Forging

In my very first post on Lord EXP, I discussed collecting materials and "synthesizing" them to at least blue before forging equipment. Today, I'll talking about the forging, itself.

Once you have a Blacksmith, you can forge equipment. Initially, you'll be forging Level 5 equipment, which simply requires certain materials that you can make in the Workshop (or collect fighting monsters or gathering) and synthesize to a higher level, as necessary. You can click on your character in the upper left corner of the screen in the castle view to see all your equipment and "equip" yourself with different equipment, as desired. You can view all the available equipment in either the Workshop or the Blacksmith by clicking on the chest of materials and then clicking the Equipment tab.

As mentioned in my earlier post, you can't wear (equip) equipment that is a higher level than your Lord Level. As your Lord Level increases, you will obviously want to be able to wear better equipment, so it is a good idea to "forge ahead." (Hah!) When you forge equipment higher than Level 5 (not including "sets," which I'll cover in a moment), you have to "forge in" another piece of equipment that is at the same level or one step (increments of five) down. So to forge Level 10 equipment, you need a piece of Level 5 (or 10) equipment, or "equipment substitute." The equipment substitutes look like little square/diamond-shaped shields with a bulge in the middle. To get equipment substitutes, you can either forge them or get them in chests for various awards. I forged most of the ones I used and got the give-aways, later. Go figure.

When you forge equipment Level 10 or above, as you can see in the figure below, there is a plus sign in the middle. When you click the plus, it gives you a list of the available equipment or equipment substitutes you can use for the forging.

When you get to even higher level equipment, there is a temptation to forge previous equipment into the next one. For example, see below, where only one piece of equipment at Level 25 is available to forge into the Level 30 piece of equipment. One problem with forging your Level 25 equipment into the Level 30 equipment is that you may be wearing it at the time. The second problem is that it is good to hold onto old equipment because you will eventually be getting heroes, and heroes need equipment, too.

Once you select the equipment to "forge in" with the materials, the screen will show the likelihood of various Level/color outcomes of the forging. At this point, you can still adjust the materials or back out to wait on better materials. If you are ready to forge, you can press the forge option (or add more steel, if necessary).

After you select "Forge," there is an odd screen that asks you to draw a symbol. I don't think it matters. I always draw a heart. If you don't do this, it doesn't forge.

To solve the issue of "forging in" lower level equipment, I just went ahead and started working on an "Equipment Set." You can find Equipment Sets at the top level of the Blacksmith > Forge menu, in a symbol at the top. I started with the "Ancient Prophet Set," which is Level 25. Boy, is this a cool set. I cannot recommend it enough, as you will come to see...

First of all, with the Equipment Sets, there is no lower level equipment to forge in. Instead, you have to have "Ancient Blueprints." To get Ancient Blueprints, you have to collect shards by killing monsters, and it takes 100 shards to make a blueprint! Yikes! Some of the equipment asks for anywhere from 5 to 100 (or more?) blueprints to forge. However, you can forge with as few as one... but that will be at the "white" level for that material item. Here's what an Ancient Prophet "Research Codex" (which goes in the "weapon" slot) Forge screen looks like:

As you get up to higher level equipment sets, the materials become challenging to collect (at a high level color). For example, in the Gladiator's Axe (Level 35) shown below, you can see that I only have 5 out of 100 "Brutal Horns." For the blueprints, while it may seem that I have few, consider the fact that I have already used some for the Ancient Prophet set.

The Ancient Prophet Set is excellent for research. I typically had two blueprints, each, when I forged the elements. I used some blue and some purple materials. Part of the reason I have all purple equipment is that I have researched the "Elite Troops" (all except the last two ring levels), which helps you forge better equipment. Anyway, when I added the fifth piece (helmet), my power went up 100K (compared to a Level 20 piece of equipment), and when I added the sixth piece (the ring), my power went up 150K. Also, having six pieces of blue and then six pieces of purple equipment are "achievements" with rewards you can access at the bottom of the Lord page (same page which shows your equipment).

In addition to the power (for what it's worth) of the Ancient Prophet Set, the real benefit is the research speed. Many of the research topics are reduced so much that they become "three seconds," effectively instantaneous, as seen below.

On a day that was a "Lucky Day" (reduced price for research) as well as a "Daily Event" for research/building upgrades, I researched a whole bunch of topics just as quick as I could click through them... limited only by my resources to buy so many. I was in the top ten of the Daily Event, that day. It was worth over 2000 in gold for the Daily Event awards. (Nevermind the fact that it is great to have all that research done in one afternoon.)

Happy Clashing,
Lisa Kay