How to play

The dragon explains the forge once. Here's what each of its instructions means in the game's rules.

You have 21 days, from April 15 to May 5, to keep a dragon paid. Every evening it takes the swords in the tribute window and adds up their value, and if you fall short three times it kills you. Forging is how value grows: each strike on the anvil can raise a sword's grade, and each grade multiplies its value by 1.5, until a strike breaks it.

The first day, step by step

The opening walks through the room in this order. You can skip it with P, but every line in it is a rule the game enforces.

  1. Heat a sword
    "Pick up a sword, then heat it first."
    Three swords come in through the hatch each morning. Pick one up with E and use it on the furnace. Heating takes a couple of seconds and never wears off, so each sword only needs it once. Lifetime Contract removes the step.
  2. Put it on the anvil and strike
    "Once it's hot, put it on the anvil."
    Each click draws one ticket from a deck of 1,000. Success adds a level, Great adds two, Hold does nothing, Damage takes one away and Break destroys the sword. On a fresh +0 blade no ticket says Break; at +5 it's 29.7% and at +10 46.7%. The board above the anvil always shows the exact odds for the next strike. The forging odds guide has the whole curve.
  3. Fill the ten squares
    "Build up ten strikes on one sword. Frenzy starts on the next strike."
    Every strike outside Frenzy lights one of the ten squares on the board, and the strike after the tenth starts Frenzy: 4 seconds in which the sword can't break, room for 7 strikes at full speed. The charge belongs to the sword, so it's still there if you take the sword off the anvil and come back to it. More in the Frenzy guide.
  4. Offer swords in the tribute window
    "I don't care how many swords you offer."
    Only the total value counts. Day 1 asks for 1,800 G: a single +5 blade (2,430 G) covers it, and so do a +4 and a +2 together (2,340 G).
  5. Ring the bell
    "My patience ends with the third failure."
    The bell ends the day. If the window's value reaches the quota the tribute is paid; if not, the dragon's anger rises a stage, and the third failure ends the run. Paid or not, everything you handed over comes back as gold, which is what the merchant and the relic shop's rerolls cost. The tribute guide covers anger and how to lower it.
  6. Trade spare swords for relics
    "Every sword is worth the same here."
    The vending machine takes any sword for one sword credit, whatever its grade, so feed it the +0 blades you weren't going to forge. On the first day its three cases hold free starter relics: take one and the other two disappear. From day 2 it sells three relics a day for credits, and you can reroll the cases for gold until you ring the bell.
  7. Keep spares
    "If you're nervous, hang some spare swords on the rack."
    Anything you don't put in the window stays with you overnight: the three rack slots, the floor, the anvil and your hands all carry over, and only broken swords are cleared. A forged sword held back covers a day when the strikes go badly.

The contract

The quota climbs every day. With no relics that lower it:

Day 1, April 15
1,800 G
Day 7, April 21
7,500 G
Day 14, April 28
45,800 G
Day 21, May 5
232,000 G

The ghost merchant comes on day 3 and every third day after, selling swords and consumables for gold; the paper calendar marks its days with scales. Get through day 21 without three failures and the contract is cleared. You can stop there or keep forging into extended days. The tribute calendar has every day's quota and the merchant page every price.

Relics

Relics sit on a shelf of eight slots, and most work for the rest of the run. They change the ticket deck, the value formula or what happens on a given result. With all eight slots taken the machine won't sell you another: look at a shelf relic and press X to throw it away, with nothing back for it. The relic list groups them by what they change, and the relic shop tool shows what each day can roll.

Controls

W A S D or arrows
Move
Mouse
Look around
E
Interact. At the anvil: leave with the sword
Left click
Strike at the anvil
Right click
Leave the sword on the anvil
1 to 9, 0, - and =, then Q
Select a consumable, then use it at the anvil
R
Undo the last strike (needs a rewind charge)
X
Throw away the shelf relic you're looking at, or cancel a purchase
Left click or Space
Advance dialogue
Esc
Open or close the menu

Tips for a first run

  • Value grows by 1.5 per level but Break grows faster early on. A +4 sword is worth 1,620 G and the strike that tries for +5 breaks it 24.8% of the time.
  • A Great sets value to 2.5 times what it was, more than the 2.25 that two Successes give, and the extra stays on the sword. The sword value guide shows the numbers.
  • One +12 blade, worth 41,519 G, pays any day's quota up to day 13 on its own.
  • The merchant's Cracked Dragon Scale stops a Break on the next strike. It's always in stock on day 3.

To practise without losing a run, the forge simulator runs the same anvil, relics and Frenzy as the game.