Losing my blacksmith to a promotion to Engineer

problem: I have a blacksmith and I want to promote him to an Engineer. but if I do I don’t have a level 6 Blacksmith anymore.

Solution: I have a Master Blacksmith (Max Level). then I promote another Hearthling to be a blacksmith. That Hearthling will quickly level up because I already have a Master Blacksmith to teach him/her.
Then I can level up one of my Blacksmiths to be an Engineer and I will still have a Master blacksmith to craft stuff.

With this solution, i won’t have to wait to level up another blacksmith because I lost the one I had to a promotion to an Engineer.

This same solution should be applied to other classes in the that would also run into this problem.

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Another solution is to treat an engineer as a “special blacksmith”, the way a cook is just a “special farmer”: a cook can still plant and harvest crops.

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To be clear, are you suggesting a change in game mechanics? So that if you already have a hearthling of a certain class, others that are promoted to that class will level faster? Would that apply just to the skilled trades or to every class?

It would be real nice if engineers could also smelt ore into bars. I dislike having to bog down my black smith’s queue to make bars for the engineer to use.

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I think it would make sense if it worked with all classes because if you already have a Max level crafter and you want another crafter of the same class then the max level crafter should be able to train the apprentice crafter. so he levels up faster.
Because when you make your first carpenter he is just figuring it out so it takes time, but if you already had a Max level carpenter he could teach the new carpenter.

I had an idea about a mechanic for this. When a crafter reaches Master, instead of making them just not level any more, they still gain XP. That extra xp can be used to craft a Tome of Knowledge or some such thing. The tomes can than be used to grant xp in that trade to others.

I’m less worried about leveling additional hearthlings in a specific trade than what happens when an exclusive one dies? Lets say a few enemies get through and I loose my master carpenter or mason. Leveling a new one will take a while and leave me unable to craft a lot of stuff. With this mechanic, if I have a bunch of tomes saved up, I can powerlevel a fresh crafter, regardless of whether or not I have an existing one.

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Promoting an engineer should only require a level 1 blacksmith + engineer’s wrench talisman, crafted by a level 3 blacksmith. Which version of the game are you running / are you using any mods?

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I Like this idea much better than mine

I think the problem some people have with this, is that they only have one blacksmith to begin with. I know it sounds kind of dumb if they’re not willing to train another villager to a level 1 blacksmith, but that’s what happens a lot of times…
They just don’t see the need to promote a second one, and then when they scale up their first blacksmith to an engineer, they forget that they can just demote that engineer again and make a noob blacksmith to use for it.

Personally, I really dislike the idea of higher level crafters teaching younger ones, even indirectly through the use of tomes. It’s just way too complicated, which is not in the spirit of the game.
Also, a whole “apprentice system” would be complete overkill, since most of the time there’s no need for a second carpenter or blacksmith for example. (Not when the game becomes virtually unplayable at 20+ villagers anyway.)
The only units where a second/third/etc one could come in handy, are farmers and footmen, and those level up fast enough in my opinion.

honestly the requirements are not that bad by any means. to me, its something you have to work for and not instant gratification.

and teh game is completely playable 20+ hearthlings. right now I am sitting at 29. with no problems at all.

Kinda offtopic, but I feel an uncontrollable urge to react to this:
I’m sitting at 28 and it’s certainly doable, but I’m playing the game on a reasonably heavy PC. Usually, games in this genre (and Stonehearth is no exception) run much better.

I mean, this is the kind of thing you should be able to play on a 5 year old laptop, but if you try that, the pathfinder slurps up all resources and your left with an unplayable hunk of… well, you get the idea.

there are settings to limit the hearthlings you get if you do have a computer that can not do as many as say 50. there is a solution for these things placed in long ago

You don’t seem to get the point. The point is: there shouldn’t have to be a solution. I’m not bashing the game here, I’m just saying there’s a long way to go optimisation-wise. And everyone knows it.

So these temporary fixes, like limiting the amount of hearthlings, are great. But don’t pretend like they should be part of the finished game, or that they are a reasonable solution to what are actual, inexcusable performance problems.

Edit: you could even say that this is part of the problem that’s described in this topic: when playing this game on a pc that only runs it up to like 10-15 hearthlings, having a separate blacksmith and engineer is a luxury some won’t be able to afford.