Crypts, Chests & LootCrypts, Chests & Loot

The three crypt classes

Every crypt is a map site explored by a captain (in practice, always Carter) burning Tar. A crypt has Health (total exploration needed), Damage (progress per march), and Cost (tar per march)—and marches round *up*, so efficiency bonuses only pay off at whole-march thresholds. All classes run to level 35, and fully exploring any crypt drops a clan chest for your whole clan.

Higher levels gate behind the research ladder: Crypts IV at Academy 20, V at 25, VI at 30, VII (level 35) at Academy 35. One overlooked lever: loading a march with more tar than the base requirement grants +10% exploration efficiency, applied before other bonuses.

The twelve common crypts

There are twelve visually distinct common crypt types, and each is the only common-crypt source of one signature material—which means the crypt you farm determines the gear you can craft. The community mined this mapping from each material's info icon; names for three types remain undocumented.

Rare and epic variants

• Rare crypts come in two appearances. Community sourcing says only the horned variant drops Amber—the crypt-efficiency gem, the one every crypter chases. The wiki documents one named variant, the Rare Dragon Crypt, with its own Rare Dragon Chest.
• Epic crypts have many visual variants; no public source names them all. They're the source of unique-equipment materials—the Omniscience set is the reason you're there.
• Tartaros Crypts appear only during Day 4 of Trials of Olympus, burn Lava Oil instead of tar, and are the game's only source of spell Enchantments.

Chests

Chests run on a quality ladder—Wooden → Bronze → Silver → Golden → Precious → Magic—where the tier tracks how hard the source content was. A single Magic chest from an Epic Crypt 35 outweighs a pile of Wooden ones.

The materials catalog

Forge materials come in eight quality tiers—Poor → Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic → Legendary → Ascendant → Godlike—and combine four-into-one at the Forge Workshop. Every equipment piece needs four distinct materials, and mixing qualities lowers your odds of the top-tier result: match all four and it's guaranteed.

The 24 standard materials split cleanly in two. The twelve targeted materials each drop from exactly one common crypt type (the table above) plus rare and epic crypts. The twelve generic materials drop from any common crypt from level 5 up:

…plus Frost Oil, Phoenix Feather, Spectral Paint, and Vampire Ashes (no wiki thumbnails exist for those four yet).

The gem catalog

A gem is a stone you set into a piece of your Hero's or a Captain's equipment. While that equipment is worn, the gem's bonus is on—most of them boost your whole army, so one good stone quietly makes every soldier you own hit harder or last longer.

From crypt to combat—the life of a gem

• Get one. Gems drop from rare crypts (the special glowing variants of the ordinary crypts around your city), come as event rewards, or can be crafted at the Forge using Rare Flickering Dust. A few—like {{item:cyanite:Cyanite}}—can't be crafted at all and only come from special sources.
• Socket it. Every equipment piece has exactly one gem slot (plus one enchantment slot). Open the Forge, pick the piece, set the stone. Done—the bonus applies while the gear is worn.
• Upgrade it. Gems come in the same eight quality tiers as materials—Poor → Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic → Legendary → Ascendant → Godlike—and four identical gems combine into one of the next tier. That's the whole upgrade path: a Poor {{item:ruby:Ruby}} gives your melee units +3% strength; feed enough Rubies together and the Godlike version gives +40%. The table's last column shows exactly that journey for every gem.
• Take it back. Gems are never lost: pull one out of a piece with Jewelers' Pincers of the matching level and re-use it forever. (Enchantments are the opposite—removal destroys them.)

What a "gem pair" is

The game issues most combat gems as twins: one stone raises a troop class's strength (the damage they deal), and a sibling stone raises the same class's health (the damage they survive). {{item:ruby:Ruby}} and {{item:amber-stone:Amber Stone}} are the melee twins; {{item:sapphire:Sapphire}} and {{item:beryl:Beryl}} cover mounted units, and so on down the table. A "pair" is not a bundled item—they're two separate gems needing two separate slots. If you can only afford one, strength is usually the attacker's pick and health the defender's.

The confirmed roster—thirty-one gems

Three gems have no wiki artwork yet—{{item:topaz:Topaz}}, {{item:azurite:Azurite}}, and {{item:cyanite:Cyanite}}—but all three are confirmed in-game and sit in the table below.

The gem-crafter's playbook

• Always craft at the lowest tier and combine upward. Four identical gems combine into one of the next tier, and the Blacksmithing research adds up to a 15% chance of a free bonus gem on every combine—a cascade that pays out at every rung. Crafting mid-tier directly skips all those free gems.
• Combining and disenchanting run on Rare Flickering Dust, with exact in-game prices (identical for every gem): crafting costs 80 / 320 / 1,300 / 5,200 / 21,000 / 84,000 / 340,000 / 1,400,000 dust from Poor up to Godlike, and disenchanting returns 10 / 40 / 160 / 640 / 2,600 / 10,500 / 42,000 / 170,000—always about one-eighth of the craft price. So combine gems up before disenchanting the ones you don't want.
• Gems come back; enchantments don't. Pull gems with Jewelers' Pincers before dismantling gear. And since gear only wears down in battle, your best enchantments belong on economy captains' gear—it never breaks.

Tar, in all its forms

The tar-economy levers worth researching: Crypt Exploration Cost (continuous savings), Crypt Exploration Efficiency (only pays at whole-march thresholds), the Chance to Explore Twice line, and the flat +10% for overloading a march with extra tar. The Ragnarök Fenrir shop also sells tar bundles and rare-crypt keys for event points.