Potions sit at the center of The Forge’s risk–reward loop. You mine, fight, and forge with a tight margin for error, and these consumables are how you buy that margin back — either as raw survivability or as time saved on long grinds.
The game keeps the system deliberately small: a handful of clearly defined buffs with simple numbers and short timers. That makes it easy to learn, but it also means each potion matters a lot once you start pushing deeper into Stonewake’s Cross and the Forgotten Kingdom.
Where to buy potions in The Forge
All potions come from one NPC: Maria.
- Stonewake’s Cross: Maria’s main shop sits between Miner Fred’s pickaxe shop and the Forge.
- Forgotten Kingdom: Maria also appears here, opposite the weapon-selling spot.
Each potion is displayed on a cart. Walk up and interact (default: E) to see its name, cost in Gold, and effect.
There’s no cap on how many bottles you can buy. Gold is the only currency involved, earned from quests and selling equipment.
All basic potions in The Forge
At launch, the core potion lineup focuses on five stats: health, damage, speed, luck, and mining efficiency. Each effect runs on a short timer and then disappears; there are no permanent upgrades here.
| Potion | Cost (Gold) | Main effect | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Potion I | 150 | Restores 30 health over time | 5 seconds |
| Health Potion (Recover II) | >150 | Restores 75 health over time | 5 seconds |
| Speed Potion | 200 | +15% movement speed | 60 seconds |
| Damage Potion | 250 | +10% physical damage | 60 seconds |
| Luck Potion | 350 | +20% luck (drop and ore chance) | 300 seconds |
| Miner Potion | 500 | +15% mining speed, +10% mining damage | 300 seconds |
Some in-game labels show a Roman numeral I next to potion names. That’s simply the first tier; more powerful versions already exist in the health line and can plausibly expand to the rest later.
Health potions: small numbers, big impact
Health potions are straightforward heals with a very short window, and they show up in both regular play and at least one quest.
- Health Potion I (150 Gold): recovers 30 HP over 5 seconds.
- Health Potion (Recover II) (price >150 Gold): recovers 75 HP over 5 seconds.
The heal is over time rather than instant, so chugging a bottle during heavy damage doesn’t make you immortal; it just buys a few hits of breathing room. That matters when you’re dragging zombies through caves or pushing into higher-level zones where a single mistake can snowball into a respawn.
Health Potion I also has a specific use in the Forgotten Kingdom. The NPC Isaac, sitting under a tent in the camp with Captain Rowan, asks for a health potion. Handing him Health Potion I is the only way to complete his quest. Giving him a higher-tier heal makes him reject it and you lose nothing but time.
Speed potion: movement as a defensive stat
Speed Potion costs 200 Gold and gives a 15% movement speed boost for 60 seconds.
That sounds small, but in a game where you’re constantly kiting zombies around mining routes, that 15 percent translates into:
- Easier dodges against melee swipes.
- More room to reposition while mining nodes in hostile areas.
- Shorter runbacks through the same tunnels, which adds up over long sessions.
Speed acts like a soft form of mitigation: you take less damage not because your stats changed, but because enemies simply connect with fewer hits before they die or you escape.
Damage potion: compressing combat time
Damage Potion comes in at 250 Gold and grants 10% extra physical damage for 60 seconds.
A flat 10 percent boost is easy to undervalue, but it stacks multiplicatively with your weapon and race choices. In practice, that means:
- Shorter time-to-kill on zombies, especially in groups.
- Less time spent exposed in melee.
- More efficient use of other timed buffs, because fights end quicker.
For melee-focused races and heavy weapons, popping a damage potion before a dense pack or a tougher enemy can be the difference between a clean clear and a slow, resource-draining slog.
Luck potion: making rare drops less rare
Luck Potion is the first buff that really stretches over multiple encounters. It costs 350 Gold and gives +20% luck for 300 seconds.
“Luck” in The Forge influences:
- The chance of rarer ores when mining rocks, boulders, and pebbles.
- Drop quality when farming loot-heavy spots.
Five minutes is long enough to cover a full mining loop or a dedicated loot run. That’s where the potion pays off; the more nodes or enemies you hit while it’s active, the more that 20 percent nudges the math in your favor.
Miner potion: the grind accelerator
Miner Potion is the most expensive standard potion at 500 Gold, and it leans entirely into resource gathering. When you drink it, you get +15% mining speed and +10% mining damage for 300 seconds.
Those two stats do slightly different things:
- Mining speed: how fast your swings land on a node.
- Mining damage: how quickly you chew through the node’s HP per hit.
Combined over five minutes, that turns into a lot less time per ore vein and a much higher number of nodes cleared before the buff drops. In other words: if you’re about to grind ores for a while, starting the session with a Miner Potion gives you noticeably more materials for the same real-world time.
Can potion effects stack?
Yes — and stacking is where potions feel strongest.
You can chain different potions back to back and have their effects overlap. A common example for mining sessions looks like:
- Drink a Luck Potion for +20% luck over 300 seconds.
- Immediately follow with a Miner Potion for faster and stronger mining over the same 300 seconds.
During that five-minute window, every node you hit benefits from both increased yield speed and better chances at rare ores. For combat-heavy runs, you might pair a Damage Potion and a Speed Potion, then hold a Health Potion as a safety valve.
Once a timer runs out, the corresponding buff disappears and you can reapply it with another bottle as long as your inventory (and Gold) hold out.
How to buy and use potions
Buying and drinking potions is simple, but there are a few small details worth calling out.
Step 1: Head to Maria’s shop in either Stonewake’s Cross or the Forgotten Kingdom and walk up to the cart holding the potion you want.
Step 2: Press the interact key (E by default) to open the purchase prompt, confirm the Gold cost, and buy as many bottles as you need.
Step 3: Open your inventory and equip the potion to a usable slot.
Step 4: When you’re ready for the buff, select the potion on your hotbar and press the fire/use button to consume it. The on-screen timer starts immediately.
For NPC deliveries, like Isaac’s request for Health Potion I, you should equip the potion but not drink it. Instead, hold it in your hand and interact with the NPC to hand it over.
Which potions are worth buying for different goals
Gold is finite, especially early on, so it helps to think of potions in terms of what you’re trying to do that session.
- Staying alive in combat: Health Potion I is the cheapest “extra life” you can buy and works well as a backup during tougher cave runs. Pairing it with a Damage Potion lets you both survive and shorten fights.
- Speedrunning resource grinds: Miner Potion is the main lever here. If you’re sitting down for a dedicated ore farming block, combining it with a Luck Potion makes the time investment much more efficient.
- Exploring dangerous areas: Speed Potion gives you a noticeable bump in mobility for dodging and disengaging. Adding Damage or Health on top rounds out your safety net.
- Drop-focused sessions: Luck Potion is the key choice whenever your goal is rare ores or loot rather than XP or quest completion.
The short version: Health Potion I offers the best raw value for combat safety, Luck and Miner potions dominate any kind of grind, and Speed and Damage are flexible tools that become more important as enemies hit harder and zones get riskier.
Used sparingly, potions smooth out early-game spikes and make questing less punishing. Stockpiled and stacked, they turn mining and farming into something much closer to a controlled sprint than a slow walk — which is exactly where The Forge becomes more about planning and less about hoping your next run goes better.
