A (Blacksmith) Modding Story
-Zengief

So there I was, getting ready to move to a new city and start a new job within two weeks. No stress, really. Did I mention that I can't sell my current house and that the reason I was starting a new job was that my current one recently told me that I was laid off. What about the fact that my wife just lost her job? And the car is in the shop? And the dog isn't eating his food?

So no stress, really.

My wife notices and helpfully says, "Why don't you get that Sky game you talked about?"
I replied, "You do realize that you won't see me for a couple of weeks as a result of that game, right?"
"Well as long as we get the house packed and stuff, we should be good. Go ahead and get it."
"I don't know..."
"Come on, it will relax you."
"OK"

I had no idea.

3:00 am-
On a recent trip that Lydia and my character made from a nearby fort, weighed down with all of the heavy iron gear from the local bandits, I was suddenly disappointed with the crafting system. What I really wanted to do was smelt down the items and and practice my smithing using the materials. Unfortunately, smelting weapons and armor isn't an option. And lets not go into the mass creation and loss issues. Good thing I bought this game for the PC! So after a quick Google search or two I come across the following info-
Skyrim Nexus had a smithing mod or two to tryout and get ideas from.
There was supposed to be an official modding tool released soon.

So fast forward a week and a half to today. First of all, moving day is now much closer (this weekend). Second, I have downloaded the Creation Kit and looked around at tutorials briefly. Did I mention that I am a modding newb? Oh yeah, this should be amusing.

I had some issues with it crashing last night, but after restarting my machine, it seems to be behaving better. I have learned that it is REALLY important to load in the master file data first, because otherwise the tutorials make no sense. So much for skipping over parts of the tutorial that I think I don't need to bother with like "Installing the Creation Kit".

My notes for my ULTIMATEST Blacksmithing Mod EVAR!! read:

• Disassemble items to receive metal pieces and leather strips
  
• Make metal pieces like a partial ingot (100 pieces to an ingot)
  
• Pieces weigh .1, ingot weight bumped up to 10
  
• Disassemble as a workbench process
  
• Select items from inventory to process instead of selecting product desired (like at smelter)
  
• Slow down the smithing leveling
  
• Add leveling for disassembly
  
• Have a return % factor based on smithing level (better smiths get more of the material back)
  
• Receive 40-50 metal pieces per iron ore, less for higher ore types.
  
• Ore weighs 10
  
• Re-color gold piece artwork for other metals (will MS Paint work OK?)
  
• Unable to forge item until you have disassembled it X times (once only?)

One thing I am not afraid of is scripting. My job has me doing some coding as part of it. I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am much less scared of Notepad++ than I am of GIMP.

I plan on making periodic updates to this post.
All comments, suggestions, critiques, and cajoling are welcome. General name calling is accepted, but ignored.

11:30pm
I decided to start with some of the easier parts. I thought that making Iron Pieces and a recipe to make ingots would be a easy dip in the pool. Not so!

I duplicated a Gold Piece (gold001) and changed its properties a bit and then went on to the wiki to look up some info. When I came back, Creation Kit had crashed again, losing my progress. I am stating right now that after every change I make, I will hit save. Any future data loss is on me.

After I successfully saved my new iron piece in a file aptly named MetalPieces.esp, I worked up a recipe using the iron smelting recipe as a guide. After saving I tried to go into the game and use a console command to put some ironpieces in my inventory.

No luck! It told me that the ObjectID didn't exist.
(console command that I used was player.additem IronPiece 1000)

I figured that I must be missing some simple step. So I went back to the item creation tutorial and added the Vorpal Sword exactly as written. When I tried the console command as written in the tutorial, I received the same error. I tried the Editor ID, the Form ID, used quotes, used a combination, but nothing has worked. I tried using the console command to give my player a simple DaedricSword and even that didn't work.

I don't know what I am doing wrong when it comes to console commands, but any help would be appreciated.

Do I need to compile the plugin after I save it?
What should the console command for getting a basic iron sword look like, exactly? Maybe I am just entering it wrong.

The item ID on the console depends on the order the mod was loaded in. Best bet is if you want to test your items, create a container somewhere convenient and fill it with all your items. Disable the container before releasing to the public.

To add an item via a console command, you have to have the Form ID #. For example, the daedric sword would be "player.additem 139b9 1". When you create an item in the creation kit, it assigns the item its own unique ID. You need this # in order to add it in game with the additem command.

With the creation kit loaded, click on a category of item in the object window. Say "Armor". It will list all armor in the game to the right. If you look at the column heading above the first item it says "Editor ID". Follow that to the right and you will see a column that has been scrunched together to look like || and if you expand it, it will show the Form ID. This is the code you are looking for. Also, since the item you added is from a mod file, a # will have to be added before hand, so if the Form ID number was 1234, the additem number would be 01001234. That first number changes with how many mods you have and what order, so you may have to change the number to 02001234 or 03001234, ect.

Thank you both for that. With a better understanding of how that ID works, i reordered my mod loading so I was sure of the ID. PRESTO!!!