There is a lot of ways to get better equipment in Dragon Quest XI. You can complete quests, find loot, buy it, but the best way is by using the fun-size forge. With it being such an important item, one with a number of mechanics and tricks to it, this thing can be overwhelming for ever veteran players. To make the concept a little easier, here is a guide to the basics of the forge.
Dragon Quest XI Fun-Size Forge Facts
Finding Recipes
Before you can do anything with the fun-size forge, you need to locate recipes. A full list of them can be found here, but the main idea is to check every nook and cranny for treasure, including bookshelves, which will allow you to make a wide variety of items. These are important to do in the moment, since they’re typically scaled around when you’re suppose to find it. Once you have the right recipe, it’s time to craft it.
Locating Materials
Much like the real world, simply knowing what you need to make it is not enough to actually make it. This means you need to fight monsters, defeat them and collect the materials needed to craft the item. For the most part, you can likely guess which monster gives the material you need. A slime isn’t going to drop fur, just like you’re not going to get honey from a dragon.
This will help narrow down which new monsters have the potential item you need, with the journal outright telling you what the potential drops are. Once you know what you need to kill, you can focus on killing it until you get the drop(s) required to make the item. Please note, some drops are less common than others, so it might take 50 or more monsters before you get the item you want.
Using the Fun-Size Forge
Even though the forge is straightforward, it requires a certain amount of skill to yield good results. The idea is simple. You start with a temperature, hitting it causes it to decrease and give a set amount of points to a bar, which continues to decrease with the temperature. The trick is to figure out the correct way to hammer said object.
This could be as simple as left, right, left, right and keep repeating until you’re done or as complicated as requiring multiple specific moves. Thankfully, I do not believe any item has a single correct order. Most have multiples, you just have to figure it out based off how you’re progressing.
One of the most important things to remember is to not get greedy. More often than not, once you’re inside the first bar, any additional moves will cause it to move outside of it. So, unless you’re completely certain you know how to proceed, it’s better to leave well them enough alone.
Upgrades
As you and the team level-up, the Fun-Size Forge levels up as well. In increasing your level means you are increasing the amount off Forge Points that you can get. You should know by now that the more forge points you get, the more times you can ‘Bash’ that equipment hoping to reach that critical point when forging. Other times when you level, the Fun-Size forge gets an ability such as being able to ‘Bash’ two squares vertically, or four-squares. Pretty much if you are high-leveled enough, the easier it gets to forge an equipment.
Results
Notice that orange glow?
The objective in forging is to reach that green mark when tampering an equipment. It’s important to be careful when forging because when you go over that green mark, you will break a part of the weapon – yielding you a low leveled equipment. If at some point you get lucky and manage to tamper all squares with critical (orange colored square), you will be getting the perfect forge – yielding you from +1 to +3 bonus stats and you will receive a Perfectionist Orb.
While not everyday is a lucky day, there will be times you will mess up. Don’t worry, you will still get the equipment you crafted. You just won’t be able to get that bonus but you can always rework it by using the Perfectionist Orb that you get upon successful forge or you can buy them at the L’Academie for 100G each.
