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The developers ofAge of Wonders 4have released a major free update alongside each of their big DLC expansions. For the “Empires and Ashes” DLC, they released the Golem Update, and the biggest new feature they added was the Item Forge.
The Item Forge gives players a way to customize their heroes' equipment without having to hope that the game will randomly drop something goodfrom an Ancient Wonder or Infestation. However, the ability to craft custom items is powerful, andAge of Wonders 4makes this ability expensive in a variety of ways.
How to Get the Item Forge
You don’t get access to the Item Forge when you first begin a scenario. Instead, you need to build it.
Fortunately, the construction requirements aren’t very steep.The Item Forge is a Wizard Tower structure, and you only need to build the Foundation to unlock it. Once you have, the Item Forge costs:
Like other Wizard Tower structures, there’s no way to get a discount by meeting a Boost requirement. This also means you may only build one Item Forge per scenario, and only in your capital city.
Once the Item Forge is up, you’ll need a special resource called Binding Essence to fuel it. The only way to get this resource is to Disenchant existing magic items, which you’re able to do from any hero’s Equipment screen. If you aren’t sure how to get there, here’s how:
You get 40 Binding Essence for each tier of the item you Disenchant. That means 40 for a tier 1, 80 for a tier 2, and up to 160 for a tier 4.
How to Craft Custom Items
Once your Item Forge is up and running, and you have enough Binding Essence to build something, you can access the Forge by selecting the anvil button in the upper-left corner of the interface. This button is always present, but it doesn’t work until after you build the Forge.
Once you enter the Forge, you can choose the item you want to craft. There are a few different variables you’ll need to keep in mind as you’re crafting.
Base Item Types
The first thing you need to decide is what kind of item you want to craft. There are several categories to choose from, and while the choice of category determines what the item can do and what slot it goes in, each item within a category only provides a cosmetic change. Whether a category is available may depend onwhich Pantheon Powers you’ve unlocked.
The item category determines what infusion types are available.
Infusion Availability
For an infusion to show up on your list, you need access to one or more Magic Materials. There are always a few basic infusions you can choose from no matter what, but for anything better than the basics, you need Materials.It doesn’t matter which ofAge of Wonders 4’s Tomes you’ve chosenor what your empire’s affinity is, because only Magic Materials have an impact.
Specifically, if you want access to every infusion in the game, you’ll need to own or otherwise have access tothree of every material inAge of Wonders 4. That means three Arcanium Ores, three Focus Crystals, three Fireforge Stones, and so on. The list of possible infusions is too long to copy here, but if you want to know what you’re missing, check the box in the infusion menu that says “Show locked.” Each infusion description says at the bottom what materials you need to use it.
Infusion Points
Sadly, you may’t stack all the best infusions into a single item and blast your way to victory. Each infusion has an Infusion Point cost between one and five, and each magic item has a limit of five Infusion Points. Damage infusions always cost one point, and so you can only add up to four points of abilities and passives to any given weapon.
Item Tier
The amount of Infusion Points you spend determines what tier of item you create.
There are two ways in which item tier matters. First, if you decide to Disenchant a crafted item, you’ll get back an appropriate amount of Binding Essence based on the item’s tier. Second,magic weapons deal more damagewhen they belong to a higher tier. This means the best way to use an Item Forge early on is to craft tier-four weapons as fast as possible.
Item Cost
The Infusion Point value of each infusion determines the overall cost of the item. If you choose one-point infusions, your prices will look like this:
However, two-point infusions look like this:
A three-point infusion costs 150 BE and 3 turns, a four-point infusion costs 200 BE and 3 turns, and a five-point infusion costs 250 BE and 3 turns. The extra costs are to balance out the fact that an item that does five things is generally more useful than an item that does one thing well. And no matter what, crafting an item costs more Binding Essence than you get for Disenchanting an item of the same tier.
Arsenal and Blueprints
The last two features of the Item Forge are the blue buttons along the bottom. The Arsenal button lets you see the magic items that no hero is using, and you can Disenchant them from this menu along with the hero’s inventory screen. The Blueprints menu lets you see all the items you’ve crafted across all the scenarios you’ve played. If your current empire has the right Materials (whether through cities, outposts, or vassals), you can select it from the list to quickly craft it again.
