Anvil Life shipped in 2022 and, honestly, it was not good. I knew what I wanted it to be and I could not build it. This update is that game — rewritten from the first line, with nothing carried over except the idea.
It is free. If you own Anvil Life, it is already yours.
The dungeon is no longer a level you clear. It is a wave you endure. You choose how long you think you can survive — 15, 30, 60 or 90 seconds — and hold. Kills drop loot, loot piles on your back, and none of it is yours until you walk out. Leave early and you keep part of it. Hold to the end and you take everything plus a chest. Die and the pile stays on the floor.
Every dungeon now has three difficulty tiers. Normal, Nightmare and Abyssal, unlocked one at a time by surviving a full 60-second run. Twelve dungeons, thirty-six ways to die.
Gear that can betray you. Items upgrade from +1 to +10. The first five are safe; after that the anvil starts burning things. High upgrades need rarer scrolls. A +10 piece survives even when it shatters — but repairing it to full costs real gold.
Companions. Ten of them, each with their own level and bonus. One trades your safety for a higher chance of meeting a boss. They follow you into the dungeon and they gain experience while you fight.
A squire who works for you. Send him out to trade the gear you do not want. At high levels he starts crafting potions and upgrade scrolls instead.
A vault that pays. Lock valuable gear away and it yields dust over time. Material matters — dragonbone pays far more than wood.
Kill records. Every dungeon at every difficulty keeps your best run separately. Beat it and the counter turns green mid-fight.
I did not tune this by feel. The game contains a simulator that runs thousands of headless runs per dungeon and measures profit against risk. Every dungeon lands between 1.00 and 1.21 on that curve — except the last one, the Hall of the Gods, which sits at 0.84. That one is a losing bet on purpose. Go anyway.
If you bought this in 2022, you bought something unfinished. This is me finishing it. If anything is broken, post in the discussions — I read them.