Tips & Tricks
Preferred weapon type and stats are important!
Always check a hero's preferred weapon type and primary/secondary stats before forging a weapon. You can check this by holding the mouse cursor over a hero's picture in the forge menu.
Patata and potato dog
After the story progresses, you can control Patata and potato dog. They can't help forge a weapon but do have useful skills. Once assigned to the workshop, Patata can boost stats generated and potato dog will improve the mood of your Smiths.
Advancing the Story
Your most common obstacle between you and advancing the story is getting enough fame. The best way to do this is to get A or S rankings after selling a weapon. After your smiths become more versatile (or you just hire more that are), it's very easy as to have weapons that are strong in places that heroes want them.
Take this one right here, for example. The hero preferred accuracy, then speed; I made one that had just that, and it's probably going to get an A or S ranking because I made one that the hero wanted. This will result in a lot of fame and money, accelerating the story. Click on each of the pictures to see them better.
Obtaining Resources
A common threat in this game is having enough resources, or rather, the lack thereof. There's a lot of panic when you run out of a special resource, or you research a weapon that requires a resource that you don't know how to get. The best remedy is to unlock more areas with tickets. It's very common you would only be 1 area away from being able to find them with the "explore" option. Another thing to do is to move to the next region, as that may also contain your needed resource in its shop area.
In this picture, He needs to have access to those blue and yellow crystal thingies (topaz). He would likely be able to just find some in the next area he unlocks through exploration. He's also likely to find topaz in the next reigon in the shop area.