Gear and upgrade guide

Every armor set by class and level, the jewelry, the boss uniques, item grades, where gear drops, and how the blacksmith takes your weapon from +0 to +10. Read this before you risk your best item on the anvil.

1. How gear works

You wear a weapon, an off-hand shield (warriors and priests), a helm, a chest piece, gloves, boots, two rings, two earrings, a necklace, a belt and a cloak. Every piece has a required level, and from level 5 every class has armor of its own. The tooltip shows the class, the level, the gear band and every stat line.

• Weapons and armor that monsters drop come at +1. Shop stock comes at +0.
• The traders in Emberfold, Valcrest and Gorzhak sell the starter set and the level 5 iron gear of every class. Anything better drops from monsters, comes from the Riftstone Reel or is bought from other players' stalls.
• Wings, glows and store cloaks from the Power Up Store are looks with small bonuses. They have no + ladder.

2. Gear bands

Every piece belongs to a band, named in its tooltip.

3. Armor by class

At level 1 everyone wears the same padded set: Leather Cap, Padded Vest, Leather Gloves and Leather Boots. From level 5 each class has its own look and its own stats: warriors wear plate, rogues leather and scale, mages robes and pointed hats, priests vestments and circlets. Each set is a helm, a chest piece, gloves and boots.

The dragon chest pieces carry 8% Flame Resistance, and the level 55 chest pieces 8% Shadow and 8% Poison Resistance.

4. Weapons

Warriors and priests also find a shield at every level: wooden, iron, steel, mithril, dragon and titan.

5. Item grades

• Common: the item's own stats only.
• Magic: one extra random line.
• Rare: two or three extra random lines.
• Unique: the boss uniques, with fixed lines plain items never have.

Random lines can be STR, DEX, INT, VIT, HP, MP, attack power or defense, and grow with the item's level. Higher monsters drop magic and rare pieces more often than low ones, and bosses most often of all. Better grades also sell to traders for more.

6. Where gear drops

• A monster drops gear from 20 levels below its own up to 5 above it, so a level 42 Ash Revenant can already drop level 45 dragon gear. Bosses above level 60 count as level 60.
• No boss unique drops in the start zone around Emberfold.
• The Riftstone Reel of Nessa the Gemcutter in Emberfold pays gear by stone: green stones mithril (level 30), blue stones dragon (level 45), violet stones the level 55 set, for any class. Violet stones can also pay unique jewels, a level 45 boss weapon or a level 60 legendary weapon.
• The database lists what every monster drops.

7. Jewelry

Plain jewelry comes in three metals, each with a ring, an amulet, an earring and a belt in four kinds. Bronze pieces drop from monsters of levels 8 to 23, silver from 24 to 43 and gold from 44 up, and the bosses of those levels drop them more often.

Metals: Bronze (level 10), Silver (level 28), Gold (level 48), for example the Bronze Ring of Might or the Gold Belt of Warding. Along with them you will find single jewels with stat mixes, such as the Bronze Band, Sage's Charm, Hunter's Earring, Warder's Belt, Flameheart Ring and Stormglass Earring, and the Rift jewels the Riftstone Reel pays.

8. Boss uniques

A boss unique is always clearly stronger than the best plain piece of its slot at its level, often with class guards or strong resistances. It shimmers gold in its slot and its tooltip.

9. The blacksmith and the + ladder

Brann, the blacksmith in Emberfold, raises weapons, shields and armor up to +10. Every + raises the item's stats, and the later steps raise them the most. Every try costs gold, and the price climbs with each step.

• +0 to +3: gold only, no scroll. The first two steps never fail. A failed try from +2 to +3 keeps the item at +2.
• +3 to +10: every try needs an Upgrade Scroll as well as the gold, and a failed try destroys the item.
• Best Upgrade Scroll: works like an Upgrade Scroll with better odds. Scribes sell it, and Colony monsters and bosses drop it rarely.
• Fortune Stone: from the Power Up Store. Put one in the blacksmith's window and that try's chance of success goes up. One stone per try, used up whether the try works or not, and never spent on a step that cannot fail. It never makes a step certain.
• A success at +7 or higher is announced to the whole server.

Scrolls are sold by the scribes: Ilsa in Emberfold, Wendell in Valcrest, Vashka in Gorzhak, and more in the Colony, Morgard and the Umbral Rift. An Upgrade Scroll costs 100,000 gold, a Jewelry Scroll 400,000 and a Best Upgrade Scroll 1,000,000. Monsters drop Upgrade Scrolls rarely, and the homeland roaming bosses drop an Upgrade or a Jewelry Scroll.

Jewelry and cloaks go up to +3 by merging instead: bring three identical pieces at the same +, a Jewelry Scroll and the gold, and they become one piece a level higher. Merging never fails.

10. Weapon glow at +7 and +8

From +7 a weapon starts to glow, and from +8 it burns, lit in its own colors (a near-black blade stays dark). Elemental weapons burn in their element's look: flames for fire, pale crystals for ice, sparks for lightning, violet bubbles for poison and dark violet flames for shadow. Everyone around you sees it.

11. Elements and resistances

Some weapons carry an element and deal extra Flame, Glacier, Lightning, Poison or Shadow Damage on every hit. Only weapons have elements: skills and monsters do not, so resistances matter against players.

• A resistance takes its percent off the extra damage of a weapon of that element, up to 50% per element, so an elemental weapon always keeps at least half its bonus.
• Resistances are flat. A + does not raise them and drops never roll them.
• You find them on dragon and level 55 chest pieces, on jewelry named for an element (Flameheart Ring, Stormglass Earring, the Emberbound, Frostbound and Stormbound belts, the drake pendants) and on boss uniques. The Legion Belt from the Ancient Colossus resists all five.
• Class guards ("Defense vs Warriors" and the others) work the same way against each class, up to 30%. Your character window shows your resistances.

12. Two-handed weapons

The Mithril Waraxe, Dragon Wingblade, Dragon Scythe, Titan Greataxe, Hellmaw Cleaver and Nightreaper are two-handed warrior weapons. They leave no hand for a shield: equipping one puts your shield in the bag, and a shield cannot go beside one. Swords, falchions and hatchets are one-handed, so a warrior who wants a shield picks one of those.

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