Gold sits behind almost every decision in The Forge. It pays for stronger pickaxes, lets you upgrade weapons and armor, and keeps you supplied with potions. The game throws small payouts at you for nearly everything, but a few loops are far more efficient than others.
Craft gear instead of selling raw ore
Vendors will happily buy your ores on the spot, but that exchange rate is bad. Turning those same ores into equipment before selling multiplies your income with almost no extra risk.
Why forging first is better
Raw common and uncommon ores sell for tiny amounts, even in bulk. When you drop 20–25 of those ores into the forge and craft a weapon or armor piece, the resulting item often sells for two to five times the value of the ore pile.
For example, selling a stack of quartz directly gives only a few hundred gold. Forging that same amount into a helmet or chestplate can push the sale price into the low thousands, even when the roll is not perfect.
What to craft for profit
- Great Axes / Gran Hachas: Use 20–22 total ores of any mix to push the forge preview toward a Great Axe. Probabilities around 60–70% are common at that amount. A single Great Axe in the “excellent” range can clear well over 1,000 gold when sold.
- Skull Crushers / heavy hammers: Require around 30 ores. These cost more material but sell for more when you land them.
- Heavy helmets and chestplates: Feeding ~25–46 ores into an armor recipe with a “heavy” outcome almost always beats selling that ore raw. Even a mid-roll heavy helmet can be worth several times its material cost.
- Colossal and Battle Axes tier weapons: Once you reach higher-tier recipes, only bother with weapons in the Battle Axes class or above. Lower-class weapons eat the same ores but pay far less.
Higher rarity ores (uncommon, rare) improve both stats and resale price. There is no penalty for mixing compatible ores as long as you hit the required total count and stay in the correct weight/class band.
How to run an efficient forge-and-sell loop
Even with some unlucky rolls yielding swords or lighter gear, the average payout per ore stays far above what you would get from dumping ore stacks directly to Greedy Cey or similar NPCs.
Mass craft Great Axes for early-game income
Before you unlock heavier recipes, Great Axes are the simplest, most repeatable way to turn starter ores into useful money.
Why Great Axes work so well
- They only require 20–22 total ores, which is easy to farm early.
- The forge often shows a roughly two-thirds chance to hit the Great Axe outcome at that amount.
- Any common or uncommon ore works, and you can freely mix types.
- Sale values over 1,000 gold per axe are common even without perfect forging.
Once you reach the point where minerals “overflow” in your inventory, dumping spare quartz, amethyst, topaz, dark bones, and similar materials into this recipe becomes a reliable money printer.
How To farm Great Axes
Players routinely walk away with 7,000–16,000 gold after clearing a batch of a dozen or so Great Axes, even with some bad luck mixed in.
Turn spare essences into direct gold
Essences drop from enemies and power the Enhancer NPC, but they also sell for strong amounts of gold when you have more than you need.
How essence selling works
- Essence comes in tiers: small, medium, large, epic, superior, and more.
- High-tier essences (epic, superior) fetch the highest prices and are central to fast money farms.
- Essence vendors such as Greedy Cey accept essence and will quote you a combined total for everything you select.
Dumping a modest pile of essence at once can net tens of thousands of gold. For example, clearing out a stash of mixed-tier essence can easily hit around 18,000 gold, even when the pile does not look huge.
When to sell essence vs. when to keep it
- Keep enough essence to upgrade your current main weapon and armor at the Enhancer NPC.
- Sell duplicate or excess essence once your core gear is upgraded to a point you are comfortable with.
- Avoid selling rare runes. Runes sell for trivial amounts and are much more useful socketed on gear.
How to cash out essence
This method scales with power. The stronger your PvE build, the more enemies you can mow down per hour, and the faster the gold piles up.
Farm magma and Volcanic Depths for essences and XP
Enemy-dense areas like the magma zone and Volcanic Depths double as leveling and money hotspots, because every kill adds both XP and valuable loot.
Magma tunnel farm
Just past the main cave, a magma section hides behind breakable or glitchable rocks. Once inside, you can loop through a tight area filled with mobs that drop essences at a high rate.
This loop is especially effective for players who enjoy combat-focused gameplay and want to level and earn gold at the same time.
Volcanic Depths late-game farm
Once you unlock Ashen Passage and Volcanic Depths, that region becomes one of the highest-paying PvE farms.
With solid gear, this loop can reach tens of thousands of gold per hour while also driving your character level and Index progress forward.
Use quests as a passive income engine
Quests in The Forge are not just tutorials or XP bonuses. Many of them deliver large gold payouts with very little extra effort, especially when you stack multiple at once.
Quest types that matter most for money
- One-time questlines: The Portal Tool quest leading to the Forgotten Kingdom, character quests from Masked Strange, Malik, Isaac, Amber, and quests such as Bard’s Guitar offer good early-game payouts and unlock key tools.
- Daily-style repeatable quests: NPCs in the Forgotten Kingdom and inside the Stonewake’s Cross cave offer repeatable objectives like mining specific ores or killing specific enemies, with gold attached each time.
- High-value dailies: Missions like the hooded stranger at the mine entrance can be repeated every 24 hours and are specifically called out as strong money and XP farms.
Monke quest: a quick 10,000 gold spike
Before fully diving into forging, one of the most efficient early money bursts comes from the Monke NPC near the Forgotten Kingdom.
This payout arrives very early in progression and can cover your first big pickaxe upgrade or several key potions and rerolls.
General quest stacking strategy
Quests like Captain Rowan’s cave missions or Sensei Moro’s tasks around the forge area are specifically highlighted as strong, repeatable money and XP sources.
Claim Index rewards and upgrade your pickaxe
Two quiet systems significantly affect how fast you can earn: the Index and your pickaxe tier.
Index Tab: hidden gold payouts
The Index tracks first-time discoveries: new ores, new crafted items, and new monsters defeated. Each first entry typically comes with a gold and XP reward that must be manually claimed.
For players who explore broadly instead of staying in one cave, this can add up to a meaningful amount of gold with essentially no grind.
Pickaxe upgrades and selling old tools
Your pickaxe determines how fast you gather ores and which rocks you can break. Upgrading it early is one of the best ways to speed up every money-making method.
- Stonewake’s Pickaxe is a key early milestone; it greatly improves ore income.
- More expensive pickaxes break harder rocks and reach higher-tier ores, feeding better forging and higher sale prices.
You can partially fund each upgrade by selling your old pickaxe, but the game only lets you sell it if you own a second pickaxe.
This approach keeps you moving up the pickaxe ladder without needing to farm the entire cost from scratch every time.
Optimize your loop: play normally, cash out smart
The strongest money flow in The Forge comes from combining these systems instead of treating them separately. A typical efficient session looks like this:
Played this way, The Forge stops feeling like a grind and starts to resemble a tight economy game where nearly every action pays out two or three times: once in raw drops, once in forged value, and again in quest and Index rewards.
