Stonewards Build Guide: How Forging, Upgrades and Ring Picks Shape Every Run
A Stonewards build is a per-run plan: craft arrows, repair walls, then stack randomized forge upgrades. Learn how offers work and how to prioritize each wave.
In Stonewards, a "build" is not a fixed endgame loadout you copy from a tier list. It is the per-run plan for how you spend everything you mined: which resources become arrows and wall repairs at the forge, and which randomized upgrade offers you accept between waves. The Steam store page describes the loop directly — spend mined resources to craft arrows, repair defenses, and unlock randomized roguelite upgrades that shape each run — so every mission produces a different build from the same dig-forge-defend rhythm. This guide covers how those offers work, what demo-era ring choices looked like, and how to set priorities the game will not set for you.
How Forge Upgrades Are Offered
The upgrade system was introduced in Devblog #05 (May 2026): a forge was added where you upgrade your character by depositing resources found while mining. Because the offers are randomized, you never choose from a full catalog — you react to a small slice of the pool each wave. The store page's framing ("stack raw strength, strange powers, tougher walls, or trust your team's latest plan") confirms that stacking multiple upgrades into a coherent direction is the intended way to build power.
Patch notes show the pool itself is actively curated. Hotfix 0.1.6 added Projectile Bonus upgrade support for the Mage and Healer, which means new upgrade types can appear for specific characters at any time. The same hotfix slightly reduced the Archer's ranged and charged attack damage, and reworked Endless Mode difficulty scaling to a non-linear progression — both changes that shift which picks feel strong. Treat any specific upgrade valuation as a snapshot of the current patch, not a law.
One practical note: Hotfix 0.1.6 also fixed an issue where player input could become blocked during end-of-wave or regular upgrade selections. If you played during launch week and remember offers freezing, that was a bug, not a mechanic.
Rings and the Blacksmith (Demo-Era Details)
Demo-era play produced a ring system on top of forge upgrades. Community reports from that period describe the Blacksmith offering ring choices — up to four ring slots, with four offered options per roll — that modify your stats for the remainder of the run. These are player reports from the demo and pre-Early-Access builds, so exact slot counts and reroll rules may differ in the live game; the details have not been formally documented by Banana Tiger Studio.
Rings clearly still matter in Early Access. Hotfix 0.1.5 raised the Blacksmith's maximum level from 101 to 999, and Hotfix 0.1.5 also fixed players being able to deposit resources into the Blacksmith or Wall Builder from any distance — implying the Blacksmith is a deposit-driven station like the forge. Hotfix 0.1.4 added more detailed descriptions for Rings and Tomes in the shop, making their effects clearer before purchase, which confirms a shop layer where rings and tomes are bought between runs.
Whether found rings can be kept permanently for builds is still an open question. A Steam community thread from August 11, 2026 asked exactly this and received no official answer, so treat any claim about persistent ring collections as unverified.
Resource Priorities Between Waves
The forge forces a three-way competition for the same ore haul: ammunition crafting, wall repair, and upgrade rolls. Demo-era community guidance suggested a rough starting budget — about forty percent of each haul to wall repair on the lane monsters actually use, forty percent to ammunition and basic consumables, and twenty percent to one deliberate upgrade — while explicitly warning that exact costs vary by patch. The reasoning behind that split is more durable than the numbers: monsters path toward the King through the weakest segments, so a broken primary gate undoes every upgrade you bought.
Ammo crafting deserves special emphasis because the store page lists it first for a reason. A review from Early Access launch week describes runs failing when players could not kill enemies faster than they spawned, noting that runs without automated ballistas felt doomed — defenses appear partly as wave upgrades rather than things you freely craft. That is a player opinion about difficulty, not a confirmed balance fact, but it illustrates why empty quivers and unrepaired gates lose missions regardless of how good your build looked on paper.
Timing matters as much as allocation. The store page is blunt about the dig phase: take too long in the mines and your friends defend the kingdom one dwarf short. The same pressure applies at the forge — Hotfix 0.1.6's notes on horn telegraphs and the general wave loop mean the horn returns whether or not you finished spending. A build you never complete before the next wave is worth less than a boring one that was ready.
How Character Choice Interacts With Your Build
Your starter dwarf shapes which upgrades are worth taking. The two confirmed starters lean opposite directions: the Miner archetype feeds the economy phase, hauling ore so the squad can afford arrows, repairs, and rolls, while the Warrior anchors surface defense on the primary lanes. Community tier-style advice from the demo era suggested defenders favor armor and knockback-style picks while craft-focused players multiply team output through crafting speed — but those are fan-framework labels, not in-game upgrade names, and the developers have not published any official ranking.
Patch notes prove the interaction runs deeper than playstyle preference. Hotfix 0.1.6 added Projectile Bonus support specifically for the Mage and Healer, and nerfed Archer damage — so the same offer can be worth different amounts depending on who you unlocked and who you brought. A community discussion from launch week argued that ranged and Mage builds felt weak compared to melee in solo play, requesting a projectile-penetration or ricochet ring; that is one player's assessment and other reviews disagree, so read it as a debate, not a verdict. For more on the roster itself, see the characters overview.
In co-op, role coverage beats duplicate stacking. Demo-era community templates described four-player splits — defenders on armor and control, a miner on yield and craft speed, a flex ferrying ore — and warned that four players all taking mining buffs while nobody holds the wall is a classic failure. Coordinate deposits before spending shared ore piles, because a build spread across complementary roles survives longer than four identical half-builds.
Hub Progression vs Per-Run Builds
Not everything resets. The store page's Early Access answers describe character evolution systems with medium-to-long-term unlocks, and a launch-week review describes spending meta currency in the hub on unlocked characters, relics, rerolls, and per-character stat upgrades such as health, stamina, and special ability — with the caveat that each new character starts with relatively lower stats until upgraded separately. That per-character upgrade structure is a player report, not an official breakdown, so its details may be incomplete.
The key distinction for build planning: forge upgrades shape the current mission, while hub purchases shape what you start each mission with. Rings and tomes bought in the shop (with clearer descriptions since Hotfix 0.1.4) sit somewhere in between, and their exact persistence is one of the unresolved questions above. When a run ends — win or lose — your randomized stacks are gone and only the hub layer carries forward.
Why No Build Guide Can Claim a "Best" Build
Stonewards patches frequently, and the changelog is the proof. Within the first seven days of Early Access the studio shipped Hotfix 0.1.4 (August 13), 0.1.5 (August 14), and 0.1.6 (August 18), touching ring shop descriptions, Blacksmith levels, coin distribution, Archer damage, Mage and Healer upgrade support, and Endless Mode scaling. The 0.1.5 announcement also stated the team would begin adding and improving content the following week. Any upgrade ranking accurate today can be wrong by Friday.
The studio's own Early Access statement reinforces this: they plan to continuously refine progression and balance based on player data throughout a nine-to-twelve-month Early Access window, including more intricate upgrade systems in the eventual 1.0. The stable advice is therefore structural, not numerical: repair the lane monsters use, fund ammo before luxury stats, pick upgrades that fix how you actually died, and re-evaluate every wave. For the wider loop this sits inside, see the game info page; for where those lanes are, the map guide and the revive guide cover the parts of a run that no build can replace.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common Stonewards questions.
What does a Stonewards build actually mean?
A Stonewards build is not a fixed meta loadout. It is the set of per-run decisions you make at the forge between waves: which resources go to arrows and wall repairs, and which randomized upgrades and ring offers you accept for the current mission.
How do you unlock upgrades in Stonewards?
The official Steam page and Devblog #05 describe depositing mined resources at the forge to unlock randomized upgrades. The offers you receive are drawn from a pool, so you choose from what appears rather than picking from a fixed tree.
Do forge upgrades carry over between runs?
No. The store page calls them randomized roguelite upgrades that shape each run, and community demo-era reports say they reset when the mission ends. Persistent progression, such as characters and shop rings and tomes, lives in the hub instead.
Are rings kept after a run in Stonewards?
Not confirmed. A Steam community thread from August 11, 2026 asks whether found rings and tomes can be kept for building loadouts and received no developer answer, and Hotfix 0.1.4 only added clearer shop descriptions for rings and tomes.
Is there a strongest Stonewards build?
No, and any guide claiming one is out of date. Banana Tiger Studio shipped at least four balance hotfixes in the first week of Early Access, reworking everything from Archer damage to Blacksmith levels, so upgrade values shift constantly.