So I wanted to detail how to improve the current forge because right now it punishes players for building weapons before upgrading the forge. Instead make it a weapon leveling system.
Each weapon starts at Forge 0 with no upgrades. The cost to build this weapon is minimal but it does require a blueprint. The next upgrade requires Forge level 1 and another blueprint but the cost is lower than the current system. This continues to the max Forge level, each time it requires a blueprint and costs some gold. No step can be skipped so the gold costs would have to be greatly reduced since every player is paying for every step from level 0 all the way up to the max Forge level.
In addition to this, blueprints can only be acquired once per Forge level. So if the Forge caps at level 20, that means you could only acquire a specific blueprint 21 times (once at rank 0, and 20x for each Forge level). After that you would never get that blueprint on that character ever again. This provides enough grind, but doesn't punish players for not crafting/upgrading a weapon.
So let's say a new player loves Lycus. They play him for a while and eventually get Spinning Coin. They can craft it and try it out to compare it versus Dolores. Eventually the get Pepper Pot and they want to craft and try it too, except now it is level 0, while Spinning Coin is level 4. They keep playing and eventually get all of the possible blueprints for Dolores even though their Forge is not level 20 yet. This means that any future blue blueprints will be either Spinning Coin or Pepper Pot.
If that player eventually collects all 62 blue blueprints then any time they run Lycus and would get a blue blueprint, they instead get a chance for a 1.5x experience booster. That way treasure hunter works the same and they could fail just like with a blueprint.
This system would accomplish a few things. First the grind would be defined and players could work towards a weapon even if they got the other one since that is one less drop in that blueprint pool. Second, it would give players a better sense of progression as they would constantly be upgrading weapons as they acquired blueprints and their Forge level increased. Third, the cost of the upgrade would be more appropriate for new players since the cost would only increase each time a weapon was upgraded. So it would start out cheap and increase as the item leveled. This would also allow players to try out various weapons before deciding which one to invest in.
Anyway, I'm all for a long grind with some RNG, but eventually a player should max out a weapon and never have to get that blueprint again. It would be nice if players could track their progress and see how many Dolores blueprings they still need and know how many more times it could be upgraded though.
