The Gold Forge
How the Gold Forge turns SHARDS into KEEP each UTC day: requirements, daily caps, the payout formula, claiming, raid risk, and the item drop table.
The GOLD FORGE is the only place in Pixel Kingdom Wars where SHARDS become KEEP. Once a day you smelt SHARDS into a shared pot; at UTC midnight the day's KEEP emission is split among everyone who contributed, and every contributing base also gets a roll on the Forge's item drop table. This is a devnet playtest: the KEEP and SOL mentioned here are test-net tokens with no real value.
Quick facts
- Build: 2,500 SHARDS, 60 seconds, requires Keep level 3 and purchased land.
- One cycle per UTC day. Contributions close at the next UTC midnight; the server tells you the exact time left.
- Daily contribution cap depends on Forge level: 2,000 SHARDS at L1 up to 200,000 at L20.
- Daily emission: 273,972 KEEP shared pro rata across all contributing bases.
- Soft cap: 350,000 SHARDS server-wide; below it you earn about 0.78 KEEP per SHARD, above it everyone's rate dilutes.
- Smelted SHARDS are burned. KEEP lands as CLAIMABLE and expires after 30 days if unclaimed.
- Open-Forge SHARDS can still be raided until the day settles.
- Item drops: one independent roll per item per base per day, at most one copy of each item per day.
What the Forge does
SHARDS are your base's building money; KEEP is the token that belongs to your wallet. SHARDS cannot be withdrawn or traded, and the only gameplay route from SHARDS to KEEP is the Gold Forge. (The reverse direction, KEEP to SHARDS, is a plain 1:1 converter — see Economy: Shards and KEEP.)
Why: Keeping the conversion inside one building lets the game hand out a fixed, predictable amount of KEEP each day. The 500,000,000-KEEP play pool is spread over 5 years, which is where the 273,972 KEEP daily figure comes from (500,000,000 ÷ (5 × 365), rounded down).
Requirements and cost
- You must own land. Without a paid Land Deed the Forge cannot be built or used, because the SHARDS-to-KEEP faucet is deliberately a building on your land rather than a menu anyone can open.
- Your Keep must be level 3 or higher.
- Building costs 2,500 SHARDS and takes 60 seconds.
- Until the build finishes, the Forge counts as level 0: the screen shows NOT BUILT or LOCKED, and contributions are refused with a prompt to build a Gold Forge first.
Upgrades
Upgrading the Forge raises your daily contribution cap. Upgrades cost SHARDS and time, and — unlike most buildings — every upgrade from L2 upward also costs devnet SOL, paid from your wallet to the game's liquidity wallet: 0.10 SOL for L2, then +0.05 SOL per level (0.15 at L3, up to 1.00 SOL at L20).
| Target level | SHARDS | Devnet SOL |
|---|---|---|
| L2 | 182 | 0.10 |
| L3 | 290 | 0.15 |
| L4 | 464 | 0.20 |
| L5 | 741 | 0.25 |
| L6 | 1,180 | 0.30 |
| L7 | 1,890 | 0.35 |
| L8 | 3,010 | 0.40 |
| L9 | 4,810 | 0.45 |
| L10 | 7,690 | 0.50 |
| Target level | SHARDS | Devnet SOL |
|---|---|---|
| L11 | 12,300 | 0.55 |
| L12 | 19,600 | 0.60 |
| L13 | 31,200 | 0.65 |
| L14 | 49,900 | 0.70 |
| L15 | 79,700 | 0.75 |
| L16 | 128,000 | 0.80 |
| L17 | 203,000 | 0.85 |
| L18 | 324,000 | 0.90 |
| L19 | 517,000 | 0.95 |
| L20 | 826,000 | 1.00 |
Upgrade times run from 2 hours (L1 to L2) up to 7 days (L19 to L20). The SHARD curve is the same one the Keep uses.
The daily cycle
Each Forge day runs on UTC time and closes at the next UTC midnight. The server reports the cycle's end time directly, so a wrong clock on your phone or laptop cannot mislead you. Once you have put SHARDS in for the day, the Forge header reads SMELTING (before that it reads READY); the THIS CYCLE tab shows the current global pot, and MY LEDGER shows your past days and what is claimable.
Within a day you can contribute as many times as you like, up to your Forge's cap for that day. The cap is per base (per Land Deed) and resets at midnight.
Contribution caps by Forge level
| Forge level | Cap (SHARDS/day) | Forge level | Cap (SHARDS/day) |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | 2,000 | L11 | 22,700 |
| L2 | 2,550 | L12 | 28,900 |
| L3 | 3,250 | L13 | 36,800 |
| L4 | 4,150 | L14 | 46,900 |
| L5 | 5,300 | L15 | 59,800 |
| L6 | 6,750 | L16 | 76,200 |
| L7 | 8,600 | L17 | 97,100 |
| L8 | 11,000 | L18 | 124,000 |
| L9 | 14,000 | L19 | 158,000 |
| L10 | 17,800 | L20 | 200,000 |
If you try to exceed the cap, the server refuses with a message like "this Gold Forge's daily cap is N shards at level L — X left today." These cap values are marked as playtest placeholders in the code, so expect them to be tuned.
How the payout is calculated
At midnight the server settles the whole day in one step. For each base it takes the net position — SHARDS you contributed minus any SHARDS raiders took from your open Forge that day — and compares it with the global total of all net positions:
payout = floor( yourNet × 273,972 ÷ max(globalTotal, 350,000) )- If the whole server contributed 350,000 SHARDS or fewer, the divisor is the soft cap, so the rate is 273,972 ÷ 350,000 ≈ 0.7828 KEEP per SHARD. Any emission not captured simply stays in the pool for the future.
- If the server contributed more than 350,000, the full 273,972 KEEP is paid out and everyone's rate shrinks proportionally.
- The rate is always below 1 KEEP per SHARD by design (the code calls this the sub-parity invariant).
- There is no per-wallet share cap, dust floor, or refund on the live path.
Worked example: you smelt 2,000 SHARDS (a full L1 cap) on a quiet day where the global total is under 350,000. Your payout is floor(2,000 × 273,972 ÷ 350,000) = 1,565 KEEP. On a busier day with a 700,000 global total, the same 2,000 SHARDS pay floor(2,000 × 273,972 ÷ 700,000) = 782 KEEP.
At settlement your contributed SHARDS are burned — they leave the game for good — and the KEEP moves from the emission pool into a payout escrow under your base's name.
Tip: The payout depends on everyone else's activity, so the same SHARDS can be worth more on quiet days. You cannot see the final rate until midnight, but THIS CYCLE shows the running global pot.
Settlement is deferred while any contributing base is in the middle of a live raid, so on rare occasions your day may settle a little after midnight.
Claiming and expiry
Settled KEEP is not credited automatically. It appears under CLAIMABLE on the Forge screen and in MY LEDGER, and you tap to claim it into your wallet's KEEP balance.
- Unclaimed allocations expire after 30 days and return to the emission pool (never to the game's treasury).
- One claim tap resolves up to 30 days' worth of allocations; if more remain, the screen offers another tap.
- A claim goes to whoever currently owns the deed. Settlement and claims are tied to the base, so if you sell your Land Deed, unclaimed Forge KEEP goes with it.
- Your ledger history shows 30 days by default (up to 90). The public per-day list on THIS CYCLE shows the last 14 settled cycles with abbreviated wallet addresses; days still open are not listed.
Raids and the open Forge
SHARDS you have put into today's Forge are not safe until the day settles. A raider's lootable pool is your base's liquid SHARDS plus anything sitting in the open Forge, and a successful raid reduces your Forge position for that day. Only the net position (contributed minus raided) earns KEEP and counts for drops.
Why: The Forge is a SHARD sink, not a vault. If open-Forge SHARDS were untouchable, dumping everything into the Forge each morning would make a base raid-proof for free. See Raids and loot for how much a raid can take.
KEEP, by contrast, is never raidable. Once claimed, it belongs to your wallet.
Daily item drops
Every base that ends the day with a positive net position gets one independent roll for each item in the drop table — the panel is labeled DAILY DROPS · INDEPENDENT PER DEED. The roll is deterministic (derived from the day, the base, and the item), the size of your contribution does not change the odds as long as it is above zero, and there is no global quantity cap. You can receive at most one of each item per base per day (the owner's ceiling constant is 2, but the current roll design yields one). Drops go straight into the base's inventory in the same step as the payout, and an owed drop is never lost even if your backpack is full.
Consumables
| Item | Odds per base per day |
|---|---|
| KEG OF HASTE | 8.00% |
| FINISHER'S SEAL | 4.00% |
| POWDER CHARGE | 2.00% |
| WARZONE AEGIS | 0.25% |
WARZONE AEGIS is Forge-only: it can never be bought or sold. The other three are also sold in the Shop for KEEP.
Elite training writs (Forge-only)
| Item | Odds per base per day |
|---|---|
| DRAGON TRAINING WRIT | 1.20% |
| GLOAMFANG TRAINING WRIT | 0.80% |
| HEXBARROW TRAINING WRIT | 0.50% |
| DIREWYVERN TRAINING WRIT | 0.30% |
Using a writ unlocks that troop for your whole account permanently. If you already have the unlock, the writ is not consumed — sell it on the market instead.
Warden hero gear (Forge-only)
| Item | Slot | Odds per base per day |
|---|---|---|
| MARCHER'S GREAVES | boots | 2.50% |
| SIEGE GAUNTLETS | gloves | 1.80% |
| WARDEN'S HELM | helm | 1.00% |
| KEEPWARD SIGNET | ring | 1.00% |
| SHARDPLATE CUIRASS | chest | 0.60% |
| Item | Slot | Odds per base per day |
|---|---|---|
| VOIDWEAVE CLOAK | cloak | 0.60% |
| BULWARK OF THE DEEP KEEP | offhand | 0.60% |
| AMULET OF THE FIRST SHARD | amulet | 0.40% |
| BREAKER OF GATES | weapon | 0.40% |
| BANNER OF THE NINE | banner | 0.15% |
Since 2026-08-16 the Forge is the only source of hero gear. You can own up to 2 of each piece (1 BANNER OF THE NINE); spare unequipped copies can be sold for devnet SOL on the item market. Stats and the Warden set bonus are covered in Items, gear, and inventory.
The writ and gear odds are marked in the code as assumptions awaiting owner tuning, so treat them as current rather than final.
What is and isn't live
- The Forge is live in production behind a server kill switch (
FORGE_ENABLED); it is on unless operators turn it off. - The KEEP-to-SHARDS converter works independently of that switch and does not require land.
- An older wallet-based Forge path with a 30% share cap and refunds is deprecated and only serves unmigrated legacy state; the per-deed settlement described here is the live one.