The Workings — Realm Foundry

01 / The loop, today

Four Steps

Everything in the first half of this page explains one of these

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1. Kill something that curses you

When a monster that burns, poisons, bleeds, roots, stuns, weakens or otherwise curses you dies, it leaves a residue on the cell it fell on. It stays for three rounds. Hazard ground, the slag and spores and grave-salt some floors fight on, can be scraped too.

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2. Harvest it, in the fight

Stand on it or beside it and press K, or the HARVEST button next to GUARD. It costs your supportive action for the turn, the same one you would spend on a heal. Nothing survives the end of the fight except what is already in your bags.

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3. Work a weapon at the Tavern

Open THE BENCH. Pick a Rare or better main-hand weapon, a residue, and a ground reagent. The bench shows you the exact line the weapon will carry, and why, before you commit. Committing binds the weapon to you.

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4. Go deeper, and it wakes up

A fresh working is faint. Every fight you win at depth charges it, up to a ceiling set by the deepest floor you have reached this run. Walk back to the Tavern and it goes cold again, ready to be earned on the next descent.

02 / Harvesting

What the Fight Leaves Behind

Two kinds of material, both found only in combat

Residue

A slain monster leaves the first curse it carried: kill the thing that burns you and you get a Residue of Burning. One harvest takes all of it. If nobody picks it up in three rounds it fades. Titans leave nothing; there is no pouch that size. The battle log names every residue as it is left, and a ring marks the cell.

Ground

Hazard tiles are ground reagents waiting to be scraped. Their grade comes from the floor, one grade per ten floors: Pit-grit on floors 1 to 10, Brine-salt on 11 to 20, Glass Dust on 21 to 30, Forge-scale on 31 to 40. Their flavour comes from what burns there: slag is fire, spores are poison, rime is frost, grave-salt is shadow, sun-glass is holy, iron is anything that simply cuts. Today flavour is a name only; grade is what matters.

Stand on it, or beside it

Standing on a hazard while you scrape it pays two, and the hazard bites you for the privilege. Standing beside it is safer and pays one. The HARVEST button's tooltip tells you exactly what you would get and from where before you spend the turn. A tile can be scraped three times.

The last kill's residue

If the fight ends with residue still on the field, nothing is lost: every residue nobody reached is gathered with the spoils and dealt round the party like any other drop. No fuss. Harvesting in the fight still matters when there are more residues than turns, or when you want a particular one.

Who can harvest

Anyone, including the Classless. Harvesting needs no school. What you gather goes into a reagent pouch beneath your bags on the character sheet: it never takes a bag slot, never spills into the overflow, and stacks to ninety-nine. Residues cannot be bought, sold or traded: the curse has to come from a fight you were in. Ground does not trade yet either.

03 / The bench

Working a Weapon

The preview is the whole rulebook, and it explains itself

What goes in

A carrier: a Rare or better main-hand weapon, in your hand or in your bags. Rare and Epic weapons hold one working, Legendary two. A residue, in quantity: it decides what the working does, and the weapon sets the price, one per ten floors of its depth, one more if it is Epic, two more if Legendary. A floor 2 Rare asks one; a Kingsgrave Legendary asks six. Ground, as many as you choose to spend: it decides how strong the working can get. Everything that goes in is used up.

What comes out

A chance, on every offensive action, to lay the residue's curse on the first enemy you aimed at, for two turns. A sword procs on hit, a bow or wand on shot, a staff or totem on spell. The roll happens when you attack, whether or not the attack lands, once per action no matter how many it hits. Cold it is always 5%. What it climbs to at full charge is bought with ground: one reagent sets the ceiling at 8%, two at 10.5%, three at 12.5%, four at 14%, five at 15%, six at 16%, seven at 16.8%, and eight reach the top, 17.5%. Past eight, more buys nothing.

Ground has to match the steel

A weapon's depth is its item level, the floor it dropped on. Ground from the weapon's own floors counts whole: every one you spend is a step up the ladder. Ground from the band just above counts as half a reagent each, so two of it make one step and sixteen reach the top. Anything shallower is refused, and so is ground deeper than the weapon. A floor 27 weapon takes Glass Dust whole, Brine-salt at half, and nothing else. One kind of ground per working; no mixing.

Binding and removal

Working a weapon binds it to you: it will never list on the Exchange or pass to anyone. You can strike a working off later at the bench, which frees the slot but destroys the working; the residue and ground do not come back, and the weapon stays bound.

A legendary's own proc

A rolled legendary proc and a working are separate channels. Both fire. A legendary keeps its rolled curse and takes two workings on top. If two of them carry the same curse, the second landing refreshes the duration rather than stacking it.

Where to read it

Hover any worked weapon: every working is listed with the chance it rolls right now, its cold and charged numbers, its grade, and the run's charge. The character sheet shows the charge under Recovery. The battle log says "working stirs" every time one fires.

04 / The charge

Why It Is Faint at the Door

The working is permanent. Its strength is not.

Kills fill it

Every fight you win adds its experience to your charge, before any party bonus, so a party charges no faster than a soloist. About ten fights at the deepest floor you have reached this run fill it completely, roughly a tenth per fight at depth.

Depth caps it, and pays it

The deepest floor you have set foot on this expedition sets how high the charge can go, and what a fight is worth to it. What matters is depth, not your level: a fight far shallower than your deepest floor this run adds nothing, so farming the shallows with a deep ceiling does not work, and a level 50 charges at the Anvil just fine.

The Tavern resets it

Returning to the Tavern, on your feet or carried, empties the charge. Walking out on your own feet turns a tenth of it into experience first. Logging out does not reset it: your run waits for you. Nothing charges inside a trial.

05 / Schools

Your Class Decides

The Awakening hands you a class; the class hands you a school

The four schools

Hexweaving for Wizard, Warlock and Necromancer. Hallowing for Cleric, Druid and Shaman. Tempering for Warrior, Death Knight and Paladin. Rigging for Rogue, Demon Hunter and Engineer. Today every school works the same residues the same way; what sets them apart arrives in the second half of this page.

The Classless

Before the Awakening you can harvest and keep what you gather, but the bench will not work for you. Nothing is wasted: the materials are still yours the day you have a school.

The Shaman's focus

Shamans now have a focus weapon of their own: the totems, one per tier, one-handed, feeding spell power like a staff while leaving the shield arm free. They drop like any weapon, and the Vein-Singer rivals carry them. A totem procs on spell, like any focus.

06 / The fine print

Everything Else That Is True Today

Short, because the bench already tells you most of it

1 Only main-hand weapons take workings for now, and only Rare or better. Armour, shields and jewelry come with the earned triggers below.
2 One kind of working exists today: the status proc. Every residue makes one. Sixteen residues exist, one for every curse the mountain's monsters apply.
3 Twenty-four ground reagents exist: four grades by six flavours. Flavour changes nothing yet. Grade decides whether a reagent counts whole or half against the weapon's depth; how many you spend decides the ceiling.
3b The bench shows the price and the investment before you commit: the residue socket reads what the weapon asks against what you have, the ground socket has a SPEND stepper with the ceiling it buys, and hovering the WORKING socket shows the weapon's tooltip as it will read.
4 A working never misses its trigger: the roll happens on the attempt. One action is one roll, no matter how many it hits. Supportive actions, heals and harvests never roll.
5 A faint working still works. Five percent is one proc in twenty attacks, not nothing. The deep is where it earns its keep.
6 There are no ranks, no shards and no catalysts yet, so any awakened character may work any grade their weapon allows.

Back to Combat Class Codex

07 / What is coming

The Second Half

Designed, not built. Nothing here is in the game yet, and the numbers will move.

Catalysts: earned triggers

Moments in a fight will drop a catalyst: you blocked a heavy blow, you finished a fight under a quarter health, you harvested while the hazard bit you. A catalyst gives a working a trigger of its own instead of the weapon's, and rarer triggers hit harder. This is what opens armour, shields and jewelry to workings: a working that fires when you block belongs on a shield.

The Vigil: Hallowing's signature

A hallowed item will keep a vigil over the party: a point of shield to every ally, every round, climbing to four when charged. No action, no targeting, no cost. The one working that runs for free, because the healer's school should not be the one paying most for its identity.

Shards, runes and rank

Rival delvers, and rarely chests, will drop shards; five make a rune, a rune raises your rank, and rank decides which grade of ground you may work. Four ranks, one per band, twenty shards in a character's life. Shards and runes never trade. When rank exists, ground and catalysts will go on the Exchange, because rank keeps bought materials from being bought power.

Echoes: borrowing a rival's spell

Kill a rival delver of your own seat, Blade or Shadow or Chant or Spark, and harvest its echo. A weapon worked with an echo casts one of that rival's spells at a small chance, 3% cold to 7% charged, and it never misses. One borrowed class per item. A Dowser's staff that throws fire because you took it off a Dowser is the whole idea.

More kinds of working

Damage into resource, overheal into shield, ground control that lays walls and wires, and a damage-type split that reroutes part of a blow around whichever mitigation is higher. Each school's residues will lean toward its own kind.

Tuning from play

The ten-fight fill, the 5 to 17.5% band, the three-round residue and the tenth paid on the way out are placeholders. They will be tuned from what the ledger shows over the next weeks, and the patch notes will say when they move.

You don't make things.You change the things you carry.