Heaven Help us all, they've added more.
Alright my darlings, get ready for a hell of a long ride. The forge is basically the main way of equiping and upgrading your gear, gems, and skills. See the tabs across the top? Enchancement improves your gear, socketing lets you add gems, enchantment lets you use Eternal Spire (ES) mats to add bonuses to your gear, synthing... oh god the sything.... lets you combine and fuse gems and shards (for heros and clothing), and play with gear upgrades, the exchange feature lets you exchange a gem (fused or normal) for different stats, and recycle lets you get different awaken skills. Let's hit them in more detail...
1) Enchancing your gear. Gear levels as your character does, which mean if you're level 16 your can only level it up to 16. At 20, 40, 60, 70, 80 you have to buy patterns from the arena shop before you can level higher.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. You can upgrade gear once you get the mats beyond what your main or heros can equip. You know what this means? Yep, you get the pattern to upgrade your hero's dagger, you've got the mats sitting there from Erebus, and then you upgrade it and it unequips and you loose 50k BR. And now you can't equip it again until you level your hero up. It's horrible! also applys to rebirthing heros, you have level 60 gear on them, you get them to 70, upgrade 4 pieces, rebirth them down to 55 and then two days later craft the last 70 gear and are now screw until you get 2.5k time skip scroll to get them back up to 70.
Ah hem... ok end of rant. Back to the guide. Two more quick things to note. One "Explosive VIP" - lets you ocassionaly skip ranks (level for free). It also lets you specify how many ranks you want to do at once. In the BR section I talk about the order to level gear in. While following that, you also want to hit the bonuses for having your gear at the same level (20, 30, 40, 50, 60,70, 80).
2) Socketing - Same bonuses with sockets, try to get them as you go, especially for your main. Gems you can equip are at the bottom. If you have 3 or more you can synth them into a higher level gem.
Socketing rods are used to unlock extra gem sockets. You can get them from devotion and the shops. I believe they unlock costing 30, 50, 80, 100, 300. Unlock on your main first, then best hero, until the main is completely unlocked, then work on other heros.
Upgrading sockets - from level 30+ you can equip fused gems. You probably won't be able to because they're damn expensive to craft but if you do get one in an event or something you'll need to unlock a currently open slot for it. First you need 20 magic socketing rods (gotten from events or Dark Abyss). Then click upgrade socket and there you go. Due to cost, I'd recommend upgrading a 2nd piece of gear over a 2nd slot.
I'm not even gonna touch what are the best gems per build and class here. Just keep in mind that sometimes it's better to exchange a gem to one that's better for your class then equip what you have.
3) Refining - Refining requires refining stones recieve from the jackpot and events.
It's pretty straight forward, and infinately easier as a VIP with extra spins. Same deal
with the level bonuses, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15 etc. Basically, you're looking for any high stat
here except the wrong kind of attack. Ideally you would match the same stats as you
gem... realistically, I'd rather get awakening stones. Early on you can be a bit picky,
but usually when you get a high stat, say 13-15+ you want to lock it in. So basic rolls
cost 50 stones, one lock costs 70, two cost 110, three cost 170, and 4 cost 350.
Honestly, it's not worth it to me to blow 20k stones trying to get dodge instead
of crit or endurance.
4) Enchanting - Alright, you know how when doing ES you get two types of stones, runestones and enchant stones? Here's where you use them. As you slaugther your way through ES you unlock elite mobs you can defeat for weapon and armor enchantment stones. You can also trade in the enchanted ore you get for runes.
Frankly, I find once you unlock the advance elites (demon huntress and up), it's better to do those. After all, during tycoon you can buy the regular ones.
If you have them unlocked weapon, helm, ring get priority. If you're leveling from tycoon, then you level those 3 up to level 5. Then chest, legs, boots to 5. Then back to weapon, helm, ring until 6. Repeat as needed.
5) Synthing (whimpers in terror) - Alright synthing. You will spend an insane amount of time in the forge, most of it spent here. There are 5 catergories of stuff you can synth.
A) Gear - at 20, 40, 60, 70, 80 you have the option of sything new gear. You will need shards from erebus, erebus synthing materials (also found doing loop quests), a pattern that is usually bought from the arena shop, and the orginal piece of gear. Make SURE you are selecting the right gear (if you have more then one, always click the arrow and select the gear from the hero/main).
B) Items - Clothes, Wings, Mounts, Holy Crystals, Medals, Chereubstones, and advance training stuff. Nothing tricky, clcik the "show synth only button to make life easier.
C) Fuse - Still missing stuff and a little buggy. In general, stay away from this unless you get 3 fused gems from events. Why stay away? it's really only useful for cashers or people at max level but I'll explain. First you need to get 20 magical rods to be able to actually use it. Next, you need to get a ton of gem essences (via events). Third, you need twice as many gems. So in order to have 1 fused gem you need 4 gems. Yep, that means you sacrifice 2 lv 8 HP and 2 lv 8 Patk to make one lv 8 HP+ Patk which has the combined stats of one each.
D) Upgrades - These make the base stats of the gear better or add new stats to the gear. You will require prints from the Dark Abyss shop, x-server arena shop or events in order to upgrade. You will also need either a ton of divine right mats or a bunch of ungodly souls. Good luck getting the souls, they're insanely pricey unless you place/win tycoon. Divine right can be purchased in the DA shop or x-server.
E) Gems - Nothing too special here. I recommend ALWAYS using synth scrolls. Because the "75% success rate" is a vicious lie. Better to click the option to use scrolls or gold and not loose gems. If you don't have enough scrolls, priortize by what your main needs (I.e. HP, atk etc.).
6) Exchange - Here you can swap weapons and gems for other weapons and gems of the same rank. So if you win a sword from tycoon, you can make it a bow or dagger or staff. Exchanging just costs gold but keep in mind you can only exchange if they are in the same rank. So you can exchange a Hp gem for atk, def, or agility but not for dudge, endurance, block or crit.
7) Recycling - Pretty straight forward, you have books you use to unlock awakening skills. You can recycle them for 5 points each and then go buy the ones you want from the shop. Don't trash ones you are thinking about using since books run from 10-20 each in the shop.
Finally it's over. My god I hope someone finds this useful.
