In another thread, someone asked 'which bods should I keep/do'? Well, that answer is somewhat complex. It depends on the reward for the bod, the cost in ingots to complete the bod and what other bods can be 'traded up to' with bribing. For those that don't know - you can take any bod and 'bribe' a smith to give you a better bod. 80% of the time that will be the same bod but with a higher ore (bronze to gold for example). The other 20% of the time it will either increase from NM to EX or up in quantity (like 10 to 15). So you can bribe say a DC NM 10 Shield bod to (80%) Shadow NM 10 Shield, or (10%) DC EX 10 Shield or (10%) DC NM 15 Shield. You can bribe a bod multiple times. For smith bods - weapons cannot go above iron so a dagger 10 nm bod will go to dagger 15 nm or dagger 10 ex from there you can keep going until you hit dagger 20 ex.
For answering the question - "which bods should i do or use to bribe up?" I'm going to provide a small expose on non-combineable bods (ie non Ring/Chain/Plate) that CAN be any color ore.
Note: The weapon iron bods are basically only good for turn ins IMHO. Its too much hassle to try to fill out any of the rewards and I just blindly turn them in. My system - buy the items from the NPC for Iron 10/15/20 then complete and turn in bod for reward and new bod. For Iron 10/15EX I will usually fill and turn in. Iron 20 EX takes too much time and ingots and I just throw those out.
Ok, for the non-combinable the way I look at it is I consider what is the 'cost' to fill the bod. Cost to me is the value of the ingots I need to use. Yes, you can mine these up for free and you might have 60k sitting around the house of val ingots that essentially cost you nothing - but you could just as easily sell those ingots and use the gold to buy said reward and save yourself money in some cases. So what I have done is taken a look at the current cost of ingots. This is generally on GL shard but I did a search on the main search site across all shards to come out with rough averages for the ingot selling prices. Are they truly selling at these prices? Maybe/maybe not and your mileage may vary but I feel these are a good approximation. I did the same thing for the rewards - looking at the selling prices (on vendors) for various hammers, POF etc.
Based on the specific bod each one takes more or less ingots to fill - a heater shield bod is NOT the same as a tear kite shield bod since one takes 18 ingots per heater and one takes 8 ingots per tear kite shield. That makes filling one 2x as expensive in ingot costs as the other. So I calculated the approximate costs based on number of ingots assuming 0% failure rate. Note that all helmets take 15 ingots so all helm bods are the same.
With 120 smith, a tally and using an ASH hammer you can make sure you have 0% failure rate for any bod item (even plate mail) so I am assuming no failures. I calculated the cost to fill the bods. The cost for NM and EX is the same since you will make all EX items and fill. However, the rewards for NM bods and EX bods are different so you will see two separate charts for NM vs EX. For cases where a bod gives you a DC hammer 60% of the time and a shadow hammer 40% of the time - I added 60% of the value of a DC hammer to 40% of the value of shadow hammer for the value of the reward.
I then took the value and subtracted the cost to fill the bod. Any bod value in RED means you are better off selling the ingots, throwing the bod out, and then buying the reward with the gold. IE the bod is not worth doing. In those cases you either throw the bod out or bribe it up to something more valuable. However, in some cases like a Val 20EX bod -you just toss it because you cannot bribe any higher and the reward is a +15 scroll so you lose tons of money filling the bod.
This chart can then be used to evaluate which non combineable bods to do. If not worth completing, either throw it out or bribe it up.
If I get the time I'll dig into the large bods which get way more complex since you always have the option of doing the large or doing the smalls. For example the reward for Ring DC 20 EX bod is a Copper Hammer. The value of a copper hammer is about 200k. The cost to fill 4 DC EX ring bods is the same if you turn in as one or turn in separately. However, if you turn them in separately you can get 4 vials of POF each worth 100k or more. So you get 400k in reward value vs a 200k hammer + 20k gold.
And, of course, I'm using the Tower of Roses reward charts to determine the expected rewards.
Here is my current assumption sheet for costs:
Here is the bod reward chart with cost on top and then Normal and Exceptional rewards (net of costs). Anything in red is not advised to complete the bod. Either bribe up or toss.
Ok, yes I'm a glutton for punishment. Here is the chart for Ring Mail armor. Note that I have the individual pieces listed which essentially is the same as the noncombinables save for the number of ingots. I also have the full ring mail set reward which includes the item + gold for the set then subtracts the cost to fill the entire set (ingots). Below that set line I have totaled up the 'value' of the individual bods. As you can see there are some instances (Ring 10 EX for example) where you do get value from doing the large - but you get MORE value from turning in the single bods for Powder of Fort (4x POF vs single hammer reward).
For answering the question - "which bods should i do or use to bribe up?" I'm going to provide a small expose on non-combineable bods (ie non Ring/Chain/Plate) that CAN be any color ore.
Note: The weapon iron bods are basically only good for turn ins IMHO. Its too much hassle to try to fill out any of the rewards and I just blindly turn them in. My system - buy the items from the NPC for Iron 10/15/20 then complete and turn in bod for reward and new bod. For Iron 10/15EX I will usually fill and turn in. Iron 20 EX takes too much time and ingots and I just throw those out.
Ok, for the non-combinable the way I look at it is I consider what is the 'cost' to fill the bod. Cost to me is the value of the ingots I need to use. Yes, you can mine these up for free and you might have 60k sitting around the house of val ingots that essentially cost you nothing - but you could just as easily sell those ingots and use the gold to buy said reward and save yourself money in some cases. So what I have done is taken a look at the current cost of ingots. This is generally on GL shard but I did a search on the main search site across all shards to come out with rough averages for the ingot selling prices. Are they truly selling at these prices? Maybe/maybe not and your mileage may vary but I feel these are a good approximation. I did the same thing for the rewards - looking at the selling prices (on vendors) for various hammers, POF etc.
Based on the specific bod each one takes more or less ingots to fill - a heater shield bod is NOT the same as a tear kite shield bod since one takes 18 ingots per heater and one takes 8 ingots per tear kite shield. That makes filling one 2x as expensive in ingot costs as the other. So I calculated the approximate costs based on number of ingots assuming 0% failure rate. Note that all helmets take 15 ingots so all helm bods are the same.
With 120 smith, a tally and using an ASH hammer you can make sure you have 0% failure rate for any bod item (even plate mail) so I am assuming no failures. I calculated the cost to fill the bods. The cost for NM and EX is the same since you will make all EX items and fill. However, the rewards for NM bods and EX bods are different so you will see two separate charts for NM vs EX. For cases where a bod gives you a DC hammer 60% of the time and a shadow hammer 40% of the time - I added 60% of the value of a DC hammer to 40% of the value of shadow hammer for the value of the reward.
I then took the value and subtracted the cost to fill the bod. Any bod value in RED means you are better off selling the ingots, throwing the bod out, and then buying the reward with the gold. IE the bod is not worth doing. In those cases you either throw the bod out or bribe it up to something more valuable. However, in some cases like a Val 20EX bod -you just toss it because you cannot bribe any higher and the reward is a +15 scroll so you lose tons of money filling the bod.
This chart can then be used to evaluate which non combineable bods to do. If not worth completing, either throw it out or bribe it up.
If I get the time I'll dig into the large bods which get way more complex since you always have the option of doing the large or doing the smalls. For example the reward for Ring DC 20 EX bod is a Copper Hammer. The value of a copper hammer is about 200k. The cost to fill 4 DC EX ring bods is the same if you turn in as one or turn in separately. However, if you turn them in separately you can get 4 vials of POF each worth 100k or more. So you get 400k in reward value vs a 200k hammer + 20k gold.
And, of course, I'm using the Tower of Roses reward charts to determine the expected rewards.
Here is my current assumption sheet for costs:
Here is the bod reward chart with cost on top and then Normal and Exceptional rewards (net of costs). Anything in red is not advised to complete the bod. Either bribe up or toss.
Ok, yes I'm a glutton for punishment. Here is the chart for Ring Mail armor. Note that I have the individual pieces listed which essentially is the same as the noncombinables save for the number of ingots. I also have the full ring mail set reward which includes the item + gold for the set then subtracts the cost to fill the entire set (ingots). Below that set line I have totaled up the 'value' of the individual bods. As you can see there are some instances (Ring 10 EX for example) where you do get value from doing the large - but you get MORE value from turning in the single bods for Powder of Fort (4x POF vs single hammer reward). 
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