Forging

A second path to a better weapon, standing beside Weapon Refinement rather than replacing it. Refinement improves a treasure you have already bonded to; Forging takes a piece of gear that is already finished and tempers it one tier higher at a time. The piece itself is crafted at a bench; the tempering happens at a ritual of its own.

Tier 1: the bench

Two recipes get you started at a vanilla crafting bench: a Spirit-Forged Blade (Weapon Bench, iron bars, Spirit Stones, and Common forging material) and a Spirit-Woven Robe (Armor Bench, cotton bolts, Spirit Stones, and the same material). Both are Rare quality, ready to carry into the ritual below the moment they are made.

Tier 2 and up: the Forge Anchor

Place a Forge Flag to plant your own Forge Anchor — placing a second one simply moves the first, so you only ever have one. Stand within 4 blocks of it, hold a forgeable item (this release, only the two Tier 1 pieces above), and run /cultivation forge combine (or smith) to attempt the next tier up, capped at Tier 5.

Each tier costs a growing stack of forging material, drawn from a three-rung ladder — Common at Tier 2, Refined from Tier 3–4, and Pristine at Tier 5 — in growing quantities as you climb (2 at Tier 2, up to 5 at Tier 5). Materials are spent the moment the ritual begins, win or lose.

The ritual runs 45 seconds, draining 2 Qi every second (90 Qi if it runs the full length), and needs at least 20 Qi banked to start. Wander more than 4 blocks from your anchor or run out of Qi mid-ritual and it fails exactly as if the roll itself had gone against you — never worse. /cultivation forge cancel stops it cleanly at any time; spent materials are gone, but your item comes back completely unchanged.

Failure chance is 30% plus 5% for every tier above Tier 1 (Forge-Base-Failure-Chance and Forge-Failure-Chance-Increase-Per-Tier): 35% for Tier 2, rising to 50% at Tier 5.

Grade: Low, Mid, High, Perfect

A successful forge lands on one of four grades, rolled from the quality of material you used — Pristine skews the roll toward Perfect, Common skews it toward Low, with some randomness on top either way. Right now the grade is shown on the item's own tooltip and nothing more; it carries no combat bonus yet, and exists as the hook a future release can hang a real stat on.

Where the materials come from

Common material drops from winning a duel against a Wandering Rival Cultivator (35% chance) or claiming a Buried Cache (50% chance). Refined material comes all but guaranteed from a cleared Ruin Vault. Both sites are found through Spirit Sense at its highest stage.

v0.11.2 A Sword Tomb gives all three kinds. Pull a tomb sword (once every 10 minutes, and no more than 12 swords per tomb per day) for one roll of Common (62%, 1-3), Refined (30%, 1-2) or Pristine (8%, 1) material.

Crafting the materials and cores

v0.11.1 Refined and Pristine material can now also be crafted, and so can the Profound and Divine Cores that Pristine depends on. All four recipes are at the Workbench, on its Tinkering tab, take 3 seconds each and have no recipe to learn first. They use Update 7 ingredients from the vanilla game.

Each recipe makes one item. In the vanilla drop tables, the Enkindled Sigil drops from Revenant Guardians, Bundled Treasure from Goblin Gluttons and Feastmasters, the Hide from the Voidtaken Grizzly of the Voidtaken Hunt, and the Gobliterator Core from the Gobliterator. The Voidtaken Grizzly and the Gobliterator's final phase are also on the list of bosses that always drop a Profound Core; see Breach & Boss Rewards.

Common Forging Material and the ways to find Refined and Pristine material listed above are unchanged. The recipes are an extra route, not a replacement.