You can mine ore from mountain tiles with pickaxe. Raise mining skill to mine all ore types. Then smelt ores to ingots. There are 6 metal types, copper is for low levels and adamantium is best. Enemies drop blueprints or you can buy from shop. Go to blacksmith and you see learned blueprints. Select one and craft, you will get blacksmith skill progress from every ingot you use. Crafting will always success. Low level skill make low quality items 60-90%, on higher level can make up to 150%. Enemy drop 100% quality items. There is 30 armor and 25 weapon items and they can be any metal type. 55 * 6 = 330 normal items. Then there will be unique items and set items, those can be crafted too if find blueprint.
Example axe crafted in all metal types.
Every skill have passive abilities what open every 5 skill level.
some examples.
(typo in blacksmith)
Using skill have change to get progress. Low skill level change to get progress is about 100% but later much less.