ForgeTax Black Screen on Anvil Fix: How to Stop Crashing and Freezing

I was three swings into a perfect blade when ForgeTax pulled the plug on my monitor. No crash window, no error, just a black screen with the forge crackling away in my headphones like nothing happened. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been there too.

ForgeTax is a dark first-person forging roguelite from GraveYardDev, launched September 29, 2026. You heat a blade, drag it to the anvil, and hammer it to push its value higher, while a greedy dragon waits for its tribute and every extra strike risks shattering the steel. It’s tense, it’s addictive, and it peaked at over 8,000 concurrent players. It also has a nasty habit of blacking out at the exact moment you commit to the anvil.

Here’s the pattern. The UI disappears, the screen goes dark, but the audio keeps going: ambient forge loops, menu clicks, all of it. Your inputs stop registering, and the only way out is killing the process in Task Manager. Losing a run that way hurts in a roguelite.

I went through Steam Community threads, tech forums, and player reports and tested what actually helps. Here’s the full breakdown.

ForgeTax RNG Bullshit Glitch Tool Ultimate Guide to GraveYardDev’s Roguelite Mechanics

Why the Anvil Kills Your Screen

The bug fires when you focus on or strike the anvil, and that isn’t random. The game does a lot of heavy lifting in that moment, and three things tend to snap:

• Camera and post-processing overload. Approaching the anvil locks you into a tight, focused camera. FOV, depth of field, and bloom all shift at once. If your GPU can’t build those visual layers fast enough, the renderer stalls and you’re left staring at a dead frame buffer.
• DirectX 11 shader timeouts. The glowing metal uses dynamic emissive textures that change color with temperature. On certain GPU architectures or older driver branches, the sudden load of heat maps and particle sparks trips a driver timeout.
• Corrupted temp data. ForgeTax constantly writes temporary states to your local app data. If a sword shatters right as the camera transition starts, the cache can get mangled, and the next anvil interaction throws rendering errors.

Knowing which one is biting you saves time, but since you can’t always tell, work through the fixes in order.

Fix 1: Clear the DirectX Shader Cache and Set Launch Options

A bloated shader cache is a classic cause of blank screens during sudden camera switches. This is the first thing I’d try.

1. Close ForgeTax fully with Alt + F4 or Task Manager.
2. Open the Start Menu, type ‘Disk Cleanup,’ and run it as administrator.
3. Select your main drive (usually C:).
4. Uncheck everything except DirectX Shader Cache.
5. Click OK and confirm the deletion.
6. In Steam, right-click ForgeTax, then Properties, then the General tab.
7. In the Launch Options box, type exactly: -dx11 or -windowed -noborder
8. Launch the game and test the anvil.

Try the two launch options separately. Some setups prefer one over the other.

Fix 2: Force the Game Onto Your Dedicated GPU

This one hits gaming laptops and mid-range rigs hardest. Windows sometimes quietly hands rendering to the integrated graphics when you zoom into small-scale minigame moments like the anvil. Your beefy GTX, RTX, or Radeon sits idle while a tiny integrated chip chokes.

1. Press Windows Key + I to open Settings.
2. Go to System, then Display, then Graphics settings.
3. Under ‘Choose an app to set preference,’ pick Desktop App and hit Browse.
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ForgeTax.
5. Select ForgeTax.exe and click Add.
6. Click the game in the list, then Options.
7. Choose High Performance and make sure it points to your discrete GPU.
8. Save, restart your PC, and launch.

Fix 3: Turn Off the Fancy Post-Processing

If the black screen survives the first two fixes, the post-processing pipeline is almost certainly choking during the zoom-in. Strip it down.

• Open Settings, then the Video/Graphics tab.
• Switch off Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and Bloom. These three flip states rapidly when you focus on the anvil, so they’re the prime suspects.
• Toggle Display Mode between Borderless Window and Exclusive Fullscreen. Different hardware reacts differently to engine scaling, so test both.
• On a 144Hz or 240Hz monitor, cap your frame rate at 60 FPS, either in-game or through your GPU control panel. Wild frame swings during asset transitions are a known trigger for lockups in indie roguelites like this one.

Yes, the game looks a little less cinematic without bloom. A blade that actually finishes forging looks better than a black rectangle.

Fix 4: Verify Your Game Files

Sometimes an asset is corrupted or missing, and the game goes hunting for a spark particle or sound effect that doesn’t exist. Visuals stall while the rest of the engine keeps looping.

1. Close the game and open Steam.
2. Right-click ForgeTax in your Library and open Properties.
3. Go to Installed Files.
4. Click Verify integrity of game files.
5. Let Steam scan. Any broken or mismatched files get replaced automatically.

It takes a few minutes and costs you nothing.

Fix 5: Wipe the Temporary AppData Files

If a weird item generation glitched in a past session, the game may be stuck reading a bad inventory pointer every time you touch the blacksmith tools. Clearing the cache forces a clean slate.

1. Press Windows Key + R, type %localappdata%, and hit Enter.
2. Find the GraveYardDev folder or the ForgeTax subfolder.
3. Look for folders named ‘Saved,’ ‘Cache,’ or ‘Config.’
4. Delete the temporary cache or config files.
5. Restart the game.

Back up everything to another folder first. Do not delete your main .sav file unless you want to wipe your progression and start over.

Check Your Specs

Low VRAM can cause instant blackouts during heavy rendering, so make sure your rig clears the bar.

Sitting right at minimum? Expect the anvil to be the first place the game complains. Running the recommended specs and still getting blackouts points to drivers or cache problems, so update your GPU drivers before anything else.

My Verdict

ForgeTax is a gem. The forging loop is sticky, the dragon’s tribute demands keep you sweating, and the dark atmosphere is spot on. A bug that kills your run at the anvil, the core of the whole game, is a serious blemish, though. It’s the kind of problem that should be fixed in a patch, not by users digging through AppData folders.

Until GraveYardDev ships a proper fix, the combo that stabilizes most setups is clearing the shader cache, forcing the dedicated GPU, and turning off motion blur, depth of field, and bloom. Keep an eye on the Steam update page for official patches, because a real fix from the devs will beat any workaround here.

Got a different fix that worked for you? Drop it in the community hub. Someone staring at a black screen right now will thank you.