Don't forget your sword! (Hardening and honing)

Friday was an extremely interesting day. I had my first experience trading (and from what I can tell, I got the short end of the stick, but that's ok! Live and learn :D). I spent hours trying to figure out a dynamic event. I crafted a pair of vambraces and a colossal sword with ornate iron pommel. I broke the laws of Andor and had to relinquish my helmet to a Lion Warden. Luckily they were kind enough to replace it with more acceptable equipment! I learned that shops can be quite aggravating, particularly when you're mending and they tell you to come back in 8 hours. Except 8 hours later, they're closed. And finally, coming to the topic of today's post, I learned how to hone and harden my weapon.

I had gone to Bandar Eban to craft another piece of armor (this time a pair of ebony steel vambraces to match my greaves). I met a guy there who was also trying to craft some armor. So we started talking a bit and we both discovered we didn't have a hammer. I had left mine in Mayene, since that's where I needed it for sword making. No problem, surely the weaponsmith has a hammer. We'll just wait until he's open...

No hammer. No problem, I'll just check the handy item database Alayla so kindly shared with me to find out where I can get a hammer. There must be something close by.

Amador and Devon Ride. Where is Amador? No idea really, but I have a map! So my new friend sets out for Devon Ride and I begin my trek to Amador. Everything was going great until I reached a nice little town called Elmora. Unfortunately, this nice little town was infested with Seanchan. Their hospitality was somewhat...lacking. It was about this time that I realized I didn't have my sword.

You see, while we were waiting for the weaponsmith to open, my new friend asked me if I knew about honing my sword. (If you're wondering why he's "my new friend" instead of having a real name, it's because I can't remember his name. I'm sorry, new friend!). I told him no and he explained that if I honed my sword, I would be able to hit ghosts. I was quite excited by the prospect because I had found a spirit near Tar Valon that I really wanted to kill, but every time I tried, my sword passed right through it.

So off we went to hone our weapons. After getting over the initial sticker-shock, I realized that there were two steps to upgrading my weapon. "Honing" and "hardening." Honing seems to "enchant" your weapon (for lack of a better word) so that you can hit spirits. Hardening adds more damage to your weapon. Which explains why it costs an almost unreasonable amount of gold. In order to upgrade your weapon twice, you pay 75 gold for the honing and then an additional 150 gold for hardening, for a total of 225 gold.

I declined to harden my sword. :P

In any case, it took a full 6 hours to hone my weapon, which is about 6 minutes of waiting. Unfortunately, a lot can happen in 6 minutes, which is how I came to be in a Seanchan town with no weapon.

After some quick footwork and a hasty retreat, I finally found myself in Amador. The weaponsmith had the hammer I was looking for, so I picked up one for me and one for my friend. After delivering my friend's hammer to him in Devon Ride (he never found the weaponsmith there), I started back towards Bandar Eban. It took me about 4 hours. Real hours.

Blame the dynamic event. I'll talk about that tomorrow, but I will say that it was left uncompleted. So if anyone has any information on dynamic events, let me know!