While catching up on the game, i saw a few misunderstandings that forging gives you a chance at unique variants.
I was also under the impression that this was the case in the beginning.

But why shouldn't it be this way? It could be fun. I feel Punch is really expensive.

How about when you offer the minimum amount of crystals, you get a low chance, lets say X%.
When you offer the medium amount, maybe 2X%.
And when you pay the maximum amount, it could be 4X%.

Thats for the first unique variant, now lets tackle multiple unique variants.
Lets assign Y% as the chance for the first UV.
So Y% = X% at min, = 2X% at med, = 4X% at max.
Then the chance for the second unique variant could be 0.5Y%
And the third could be 0.25Y%.

So to summarize at this point, every time you level up, you have a chance to get 3 different unique variants, each extra unique variant harder to get than the previous.

Now lets say your item already has a few UVs, what then? Well when you forge your item, you can just tick off which UV you want to keep.
But it does not change your chance for the second and/or third UV.
Which means that having a UV that you don't want, does not guarantee that you will get another UV in that same UV slot.

I feel that this way the forge would be better accepted.

Edit: got Punch confused for Vice.