Perfect Forger

Perfect Forger is a relic that upgrades any upgradeable orb added to your deck immediately, at the cost of a small amount of HP each time it triggers. It appears as a pick-up relic in runs and interacts with any event, shop purchase, or reward that adds orbs to your collection. The relic forces a level-up of the new orb at the moment it is added, making newly acquired offensive or utility orbs stronger but trading that benefit for repeated self-damage.

The relic's mechanical effect is: whenever an upgradeable orb is added to your deck, upgrade it once and take a fixed amount of damage (shown in-game as FORGE_DMG). This applies to orbs gained from events (including Strange Mirror), purchases, or other sources that add orbs to your bag. The damage is applied per orb added, so multi-orb rewards or duplicating events can cause multiple instances of self-damage.

Perfect Forger is a high-risk, high-reward relic. It is especially valuable when most orb additions are already worth upgrading (for example, low-level offensive orbs or utility orbs that scale well with a single level). The relic synergizes with strategies that repeatedly add orbs while maintaining sufficient HP or with builds that recover HP reliably after taking the self-damage. Because the damage stacks per orb, combining this relic with effects that duplicate orb additions (such as the Strange Mirror event that duplicates orbs) can rapidly drain health and is dangerous unless the duplicated orbs are already high level or unupgradable.

Practical notes and strategy:

• The relic deals self-damage each time an upgradeable orb is added; plan for that cumulative cost when choosing rewards or event options.
• Do not duplicate all orbs with the Strange Mirror event unless nearly all are already level 3 or otherwise unupgradable, since duplicating numerous upgradeable orbs can immediately kill you.
• If you are not low on HP, always take Perfect Forger when offered; its upgrades can outpace the occasional HP loss over a run.
• The relic was introduced in v0.8.28 and has received balance changes since; in later versions its self-damage was increased (notably from 4 to 6 in a subsequent patch), so account for the current FORGE_DMG shown in-game when evaluating risk.