Game Design Snapshot 1: Dragon Quest XI’s Forge

The Forge menu, displaying all the items you can currently craft. (GIF and screenshot capture by me)

I often discover fascinating game mechanics that make up only a small portion of a game’s design, but still feel worthy of a little bit of discussion. Today I’d like to follow through on that by discussing the Forge system in Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.

DQXI’s Forge, like many other games with item crafting systems, lets you craft useful equipment with materials you’ve gathered throughout the world. However, it puts an interesting twist on the average crafting mechanic:

Woah!

It turns crafting into its own turn-based minigame (applause). The Forge mimics Dragon Quest XI’s traditional turn-based combat system by letting you take turns bashing your chosen item with your hammer, making crafting items to power up your characters feel much more substantial. You don’t actually have to do the minigame if you don’t want to (which means you’re still rewarded for just collecting the bare minimum crafting materials), but if you perform well in it, you can power up the item even more than normal (e.g. You can forge a ‘+3' Wizard’s Staff, which boasts a big boost in power, instead of just a normal Wizard’s Staff if you’re good at the Forge.)

Taking turns Bashing the item and using special “Flourish” abilities, which cost more Focus

Here’s how it works: The Forge’s temperature (displayed in red), gives you a rough indication of how strong your next Bash will be. Bashing one of the displayed sections boosts the completion of the associated gauge (in blue) by a certain amount, and reduces the temperature (thereby reducing the strength of your next Bash). Your goal is to get the blue bar in the tiny green sweet spot near the end of the gauge, and ideally move it precisely under the even tinier diamond in the middle of the green sweet spot. Doing a regular Bash costs a little bit of Focus, of which you have a limited amount. You can spend more Focus to perform Flourishes, i.e. special abilities, that can do things like hit two sections at once, or hit one section just a tiny bit if you want to be precise.

Putting the finishing touches on the staff by carefully calculating my last few moves, based on my remaining Focus

Using the Forge in Dragon Quest XI, then, is a fun little exercise in managing your Focus while carefully noting your progress with each gauge, getting a feel for how the Forge’s temperature correlates to the effectiveness of your next Bash, and a bit of luck (you can score a Critical Hit sometimes, which boosts the gauge greatly, stopping it directly under the diamond if it reaches far enough). It evolves over the course of the game too, with more powerful items having 4 or more gauges you need to fill, and with new Flourishes you gain as you level up your character.

Failing at the Forge still yields the item, but audiovisual feedback makes you feel a little bit bad about it (which, I suppose, gently encourages you to get better at the Forge and get the most out of it)

A successful use of the Forge will get you a +1, +2, or +3 item depending on how many sweet spots / diamonds you managed to hit

I love how Dragon Quest XI’s Forge adds just a bit more depth to the act of crafting items, rewarding you if you take the time to do it right, while still giving you the item if you happen to fail. It’s a small system with some nice depth to it, inside of a huge game filled with plenty of deep, big, and small systems.