Through the game you will get the ability to create and enhance weapons. You can find 3 different smelters.

• Steel Smelter (worst)
  
• Durium Smelter (meh...)
  
• Arcadium Smelter (awesome)

Please dont bother using the steel one. You already have a set of steel equipment on you. You could upgrade them by adding lifeforce but ... it really does not do the trick. Trust me.

My tip is to not forge anything till you get the Arcadium Smelter. You will gather a hugh amount of gold to this point. You should already have some significant amount of lifeforce too.

The Arcadium items really need MUCH lifeforce. Please refer to the section of this guide called "farming" for some advise.

Here is what I think is the best combination. Mentioned in the order you should aquire these.

Arcadium Sword
Put only brown minions into it to max the damage. Dont bother the firedamage, you wont need this. Critical is not needed too! You could put some (50-100) blue minions for knockback in, but ... well it is more annoying than helpfull knocking enemys off their feet.
You will get a sword, so powerfull it will kill most enemys with one or two hits.

Arcadium Armor
Put most of the minions for damage reduction. Add 100 for regeneration, dont bother the other 2 options. You will aquire an amor, that makes you nearly undefeatable. If you have the sword and this, you wont need the minons anymore.

Acradium Helmet
It gives you a +10 minions to control. 50 minons ... that is really awesome. But be carefull not to get them killed all together ;D
Oh and as I wrote just before, you wont need that amount of minions any more ;D

You will find youself forging, not having enough minions to complete the item at once.

500 minons sound awefull much (near the end of the game you might have around 500 browns, maybee) and this is only one item.

The solution is pretty simple. Go the the arena of your tower (remember? that location you are told you can fight already defeated creatures!?). Near the end of the game you will have access to the "Beetles".

• Fight Beetles (drops brown lifeforce)
  
• Blind Beetles (drops blue lifeforce)
  
• Smaraged Beetles (drops green lifeforce)
  
• Magma Beetles (drops red lifeforce)

These options spawn 25 Beetles of the kind you have choosen. Each Beetle will give you 3 lifeforce on dying; that makes a total of 75 Lifeforce per round.

IMPORTANT TIP
If you dont have any Arcadium Items, be warned. Dont rush into them, or they will rape your ass!!! The tactic of choice is to gater around 10 blue and the rest brown minions. Enter the arena and set a point for the blues in the left corner. Set a point for the browns like 10m ahead to the enemy.
Now try to lure SOME (2-3) of the beetles to your minions and help defeating them! The blues will revive fallen minions. Reorganise your minions after each killing and keep repeating till all beetles are dead.

If you have the Arcadium Sword (als mentiond in this guide) with max damage, you dont need your minions any more. Leave them in the pits, ignore Gnarl telling you to take them with you and enter the arena. Start at one side (left or right) and fight the beetles. You will need around 1-2 strikes to kill them. This is way more faster then the first option, but will need some skill. Dont rush in too hard, or they will sourround you and ...

If you have the Arcadium Sword AND the Arcadium Amor, you are well prepared. You dont need to bother anything. Just rush into the middle of the beetles and kill them.