Guide:Forging

Understanding how the Forge works.
For this, I recommend going practicing on the test server if you are a PC player – you can give yourself everything for free using debug, so it’s great for testing. To do this, simply right click on on Steam, select properties, click the Beta tab, and opt into the beta.

After you have put your tool into the forge and begun the forging process, you then have the option to put in ingredients into your tool on a round-by-round basis. These ingredients all have various effects which will be explained below. In addition, all ingredients cost vigour and/or stability to use, which will be explained in more detail later.

For details on the ingredient's specific information head over to: Forge Ingredient Crafting

The Gum (1) and the Catalyst (2)
In game, there are 6 types of “ingredients” able to be used in the forge. We will talk about the first two – Gums and Catalysts.

1.) Gums - Essentially, Gums allow you to influence the outcome of what boons you get. When used, it gives the player a buff icon in the forge (7)

Gums are separated into categories, such as Special, Effect, and Longevity, increasing the outcome of getting any boon relating to their field. Stacking more of the same gum further increases the odds of getting any boon relating to their field

Referring to the forge trait list document 24, if I were forging a slingbow and I put 3 Longevity gums into the forge, I would have a very high likelihood of getting Either the “Heavy Duty” boon, or the “Long Range” boon

2.) Catalysts – specifically Vigour Catalyst 2, simply allow you to remove these buff icons. This is useful, for example, by allowing you to forge one boon onto your Item, such as Heavy Duty boon, than remove the Longevity Gum to place on an Effect Gum to try and forge another boon, such as Devastating Damage boon.

In addition, when used with Draining Boon Compound 1 (more on that later), you receive a rather nice portion of spent Vigour back, allowing you to forge better equipment.

The Compound (3) and the Resin (4)
Both of these serve critical roles in the forging process – without them, it would be impossible to forge anything.

3.) Compounds allow you to obtain what is known as Boon Points (8). Whenever a compound is used, the boon bar is filled, and the game rolls a counter (9); if this counter lands in the boon bar, the game gives you a random boon. The boon it gives you can be influenced by Gums.

There are a lot of different compounds available for use – the ones I use will be covered below.


 * Pure Boon Compound 2 and Pure Boon Compound 3 – compared to other compounds, these have the advantage of giving only Boon points – other compounds are often cheaper, but have a negative attached to them, such as also filling up the quirk or defect bar.
 * Draining Boon Compound 1 – fills the Boon bar as much as Pure Boon Compound 3 does and also uses less Vigour in doing so. However, it also fills up the Quirk bar by a lesser amount and gives the draining boon debuff, which removes a small portion of Vigour. With the use of Vigour Catalyst 2, we can convert this debuff into even more Vigour.

Using all 3 together is key to creating forges that maximize boon points while having little to no quirks.

4.) Resins

There currently exists two types of Resins – both of which are very important.

Deconstruction Resin allows you to basically reset your forge if you’re not happy with how it’s going. Level 1 – 3 gives 25% - 75% of your ingredients back. I recommend using only level 3 – as the cost of ingredients to craft it is much less than the cost of ingredients to craft all other components needed in forging.

Setting Resin is basically the “I’m finished” button. Once it’s used, the Item than goes into the Centraforge’s queue before being ready to use.

The Paste (5) and the Solvent (6)
These two ingredients are arguably less important than the previous 4 mentioned. None-the-less, they can be used to help forges last longer or to better pick boons.

5.) Pastes have a large variety of uses. Similarly to gums, they provide useful player buffs (10), however these are round-limited buffs, meaning they often only last 3-5 rounds, and rather than influencing which boon is picked, provide different benefits.

These benefits can include reducing Vigour or Stability costs, increasing Boon point gain, or reducing Quirk and Defect point gain.

6.) Solvents are essentially your “undo” button. They simply allow you to remove boons, quirks, or defects. Two notable solvents include:

Boon Removal Solvent – Simply removes a boon, and rerolls a new boon. This “new boon” can be identical to the one that was just removed however.

Boon Transmute Solvent – Removes a boon, and rerolls a new boon. However, this “new boon” will never be the same as the one that was just removed. This is also much more expensive to craft, requiring roadrunner feathers.

A quick word on boons
For this, I will be referring to this spreadsheet (a copy of which is loaded on the bottom of the Forging page of this wiki, also to note this page contains details on all Boons, Quirks, and Defects currently in the game), which documents every available boon, as well as what tools they are restricted to.

Now, there are quite a large number of boons on that spreadsheet, but we only need to focus on the following: Now, I’m sure you’re wondering just how you put these amazing boons onto your tools. Let me explain…

The Step by Step Process to Forging (and reducing RNG)
The following information will list the exact process behind forging various pieces of equipment, ranked in difficulty from easiest (lowest RNG and/or cost) to hardest (highest RNG and/or cost)

Effect Gum Special Gum  Lightness Gum/Longevity Gum  Vigour Catalyst 2  Boon Transmute Solvent Fate Paste 2 Protection Paste 2  Corrupted Boon Compound 1  Deconstruction Resin 3  Setting Resin

This is the standard deck I use for most of these forges. In addition to this, I also use Trait Reduction Gum, Glow Gum, Lightness Gum and Transmute Solvent in some of my forges Most forges generally start by putting two gums of the type of boon you want i.e Effect Gum, using 1-2 Draining Boon Compounds, and resetting if you don’t get the desired boon first time. This is cheaper than using Transmute Solvent, and saves on Vigour and Stability. Vigour and Stability act as the limiting factor in forging – once either one runs out, it is impossible to continue forging that tool.

When wanting multiple boons on a tool, we start with the boon that has the lowest chance of being chosen. For example, referring to the Forge Trait List shown earlier, using a Special Gum on a Slingbow has a roughly 1 in 4 of having Multishot Boon being chosen, whereas using a Longevity gum on a Slingbow has a roughly 1 in 2 chance of having Heavy-Duty (Durability) Boon being chosen.

Once the forging process is done, we put in a setting resin to complete the tool.

Original Guide on the Official Forums as written by Vansten.