The Forge’s Iceberg Island takes the game’s mining grind and replaces it with something quieter but just as demanding: a combat-heavy maze that reconfigures itself every day. There are no ore nodes here, only a rotating shop, tough enemies, and the quests that eventually open the way to the Heavenly Pickaxe.
Requirements and how to reach Iceberg Island
Access to the maze is locked behind Island 3, Frostspire Expanse. You need to reach level 70 to unlock Frostspire Expanse through your portal and teleport there. Once you’re on Frostspire, the maze is not on the same landmass; it sits on a separate iceberg that can only be reached by ferry.
The ferry is also your first real gate. Each trip costs exactly one Coinite. You cannot swim across anymore, and closing the game or dying will send you back to Frostspire Expanse, which means paying again for another attempt.
To prepare:
- Reach level 70 so you can portal into Frostspire Expanse.
- Buy the Void Pickaxe in Frostspire’s store so you can mine Coinite from medium or higher nodes in the Raven Cave.
- Farm Coinite in that Raven Cave until you have several spare pieces; each ferry ride, successful or not, consumes one.
Once you have Coinite and access to Frostspire Expanse:
Step 1: From the main Frostspire hub, move to the far left side of the map where the docks sit. Look for the large ship and the Ferry Operator NPC.
Step 2: Talk to the Ferry Operator and choose to cross. Confirm payment of 1x Coinite. You’ll get a short countdown before the ship departs.
Step 3: Stay on the deck until the cutscene finishes and the boat reaches the iceberg.
Only one player has to pay the fare for the ship to sail, but if you’re relying on strangers, you may end up waiting. Treat Coinite as the default ticket cost and assume you’ll be paying your own way.
Finding the entrance to the Hidden Maze
The iceberg itself is straightforward. After disembarking:
Step 1: Walk straight forward from the ship until you reach a hole in the ground marked as a point of no return.
Step 2: Drop down into the pit. This is where the game notifies you that you’ve discovered the Secret or Hidden Maze.
Step 3: Follow the short tunnel and turn right to reach the actual maze entrance.
Near the early corridors, you’ll encounter the Masked Stranger, who hands out an initial kill quest focused on Iceberg mobs. This quest is separate from the angelic maze quests, but it’s a good way to start engaging with the enemies you’ll be fighting throughout the run.
Enemies inside the Iceberg Maze
The maze trades ore nodes for two new enemy types:
| Enemy | Role in maze | Typical drops | Gold range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skeleton Pirate | Common melee enemy, used in multiple quests | Medium, Large, Greater Essence | ~450–900 |
| Cthulhu Pirate | Higher-HP threat, also quest target | Greater, Superior, Epic Essence | ~750–2,500 |
Both enemies have high health compared to earlier islands and hit hard enough that undergeared players can be deleted in a few hits. They exist primarily to fuel repeatable kill quests rather than to serve as top-tier gold or essence farms.
Death inside the maze is punishing: you are kicked back to Frostspire Expanse and must pay another Coinite to re-enter and re-run the route. If Coinite is scarce for you, it is worth over-preparing with strong armor, healing, and damage gear before committing to extended maze sessions.
How the Iceberg Maze works and why it feels different
The maze is a network of narrow corridors and frequent dead ends that reconfigures itself on a daily schedule. The layout that leads to the merchant and to the angels is stable within a single day across servers, then changes when the maze resets.
That means there is no permanently correct left–right pattern to memorize. Instead, you read subtle cues in the environment and use them as progress markers:
- Environmental differences signal progress. Most corridors look similar, but if you start seeing changes in geometry, props, or lighting, you’re typically moving toward something important instead of looping into a dead end.
- Crossroads usually hide the merchant. When you reach a fork with multiple choices rather than a simple turn, Fungi’s alcove often branches off from one of those paths.
- Long, torch-lit hallways lead to the angels. When the space opens into an unusually long corridor with lit torches, you are close to the main room that holds the Heavenly Pickaxe.
Because dead ends tend to branch off quickly and terminate fast, a basic strategy like hugging one wall and backtracking after short dead ends is normally enough to get you to both key locations within a few minutes, even after a fresh reset.
Finding the Fungi merchant and what she sells
Inside the maze, the most useful NPC you’ll run into early on is the Fungi merchant. She moves when the maze resets, which means her exact corridor changes daily, but her behavior stays consistent.
To track her down:
Step 1: After entering the maze, begin moving through corridors while loosely hugging one side, watching for a true crossroads instead of a simple bend.
Step 2: At the first major crossroads, explore the branching paths. One of them typically ends in Fungi’s shop room, which feels like a small side chamber off the main path.
Fungi’s inventory is where the Iceberg update quietly expands The Forge’s buildcraft:
- Fungi Potion — A powerful mining consumable that grants roughly 20 percent faster mining speed, 15 percent extra mining damage, and a 15 percent luck boost for 600 seconds. It is expensive for early players but efficient once you can afford repeated Raven Cave or high-tier crystal runs.
- Weapon blueprints — Limited recipes for specific weapons such as Executioner’s Great Axe, Shark’s Fang (dagger), Crystallized Broadsword, and Anchored Straight Blade (a great axe, despite the name). Buying a blueprint lets you craft that weapon repeatedly at the forge, subject to normal RNG.
The shop stock refreshes on a timer and shifts location with each maze reset. That makes Fungi a recurring check-in NPC rather than a one-time vendor. If you care about daggers or great axes, it is worth visiting her room every day to see what is currently on offer.
Maze reset time and what it controls
A sign at the maze entrance makes one thing explicit: the maze resets daily. Less clear in-game is when that happens and what resets along with the walls.
The behavior lines up with Fungi’s dialogue. She notes that she moves with the maze, and her shop also has a visible refresh timer. The daily reset that changes the corridor layout is tied to the same schedule as her shop rotation.
| Event | Approximate time | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Daily maze reset | 1 AM CET / 4 PM PST | Corridor layout changes, Fungi’s location moves, her stock refreshes |
There is no in-game countdown for the exact daily flip, so treat these times as the window when you can expect the maze to be different from the previous day. If you are mid-run when the maze resets, you should assume that previously discovered routes and merchant positions will no longer apply the next time you enter.
Reaching the angels and unlocking the Heavenly Pickaxe
The far end of the maze holds the update’s showcase item: the Heavenly Pickaxe. Reaching it is not a puzzle as much as a test of persistence across multiple sessions.
Once you’ve fought through the maze and followed the long, torch-lit corridor, you arrive in a large chamber dominated by a gate. On the other side sits the Heavenly Pickaxe in full view, but you cannot walk or dash through the barrier. Two angel NPCs stand near the entrance to this space.
Interacting with either angel starts a series of Maze Quests focused on killing Skeleton Pirates and Cthulhu Pirates inside the maze:
- Early quests ask you to kill small numbers of each enemy type.
- Completed quests unlock further angelic tasks, forming a repeatable quest line tied to the maze.
- Finishing the required set of angelic quests eventually unlocks the gate to the Heavenly Pickaxe.
Only after completing the full angel quest line can you legitimately approach the Heavenly Pickaxe and buy it. The pickaxe costs in the low millions (around 2.4 million), which is less than the Crimsonite Pickaxe but still a huge investment.
Stat-wise, Heavenly is strong but not game-breaking. It improves on previous pickaxes, but the jump from Heavenly to Crimsonite feels larger than the jump from Void or other high-tier picks up to Heavenly. Many high-level players treat Heavenly as a cosmetic or collection target and continue saving for Crimsonite as their true long-term tool.
There is also a separate masked quest giver near the maze entrance who hands out general kill quests. These are loosely connected to the maze flow but do not directly open the angelic gate. Treat them as optional progression and a way to gain additional rewards while you farm the enemies needed for the angel quests.
Heavenly vs Crimsonite: is the maze pickaxe worth it?
The Heavenly Pickaxe sits in an awkward place in The Forge’s progression curve. On paper it’s the thematic reward for making it through the Iceberg Island maze and finishing the angel quests. In practice, it competes directly with the Crimsonite Pickaxe, which is more expensive but also significantly stronger.
The trade-offs look like this:
| Pickaxe | Cost | Relative power | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavenly Pickaxe | ~2.4M | High | Stylish, accessible once you clear maze quests, stronger than Void and Frostspire picks | Smaller performance gap vs cheaper options, outclassed by Crimsonite |
| Crimsonite Pickaxe | Higher than Heavenly | Very high | Best-in-slot for raw efficiency, faster mining in top-tier areas | More expensive, no maze narrative attached |
If you enjoy the maze and want the Heavenly Pickaxe for its look or as a progression milestone, the purchase is defensible. If your only concern is raw mining efficiency and long-term gold, it is often better to simply clear the angel quests for completion’s sake and then continue grinding gold until you can jump straight to Crimsonite.
Frequently asked questions about the Hidden Maze
Do you have to pay the ferry every time?
Yes. Every crossing consumes one Coinite, whether you are exploring for the first time or returning to the maze to complete additional quests. If someone else in your server pays, you can ride their trip for free, but you should not rely on that if you value consistency.
What happens if you die in the maze?
You respawn back on Frostspire Expanse, not on the iceberg. That death effectively wastes the Coinite you spent for that run, and you must pay again when you want to re-enter the maze. This is the main reason to take the combat inside seriously, even if you are only there to shop.
Is there any ore to mine inside Iceberg Island’s maze?
No. The maze deliberately removes ore nodes from the equation. Your rewards are quest progress, enemy drops, blueprints, and the eventual Heavenly Pickaxe, not raw mining opportunities.
Does the maze reset affect only walls, or everything?
The daily reset changes the corridor layout, moves the Fungi merchant’s location, and refreshes her stock. The angelic chamber and the presence of the Heavenly Pickaxe remain the end goal; you simply take a different route to get there each day.
Is the Fungi Potion worth buying?
For players who spend long stretches mining high-value crystals or farming Coinite, Fungi Potion is extremely efficient. The combined boosts to mining speed, mining damage, and luck over a ten-minute window add up quickly. Its gold cost is high early on, but it shines once you can afford repeated uses in Raven Cave or other lucrative areas.
Iceberg Island’s maze is less about precision pathing and more about resource management: Coinite for entry, time for repeated runs, and patience for the daily shuffle. Treated that way, it becomes a reliable loop for blueprints and a thematic pathway to a flashy mid-to-late-game pickaxe, even if the smartest long-term play is to keep your eyes on Crimsonite.
