The Forge—a Roblox RPG meets mining sim—throws a ton at you just within those first few minutes of questing, cave exploration, and crafting. It’s a little more serious about the RPG part of the formula than I anticipated, so when the tutorials turned me loose, I’ll admit it, I floundered.

Fortunately, after countless trial-and-error crafts and plenty of mistakes, I’ve finally gotten the hang of it and feel ready to share a little forging wisdom. So if you’re looking to climb the levels and become a master miner, I’ve got some tips for The Forge first-timers that’ll carry you into the late game.

Conquer objectives faster by picking up every quest you can

Tons of quests in The Forge share overlapping objectives, and if there’s a limit on how many you can have at once, I’ve yet to encounter it. Make your life easier by speaking to every NPC you can and accept whatever tasks they have for you.

Most are easy and a nice introduction to the basics—like learning how to mine Stone—while others require quite a bit of grinding. Even as I write this, I have three active quests demanding I slay a bunch of Rogue Skeletons, but every skelly I crush with my katana puts me one step closer to finishing them all.

Save your Robux, The Forge regularly receives new codes

I’m sure it’s no surprise to Roblox vets, but the cash shop here is loaded up with all sorts of mining bonuses, inventory upgrades, etc. Fortunately, there’s a pretty regular supply of new codes in The Forge, giving you free items like Luck Totems (which increases your mining Luck by 25%) and Rerolls (used for random spins to swap your fantasy character race).

Don’t waste money on every pickaxe upgrade in The Forge

There’s one piece of universal wisdom I keep seeing passed around, and it’s don’t buy every pickaxe upgrade available at the shop. Seriously. I know it’s tempting, I made this exact mistake and upgraded one-too-many times, but it’s a waste.

You’ll naturally upgrade to the Iron Pickaxe through Sensei Moro’s quests, then upgrade to the Cobalt Pickaxe for $10,000 in Miner Fred’s Forgotten Kingdom shop. After that, I suggest waiting until you can buy the Mythril Pickaxe for $67,500, and forget the others. You can buy the Arcane Pickaxe after completing another quest, and it’s better than everything in the shop.

Use The Forge calculator to guide your smelting recipes

It’s a bit tedious, but I like using this site’s calculator for ore recipes in The Forge. To use it, select one of the resource goals from the top bar (like planning, DPS, optimizing, etc), input the numbers from your inventory, and let the calculator do its work.

It’s especially handy for optimizing ore recipes when your inventory is full. I like mindlessly farming nodes as an easy second screen task, then I dump the data in when I’m done so I can craft and make extra money.

The crafting minigame at the in-game forge impacts quality

I sure wish I would have realized this sooner rather than later, but yes, The Forge crafting minigame does impact the quality of what you make. That also means your profit takes a hit from poor performance, so don’t phone it in when you’re timing those hammer hits.

Crafting in The Forge works a bit like a rhythm game, so my hundreds of hours into Project Diva came in handy here, but it may be a pain for those unfamiliar with the loop. You can bypass the first two steps with the Fast Forge pass, though that’ll cost you Robux. It doesn’t seem very worth it anyway, since the fourth sequence is the hardest, and you still have to do it.