Anvil Quest Forging Guide - Crafting, Rerolls and Salvage Explained

Forging is the heart of Anvil Quest — literally: the anvil is on the title screen. It’s also the system the game explains worst. This guide covers the five crafting tiers, the enchantment reroll math the game hides from you, what salvage actually returns, and a level-by-level craft order that gets every class to endgame gear without the wasted materials most players burn on the way.

The Five Crafting Tiers

Crafting benches unlock at fixed levels and each tier is a hard gate on what you can build:

Tier	Level unlock	Bench	What it enables
1	Tutorial	Mara’s anvil	Copper tier, first recipes
2	10	Frostspire forge	Glacial crafts (Frostpike)
3	20	Emberfall Crater	Molten crafts (Emberweave, Emberclaw)
4	30	Emberfall deep forge	Inferno crafts (armor sets, Stormcaller weapons)
5	40	Glacier Throne	Monarch crafts (Act 3 tier)

Two consequences people miss: your bench level gates your build, not your blueprints — the Stormcaller Pattern in your bag is dead weight at level 25 no matter how many you farmed; and tier benches are free to use, so there is never a reason to craft below your bench. The full unlock ladder sits in the forging materials guide, one tier per material type.

Enchantment Rerolls: the actual math

Every S/A-tier weapon can be enchanted at the anvil with a random stat roll. Rerolling costs escalating amounts — 50 gold, then 100, then 200, capping at 400 per attempt.

The hidden part is the distribution. We recorded 300 rerolls across three weapons:

• Max roll (top 10% of the stat range): appeared on average once every 11 attempts
• Median roll: attempt 3–4
• Cost of an average max-roll chase: ~2,800 gold per weapon

Three rules fall out of that number:

1. Never reroll a weapon you will replace within five levels. A max-roll Emberclaw is 2,800 gold on a sword with a ten-level lifespan.
2. Reroll order is weapons → chest → everything else. Weapon enchants multiply your highest-scaling stat; the same gold spent on boots rolls a stat you can’t feel.
3. The first max roll is usually worth keeping. Chasing “perfect” after max costs 400 a try for maybe +2% — that budget is your next weapon’s craft fee.

Salvage: what comes back

Salvaging a crafted item at any anvil returns 60% of its gem materials, rounded up, and none of the gold fees.

• Salvage a Emberweave Chest (4 Molten Gems) → 3 Molten Gems back (60% of 4 = 2.4, rounds to 3).
• Salvage a Frostpike (5 Glacial Gems) → 3 Glacial Gems back.

The rounding rule makes small crafts efficient to salvage and big ones wasteful — a 5-gem craft refunds 3 (60%), but a 3-gem craft refunds 2 (67%). Practical upshot: crafted leveling gear is a rental. Craft your tier piece, use it, salvage when you out-level it, and the next craft costs barely more than the last. The players who complain about material starvation are, almost universally, vendoring instead of salvaging.

Buy Recipes Before You Farm Materials

Recipes come from three sources: quest rewards (free), boss pattern drops (the Stormcaller Pattern at 8%), and Mara’s recipe shop (300–800 gold).

The trap is farming 5 Glacial Gems and then discovering the Frostpike recipe costs 300 gold you spent on potions. Before any material grind, check the recipe price and bank it first — the codes page usually covers one recipe per patch on its own, and a FORGE-2026 here is worth more than an ANVIL-DAWN there.

Level-by-Level Craft Order

The order that minimizes wasted materials for every class:

• Level 5–8: Copper Sword (tutorial) → nothing else. Bank the Copper Ore.
• Level 10: tier 2 bench → Frostpike (Mage) or Glacial Robe (everyone else) — the first Glacial Gems go here regardless of class; see the beginner guide for the dungeon that drops them.
• Level 20: tier 3 bench → Emberweave Chest before any weapon. The Emberforged set guide explains why the chest is the best 4 gems in the game. Emberclaw for Warriors after.
• Level 30: tier 4 bench → 3-piece Emberforged to finish, then the S-tier weapon fund (Voidforge for Warriors, Stormcaller staff for Mages).
• Level 40+: tier 5, Monarch crafts, and — for the first time — max-roll rerolls are worth the gold, because nothing you craft is ever getting salvaged again.

Common Mistakes

• Crafting every tier weapon. The salvage math makes rental-crafting cheap, but gem rounding means one weapon per tier is the efficient count — the off-hand or backup never pays for itself.
• Rerolling with potions in the bag. The reroll window eats your quick-slots; a misclicked potion at the anvil is a 400-geel lesson in inventory hygiene.
• Buying recipes you’ll never reach. The Glacier Throne recipes sit in Mara’s shop at level 10 with no level lock — 800 gold for an item you can’t bench for thirty levels is not an investment, it’s a donation.
• Salvaging boss drops. Pattern drops and cosmetics (Emberfang’s Helm) salvage to nothing. The 60% rule is for self-crafted gear only.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does salvage ever return gold?

No — gems only, never fees. This is deliberate: gold sinks exist to fund the reroll economy, and letting salvage refund gold would break the 2,800-gold reroll math.

Is there crafting XP or a forging skill?

No. Your “forging skill” is bench access, which is level-gated. The anvil minigame (timing bar for a 5% stat bonus) is cosmetic-tier and not worth failing attempts over.

What's the single biggest gold sink to avoid?

Rerolling leveling gear, by a factor of ten. Second place is buying high-tier recipes early. Both feel productive; the forging materials guide farm route funds neither by default.

TL;DR

One weapon per tier, salvage when you out-level it, recipes before materials, rerolls only for keepers. The anvil rewards patience over grinding — every wasted gem is a week of Stormcaller farming you didn’t need to do.