Forging magic items and item slots

Who can forge an item, what it costs in gems, how artifacts differ, and which slots a commander has to wear them in, with the Inspector's item counts.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake6 min read

Forging turns gems into a magic item that a commander can carry. This page explains the rules around it: who does it, what limits what a nation can make, what it costs, how the one-of-a-kind artifacts differ, and where on a commander an item can go. The items table lists every item with its stats; this page is the part the table cannot show. We report the manual’s account and have not re-measured any of it.

Who forges, and where

The Construction school lets a nation make magic items. The order is “Forge Item”, given to a mage who is in a laboratory. The mage uses up the gems the item calls for. The manual says the mage needs the requisite skill, and the item’s own path requirement is how the manual states it: the path letters in an item’s row are the skill required to forge it, and they also decide the cost.

The manual gives a shortcut for forging the same item every turn: select the mage and press Shift and o. Rituals have a similar one on Rituals.

What the manual does not say is whether any commander with the right path can forge, or whether he must be a mage by some other test. It speaks of “a mage” throughout.

What a nation can forge

Which items a nation may forge depends on how far it has researched Construction. The item tables in the manual’s appendix are grouped by item kind and then by Construction level: level 1 items are called magical trinkets, level 3 lesser magical items, level 5 greater magical items, level 7 very powerful magical items and level 9 unique magical artifacts. Our Inspector data holds only these five levels: 32 items at level 1, 117 at level 3, 138 at level 5, 91 at level 7 and 118 at level 9, 496 in all. How a nation reaches each level is on Spell research.

Once a nation has researched the right level, the manual says an ordinary item can be made without limit, as long as the mage has the skill and the gems are there. Two kinds of item are the exception:

• Some items cannot be forged at all and are only found by chance. The appendix does not list those.
• Some are restricted to certain nations and are hidden from every other nation’s forge. The manual’s example is the Black Halberd for Ulm. A restricted item that a nation can make shows on a dark blue background in the forge. In the Inspector, 29 items carry a nation restriction.
• Some items are cheaper for certain nations. The example is the Blacksteel Sword for Ulm, which shows on a grey background. The Inspector has 78 items with a nation discount.

What it costs

The cost comes from the item’s path requirement. The manual’s table gives the number of gems for each path level, and the item pays that for each path it needs, in gems of the matching type. Blood items cost blood slaves in place of gems. The levels are:

• Path level 1: 5 gems
• Path level 2: 10
• Path level 3: 15
• Path level 4: 20
• Path level 5: 30
• Path level 6: 40
• Path level 7: 55
• Path level 8: 70

The manual’s worked example is the Sword of Many Colors, which needs Earth 4 and Astral 3. It costs 20 Earth gems and 15 Astral gems. The gem types and where they come from are on Magic gems and blood slaves. The manual’s cost table stops at 8, and it does not explain how a path requirement of 9 or more would be priced, if one exists.

Of the Inspector’s 496 items, 323 need one path and 173 need two.

Unique artifacts

Items of Construction level 9 are the artifacts, and the game never holds two copies of the same one. If a given artifact is already out there, nobody can forge it again. Forging any of them requires the nation to have reached level 9 in Construction.

A game setting limits a nation to forging one artifact per turn. The manual says it is on by default and gives the reason that it makes the artifacts meaningful for nations that research slowly. We have not checked this setting’s behaviour.

An artifact that nobody has made can start to yearn for its creation. A yearning artifact costs half the usual price to forge. The manual lists four events that can start the yearning, and each one adds 50 percent to the yearning rate:

• Some nation has reached Construction level 9 in research.
• Someone has cast the Forge of the Ancients global enchantment.
• Someone has taken the Throne of Creation.
• Someone has taken the Throne of the Artificer.

With one event, the manual says an artifact has a 50 percent chance per month of starting to yearn. It does not say what happens with two or more events, other than that each event adds 50 percent. We do not state a total.

All 118 Inspector items at level 9 are marked unique, and no item of any other level is, which matches the manual.

Where an item is worn

A commander’s inventory is where equipment goes. In a province with a laboratory, clicking an empty slot opens the nation’s magic item inventory, and picking an item from there fits it to that slot. Gems are carried in a separate place, with a limit of 40 per commander.

The manual says not all units have all slots. A typical human commander has the full set. A creature that is not human may have no head slot, or no feet. A mounted commander has a foot slot that does nothing while he is mounted, since the mount does the walking; if he is dismounted, his magic boots work. A commander’s mount has a barding slot of its own. The manual shows a picture of the commander’s slots, which is not in the text we work from, so we do not give the number of hand or misc slots here.

The Inspector sorts its 496 items into ten slot kinds:

• Misc: 176
• One-handed weapon: 91
• Body armour: 56
• Two-handed weapon: 50
• Crown: 28
• Shield: 25
• Feet: 24
• Missile weapon: 19
• Head: 17
• Barding: 10

The manual’s own appendix groups helmets as one kind and does not name a crown. We do not know whether the Inspector’s crown items belong to the head slot or compete with it. Treat the head and crown split as a question, not a rule.

A unit’s standard equipment cannot be removed. A magic item over it improves the unit, and when the item is taken off, the standard item shows again.

What the manual leaves out

• It does not say how many hand, misc or foot slots a typical commander has in text.
• It does not give the cost for an item whose requirement exceeds level 8.
• It does not say how large a nation’s discount is.