Gear & gems

Troop gear

• DIY Chests give materials, not finished gear. Open one from your Inventory and pick the troop category (Infantry, Distance or Cavalry) first. Chest quality (Green, Blue, Purple, Brown, Gold) sets material quality.
• Material Synthesis upgrades materials one quality step at a time, and you cannot skip a step: Green → Blue → Purple → Brown → Gold. Four lower-quality materials make one higher-quality material. Find it in the Imperial Armament Center → Warehouse → Material Warehouse.
• Craft gear once you have all four required materials at the same quality. You need only one of each. The gear takes the quality of the materials.
• Gold gear has two bonus attributes (extra stat lines on top of its base stats) as soon as it is crafted. Dismantling it returns only part of the materials.
• Red gear is made by fusing two Gold pieces of the same type with 200 Volcanic Stones. It can carry up to four bonus attributes, inherited from both pieces. Dismantling returns only part of the materials.
• Fusion lets you choose. After any fusion (Gold + Gold, Red + Gold or Red + Red) you see three options: the left piece, the right piece, or the new result. You keep one and the others are lost. Keep an original if the result rolled poor attributes.
• Brown, Purple, Blue and Green gear are fully recyclable. Dismantling returns every material, so you can upgrade freely.

Guard equipment

• Getting materials. Chests can give random materials, let you choose materials, give finished equipment of a quality and set you choose, or give random equipment that you can dismantle for materials.
• Material Synthesis is in the Guard Equipment building → Material Workshop → Synthesize. Four lower-quality materials make one higher-quality one, for every material type. The workshop synthesizes through every step for you, so you can turn Grey materials straight into Mythic.
• Forging. Open the Guard Equipment building → Forge Equipment. Choose troop type, quality, piece, and forge method. Each piece needs four different materials and a Craft Guide for the troop type.
• Dismantling is lossy. You can take a piece off a guard and dismantle it for random materials, but Craft Guides are never returned and only a portion of the materials comes back. The game itself warns you to make your decisions thoughtfully to minimize losses. Before dismantling, check whether the piece could be used for a Tier Up instead (see below).
• Mixing material qualities is allowed. Four materials of the same quality guarantee that quality. If one material is lower quality, the result becomes a chance of either quality. If you are one high-quality material short, mixing is a reasonable choice, at the cost of lower odds.

Refining and tiering up guard equipment

• Equipment Refinement rerolls the bonus attributes on Mythic equipment that already has some. Each refinement costs 10 Refinement Stones, which come from events or the in-game store. Locked equipment cannot be refined. After each roll you can keep your current attributes or replace them.
• Refinement Stones can be bought in the store, which makes refining a faster path for spenders.
• Tiers. Refined attributes rank S++, S+ and S, best first. Odds match Mythic forging.
• S++ guarantee. Each Mythic piece tracks its own progress. If you keep missing S++, one is guaranteed. The screen shows how many refinements remain, for example “S++ attribute guaranteed within 23 refinement(s)”.
• Wish Attribute. Pick one S++ attribute you want before refining. After you roll 8 S++ attributes, the next guaranteed S++ is exactly your wish. For example, with Distance Lethality +5.00% as the wish, the screen reads “Wish Attribute guaranteed after 8 S++ attribute(s)”.
• Tier Up raises a piece to the next quality (Rare → Epic → Legendary → Mythic). Mythic cannot be tiered up.
• You need four pieces: the main piece plus three more of the same quality and the same troop type. They can be different slots, such as boots upgraded using a helmet, chest and gloves. The main piece may be equipped, but the three used up must be unequipped.
• Bonus attribute chance. Each of the four pieces that has a bonus attribute adds 25% to the chance the upgraded piece gets one: 25% for one piece, 50% for two, 75% for three, 100% for all four. The game shows the final chance on the Tier Up screen once you have added the pieces to be used up, so check it before you confirm.
• Tier Up uses up the extra pieces. The three pieces you add are consumed, and so are any bonus attributes on them. If you would otherwise dismantle spare pieces (which refunds only part of the materials and no Craft Guides), using them for a Tier Up can be the better deal.
• If you do not have three eligible unequipped pieces, the Tier Up option is unavailable. Equipment you can tier up shows a green upward arrow, and the Tier Up button shows a red dot.

Guard weapons: tempering

1. Open the Guard Weapons page and choose the weapon. Tap HONE, then AUTO HONE.
2. Set Benefit Quality to Legendary. Leave the Honing Benefit section empty. Under Tempering Benefits, select only one damage stat. Selecting more raises Gold use without raising your odds.
3. Auto Hone rerolls with Gold until it finds your stat or you run out of Gold. You can cancel at any time.
4. When it finishes, tap Replace if you got the damage stat you wanted, or Retain if not. Judge by the tempering benefit only.
5. Enhance the weapon. Everyone gets 5 free enhancements a day. After that, use Enhancement Hammers, and accept only upgrades to your tempering benefit.

• Free source of Enhancement Hammers: the Alliance Celebration equipment task gives 6 per week, if your alliance picks it as that week's task.
• Enhancement Hammers are also sold in Limited Deals → DIY Pack → Utility Item Pack.

Gemstones

• Echo Benefits unlock at +2, +4 and +6. Every gemstone in a type must reach the level. For example, both Earth gemstones must be +2 for the first Earth echo. The milestones stack, so +6 gives all three. There is nothing beyond +6.
• New generation problem. When a new generation arrives (for example R20), you rarely have the materials to take every new gemstone to +6. Swapping them all at once can drop you below the echo milestones until they are fully upgraded.
• Echo retention trick. Keep at least one gemstone from the older generation in each type. While one older gemstone stays equipped, the game keeps judging echo benefits by that older generation, and the newer ones count as meeting its requirements. You keep the old echo bonuses while you upgrade the new gemstones one at a time.
• Example. Going from R20 to R21 Earth gemstones without materials to take both to +6: keep one R20 Earth gemstone at +6, put an R21 in the other slot, and keep upgrading the R21 over time. You keep the R20 echo benefits until the R21 set is ready. The same works for Star, Moon and Sun.

Formulas and worked examples