Crafting
Shards dropped by monsters become equipment in four stages. Fusing combines like with like into a better one; crafting moves up a tier.
| Stage | Operation | Where | Caloric | Rolls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fuse shards into a better shard | Anywhere | An affinity like any other | One |
| 2 | Craft a material from shards | Foundry | Process only: heat on top of the lava | Two |
| 3 | Fuse materials into a better material | Foundry | Not used | None |
| 4 | Fabricate a material into equipment | Fabrication Bay | Not used | One per stat line |
Stages 1 and 3 are optional.
| Foundry | Stands only over deep lava: about as many as Fabrication Bays, and some sectors have none. Its window opens inside, past the doorway, with tabs for crafting and fusing materials, and shows the lava cooling |
| Fusing shards | Anywhere, from the menu |
| Every roll | Your Intelligence against the weight of the attempt; no other stat counts. The chance shows before you confirm. Unslotting a shard is not crafting: it rolls Intelligence, Reflex and Fortitude (Items) |
| Fusing materials | Rolls nothing |
Roll, grade, heat and weight formulas: Reference: Crafting.
Substance and process
In stage 2, and only there, the affinities split. At stage 1, caloric fuses like any other affinity, with no heat required.
| Affinities | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Substance | Kinetic, density, cohesion | What the material is; contributes grade |
| Process | Caloric | What is done to it; never contributes grade |
Two materials made from the same shards can still differ, by how they were treated.
Stage 1: fusing shards
| Takes | 2 to 5 shards and one Binding Salt |
| Result | One shard; every affinity and intensity sums |
| Opposites | Density and caloric cancel (+3 and -3 give 0); both shards are still spent, and the result names the axis that went |
| Failure | Nothing made; shards and salt are gone |
| Ceiling | Found shards stop at 9 on an affinity; fused ones can pass it. Socketed, a value past 9 counts as 9 + √(value − 9) (13 → 11, 18 → 12, 25 → 13), for reflex from shoulders, feet and arms and for the weapon and arms damage bonuses |
| Slot | Reads | A multi-affinity shard is |
|---|---|---|
| Shoulders, feet | Kinetic for reflex | Better: every other affinity adds resistance, at three quarters of the armour rate |
| Arms | Density for damage or reflex | Better: every other affinity adds resistance, at three quarters of the armour rate |
| Weapon | All four, signed | Cold and diffuse points subtract |
| Head, torso, legs | All four, each its own resistance | Several resistances at once |
Stage 2: crafting a material
Commit 2 to 5 substance shards, shards with no caloric. Denser and more tightly bound materials need more heat to melt; kinetic adds none.
The lava block
Each Foundry has one block of lava heat, shared by everyone there. It starts cold and cools toward 0 untended; every whole point is a point of heat, and a melt uses up what it takes.
| Lava | Effect |
|---|---|
| Hotter | A fuller block: 9 over the hottest lava, as little as 3 over the coolest. Hot lava is the commonest |
| Stiffer (more cohesive) | Cools slower: 3 an hour runny, under 2 at the stiffest |
| Density | A quench gives the most cold with water of the same Density |
| To | Do | Costs |
|---|---|---|
| Add heat | Up to three heat shards (positive caloric), spent on this melt before the block | The shards; heat past the melt's need is lost; a shard is refused if the block alone already covers the melt |
| Restore the block to full | Tick Reheat first | 2 stamina and 1.5 thirst a point restored, rounded up: 18 stamina and 14 thirst for a cold block over the hottest lava |
Shards are spent first, the block for the rest. Cold shards play no part.
| Outcome | Spent | Kept |
|---|---|---|
| Refused (shards already covered, a reheat you cannot pay, no water, a pour too small to give any cold) | Nothing | Everything |
| Short of heat | Reheat, block heat, heat shards | Substance shards, water |
| Attempt runs | What it put in | — |
The window shows before you commit whether the heat is there.
Quenching
A quench is up to 200 units of water poured from a vessel you carry; pour nothing and the material is annealed. The cold a pour gives shows before you commit: more for colder water and water as dense as the lava, as Reference: Crafting gives. Nine units of Caloric 0 water at the lava's own Density give 3 cold. The pour cools the block by as much.
Any cold rolls a quench: your Intelligence against the grade the quality roll
left, plus up to +0.15 for matching cold to the heat the melt needed (largest when equal, gone at
twice the heat) and 0.02 per point of the water's cohesion, capped at 95%.
| Roll | Decides | On failure |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | How much grade survives | A material still forms, at three quarters |
| Quench | The treatment | CRACKED |
| Treatment | Condition | Effect |
|---|---|---|
ANNEALED |
No water poured | No bonus, no risk |
HARDENED |
Quench succeeds | +1 forge point, and one more socket |
CRACKED |
Quench fails | The forged item gets no sockets at all |
Stage 3: fusing materials
| Takes | 2 to 5 materials, no catalyst |
| Substance | Sums axis by axis; grade is worked out again from the total |
| Density | Opposite signs cancel, wholly or in part; grade follows the summed substance |
| Temper | Always lost: two hardened materials make one annealed one |
Stage 4: fabricating
| Where | Inside a Fabrication Bay, not its doorway; its window opens automatically. Not while resting |
| Button | Fabricate; a weapon also has Customize (Smithing) |
| Costs | Stamina, hunger and thirst, scaled to grade (Reference: Costs); a shortfall refuses it and names what is short |
| Roll | Each stat line rolls against your Intelligence; the odds come from the shape, not the grade |
| Grade buys | Stat points, up to 5, or 6 if hardened |
| Below grade 3, unhardened | No stat lines, only sockets. Hardened, the extra point buys one line |
| Always | The item is produced, even if every line misses |
| A weapon's look | Random, or customized into your own shape for free; looks only (Smithing) |
Each slot leads with a primary stat; the secondary gets half the points and is left off at zero. Intelligence is never a craftable bonus.
| Slot | Primary | Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon | Strength | Stamina |
| Arms | Strength | Fortitude |
| Head | Fortitude | Mana |
| Torso | Fortitude | HP |
| Legs | Fortitude | Stamina |
| Shoulders | Reflex | Stamina |
| Feet | Reflex | Stamina |
A material that does not suit the slot carries half the points of its primary stat, rounded down but at least one; it never hands you a stat you did not ask for.
Crafted and found equipment
| Stat lines | Sockets | |
|---|---|---|
| Found equipment | None | Head, torso, legs: one or two, by luck. Arms, weapon: one. Shoulders, feet: one, a quarter of the time, otherwise none |
| Crafted equipment | Up to two, rolled | One per substance axis the material holds, plus one for a quench; none if cracked |
Every socket, found or forged, takes every affinity.
Material weight
Density and cohesion add weight; kinetic adds none. Weight uses magnitude, so diffuse weighs what dense does, and a dense material can outweigh the shards it came from. Formula: Reference: Crafting.
Shapes beyond equipment
The seven equipment slots can be forged from the start. Anything else needs a pattern. Picking up a pattern book (named for its shape, e.g. "Flask (pattern book)") writes the shape into your Smith's Notes as a page and uses the book up; the page stays for life. A book for a shape you already know stays in your pack as a spare you can sell or stash, and spares you carry count too. Books are found in storage rooms, likelier where little of that book or what it forges lies nearby (Stash); a dead smith's ghost leaves a fresh book for every page they knew.
| Shape | Base | Per point | Range | Book found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Satchel | 2,000 g | +1,500 g | — | 3–5 sectors from the origin |
| Flask | 1,000 g | +500 g | 1–4 L | Within 2 sectors |
| Canister | 2,000 g | +500 g | 2–5 L | 3–5 sectors |
| Jug | 5,000 g | +500 g | 5–8 L | Further |
A satchel has no equip slot, socket or stat lines: its points, off the same roll and grade, go to carrying capacity. Vessels take water from Caloric −7 to +8 and keep it warm or cold by the material's Density (Fluids). A missed roll leaves the base.
Naming
No fixed recipes or material names. The Recipes section of your inventory lists the names in the books you carry and offers a name for every unnamed material you hold.
| Signature | Which substance affinities a material carries, with signs, and its treatment; no magnitudes, so grades 6 and 14 of one shape share it |
| Naming | Names every material you hold or make with that signature, and its equipment: a Steel Cuirass instead of a Forged Cuirass |
| Book | Issued at creation; cannot be dropped, put in a container or stashed. Reading draws on every book you carry; writing goes to your own |
| Rules | A signature takes one name, and a name cannot be given to a second signature |
| Sharing | Names are not shared; the object carries its maker's name. A dead smith's names pass to whoever takes their possessions (Graves) |
Catalysts
Binding Salt drops from monsters at every distance and turns up in storage rooms; unlike cloth, it is not limited to the starting sectors.
Provenance
Every material records who fused it; every forged item records who fused each material in it and who forged it. Names are written at making and never change.