Gearing Guide

Hamilton's Gearing Guide Video

Use the gear Folio (default keybind Shift-I) to explore different gear and its stats.

Feel free to gear however you'd like. Note that this guide is player made and may be subject to debate. The information provided should still help you get an idea how to gear relatively efficiently but it may not be optimal for you.

Step 0) Pre-Level 55

Don't worry about your gear too much during this time. You will basically use whatever you get from the story quest and mob drops while questing. This gear will all be quickly replaced.

Divine Armor Grade Bonus

Step 1) Catch-up Gear

Once you reach level 50, you will receive your catch up gear. Open the box for your desired class' gear and equip it.

The catchup gear does not include a piece for your waist or arms slots, so you will want to find any cheap piece of world gear to use in these slots that has stats that fit your class. For now, make sure you keep these pieces at Rare or below or else they will disrupt your Armor grade bonus (see image for example and more info).

A cheap, but good option to fill these slots early on is Lost Garden Gear. Open the Auction House -> Select Armor -> Search "Auroria" to view all these pieces. Lost Garden Gear provides decent stats and a equip passive that boosts a specific ability for each skill tree depending on the piece.

The catch-up gear also does not include accessories. You may farm some cheap ones off mobs while leveling or you could just buy them from the auction house. Activity Tokens can also be exchanged for some decent starting accessories.

The catchup box also comes with some starter gems, you will want to gem your catch up gear with Toughness (legs) and Resilience (chest). These stats will increase your odds of survival in PvP encounters significantly. The first 2 slots have a 100% chance of slotting, so use the tier 4 (pink) gems for these slots. For all the remaining slots, use tier 3 (blue gems) as they continue to have a 100% success rate on the remaining slots while tier 4 gems do not. You could technically use tier 4 for these slots, but you may break all your gems and waste a lot of time gemming gear you should be planning on replacing!

Check out the Gemming Guide if you need additional guidance.

For gemming your other pieces, it may be better to just save up until you upgrade out of your catch-up gear rather than sinking more money into gear you should aim to replace.

Upgrading Catch-up Gear

Once you get some Activity Tokens from participating in various events, talk to any Daru Auctioneer by a Mirage Isle portal to start the quest for upgrading your catch-up gear. It may be a good idea to wait until you upgrade your catch-up gear before you put gems in the chest/legs, but it's not a big deal if you have to re-gem them. You will need to locate the Soulforged anvil which can be found in Diamond Shores.

Step 2) Divine Dungeon Gear & Hasla Weapon

Weapon

After you've completed your initial leveling, new players are advised to start working on their Emerald Weapon (Hasla Weapon) until it reaches Divine grade.

Armor

For your armor pieces, a cheap way to get decent armor pieces is to acquire Divine Dungeon Gear. This is due to the fact that dungeon gear is considered "Easy" to regrade when you look at the Regrade Rates for different types of gear. Players can acquire armor pieces from Greater Howling Abyss (GHA), regrade them to Divine, then craft the piece into an Aria's Autograph which can be opened into a chosen piece of armor from Mistsong Summit (MSS) while maintaining the same grade. You will find that dungeon gear makes up the armor pieces for many of the starter gear sets on darugear.com.

Gemming your gear is an important step in order to survive in PvP encounters. Specifically, you will want to slot Radiant Earth Lunagem: Mastery lunagems in your pants to increase your Toughness stat, and Radiant Earth Lunagem: Flexibility lunagems in your pants to increase your Resilience stat. See the Gemming Guide for a quick overview on how to gem your gear.

Accessories

This is also a good point to get started on your Dream Ring quest line if it's a good fit for your class. Healers may prefer the Ynystere Ring. Most classes will also want to start working on their Halcyona Necklace.

These pieces mentioned above mostly require time and effort rather than gold, so you are able to work on them while saving up gold to upgrade your other gear. To fill in your other accessory slots, consider library accessories, mob drop accessories, or some cheap crafted accessories.

As for your other accessories, don't spend too much gold as upgrading your other gear further will be a better bang for your buck.

Step 3) Crafted & Obsidian Gear, Serp Sleeves

As you're gearing, if you aren't sure what to upgrade next, check out Gearing#Class Specific Guides or take a look at other players and the top 100 gear score list to see what gear and gems other players may be going for your class!

Crafted & Obsidian Gear

Once you've completed your "Early Game" (cheap) set of dungeon gear, it's time to start working on more expensive pieces to improve your gear. For this stage in your gearing process, you will generally want these pieces to be Divine or Epic grade, but don't think you need to regrade them yourself as it is often times cheaper to purchase the pieces from other players instead.

Generally, a more finalized gear set will include a mix of gear types. For example, some classes may prefer all Obsidian gear pieces, but there are no Obsidian pieces for the waist or arm slots, so players will fill these slots with Crafted, Dungeon, or Auroria gear pieces. Obsidian gear is tiered up through simple crafting recipes fount in the Folio (default keybind: "o"). Crafted gear is tiered up through a more RNG based crafting system, see Reforge, Regrade, and Manaseal Guide.

For Obsidian gear, you will want to tier it up based on what grade of gear you acquire. For example, Epic Obsidian gear is often upgraded to T6, while Divine Obsidian gear is often only upgraded to T5 or T4, as the price of tiering it up becomes much more significant at higher tiers.

For gear pieces at this stage, since they are worth much more money, consider investing more into things like Gems or Tempers. Make sure you upgrade them to the maximum tier before doing this, as the crafting process will remove any modifiers to the gear (excluding the item grade).

Serp Sleeves

For MOST people and classes, you will use obsidian gear for most of your pieces (certain players may prefer crafted gear for specific classes). However, there are no obsidian pieces for the waist and arm slots, so you will have to use either world gear or crafted gear. For example, most classes will use "Serp Sleeves" in their arm slot. Mages and healers will generally use a Cruel-Glory Sash in their belt slot while other classes may prefer a crafted belt or an Auroria belt with a bonus to a specific ability. Ask around, browse the gear score list, see what best fits your class and playstyle.

Generally Viable Gear

Class	Gear Type	Setup
Mage	Cloth	Obsidian gear for your main 5 pieces, Serp Sleeves + Cruel Glory Sash or a crafted sash.
Melee	Leather	Obsidian gear / 4 piece Gale/Flame for your main 5 pieces, Serp Sleeves + crafted belt.
Archer	Leather	Obsidian gear / 4 piece Gale for your main 5 pieces, Serp Sleeves + crafted belt.
Healer	Cloth	Obsidian gear for your main 5 pieces, Serp Sleeves + Cruel Glory Sash or a crafted sash.
Tank	N/A	N/A

If you don't know what these words mean, read the Gearing section on the Getting Started page and rest of this guide.

Once you've upgraded your weapons, chest, and legs, go ahead and continue upgrading your other pieces.

Once upgraded, consider gemming them with either crafted or prestige gems. Prestige gems are called Lunascales and have a 100% slot chance, whereas crafted gems are only 100% on the first 2 slots. Some players will use crafted gems for their first 2 slots, as they offer larger bonuses but are more expensive, and then use prestige gems to fill the remaining slots. Prestige gems are also tradeable and can be bought from other players.

If you haven't already, now is a good time to upgrade your accessories, instrument, bow, and other off pieces.

Costume and Undergarments

Since your gear is pretty good once you complete Step 3, it may be more cost efficient to start progressing your costume and undergarments before going for additional gear upgrades.

Step 4) Repeat Step 2 & 3 But With Better Gear

Next on the list may be an Epic Ayanad Weapon, Epic Tier 7 Weapon, Epic armor, or a Legendary weapon if you're super rich or lucky. If you get to this point you don't need to be using this guide most likely.