The Forge of Potential
The Forge of Potential takes a maxed piece of gear one quality level past its cap. It succeeds 65% of the time. The other 35% destroys the item and hands back 35% of what it cost. There is no third outcome, no skill that moves the number, and no way to improve the odds.
One roll between 0 and 1 settles it. Below 0.65 the item goes up a level. Above that, the idol's break chance covers the entire remainder, so every failure is a total loss rather than a setback.
The game does carry a gentler third result, where a failed attempt drops the item two levels below the target instead of breaking it. No idol in 1.0 can reach it, because all sixteen set break chance to 1.00 and swallow the whole remainder. If Iron Gate ever tunes one below that, a third row will appear here on its own.
Averaged out, each level past the cap costs about 1.54 attempts, and the wreckage of the failures eats roughly 0.35 extra copies of the item's materials. Refine the thing you would happily rebuild, not the thing you would mourn.
It sits in the Mountains and drops a permanent marker on your map once you get near, the way a trader does. Worldgen reserves 10 sites for it, at least 400 metres apart and never within 200 metres of the world centre. You will only ever get one. The instant a player loads the first site, the game deletes every other reservation, so the forge you walk to is the forge your world has.
Haldor, Hildir and the Bog Witch collapse the same way, which is worth knowing before you plan a route. Our seed map draws every reserved site, because that is what the world generator produces, and the seed finder measures the closest one, which is the one you will actually claim.
Idols come in eight material tiers, split into a battle idol for weapons and tools and a protection idol for armour. The tier has to match the gear, and every one of them rolls the same 65%. Between them they cover 269 craftable items.
| Tier | Battle idol | Covers | Protection idol | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden |  Wooden Battle Idol | 13 |  Wooden Protection Idol | 43 |
| Bronze |  Bronze Battle Idol | 19 |  Bronze Protection Idol | 14 |
| Iron |  Iron Battle Idol | 11 |  Iron Protection Idol | 12 |
| Silver |  Silver Battle Idol | 8 |  Silver Protection Idol | 9 |
| Black Metal |  Black Metal Battle Idol | 12 |  Black Metal Protection Idol | 13 |
| Black Marble |  Black Marble Battle Idol | 16 |  Black Marble Protection Idol | 10 |
| Flametal |  Flametal Battle Idol | 29 |  Flametal Protection Idol | 13 |
| Bloodgold |  Bloodgold Battle Idol | 36 |  Bloodgold Protection Idol | 11 |
A refinement is the item's ordinary recipe with an idol added, materials priced at the level you are leaving. Nothing else changes. That extra ingredient only appears at the forge, which is why item pages here list it as a footnote under the recipe rather than putting it in the ingredient grid. No workbench, forge or black forge will ever ask you for one.