Gear stopped being a purchase.

How to think about it now

• Buy the cheapest thing that hits the level requirement. Below level 150, gear is a consumable. Don't save for the aspirational item — the imbuements on a mediocre weapon beat a bare good one.
• Imbuement slots matter more than stats. A weapon with three slots and 45 attack usually beats one with two slots and 48.
• Elemental resistance is now a real axis. Every creature's resistances are in your Bestiary. Swapping a shield or spellbook for the right element before a hunt is normal play, not min-maxing.
• Don't chase tiers early. The forge needs two copies of the same item plus dust that only premium characters collect. It's a level-200 concern.

Imbuements — the part that matters

You bring creature products and gold to an imbuing shrine and burn a bonus into an item for 20 hours of active use. Combat imbuements only tick while you're in combat; speed and capacity ones tick whenever the item is equipped and you're online.

What it costs

Materials come out of your inventory first, then the stash, then the bank — so you can leave everything in the supply stash and it just works.

The three that change the game

Strike always adds 5% crit chance; the tier raises the extra damage. Note that Vampirism and Void have diminishing returns when one attack hits many creatures — they're strongest on single targets.

Where to put them

Protection imbuements are situational, not optional

Powerful elemental protection is 15% (10% for death, which is deliberately weaker). Against a spawn that hits you with one element — and most spawns do — that is a bigger survivability gain than any armor upgrade you can buy. Check the Bestiary entry before you go, and swap.

The knight

• Two-handed for damage, shield for survival. For a decade two-handed was simply correct. With combat mode gone, shields got +30% defence and knights got Shield Bash and Shield Slam, which deal damage from the shield's defence value. Holding a large pull with a shield is now a real build.
• Magic level is no longer decorative. Your healing spells scale with shielding and magic level now. A mage helmet is still wrong, but don't dump the stat.
• Pick a weapon and stay with it. Proficiency levels per individual weapon, and switching resets nothing but starts a new tree from zero. Settle by level 100 or so.
• Endgame landmarks, so the market prices make sense: Falcon and Cobra sets, then Soul War gear (Soulwalkers, Soulbastion, Spiritthorn), then Rotten Blood and Primal Ordeal, then the Moonsilver set from Summer 2026.

The druid

• Rods now generate mana when you auto-attack instead of consuming it, and reach further. Attacking between spells is free resource — build the habit.
• Two spellbooks minimum, imbued with different elemental protections. Swapping is a hotkey, not an errand.
• Capacity is your real constraint, not gold. Featherweight on the backpack, and let the knight carry the heavy loot.
• No more energy rings. Druids and sorcerers lost them in 2026. Carry mana shield potions instead, and remember that Barrier turns your mana bar into a second health bar.

Tiers, briefly

The Exaltation Forge in the Adventurers' Guild fuses two identical items into one item at a higher tier, or transfers a tier from one item onto another. Each slot gets a different passive:

Fuel is dust, dropped by influenced creatures, premium only. 60 dust makes 3 slivers; 50 slivers make one exalted core. Fusion can fail and downgrade; transfer always succeeds but costs more. None of this is worth engaging with before you have gear you intend to keep.