No, The boss didn't die on the forge in that playthrough. I finally reloaded to before the first attempt and boss fight and did the whole thing again. Ironically, the guardian did die on the crucible the second time (I discovered the stomping him with the forge lever trick), and it worked fine.

The first time the crucible simply wasn't clickable, if that makes sense, even after bringing the forge back up to its starting position with the button and ejecting the first mold I'd used (and placing the second one). No lit up outline or anything on the crucible when mousing over or anything. After going to an earlier save and trying again, it worked fine.

It's possible that Lotus Noctus mentioned was the issue the first time. I honestly don't know if I altered the order of operations in either attempt for sure, though I think I did them the same way each time. I was sort of trial-and-erroring my way through the forging process the first time, as I am bad about relocating books that actually have important "how to" information in this game, since there are so many, and my brain never has been good at holding onto step by step instructions I read hours before, even when I was younger :P

The going to an earlier save solution so often seems to be the only way to fix gameplay bugs (or are they actual features) like this one, unfortunately. Sometimes I discover an issue after hours of play and have to decide whether or not I want to complete something badly enough to go back to an earlier save (like with Wuakeen's Rest and finding the people I was supposed to rescue in the inn dead from the get go, no matter how quickly I got to them. The latter was presumably because I passed by Wuakeen's Rest to do some other quests the companions currently in my group were anxious about and came back to it later. That's probably my biggest complaint about the game, how nit picky it is that it's possible to lock things out if you don't do things in a very specific order!

Last edited by Roxxsmom; 14/03/24 04:14 AM. Reason: added something