Technology

Technology in the Golden Basin is limited to roughly a pre-industrial revolution level. The reason for this is that metal, especially more precious metal is not an easy find. Most people work in agriculture, there isn’t a large enough yield from the fields to allow a serious mining population (and even that would be questionable with the ravaged earth and low depth of shards), and scavenging doesn’t yield enough for a real industrial revolution, which wouldn't pay for itself. Whatever technology is there is much easier to power by Embers, although a lot of knowledge is still used, manpower and resources are lacking. Compared to an Earth date, this would be around 1770, although knowledge of much more modern tech is common, and imbued items bring some more recent inventions to life.

Available are for example: printing, lenses, thermometers and barometers, clockwork, firearms, more intricate musical instruments, steady bridges, low volume metallurgy, soap.

Steam and electricity only exist on an experimental level. Prototypes have been made for flight and radio: hot air balloons are not viable due to wild currents and low variation in air density within the atmosphere. Powered flight might have a future. Radio is struggling due to the lack of precious metals and interference from the Rift.

Firearms
Somewhat common are primitive weapons with paper cartridges, stone bullets, and black powder, since their production and maintenance requirements are much less substantial. While smokeless propellant and gunpowder are well-established science, they are not commonly manufactured and are rarely used, due to the rarity of metal and the underdevelopment of precise machining equipment required. These models are one-of-a-kind, artisan products. However, the absolute peak of firearms technology took a completely different direction: Ember-fueled coilguns, which are fantastically expensive to produce, the ammunition is worth its weight in steel, but well-maintained they can easily serve multiple lifetimes while far outperforming their more conventional brethren.