After quite a bit of testing, this is a more or less guaranteed deck to get clean T6 one-hitter hammers with AoE and durability. This deck assumes the correct skill build and maximum effectiveness on your forge.
Deck:
Effect Gum
Longevity Gum
Special Gum
Protection Paste 2
Fate Paste 2
Corrupted Boon Compound 1
Defect Reversal Catalyst
Boon Transmute Solvent
Vigour Catalyst 2
Setting Resin
A note on Boon Transmute vs Boon Removal
Yes, Removal is considerably cheaper and easier to get the ingredients for than Transmute, but the added susceptibility to the whims of RNG can come back to bite you. HARD. That one time you spend all your vigour removing and readding Hard Hitter when you want Devastating Damage over and over again, you’ll completely understand what I mean. If you’re forging this level of high end gear, spend the extra time hunting/extra coin shopping and make the Transmute instead. It will pay off, trust me.
Summary of Steps:
Start with 2 Effect and 2 Longevity Gum, then 1 Protection Paste and 1 Fate Paste (the order of the pastes matters, and switches later; if anyone needs an explanation for this, I’ll answer in another reply, as this one is already super long), then Boon Compound. If you get Durability or Devastating Damage, great. If you get anything else, Transmute to get them. You should only have to transmute once or twice here. Continue with Boon Compound until you have Durability and Damage. Never add Boon Compound if you get an unwanted boon. Transmute first. Once you have Damage and Durability, no matter what level they are, stop pumping compound and Catalyst to clear the board. If you keep going, then you’ll probably end up with Hard Hitter in the top slot, and then possibly have to use an extra transmute to get AoE. You’re already going to have to use probably 1 or 2 Transmutes as it is, so save yourself from having to use any extra when you can. Those joints are expensive. After the Catalyst, 2 Special Gum, 1 Protection Paste, 1 Fate Paste, and then Boon Compound. If you get Loot Magnet now, that’s fine. Keep pumping Compound until Loot Magnet gets to 3, then Transmute to AoE, because level 3 Magnet will transmute to level 4 AoE. Fill AoE up to 4 if you didn’t have to transmute, then Catalyst again to clear the board. Fate Paste should have prevented you from getting any defects up to this point (in my tests I didn’t get any until after this point if I wasn’t paying attention and forgot the next step), but your defect bar should be about half full. Use a Defect Reversal Catalyst now. Depending on how lucky your first round of boons was, you should have Damage and Durability at least at 4. Add 2 Effect, 1 Fate, 1 Protection (note the change in Paste order), then Boon until your buffs are gone or you reach 8 Damage. Catalyst to clear the board, then 2 Longevity Gum, 1 Fate, 1 Protection, and then Boon until Durability is where you want it. Depending on how much vigour you’ve had to use transmuting boons and how good your rolls have been, you might have the vigour and stability to use another Catalyst to clear the board, then reapply 2 Longevity and your Pastes, but you might have to skip the Protection. This will just come down to knowledge of the mechanics and whether or not you can afford the Protection Paste stability cost to eek out that extra round. You should reach 8 on Durability before you run out of stability (in my tests, most of my forges ended with 8 durability, a few with less and a few with more).
If you understand the forge mechanics, you should be able to adjust this method for RNG. I spent 3.5 hours on my last stream tinkering with this strategy, and almost all of my forges ended with 1600 durability, level 8 damage and 3x3 AoE. A few ended with 1400, and some even with 1800 and 2000 durability. RNG gonna RNG, but you can fairly reliably get 1600 durability. The only time I got a defect was when I forgot to use Defect Reversal Catalyst after the 2nd stage of pumping compound. And depending on how good your rolls are you might have to use it a 2nd time if you’re getting up there in rounds. I also have a deck that replaces Corrupted Boon, Defect Reversal, and Protection Paste with Draining Boon Compound 1, Quirk Transmute Solvent, and Deconstruction Resin, but I tend to top out with 1400 durability and end up with at least 1 quirk with that deck. The quirks can be nice if you get the right ones, and mostly negligible if you get even semi-lucky, so if you’re aiming for quirks I can make another egregiously long post for that strategy. You can also watch my most recent VoD on my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/invrtdstarfish) if this written form is too confusing. But this deck should get you some high quality AoE tools with even just decent RNG. Hope this helps someone trying to craft their first top-tier hammer 