Cocklefighting

The Forge upgrades, repairs, salvages and rerolls your gear.

Forging#

Each forge level adds 10% of a piece’s base figures: its main stat, every element and its knack. Caps still hold (see Gear). Wear dulls a knack the way it dulls a stat, in red, until you repair.

Levels stay with the piece and never transfer. Gear can’t be stolen. Lower rarities take the most levels, so an early piece can stay useful for a long time. Every forge also clears the piece’s wear.

The first level costs 28% of the piece’s price (free starter gear pays a flat 20g). Every further level costs 1.5x the last. The last column is what the whole climb costs as a multiple of the piece’s price. Low down, saving for the next tier is usually better. At the top, forging is the only way up.

12 levels cost 257x the first one, so forging a common all the way costs many times a better piece. The first level or two are fairly priced at any tier. On a starter weapon the third level costs more per point than buying up.

Tempers#

Tempers are the Forge’s materials. The other material families are Words (messages and forum), Works (town) and Essences (charms). None can be bought.

Every forge level asks a few tempers beside the gold, set by the piece’s rarity: a common wants 1 Brine Salt, a legendary wants 2 Kelpsteel Ingot, 1 Siren Solder and 1 Leviathan Scale. Starter gear forges on gold alone.

Tempers drop from rewarded wins, each on its own roll up to its own cap (a Cooperage raises every cap). A boss kill rolls them 3 times over. Salvaging a piece can give some back. Your tempers show above the bench and on My Cockle.

Tempers by band

Temper	Band	Drop chance per win	Hold	Drops from level
Brine Salt	Common	8.0%	60	1
Wrack Char	Uncommon	5.5%	40	1
Pearl Grit	Rare	3.5%	24	1
Kelpsteel Ingot	Epic	2.2%	12	1
Siren Solder	Mythic	1.4%	6	40
Leviathan Scale	Legendary	0.9%	4	60
Maelstrom Ember	Primordial	0.8%	2	80
Nacre Flake	Rare	3.0%	20	20
Drift Core	Mythic	1.2%	6	20
Pearlfire	Legendary	0.9%	4	80

Cutting sockets#

The Forge cuts the sockets a piece holds and rolls how many, for gold and tempers; a re-cut is a fresh roll and can leave fewer. How many a piece can hold, what each socket takes and how a socketed charm wears are all on Charms.

Salvage#

A piece you aren’t wearing has two ways out. The Shop buys it for 35% of its price. The Forge salvages it for 20% of its price plus materials: each temper in its rarity’s forge cost has a 35% chance to come back, plus 8% per forge level, capped at 75%. Salvage rarely returns a whole level and never beats fighting.

Either way the piece, its roll and its forge levels are gone. The Shop sells the same piece again with a fresh roll. Deep gear and starter gear can’t be sold or salvaged. Both counters ask you first.

Rerolling#

From level 20 you can reroll a piece at the counter that made it. Forge levels and wear survive. Only the rolls move, and the card’s Lustre reads the new roll. There are two kinds.

Turn moves a figure inside its own range and changes nothing else: a bonus knack keeps its knack, a bonus stat keeps its stat. The card shows the range before you press. Tick as many as you like.

Recast draws a roll fresh, identity and figure both: a bonus knack takes a new knack, a bonus stat a new stat, a whorl a new whorl. It may land on what it already was. A copy never carries the same knack, stat or whorl twice. Ticking the whole roll rerolls every figure on the piece. That is the only way to move the rating and its elements, and the only way to change how many bonus knacks and stats the copy has.

Each act costs gold and a material per figure, summed. A Turn costs half a first forge level and a Nacre Flake. A Recast costs three quarters of one. A whorl costs a level and a quarter to Turn and half again to Recast, with a Pearlfire either way. The whole roll costs a first forge level and a Drift Core. Higher rarities also ask their own temper: a Recast from rare up, a Turn from epic up.

Charms reroll the same way on the Charms page with Murk Ink, Foam Flakes and Whorl Oil, priced against a waken level. A piece that rolled a whorl also asks 1 Pearlfire at every forge level, and such a charm 1 Whorl Oil at every waken.

Revealing deep gear#

A primordial piece arrives unrevealed in your inventory. Every figure reads as nothing until you reveal it here, one press per figure, rolled as you press. The rating comes first (a Siren Solder and 25% of the piece’s first forge level in gold) and makes the piece wearable. Then any stat or bonus stat (a Leviathan Scale, 10%), a knack (a Maelstrom Ember, 15%) and a whorl (a Pearlfire, 30%). A half-revealed piece fights on its revealed figures alone. Nothing on a piece can be rerolled until all of it is revealed.

Price list#

Every price the two counters ask for a piece. A Turn costs less than a Recast of the same figure. A bonus knack or stat costs less than the whole roll. A whorl costs at least the Recast and at most half again. The whole roll costs at least a first forge level. Revealing climbs stat, knack, whorl, 1 temper each. Before any town cut.

Every price is a share of the piece’s first forge level, so a rarer piece pays the same list at its own scale: Leviathan Jaw about 512x, The First Hunger about 2,858x, plus the band’s own temper from the table above.

A keystone is a family’s tier-17 legendary, the top of the Shop. Each costs a Pearlfire beside the gold. The standard line’s top tier costs gold only, so the climb is never gated behind a drop.

Wear#

Every fight you start adds 1 point of wear to every equipped piece, win or lose. Equipped gear also takes 2 a day whether you fight or not, capped at 7 days’ worth while you are away. The first 3 points cost nothing. Gear in your inventory never wears.

Past that, each point costs a common unforged piece 1% of its base figures: stats, elements and knacks alike. Higher rarities lose less, down to 0.5% on a legendary. Each forge level takes off a further 4%, floored at half the rarity’s rate. A piece never falls below its rarity’s floor, and your own stats always fight:

Ways to beat it: the Quenching Tide repairs everything you own once a day. The repairs below top a piece up between tides. The Saltworks soaks a share of the daily wear, and the Careening Beach and Drydock repair while you rest. A Rust-Proof whorl never wears and takes the rest of your gear’s wear onto itself. A full primordial set can hold wear off all your gear. Condition reads as one word everywhere: Mint from 97%, Dulled from 85%, Worn from 60%, Worn out from 0%.

The wear markSits beside a piece’s forge level everywhere gear shows: My Cockle, the bench, battle reports and rival profiles. Those two chips are what you put in and what wear took out.It is quiet under 6% and turns red past it, which is about where a repair is worth it.

Attack 74−10

What it costsThe figure the piece fights with now, and a red figure beside it for what wear takes. Stats, elements and the sheet on My Cockle all read the same way.

A repair costs a temper and a little gold. Open Repair on a piece and pick one. A Quick repair (1 Brine Salt) takes 40% of the wear off, every time. A Lucky repair (1 Pearl Grit) takes from 60% to all of it off, and the bench shows how it landed. A Full repair (up to 2 Brine Salt) takes all of it off, every time. It costs what the Quick repairs it saves would have cost: 1 on a piece a single rub would clean, 2 on anything more, never more.

Repair all takes every worn piece you own to full for each piece’s own Full repair, summed: up to 2 Brine Salt a piece, and the same gold each would cost alone. A piece in your inventory keeps its wear, so Repair all covers worn and unworn alike.

The same repair costs the same temper at any rarity. The gold is 0.1% of the piece’s price per point removed, weighed by the rarity’s resistance. A fully worn common costs about 18g to repair where the Shop charges 35g, so repairing never beats rebuying. Bellows Walk takes its cut off the gold. The Quenching Tide below repairs everything free once a day.

The Quenching Tide#

Once a day at UTC midnight, the Forge repairs every piece you own for free, equipped or not. The blessing then lasts your next 60 fights: equipped gear takes no wear, fight or daily, and every rewarded win pays 25% bonus XP. Time it to a fighting session.

It is gear’s half of the day’s upkeep. Charms have their own, the Dredging Tide, at the same midnight: take both and everything you own is repaired for nothing.

Rivals forge too#

Every rival on the Battle list carries the forge levels a same-level player could have paid for, from the same earnings that buy their gear and waken their charms. Some are forge obsessives who keep low gear forged far past its tier. See Progression for the economy.