Originally posted by vinyblaster:

Past the mountains the designers did a terrible job balancing the game. Crafting became a bit of non sense. In any case, the problem with black metal is that it is plentiful. Much more accessible than iron.

And this clashes with the game designers philosophy that everything needs to be as tedious as possible. Ergo, black metal has limited use cases and we still need to use something that was introduced 3 "levels" back.

Tbh I was glad about. I hate the green tint on blackmetal gear but I can understand the complain because from a progression point of view it was a weird choice from the devs.