The graphics are cute, the hype is real – and yet, we were surprised to find out that The Forge by the aptly named The Forge Company, is more hardcore than we expected – it isn’t cozy Minecraft at all!
Five minutes in, and you’re already juggling multiple quests, drowning in types of ore you don’t yet understand, and wondering why your shiny new sword sells for about three coins and a half-hearted pat on the back.
So yes, in a way it is basically Roblox meets Minecraft meets “you now have a second job as a fantasy blacksmith”, with a lot more RPG elements going on than it first lets on to believe.
The good news is: Once you know what matters early on, it stops feeling insanely overwhelming and starts feeling like a very immersive, yet very grindy money printer.
We thought this the perfect time to dish out some tips & tricks we picked up on our journey through The Forge thus far, which will carry you from confused to comfortably min-maxing your ore piles in no time. Let’s begin!
The Forge: Tips & Tricks
Do Every Quest – XP and Loot are Key!
This one sounds like a no-brainer, but if you come from Roblox or Minecraft, there is a different approach required here; Treat it like an RPG and talk to everyone you meet! Most NPCs in The Forge have quests for you, and a lot of these are quietly asking you to do the exact same things, which will lead you to success in the game.
There might be a case of three different inhabitants wanting Rogue Skeletons…dead. Er. Someone else might want some stone, copper, or another metal, a third wants something that requires you to delve deeper into the same mine – you see where we’re going with this. If you only accept one of these quests, you might not get the full reward, or have to go back anyway – so min-maxing even your fetch quests can lead to a much better gaming experience.
Create a loop for yourself, like walking through town, go through the dialogue and accept everything. When you then head to the location, kill all the mobs, mine all the ore mines, for you will find out that you just pushed multiple quests forward at once.
Use The Codes And Save Your Robux For Bigger Upgrades
As expected from a game like this, the in-game shop is thirsty and doesn’t mess around. You can get stuff like extra inventory, more ore, faster forging – it’s really just sitting there looking very tempting indeed. Our tip? Resist the “buy it right now” urge. Why? Because The Forge dishes out codes regularly that hand out freebies, such as rerolls or luck totems, that temporarily up your mining luck by 25%, for example.
Those two we mentioned by themselves are worth babysitting those code lists for, where rerolls let you fix a tragic starting character without spending any Robux currency, and Luck Totems turn a boring mining session into a success story. So, don’t be shy – grab those codes, take the freebies, and only drop Robux on things that actually stick around, like extra inventory, for example.
Get a Good Pickaxe – But Beware of Traps
What’s one of the biggest upgrades a miner/blacksmith/fantasy dweller could add to their repertoire? A pickaxe. Of course. Every new pickaxe on the vendor looks like proper progress, but here’s our tip: It rarely is. A bunch of these pickaxes are pure trap upgrades, with tiny mining gains for way too much cash.
This is what we’d recommend, based on our own (not so optimal) experiences:
- Starter pickaxe – suffer through it, you’re supposed to.
- Iron Pickaxe – you’ll unlock this naturally by following Sensei Moro’s questline. Don’t buy one.
- Cobalt Pickaxe – buy from Miner Fred in the Forgotten Kingdom for 10,000 once you can comfortably afford it.
- Mythril (or is it Mithril?) Pickaxe – your next big purchase at 67,500. This is the one worth saving for instead of nibbling every minor upgrade in between.
- Arcane Pickaxe – unlocked via a quest later on, and flat-out better than shop stock. Trust us.
The actual trap is buying every in-between pickaxe, just because you think this is the next step in progression – it isn’t. If you blow your hard-earned cash on micro-upgrades, you delay the real power spikes and slow your progress in turn. Our last tip? Treat the in-game shop like some scammy mobile game: Only the big purchases are actually worth it.
Mine Smart: Pebbles First, Keep Every “Useless” Ore
Early on, you’ll hit a quest like “The Basics of Mining” from Umut the Brave, asking for Stone and other starter mats. This is where a lot of players sprint deep into the mines, get smacked by enemies, and ragequit. You don’t need to.
For Stone and early metals, as an example:
- Hit Pebbles near the entrance to The Cave. They’re safe, fast to break, and drop Stone most often.
- While you’re doing that, you’ll pick up Copper, Tin, Sandstone, Iron and other odds and ends.
- Do not sell these off as junk. Later parts of Umut’s questline (and other NPCs) ask for exactly those mats.
Let The Forge Calculator Do The Boring Math For You
Once you start smelting, it’s very easy to waste ore on bad recipes “just to see what happens.” Fun once, expensive forever.
The best part? There’s a community-made Forge calculator site that basically turns your inventory into a spreadsheet, which will make your min-maxing that much easier. Here’s how it works:
- You pick a goal (max profit, specific weapon type, optimal multipliers, etc).
- Plug in how much ore you have of each type.
- It spits out recommended recipes so you don’t end up with five low-quality daggers nobody wants.
The best way to use it is in bursts. Farm until your bags are full, dump the numbers into the calculator, then do a proper crafting session with purpose. It turns random grinding into “I just made enough to pay for my next pickaxe tier,” which feels a lot better.
Last But not Least: Treat it Like a Chill MMO, And Don’t Stress too Much
This one is paramount: The Forge plays best if you do treat it like an MMO grind, despite the fact that the game is desperately trying to convince you otherwise. It’s more hardcore than we thought, but not in the way that Rust or other hardcore survival sandboxes treat their playerbase.
Once you properly lean into that grindy loop and just sort of take in the world you create around you, the hype around the game suddenly makes sense. It’s less a Roblox/Minecraft clone and more an RPG you just happen to play with a pickaxe – so go around, do quests, grind, and enjoy the results of your hard work – but with a smile.
