Item Guide
Introduction
So you got the ability to craft and use items now, but it isn't really clear how to proceed at this point. This guide aims to give you an idea what to expect and what your choices are. As most things regarding items are random: cost for crafting new items, and progress in that crafting and in upgrading items and what items you get; it's actually impossible to go an optimal way. And in the end you will always reach the goal of having everything (useful) at legendary quality, so there is no way to screw up, it just may take you longer then it would have been had you made different choices.
The crafting resources in this guide will often referred to simply as "dust".
Crafting new items, or upgrade the ones you have?
This is your main choice when it comes on how to proceed with items. There are several priorities that factor into this.
- Get valuable uniques in the slots that have them. Most item slots have a unique that is useful to some classes. Uniques can be enchanted immediately. In your first playthrough (realm) your items will be low quality, and if the unique enchant is something your class scales with it likely beats out any other option for that slot.
- Get some kind of item for each slot. Even low quality items are a good profit boost.
- Get Artificier's Shoulderpads and upgrade it to Legendary. These increase your crafting dust income, which lets you craft more items. With the incantation enchant at legendary they're also a good burst item for most classes.
- Get Resonator_Ring and upgrade it to Epic. Each level of Resonator Ring (except Legendary) increases all your enchants by 1. If you've been getting a decent number of enchanted uniques to enchant, this is a super powerful bonus.
- Upgrade common (grey) items you get to uncommon, except for more expensive ones like weapons.
- Start upgrading gear for a t2 class to Legendary, focusing on specific high value pieces to get to Legendary as fast as possible for enchants.
- Optional, not crafting, but to upgrade the other items the best strategy for research is to always have a Trial of Patience running and do Trial of Innovation with the extras. Trophies can be upgraded over time by idling Darkwood and Maosoleum or quickly by spamming manual expeditions (the drop rate penalty affects catalysts, not trophy drops).
Why upgrade grey items before upgrading everything to Legendary
Upgrading items seems expensive and doesn't give much progress, whereas crafting a new items fills the progress-bar quite nicely, you can use all your dust and you get a new and maybe even better item then you already have. But there is a different progression bar hidden in plain sight, which fills much faster by upgrading items than by crafting new ones. It's your crafting-level. And to make the most out of the dust you have, you want to get your crafting level as high as possible. Every crafting level increases the progress you make in upgrading further items and crafting new items by 5% (additive). But that alone wouldn't be reason enough. The other reason is hidden in the Items-Page.
The amount of crafting-exp you get is completely independent of the costs you have to pay to progress in upgrading items or crafting new ones! The only thing it cares about is the percent-progress you made. And upgrading items is 6.06 times worth more experience then crafting new items, while crafting new items only progresses five times as much! Together with the fact that you have to pay on average 1200 dust for one click to craft a new item and upgrading a item costs usually around 100 to 300 dust per click, you can get much more crafting experience by upgrading your items than by crafting new ones.
Doing this consequently will give you around 6 crafting-levels or 30% (additive) more then just getting new items one after the other!
Further strategy
Upgrading every item you get to uncommon means you have stronger bonus from your item-set, but also can mean you don't have some important items you may want and items don't need all colours of the crafting resources in the same amount, so you may have an imbalance. So when should you abandon ship and either start concentrating on crafting new items, or upgrade items further than uncommon?
Upgrading items further than uncommon should be done in two cases: You think it's cheap in terms of dust, so you use it as an experience boost. Or you can profit quite a bit from the next level(s) of the item and thus progress faster in the game. The more specialized you play, the faster that second point comes into play. But there are also some items that are useful for nearly every play style.
Never hesitate to upgrade further, if you have a good reason for it.
Regarding an imbalance in the different colours of crafting resources you may want to either use that surplus to upgrade items that need that dust, to convert it into crafting-experience. Or use it in experiments that need that dust color.
Unlocking Abolisher:
Abolisher needs 8 epic-items, which usually is a lot at the myst-ranges his other requirements become doable. But he is also a very item-dependent class, so I would advice you to ignore him for the time being and once you naturally get the 8 epic-items to unlock him and do his achievements. If you already struggle to get the 8 epic-items, it's very unlikely you will get any profit from playing him anyway.
You can make this point moot if you upgrade your trophies to legendary, as that is independent from crafting dust and just needs a bit of time to play expeditions.
Special and noteworthy Items
Some items are widely used, others can be really powerful in the right circumstances, having a huge influence on the way you play. This list isn't necessarily complete and will also not list unique items, as those are meant to be special and thus would all fall into this category. But instead give you an idea what may be useful to further upgrade.
Widely used items
The Falconer's Trust set, as it makes pet-leveling much faster
The Nether's Embrace set, as it allows for much higher void mana
The power Armor set, as it buffs the two most used spell types: Incantations and Evocations. Empowering hand-guards are also the cheapest item to upgrade in the game.
Casque of Learning , Endless Pouches, The Great Journey, and Hollow Eye Pendant as they buff character-experience earned, allowing for a higher character level.
Game changing items
Every Unique-Item in the game, so I won't list them all here.
Frosty Ring, for making incantation-spells cast much faster, allowing to stack those casts much higher.
Bite Sleeves, giving 75 Empathy to allow to wear the falconers set with much less investment of attribute points.
Artificier's Shoulderpads, because it allows for faster crafting resources gathering, many consider this to be top priority to upgrade to legendary.
Perfected Kata Bracers, for those classes that have a charging spell that's part of the buildup.