IncreKnight Common Mistakes & How to Fix Them Fast (2026)

Key Takeaways

• Delaying your first prestige past Level 50 costs you roughly 12 hours of progress per extra day you wait. I did this and honestly it's embarrassing how long I sat at Level 58 thinking I was being smart.

• Spending gold on weapons before upgrading the Forge is the single biggest DPS loss in the game. Forge first, always. I mean always.

• Picking Knight of Frost for your first run sets you back 1-2 days versus Flame. You can switch at Prestige 3, no harm done.

• Salvage gear, never sell. The materials are worth 5x the vendor price and you'll need mountains of them later.

The Mistakes That Cost Me Days

I started IncreKnight completely blind and made basically every mistake on this list. The worst one — and I see new players do this constantly on Reddit — was delaying my first prestige. I sat at Level 58 for three straight days farming dungeons, telling myself I'd prestige "after one more boss." Three days. For what? A few extra levels that took twice as long as they should have. The 2x damage multiplier from Prestige 1 means your second run to 50 takes half the time. Every level past 50 before that first prestige is you literally deleting hours of progress.

Prestige at 50 or 51. Not 55. Not 60. Just do it.

The Forge Obsession

Here's something that took me way too long to figure out. The Forge multiplies ALL weapon damage. A Level 40 Forge gives you a 2x multiplier. A Level 80 Forge gives 3x. And the Forge multiplier applies BEFORE element bonuses and crit damage, which means everything downstream gets amplified too.

So when you're at the shop staring at a shiny rare sword for 500 gold, ask yourself: would I rather have one decent sword that I'll replace in 10 levels, or push my Forge from 3 to 12 for a permanent +30% damage on every weapon I ever use? The math isn't close. New players buy gear. Veterans feed the Forge.

I've watched friends spend their first thousand gold on shop weapons while their Forge sat at Level 2. They're making the game about 3x harder on themselves, and they don't even realize it. You know what's worse? I did the exact same thing on my first character. We all fall for it.

Class Choice Regrets

Knight of Frost sounds cool. The slow-on-hit passive seems like it would make boss fights way easier, and look, it does — eventually. But on your first run, when you have zero prestige bonuses and your damage is terrible, that +30% slow doesn't compensate for the DPS you lose compared to Flame Knight's fire DoT.

Flame Knight's DoT ticks while you dodge, while you reposition, while you're AFK. It's damage that requires zero input from you. Frost Knight requires you to actually land hits to get value from the slow, and if you're dying before you can stack it... tbh, you picked the wrong class for your first run.

Frost becomes genuinely good around Prestige 3-4 when you're pushing difficult content and need the slow to survive boss patterns. By then you'll have enough prestige bonuses to switch painlessly. Start Flame, switch later.

Salvage, Don't Sell

I sold every piece of gear I found for my first two prestiges. Rare swords, epic armor, legendary accessories — all vendored for pocket change. Then I hit Prestige 5, unlocked enhancement, and realized I needed hundreds of salvage materials. Hundreds. And I had sold them all for maybe a tenth of their crafting value.

Salvage materials are worth roughly 5x what vendors pay for Rare+ gear. The only things you should sell are Common and Uncommon drops, and even then only if you're desperate for immediate gold. Everything Rare or above gets salvaged. Period.

More Things I Wish Someone Warned Me About

Enhancing gear before Prestige 5 is throwing away stones. Enhancement resets on prestige, and pre-Prestige 5 gear gets replaced within 20 levels of the next run anyway. Save every stone until Prestige 5 when enhancement becomes permanent.

Ignoring guild donations is leaving free XP elixirs on the table. Daily donations cost gold but return guild coins, and guild coins buy XP elixirs — one of the few ways to boost XP outside of gear. Even small donations add up to 5-10 free elixirs per week.

Stacking Offline Progression past 75% is literally wasting stat points. The cap is 75%. The game lets you invest more. Those points do nothing. Same with the 8-hour AFK cap — close the game for 12 hours, you get 8 hours of rewards, and the other 4 just vanish.

Balancing all stats equally gives you about 40% less damage than focusing on Strength breakpoints and Crit Damage. IncreKnight rewards specialization hard. Push Strength to 100 first, Speed to 75 second, then dump everything else into Crit Damage.

And the paid pets? The free ones — Phoenix, Gold Dragon, Void Cat — cover pushing, farming, and DPS respectively. Paid pets are maybe 10% better. Unless you're chasing leaderboard spots at Prestige 10+, you genuinely don't need them. That's money better spent on, I dunno, coffee or something.

FAQ

Q: I made several of these mistakes. Should I restart?

A: Unless you're below Level 20, nah. Push to Prestige 1 and fix your approach on the next run. Prestige resets levels, gold, and gear anyway — it's a built-in do-over.

Q: What's the single biggest mistake to avoid?

A: Honestly? Underleveled Forge. I'd bet 80% of the "I'm stuck" posts on the subreddit are from players with a Forge 20+ levels below where it should be.