Great Buildings Prestige, redesigned: the feature overview

The Great Buildings Prestige update arrives on BETA October 8th, 2026! 

The long-awaited redesign is here! When Great Buildings Prestige arrived on Beta earlier this year, it quickly became the most discussed feature in the community. Thanks to your comments, testing notes, numbers, and criticism, the original design has significantly changed. We've based this new release on the most common feedback topics you raised after the latest Prestige update, but kept the core of the feature intact.

We designed Great Buildings Prestige to reinforce and support these unique Buildings, keeping them and your investment into them relevant for longer. Prestige introduces new distinct progression milestones, with special building effects as a reward. This idea stays true, but we heavily reworked the areas you had the most feedback on: Forge Point costs and lack of new effects in particular. 

To give you a quick rundown of the changes before we dive into the balancing tables:

• One new Tier instead of two. Great Buildings now go straight from Copper to Gold. The Silver Tier will be removed.
• Much lower Forge Points costs. Compared to Live, the total cost of getting a Great Building to level 500 is down by roughly 80% or more.
• New Gold effects. Gold Tier effects are either evergreen or unique to their Great Building.
• No more Special Goods. Great Buildings no longer require them, so players from any Age can build and level them.
• Reworked contribution rewards. Contributors now get a fixed share of the level cost, and Gold levels reward 7 places instead of 5.

And now, to the details.

Prestige Tiers

To keep the feature flexible while offering you new unique bonuses, we've cut the Silver Tier entirely. Great Buildings now follow this structure:

Here's how's to read this graph and how the system works on practice.

• Copper Tier. Grow Copper Tier bonuses between levels 1 and 200. After that, bonuses stop growing but still apply. Between levels 101 and 200, you will grow two Tiers simultaneously: Copper and Gold.
• Gold Tier. Starting at level 101, Gold effects can be improved up to level 500. This Tier provides brand new building effects. 
• Past level 500, the Gold Tier effects plateau, and their growth is minimal. This is what the grey segment on the Gold Tier graph represents. Nevertheless, leveling past this point will still earn you significant Ranking Points, collect contribution rewards, and keep your 1.9 threads going. 

As you know from previous updates, GBs that do not receive the Gold Tier are capped at 200 levels and remain in the Copper Tier. 

21 of the Great Buildings receive the new Gold Tier. Already leveled GBs will retain their level and receive the new effects automatically if it's the level is in the Gold Tier. Compared to the previous release, we've expanded the list with the Royal Albert Hall and the Shattered Horizon Siphon – check the full balancing table in the section below. We know you are always keen to see new bonuses, and are on the lookout for new options.

New Gold effects

The building effects were one of the key feedback points we received, so introducing a whole new list of Gold bonuses was one of our top priorities. Many of you were also worried about GBs being outcompeted by the Event buildings, and we took that into consideration as well.

Rather than competing with Event buildings on the same boosts, they offer evergreen multipliers, unique resource mechanics, and bonuses that tie into playing with others.

Important! Effect values may change during Beta testing.

Boosted Copper effects

In addition to the new building effects listed above, our Game Designers have boosted a number of Copper effects for an overall added buff. Besides raising the values, we've also reconsidered effects for some of the GBs. Take a closer look:

Value buffs (max value raised)

And the additional rebalancing:

Rebalanced leveling costs

With the first Beta release, we kept the current Live costs as a point of reference, while also planning for multi-year progression in advance, which resulted in significantly higher costs. Your feedback was clear, so we started looking for a different approach.

In the new design, the Forge Points investment is about 80% lower, even compared to the Live balancing! Let's take a look at a few examples:

In addition, unlocking levels on Gold Great Buildings now takes Goods (from the Great Building's Age), Supplies, Coins, Medals, and both Copper and Gold Blueprints. This change is also rooted in our wish to decrease the costs. 

We understand if it makes you think about Forge Points you'd already invested in on Beta and especially Live. Bridging this gap for all affected players would create thousands of scenarios that may be dangerous to handle in a legacy game like Forge of Empires. To keep the server stability intact and ensure this investment still sets you up for a success, we decided to balance the difference with added costs of a different kind. If you'd already leveled your GB to the Gold Tier, you will skip these costs, while receiving all the new building effects. 

You'll also notice that the costs don't feature Special Goods. Great Buildings don't require them anymore! That means players from any Age can build and level them, as long as you have friendly neighbors willing to trade you the Goods you need. Happy trading!

In the table below, please find the FULL costs for all GBs upon the update, rounded to the nearest 1.000. Please note that the costs in the game may differ minimally from this table and use the game data as the primary reference. 

Contribution rewards

On Beta, this update has been announced on October 1st, 2026 and is currently active. Read below for a refresher.

With level 500 as the new goal, contribution rewards needed a closer look. Some of you with a sharp eye for numbers already noticed that the current system falls flat around level 300 cause that's where the costs start outpacing the rewards. We wanted to find a solution for that to keep your investments satisfying and this long-standing social dynamic going.

Now, the reward is a fixed percentage of what the level costs. If a level costs a certain number of Forge Points, a set share of that goes back to the contributors. The share depends on the Great Building's level:

The percentage drops as levels go up, but level costs climb much faster, so the total reward still grows with every band. Contributing to a high level always pays more than contributing to a low one. And since it's a fixed share of a known cost, you can work out exactly what a spot is worth before you commit.

Note: The number of Blueprints you get from contribution rewards is reduced by around 60% to balance out the more efficient FP rewards and keep Blueprints a rare resource. Medal amounts don't change.

What about the Arc? On Copper levels, its Contribution Bonus works as usual. On Gold levels, the Contribution Boost only applies when you contribute to other Gold Great Buildings. Since the release of Stellar Age: Discovery, we have one more GB with the exact same effect: The Shattered Horizon Siphon's.

Gold levels now reward 7 contributor places. Copper levels keep 5. The total reward pot stays the same, it's just split more ways, so more people get something out of each level-up. Places are still ranked by total Forge Points contributed, and first place still takes the clear majority.

Blueprint Refinery

With Silver Tier gone, the Refinery is simpler. For each Gold Great Building, you can refine Copper Blueprints into Gold Blueprints 5 times per day. This works per building: 1 Copper set (of 9 individual Blueprints) will yield you 1 random Gold Tier Blueprint of the same Great Building.

In addition, each refinement costs Goods of the GBs' Age and resources that go up with each refinement that day:

Not keen on refining? You can also get Gold Blueprints by:

• placing in the top 7 contributors on someone else's Gold Great Building
• buying them with Diamonds
• earning them from rewards

Migration and fairness

To make the migration to the new state smoother on both Beta and later Live, we've simplified the process. The release will look as follows:

• With the migration, unlocked levels reset to your built level, and every Blueprint you spent is fully refunded.
• If your Great Building's level is above the new cap, you get the Forge Points and resources you invested back. However, the current level split allows for very few of those cases. 
• All existing Silver Blueprints in your inventory will be converted to Gold Blueprints.

With this, we wanted to make sure everyone can benefit from the new system, and that there's no added value in learning about it early. 

Thanks to everyone who tested the original design and shared their thoughts! Your feedback shaped this update, and we hope you will enjoy it.

Head to Beta from October 8th, put the new Gold effects to the test, and let us know how you like them!

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