4Game

The Forge. The center of every mid-game Viking's universe, it gives you armor to survive and weapons to vanquish your foes. It's also really, really heavily dependent on the swamp/iron. The upgrade progression doesn't make sense and is partially to blame as to why people feel slighted by the lack of upgrades for the black forge, because they've had a fully maxed forge for THREE biomes.

I think this should be fixed/changed.

Currently:

You obtain the forge in the black forest. You can upgrade it twice in the forest, leaving you with a level 3 forge before you get to the swamp. Bronze armor can be upgraded to level 3 during this time (this is important later when we talk about balance changes). You then go to the swamp and can upgrade the forge FOUR more times during your time there, which leaves you with a fully maxed forge; you can now upgrade any (metal) weapon and any (metal) armor to tier 4.

There is currently NO progression for the forge in Mountains or Plains (despite using it for all Mountain and Plains weapons and heavy armor).

Change To:

Still obtain forge and the first two upgrades in the Black Forest. Bronze upgradable to level 3.

Remove TWO of the upgrades from the Swamp. So, for instance, keep the grinding wheel and the forge bellows. Change the bellows to use iron instead of wood (the legs seem to be made of metal, anyway).

Swamp now limits you to forge level 5. Change iron armor to require a level 2 forge to build (currently level 1, same as bronze). This would allow you to upgrade iron armor to level 3 just like you did with bronze in the black forest.

Change one of the current forge upgrades (tool rack?) to use silver rather than iron. It now requires you to go to the mountains to get Forge Level 6. Change silver armor to require a level 3 forge to make. This will allow you to upgrade silver to level 3 in the mountains.

Leave the last upgrade (anvil?) to the Plains and change the iron to black metal. This makes obtaining the blast furnace more of a priority, so you can upgrade your silver armor to level 4 to raid fuling camps. It also correctly places the last forge upgrade in the last biome you're going to use it in. Change padded armor to require forge level 4 and require the last upgrade to get padded armor to level 4.

This would keep progression fairly continuous and make upgrading the previous tier a better choice overall. For instance, when you get to the mountains, it might be more useful to use your first silver on upgrading your forge and upgrading your iron armor rather than just building (and upgrading) silver armor immediately.

It would help even out the armor tiers and give more linearity to upgrade progression. It also gives more value to the boss items.