we'll use a completely bogus mix for the purposes of this document. Let's say this is the one we have:

2ns mix 7d mix mix 2lb mix mix 2ib mix mix 1d mix

Although there are different notations for the mix, they're based on the same concepts. If we were to read it, we'd see that this requires 2 nickel slugs, 7 dusts, 2 lead bars, 2 iron bars and one dust to complete. The 'mix' says that we'll mix the item in the crucible.

Once we actually have a mix, we need to turn it into an ingot. The process is pretty straightforward. First, we need to go to the forge and find the crucible and start stoking the fire. The easiest way would be to get coal and push bellows. I've found that doing two or three of each of those works fine and eventually the fire will start to progress. Our goal is to get the fire to be brilliant, at which point the mixing can begin; anything less can help turn a perfectly good mix into sludge. If you get tired during the process, which you almost certainly will, you should splash water in order to fight off some of the fatigue which will set in.
After the fire is brilliant, pull crucible to make sure that it isn't over the fire. If it's not, then we'll need to start adding our ingredients, in this case we'll put nickel slug in crucible twice and push crucible to get it back over the fire. Now we wait a bit, usually on the order of 30 seconds and then look in crucible to see how the nickel slugs are doing. If they're melted, you'll see two molten nickels, in there. According to our recipe, we then simply mix to get them to combine. If we look in again, we should just see some molten nickel. We then pull crucible to get it back out so we can add the rest of the slugs and dust in the order prescribed by the mix. A note on the place where it says mix mix, that simply means that we need to mix twice in order to get the two items to mix together. In the case of the dusts, you'll see a lot of molten charcoal and the first mix blends that into one molten charcosal and the second mix combines that with the molten metal in the crucible.

Once the last part has been added and mixed, we'll then want to pour out the crucible and get an ingot out of it. pull crucible then pour crucible into ingot mold to get an ingot. There are three molds in each forge; an ingot mold, a wire mold and a plate mold - the last two are for making armors. After it's been poured, we must let it sit for a while. You can look on ingot mold to see the state of the ingots. When it's first poured, you'll see something like some molten steel and eventually it'll become a steel ingot. However, you must still look ingot to check how hot it is. Once You see nothing unusual it's ready to be taken to the forge.

Once the ingot has been cooled down, it's taken to the forge (usually an adjoining room) to be pounded into a blade or blunt. Although it took a while to cool the ingot down, you'll have to spend a fair amount of time reheating it on the forge. You'll want to put my ingot on forge in order to start heating it up. It usually makes sense to have made several ingots at once and then put them all on the forge to heat up simultaneously. This will take a while. As with before, you'll need to look ingot to check out how hot it is. The ingot will be heated to each of the following stages:

• A steel ingot appears to be slightly hot.
• A steel ingot appears to be searingly hot.
• A steel ingot appears to be glowing faintly.
• A steel ingot appears to be glowing a mild amber color.
• A steel ingot appears to be glowing red hot.
• A steel ingot appears to be glowing white hot.

Once the ingot is hot enough (red or white hot), you'll get ingot and put my ingot on anvil. By now you'll have decided what you want to make, but you can consult the list of available weapons by doing a pound help. Please keep in mind that not all weapons on that list are actually forgeable. Once the ingot is on the anvil, you'll pound ingot on anvil into broadsword in order to start creating the broadsword. After the initial pound you'll then just pound blade in order to keep pounding it. Depending upon strength, this process can take quite a while and you'll almost certainly become fatigued. If you have a friend, they can move the blade back onto the forge if it cools down too much. You can look blade in order to check on how hot it currently is. You don't want it to be below glowing red hot at any point. Once you've finished pounding the blade, you'll need to cool it off by put blade into water. When you're done, you'll be left with an unfinished blade. At this point, unless you're a Barbarian, you'll probably be unable to grind it and should go and buy a hilt to put on it. You can appraise blade to get a rough estimate on how it'll turn out, but you won't know the construction on it until you hilt it.

Once you have an unfinished blade, you'll want to take it to the grindstone to increase its stats. Some weapons simply take to grinding one way or another better than others. You can grind a claymore to have really high suitedness to strength, but it'll never be more than dismally balanced for instance, so you should have an idea as to what your weapon is best at before you start grinding. It should also be noted that grinding one aspect of the weapon will drop another and you can't grind impact.
grind help gives us:

Usage GRIND <item> <EDGE\POINT\WEIGHT\BALANCE\POWER>.

This will only work with a working grindstone. To use one, you must turn it to
get it up to a high rate of speed, and then push grindstone with <item>.  This
will prepare the <item> for grinding, but you will need to repeat as needed.

Be aware that as you increase one category others will change also.
Edge indicates how good an edge you want.
Point indicates how sharp of a tip.
Balance is how well it fits in your hand for parrying.
Weight is, well, how heavy it is to wield.
Power is how well you are able to apply its attributes.

The first order of business will be to get the grindstone turning. You'll need to turn grindstone and get it going as fast as it will go. Once it's gotten to this point, you'll need to turn grindstone with blade and then push grindstone with blade. Now comes the actual grinding. grind blade edge to start increasing the slice of the weapon or grind one of the other aspects. If you make a mistake, you'll frown and while this isn't the end of the world, you're only given a certain number of attempts to grind an aspect of the blade and each failure counts against that.