Reforging is one of those Shadow Dungeon systems that looks more complicated than it is because the item card is already throwing six other ideas at your face.
The useful mental model is: reforging lets you clean up the element on gear you otherwise like.
Equipment elemental reforge
The blacksmith tutorial in full-release gameplay says this reforge will randomly reset:
- elemental damage types on the equipment
- how the elemental bonus is distributed
But the total amount of elemental bonus stays the same.
So if an item has a useful total elemental roll but the damage is split into elements your build does not care about, reforging gives you a chance to push it toward the one you actually use.
Skill-element reforge
There is also a separate reforge for equipment that carries additional skill effects.
The tutorial states that this changes the elemental damage type attached to the skill effect but does not change that effect’s numerical strength.
That difference matters. You are not rerolling the entire trigger into a new skill; you are adjusting the element tied to the effect.
Why this matters so much for elemental builds
Imagine you are playing a Lightning Sorcerer and you find a weapon with:
- +Lightning Ball levels
- a useful triggered skill
- good general stats
- but frost/physical elemental bonuses
Throwing the whole item away is wasteful. Reforging gives you a way to chase lightning alignment without needing the exact item to drop again.
That is the strongest early use case we have actually seen.
What reforging does not prove
We do not currently have official tables for:
- exact probability of each element
- pity systems
- fixed gold cost scaling across every item level
- a guaranteed number of rerolls to hit your desired element
The tested player initially called reforging cheap, then watched the cost add up after enough misses. That is the honest takeaway: a single roll may feel cheap; stubbornly forcing a perfect item can still eat gold.
A practical early-game rule
Reforge an item when:
- the base item is already good for your class
- the skill levels/effects are worth keeping
- the elemental mismatch is the obvious problem
- you can afford several misses without emptying your entire wallet
Do not reforge every leveling weapon because “crafting exists.” You replace gear quickly in the campaign.
Reforge vs enchant vs enhance
The Steam store lists Reforging, Enchanting & Enhancement as separate systems. Do not blur them together.
This page only documents what we have verified for reforging. As we get clean 1.0 footage for the other systems, they should get their own exact guides rather than one giant speculative crafting page.
