Quick Answer (Season 5, Patch 1.5.2): Ice Forging Potential and Blood Forging Potential are two new kinds of Forging Potential added in Season 5: Rage of the Frostborn. Ice Forging Potential has a chance to be preserved when you spend it on a craft. Blood Forging Potential raises your chance of a critical success. Only items rewarded by the Rage of Morditas seasonal mechanic can carry them, and the ritual you perform decides which one you get: every rare and exalted reward rolled after a Frozen Ritual has Ice Forging Potential, and every one rolled after a Bloody Ritual has Blood Forging Potential. In practice, pick the ritual for the item type you need first. When you do have a choice, Blood is the better default, because its extra crits also add bonus tiers.
This guide covers Last Epoch Season 5: Rage of the Frostborn, which launched on October 1, 2026. Every mechanic below is checked against the official Season 5 patch notes (published September 25, 2026) and Eleventh Hour Games' Rage of Morditas dev blog. The live version at the time of writing is Patch 1.5.2 (October 7, 2026) plus Hotfix 1.5.2.1 (October 9, 2026), per the official patch notes forum. Neither patch changed how the two new Forging Potentials work.
Here is what the guide covers:
- What Ice and Blood Forging Potential actually do, in EHG's own words
- How the Frozen Ritual and Bloody Ritual decide which one you get
- How many Bloodrage Charges you get, and how to spend them
- How to choose between them
- What the community math says about the real odds
- Season 5 crafting changes that sit next to the new Forging Potentials
If you are new to the Forge, read our Last Epoch crafting guide first. It covers shards, glyphs, runes and sealed affixes, which this page assumes you know.
What Are Ice Forging Potential and Blood Forging Potential?
Forging Potential (FP) is the budget an item spends every time you craft on it. When it hits zero, the item can no longer be crafted. Season 5 added two special versions of it. The official patch notes put it in one line:
"Ice Forging Potential has a chance to be preserved when used in crafting, and Blood Forging Potential raises the critical success chance when crafting. Only items rewarded by Rage of Morditas can have one of these new Forging Potentials." — Season 5 patch notes, Eleventh Hour Games
In practice, that means:
| Forging Potential | What it does | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Normal FP | Spent on every craft unless something makes the craft free | Every craftable drop |
| Ice FP | Chance that the FP spent on a craft is kept | Rage of Morditas rewards rolled after a Frozen Ritual |
| Blood FP | Higher chance of a critical success on each craft | Rage of Morditas rewards rolled after a Bloody Ritual |
The type shows on the item tooltip in a coloured banner, blue for Ice and red for Blood. In EHG's reveal screenshots the values look like normal FP rolls: 52 Ice FP on a belt, 25 Ice FP on a two-handed mace, and 42 and 39 Blood FP on a hammer and a quiver.
A critical success is usually the best result at the Forge. It costs no FP and no shard, and it also adds a free tier to a random affix below Tier 5. (If you are planning a seal or balancing exact tiers, that random bonus tier may not be what you want.) Blood FP gives you more of those. Ice FP works differently: EHG describes it only as a chance to keep the FP a craft would have spent, so some crafts that would have cost FP end up free.
How Do You Get Ice or Blood Forging Potential?
You only get them from the Rage of Morditas seasonal mechanic. Normal drops, Monolith boss loot and faction rewards all roll normal FP. If you see an Ice or Blood FP item, it came out of a Blood-Filled Crystal.
The loop works like this:
- Find a Blood Crystal. They appear in campaign zones from Chapter 2 onward and in Monolith echoes. The game warns you with "Anger is building up in the air" and marks the crystal on your minimap.
- Phase one: kill fast. Touching the crystal starts a timer. Every kill fills Morditas's rage bar and earns Bloodrage Charges.
- Phase two: the gauntlet. When the timer ends, an arena of blood ice closes around you and every enemy you killed in phase one comes back. Clear them all.
- Spend your charges. The Blood-Filled Crystal opens a Ritual Rewards panel with five slots. Each action costs one Bloodrage Charge.
The official kill thresholds for Bloodrage Charges, from the Season 5 patch notes:
| Kills in phase one | Bloodrage Charges |
|---|---|
| 20 | 1 |
| 50 | 2 |
| 90 | 3 |
| 140 | 4 |
| 200 | 5 (maximum) |
Five is the cap, and above 200 kills the timer drops rapidly. If you want to end phase two early, leave the combat area for 4 seconds.
Two rules matter for planning. Charges do not carry over to your next Rage of Morditas encounter, so spend them all. The rewards in the panel do carry over. They only change when you perform a ritual or claim an item. A panel you have already shaped with rituals is still waiting at the next crystal.
For where the mechanic fits in your Season 5 endgame, including the Morditas Woven Echo chain and the 400 Corruption Pinnacle fight, see our Season 5 Monolith progression guide.
What Does the Frozen Ritual Do?
The Frozen Ritual is the targeting ritual. You pick a reward, spend a charge, and that slot is sacrificed. Every other slot rerolls into the same item type as the one you sacrificed. If the item was equipment, the new rolls have a higher chance of similar affixes.
From the patch notes: perform a Frozen Ritual on an amulet, and "the next set of items will only be amulets, with a higher chance of having similar affixes as the original item. Rare and exalted items will all have Ice Forging Potential."
So the Frozen Ritual does two jobs at once. It narrows the panel to the slot you need, and it stamps Ice FP on the rare and exalted rewards that come back.
What Does the Bloody Ritual Do?
The Bloody Ritual is the exclusion ritual. It banishes the selected slot, rerolls the rest, and blocks that item type from appearing until you claim an item. EHG's example: use it on a two-handed axe and none of the new rewards will be two-handed axes. Rare and exalted rewards rolled this way all have Blood FP.
The catch is that the ritual you pick controls both the item type and the FP type. You cannot ask for "amulets with Blood FP" directly. A Frozen Ritual on an amulet gives you amulets with Ice FP. A Bloody Ritual can only remove item types you do not want, and with five slots you get at most four sacrifices before you have to claim, which resets the panel. So if you want a Blood FP amulet, banish the types you do not want and claim one if it shows up. There is no guaranteed route to it.
How Many Rituals Should You Do Before Claiming?
Every ritual removes a slot, and the panel only has five. EHG explains the trade-off in the dev blog:
"The more Rituals you use before picking an item, the better the rewards are likely to be. So the more sacrifices, the fewer options become available, but the better the presented items become." — Eleventh Hour Games, Rage of Morditas dev blog
Claiming an item resets the panel and rolls five new rewards. With a 5-charge encounter, a practical pattern looks like this:
- Hunting one specific slot: Frozen Ritual on that item type, then one or two more Frozen Rituals to push quality, then claim. You leave with an Ice FP base in the slot you wanted.
- Hunting a Blood FP base: Bloody Ritual the item types you do not want, then claim the best remaining rare or exalted.
- Low on charges: if you only got 1 or 2 charges, claim an item. A ritual with no charge left to claim just shapes the panel for the next crystal, which still has value, since the panel carries over.
Season 5's two new variant uniques add a twist. They can appear in the panel when it is fully refreshed with five new items. Per the dev blog, a Frozen Ritual on another item rerolls which variant affix the unique has, and a Bloody Ritual on another item has a chance to add Legendary Potential or corrupt it. That uses the same charges you would spend on FP bases, so decide which goal you are chasing before you start.
Should You Use Ice or Blood Forging Potential?
The reviewed 1.5, 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 notes do not give an exact preserve chance for Ice FP or a crit bonus for Blood FP. That still leaves a clear way to decide.
1. Let the item type decide first. The ritual controls the item type and the FP type at the same time. If you need a specific slot, the Frozen Ritual is the only way to target it, and that means Ice FP. A great base in the slot you need beats a slightly better FP type in a slot you do not.
2. When you do have a choice, default to Blood. On the community model below, Ice and Blood make the same share of crafts free. Blood's extra free crafts come from critical successes, which also add a bonus tier to a random affix below Tier 5. So Blood gives you the same FP savings plus some free tiers.
3. Pick Ice when you do not want random bonus tiers. If you are working toward a specific tier layout, or setting up a seal, an unexpected crit tier can get in the way. Ice saves FP without touching your other affixes.
One warning: do not plan a Glyph of Despair seal around Blood FP. Nothing in the 1.5, 1.5.1 or 1.5.2 notes explains how a critical success interacts with a sealing craft.
What Does the Community Math Say?
The tool players point to is the Tunklab FP cost calculator. When a player asked on r/LastEpoch about the odds from Ice and Blood FP this month, the reply was: "Whenever you have a question like this check tunklab." That calculator is community-built, not from EHG, so treat its numbers as estimates. It models Ice FP as a 30% chance of no FP cost and Blood FP as a 30% second crit roll.
For a Tier 1 to Tier 2 upgrade on an item with 3 affixes, with a Glyph of Hope, it shows:
| Forging Potential | Crit chance | Chance the craft is free | Average FP cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 12.0% | 34.0% | 2.84 |
| Ice | 12.0% | 53.8% | 1.99 |
| Blood | 38.4% | 53.8% | 1.99 |
What the calculator shows: on these numbers, Ice and Blood make the same share of crafts free. What we take from that: Blood's extra free crafts come from crits, and crits also add a bonus tier, so Blood looks like the stronger default for slamming. These are model outputs, not official odds, and they change with tier and affix count, so run your own numbers before committing an expensive base.
What Else Changed for Crafting in Season 5?
The new FP types are not the only crafting change in Patch 1.5. These sit right next to them:
- Rune of Evolution: maximum FP cost cut from 25 to 15.
- Precorrupted items: below area level 80 they cannot roll T7 affixes, and below area level 50 they cannot roll T6.
- Rune of Corruption: on normal, magic, rare and exalted items with a level requirement below 55 it cannot roll T7, and below 35 it cannot roll T6.
- Low-level crit bug fixed: characters below level 15 had a 0% critical success chance. That was fixed in 1.5.
- Merchant's Guild filters: the number-of-T6 and number-of-T7 filters now ignore sealed affixes, which EHG says makes Rune of Havoc and Rune of Redemption targets easier to find.
- Hotfix 1.5.1.1: Rage of Morditas rewards can no longer appear already ruined.
- Hotfix 1.5.2.1: fixed corrupting Unsated Rage, Frostbound Solitude or Withstand the Elements sometimes removing the variant modifier.
If you trade, the Season 5 Bazaar changes matter too. Our Season 5 faction reworks guide covers the new Merchant's Guild pricing tools, and Merchant's Guild vs Circle of Fortune helps you pick a side. To see which builds are worth crafting for this season, check the Last Epoch Season 5 tier list.
What Are the Most Common Ice and Blood Forging Potential Mistakes?
- Rituals on a 1-charge crystal. If you only have one charge, a ritual leaves you with nothing to claim this time. Only do it if you are setting up the panel on purpose.
- Expecting Blood FP from a normal drop. Only Rage of Morditas rewards roll it. Do not hold random drops hoping for it.
- Frozen Ritual when you wanted Blood. The ritual decides the FP type. Frozen always means Ice on rare and exalted rewards.
- Throwing away an Ice or Blood FP base too early. The special FP is the reason the item is good. A decent base with Blood FP is often a better crafting project than a slightly better base with normal FP.
- Planning around exact odds. The official notes do not give them. Community numbers are estimates.
Short on time to farm Blood Crystals? Get to the Monolith faster, buy the bases you need, and skip the grind.
- Last Epoch Leveling — campaign and Corruption push so you reach Empowered Monolith and its Rage of Morditas echoes sooner
- Last Epoch Gold — Bazaar buying power for exalted crafting bases and the uniques your build needs
- Last Epoch Merchant's Guild — faction rank and Bazaar access to buy and sell crafted gear
FAQ
What does Ice Forging Potential do in Last Epoch? Ice Forging Potential has a chance to be preserved when used in crafting, so some crafts that would cost FP end up free. EHG does not describe it as changing your critical success chance. It was added in Season 5 (Patch 1.5).
What does Blood Forging Potential do in Last Epoch? Blood Forging Potential raises the critical success chance when crafting. A critical success costs no Forging Potential and no shard, and adds a free tier to a random affix below Tier 5.
How do I get Blood Forging Potential? Perform a Bloody Ritual in the Rage of Morditas Ritual Rewards panel. Every rare and exalted reward rolled after it has Blood Forging Potential. You cannot get it from normal drops.
Is Ice or Blood Forging Potential better? The official notes do not give exact numbers. Community calculations suggest both make a similar share of crafts free, but Blood also raises your crit chance, and crits add a bonus tier, so Blood is the stronger default for slamming. Pick Ice when you need the Frozen Ritual to target an item type, or when you do not want random bonus tiers.
Can I add Ice or Blood Forging Potential to an item I already own? No. Only items rewarded by Rage of Morditas can have them, and the type is set by the ritual you perform before the reward is rolled.
Do Bloodrage Charges carry over between Blood Crystals? No. Charges reset after each encounter, so spend them all. The rewards in the panel do carry over until you perform a ritual or claim an item.
