Like a Dragon: Ishin! - Smithing

Welcome to the worst part of the game - the smithing.

You can craft, enhance and donate at Kurogane Smithing (you can use the ride to arrive in front of it). For completing the completion list, you will have to collect 45 types of enchantments (not all!), enchant them (put them into weapons), and  you need to craft every single type of equipment and you're done. It requires A LOT of money (around 6000 Ryo).

How to easily level up the Smithing

Before you can craft higher level gear, you need to reach a certain level of Smithing. 20 is the max level, and getting there is quite easy, but you will need around 200 ryo for this. Visit the Rakugai Arms Dealer just southwest from Kurogane Smithing and buy up to 200 Bungle Blades (1000 mon per piece). If you donate this blade, you will get experience for smithing. At start it takes like 30-ish blades for 1 level, and up to 150 or more for last few levels. Still, it's faster a better than crafting.

Start with at least level 16 before you even craft, that will lower the cost as much as you can.

Where to find both blacksmiths

Of course, the first and the main one is at Korogane Smithing, and most of your time you will spend here. The second one is in Mukurogai, near the Jozo statue on the riverbanks (the east side). The second one will forge enhanced weapons and only take materials for these, not the money. As only that guy wanted to make all of the weapons...

Anyway! The second blacksmith is named Dead-Eyed Man, and here is the list of weapons he will take and make the next/strongest weapon out of it (it also counts as crafting entry for the final weapons in the completion list):

• Yaksha Blade into Skink Lizard
• Skink Lizard into Muramasa
• Peashooter into Cuckoo
• Jumbo Saw into Nenekiri-Manu
• Worn Magical Sword into Last ofthe Dragons
• The Radish into Blossoming Bud (you need to have Doburoku items in your inventory to give them to him)
• Chopstick Gun into Sprint in Full Bloom

Seals - Basic info and progress route

I want to make this clear and you need to know that making seals is the worst part alongside with the material grinding. If you craft all weapons and leave Seals for the end, you are not in a great position. I know because I did that. Let me explain it.

So, Seals can be farmed (as a direct enemy drop, or from dismantling weapons if they come with "soft" enchanted seals (you can't remove a seal if if that that solid border when you look at it on the weapon). Currently the best method is by calculating predefined outcomes when crafting, while hopping to get the one you need while crafting a certain weapon. If you craft all weapons, you will have to craft some of the same ones to get the seal you need, which means - more money and materials.

The best way to get something is to follow a list of weapons and possible seal drops while crafting it, while using the method with which you know after which craft you get the seal on any weapon. I will note down full examples and much more than I read in other guides, because everything I read was very misleading.

Seals - Battle Dungeon Drops

As of patch 1.04, you can get the next seals from Battle Dungeons. Do this first and collect them all (they show under the materials list before starting the mission, so you can check which one to do before starting):

• Sword Seal: Fierce Deity
• Sphere Seal: Greed
• Square Seal: Heavy Drinker
• Square Seal: Reverence
• Square Seal: Drunken Craze
• Square Seal: Virtuous
• Square Seal: Special Moves

Seals - Golden Sneaks Farming

Golden Sneaks are single enemy encounters that you can run into randomly and rarely in the town. They drop a lof of Seals, and some are only obtainable by farming Golden Sneaks. Farming Aquamarine from Golden Sneaks makes no sense, you can get 1-3 on every run in Battle Dungeons, making this method of farming obsolete as of patch 1.04.

Farming Method: Teleport to the eastern bridge palaquin point, save. Talk to palaquins, cancel, and look on the bridge. If you spot Golden Sneak, go and fight him, and you might get more south and north alongside of riverbanks from the bridge. It's easy to spot enemies with the headband that revelas their location (if you see one red dot, that is the Golden Sneak. To reset enemies, simply talk to palaquin guys and that will reset it. Farm if you want.

List of Seals that can drop from Golden Sneaks:

• Sphere Seal: Corporal
• Sphere Seal: Attack
• Sphere Seal: Fierce Attack
• Sphere Seal: Madness
• Square Seal: Raging Flame
• Square Seal: Champion
• Sword Seal: Mighty
• Square Seal: Brawl
• Sword Seal: Fierce Deity
• Gun Seal: Double Shot (can only be obtained from Golden Sneaks)
• Square Seal: Fierce Battle
• Square Seal: Special Moves (can only be obtained from Golden Sneaks)
• Gun Seal: Sure Shot
• Sphere Seal: Bewitched
• Square Seal: Reversal
• Square Seal: Bleached Cloth
• Square Seal: Chain Mail
• Sphere Seal: Endurance
• Sphere Seal: Adamantine
• Sphere Seal: Greed

Kiwami seal is not needed for anything other than leveling up your seals, so don't even bother farming them (Golden Sneaks can also drop these).

Seals - Crafting method

This is the best way to get the remaining seals. It comes down to pure luck in the end, but the odds are better than farming for enemies for hours. Some Seals you will have to farm, but most of them can be obtained using this method. 

Crafting and getting seals is predefined; which means you can't just save and load the save to try the different outcome. That sucks, but there is a way with the below method to make it work. One important note! If you can't get the first Seal to appear on the base weapon you are trying with (if it doesn't appear pass the 10th craft), simply load, craft the same weapon with the regular hammer so it doesn't get a slot, and that will reset it. Save and try the below method again.

For seals, they seems to be predetermined as well; if nothing comes that you need, simply craft the weakest and cheapest weapon, BUT with seal, to reset them on the other weapons. That seemed to work for me.

• Step 1 - Buy a bunch of Nameless Swords from Mukurogai Arms Dealer. They are 1000 mon each. I bought 100 of them
• Step 2 - Buy a bunch of Iron Scraps and Crooked Magnets from materials vendor at Kurogane Blacksmith. I got 200 each.
• Step 3 - Play Chicken Race and get as much tags as you can. Go to Gambling Den, exchange the tags for Silver Hammers. I got 100
• Step 4 - Go to blacksmith, and save your game. Let's call this save slot SAVESLOT_1
• Step 5 - Craft Ebony Sword for 6600 mon with Silver Hammers until you get the one with some Seal attached to the Seal Slot. Crafting with other hammers and other weapons during this will mess with the outcome, just stick with this one. Usually it takes 4-20 times of crafting to get the one with the random seal when crafted. You need to count which weapon was the one with the Seal, I count by the number of silver hammers I use, so, when I get the Ebony Sword with some Seal on it, I look at the number of silver hammers I have left, write that down and add +1 so I know where to stop on the next step. Let's say that on the 5th try I got Ebony Sword with some Seal in the Seal Slot of that weapon.
• Step 6 - Load SAVESLOT_1. If the 5th weapon was the one with the seal, craft 4 Ebony Swords and Save your game on a different slot. Let's call it SAVESLOT_2. What you did now is saved your game before the next craft that will give you a guarnatied seal from any armor, weapon that you can craft. You just need to pick the correct one which can give you some Seal and try to craft it.
• Step 7 - This is where I got confused so many times. Let's get some example from here. Check at the list of seals below this steps, and let's hunt for Sphere Seal Bewitched Seal. If you checked below, the only weapon that can give it is the Jumbo Saw. If you did the last step, next craft of this weapon can either give you Bewitched OR Fierce Attack Sphere Seal (weapons have Sphere, armor Square Seals).
• Step 8 - Craft the weapon or armor you want and hope for the best. If that weapon or armor doesn't get you the seal you want, you CAN'T load your save and retry, it's already predefined. My advice is to look for other seal and check which weapon or armor can get you that one, and simply load SAVESLOT_2 and try that one. When you repeat all of steps (minus the first few if you still have enough materials and hammers), the next time the Seal you can get will possibly change, meaning if you didn't get the one you need on the previous try, there is a change you will on the next round.
• Step 9 - When you have what you need, you can start again with saving on SAVESLOT_1 and repeat the steps from that point. I will note down what I still miss to give you some example how I'm farming. 

The best way to start this is to prepare armors and weapons for crafting so you can craft them during the last of the steps which will give you a Seal. If you prepare and don't have enough materials to craft the ones you need, you will just spend time without any outcome.

Down below is a list of seals I'm still missing, and list of equipment that can give that ones to me. I hope this is clearer now, I was reading 20 times before i started this method, and I still have some questions.

Square Seal Drunken Haze

• Headband (Iron Hachigane: Bleached Cloth OR Reverence OR Drunken Craze)
• Headband (Divine Dragon Emblem: Drunken Craze OR Fighting Spirit OR On the Brink OR Fierce Battle OR Blessing)
• Headband (Berserker Charm:Drunken Craze OR Fighting Spirit OR On the Brink)

Sphere Seal Bewitched

• Special (Jumbo Saw: Bewitched OR Fierce Attack)

Square Seal Reversal

• Headband (Amulet of the Gods: Chain Mail OR Reversal)
• Headband (Blood-soaked Headband: Chain Mail OR ReversalBrawl OR Bleached Cloth)
• Herbalist's Binding
• Breastplate (Herbalist's Binding: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Reversal)
• Gauntlet (Unbridled Fury Gauntlets: Chain Mail OR Raging Flame OR Reversal)
• Gauntlet (Hidden Blade Gauntlets: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Reversal)

Square Seal Antidote

• Headband (Ebisu Eboshi: Fighting Spirit OR Fierce Battle OR Fireproof OR Antidote

Square Seal Hemostasis

• Headband (Fighter's Binding: Hemostasis)
• Headband (Brawler's Binding: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Chain Mail)
• Headband (Herbalist's Binding: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Reversal)
• Headband (Celestial Garb: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Chain Mail)
• Gaunglet (Hidden Blade Gauntlets: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Reversal)
• Gaunglet (Sakura Gauntlets: Fireproof OR Hemostasis OR Chain Mail)

Square Seal Experience

• Headband (Red Headband: Experience OR Chain Mail)

Square Seal Repentance/Change of Heart

• Can only be found in the Battle Dungeon stage Rescue the Kidnapped Official 1, where it can spawn on Yoshiyuki sword drops.

Square Seal Blessing

• Headband (Divine Dragon Emblem: Drunken Craze OR Fighting Spirit OR On the Brink OR Fierce Battle OR Blessing)
• Headband (War God Amulet: Champion OR Fighting Spirit OR On the Brink OR Blessing)

The materials grinding

Oh boy!

Yes, this is where you need to spend a lot of time, but after patch 1.04, everything is 10 times easier (the drop rates are better). I will link you the article, but I will also mention what I state in there:

• Like a Dragon: Ishin! Patch 1.04 fixed smithing grinding and rewards you with some seals!

On March 17th, Sega rolled out a new patch for Ishin. I just want to mention that the grinding for materials is now somewhat fixed, so the time needed to farm Dragon-related materials should go in your favor. There is also one great bonus added, Remunerative Materials Kit:

• Sphere Seal: Greed x10
• Sphere Seal: Kiwami x10

If you bring these to Blacksmith, you can enchance the empty slots with Greed. If you max out Greed with Kiwami Sphere 3 times, it will raise the material drop rate for 6% each! I added 3 on my main weapon and the real farming starts now!

Merchant Materials

• Amber (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Beast's Tail (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange, Trade: Unyuan Dojo for 1 Pearl)
• Beautiful Pelt (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange, Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Cracked Cutting Board (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Crooked Magnet (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Dead Branch (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Doburoku (Ichikura General Goods, and other General Goods stores)
• European Fabric (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Exquisite Cogwheel (Ichikura General Goods, Don Quijote)
• Fine Horse's Mane (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Fine Silk Fabric (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Firework Ball (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Flint Stone (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Gold Nugget (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Gold Chunk (Rare General Goods merchant; A special type of vendor that spawns up on Shijo street. Save/Load your game and look around for dark-purple guy with 2 boxes, he carries red paper boxes)
• Gold Dust (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Grinding Stone (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Iron Scrap (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Lead Chunk (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Lime Powder (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Metal Sheet (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Misshapen Screw (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• New Screw (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Quality Hide (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange, Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Precious Steel (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Rainbow Fabric (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Sacred Wood (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Soft Lumber (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Solid Wood (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Vermilion Fabric (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange)
• Volcanic Rock Fragment (Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Water God Stone
• Wild Silk (Shinto Priest Virtue Exchange, Materials Vendor at Kurogane Smithing)
• Worn Out Cogwheel
• ...

More details coming soon...

Battle Dungeon and Other RNG Materials

This list is the one you need to farm for. Usually it will be Battle Dungeons. I will note the ones where I had the most luck with certain items from the list, but be aware that many dungeons are dropping similiar materials, you can check that by pressing the triangle (View List) when you're on the Battle Dungeon list.

Farmable Materials

• Ancient Amulet
• Aquamarine (Battle Dungeon 3-2: Sanada Stronghold - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 2). You can also farm Battle Arena, the last match of the Knockout Matches for 3000 Arena points. You need 8000 for x1 Aquamarine in the exhange here. The drop in the Battle Dungeon is not bad, so choose what you prefer.
• Beautiful Leaf  (Battle Dungeon 1-2)
• Black Belt
• Broken Awl (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• Broken Compass (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Carved Wooden Bear (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• Driftwood (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Elegant Hair Ornament (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• European Fabric (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• ...
• Fine Silk Fabric (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Thousand-Year Tree Branch (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Fluorite (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• Gold Nugget - you can get it from Virtue Exchange Shop, or grind for it, it's a pretty common drop (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad), (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1)
• Gold Chunk (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad), (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1)
• Gold Seal (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1)
• Obsidian Chunk (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1), (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Ominous Prayer Beads (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• Platinum Fillings (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1), (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Platinum Chunk (Battle Dungeon 2-1: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 1), (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3), (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Phoenix Feather (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2), (I prefer this one; it's short, and it has decent drop rate for this material - Battle Dungeon 3-11: Sanada Stronghold - Inflitration 2)
• Precise Machinery (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Rusty Springs (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Sacred Wood (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)
• Silver Scrap (Battle Dungeon 1-1: Bandit's Caves - Defeat the Sword Squad)
• Small Wind-up Device (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Sturdy Lumber (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Tear of the Dragon (Battle Dungeon 2-3: Bandit's Mine - Reclaim the Stolen 1000 Ryo Boxes 3)
• Vermilion Fabric (Battle Dungeon 3-5: Sanada Stronghold - Rescue the Kidnapped Officials 2)

Rarest Farming Materials

By far the most tedious chore is grinding for dragon items. The best way is to prepare a weapon with 3 Greed Talismans (10 are gifted to you as a claimable gift in Taradaya Inn) that are enchanced 3 times each with Kiwami Seals  (10 are gifted to you as a claimable gift in Taradaya Inn). You can also do without this, as path 1.04 greatly raised the drop rates.

Save. Start 3-20 level and beat the soldiers first. Leave Sanada for the last. If neither enemy don't drop any dragon items, just load and save yourself some time. Killing Sanada can take time, although there are methods for that; but the best is to continue only if some regular enemy drops either of the 3 dragon items. You will need around 22 each, which means 2-3 hours of farming (I had like up to 5 dragon item drops on some visits).

• Eye of the Dragon (Battle Dungeon 3-10: Sanada Stronghold - Defeat Sanada Nobuyasu)
• Dragon Whiskers (Battle Dungeon 3-10: Sanada Stronghold - Defeat Sanada Nobuyasu)
• Dragon Fang (Battle Dungeon 3-10: Sanada Stronghold - Defeat Sanada Nobuyasu)

More details coming soon...