Gear upgrading guide

Everything you need to know, but you don't dare to ask...

I. Getting started
Gear upgrading is the essence of this game. With the items you will get as quest rewards (and some lucky monster drops) you can barely handle the endgame areas. And forgot going for some instances. You will be probably one-hitted by monsters.
The are 5 ways of gear upgrading:

1. Putting stats on items (the most efficient).
   
2. Tiering gear up (good only for weapons).
   
3. Drilling rune slots and putting some runes there (semi-good, those runes aren't good, except some asskicking rank4 and 5 runes).
   
4. Enchanting (nice way to boost the physical/magical defense and to get some nice extra stats)
   
5. Using high-dura items (every item with 101 or better durability gives +20% to all it's statistics)

Making long story short: use high-dura items, enchant them to +6, put some nice stats and drill additional rune slots.

2. The item: explanation of the terms etc
Sorry for not perfect image quality. Photobuckets tends to screw up this. I know, there are better image hosting sites, but let me focus on the guide now. Image is readable.
Item rarity
Guardian Pants - this item is "green". There are several types of items.

• White items - are common
  
• Green items - are normal
  
• Blue Items - are rare
  
• Purple items - are unique
  
• Orange items - are epic
  

The more rare item is, the better stats it haves. But this comes only for the basic stats: psychical/magical defense for armor and physical/magical attack for weapons. Approximately green item will have 20-50% better stats then white one, blue will have 20-50% better stats then green, purple will be better then blue and so on. It isn't always 20-50%, sometimes it's only 10%, depending on the items. It's not necessary to buy purple items on AH. you can build your gear on green/blue items. But if you have a choice, select better one.

Enchantment
This is the "+4" part on the image. You enchant items using special jewels from item shop. Enchanting item boos its basic stats (psychical and magical defense for armor. Physical or magical attack for weapons) and adds "hidden" attribute.

• Weapons - phisical/magical attack, depending on weapon. Wands and staffs gets the "magic attack" bonus. Other weapons get "psychical attack" bonus
  
• cloth head part: intelligence bonus
  
• cloth upper body: intelligence bonus
  
• cloth hands: intelligence bonus
  
• cloth waist: wisdom bonus
  
• cloth lower body: wisdom bonus
  
• cloth shoulder: stamina bonus
  
• cloth feet: stamina bonus
  
• cloth cape: stamina bonus
  
• rings: critical damage bonus (more damage on critical strike)
  
• Earrings: health points bonus
  
• Necklace: critical strike chance bonus
  

Sorry, but I don't have information for leather/chain/plate items.
The better item you try to enchant (in this case better=higher level), the enchant effect will be better.
For example: lv 50 necklace gives +10 crit chance per enchant level.
Sand dune necklace - level 55 - is +12% crit chance per enchant level.

Durability
Higher=better. Item with current durability equal or higher then 101 will get 20% bonus to all it's statistics: physical/magical attack/defense, enchantment bonus stat, all runes and all stats. Eg. you had a Stamina X stat on the item. Normally it gives 35 stamina. With the bonus it will be 42 stamina.
While fighting items lose their durability. When the item dura falls down below 100, it will lose the +20% bonus. You can restore it by repairing. Items with really low-dura will get the -20% penalty to all stats.
DOn't use items with 101-104 dura, they will be broken to fast.
107 is quite good, it's about 1.5h of normal gameplay to lose this.
111+ will prevent losing the 20% bonus after death (resurrection brings 10 dura penalty for each item)
116+ is awesome...and incredibly expensive.

Rune slot
There can be up to 4 runes slots in one item. While playing you find plenty of runes with stats. You can put them in items with rune slots. You need drillers from weapon shop to get more then 1 rune slot.
You should put here good (tier V) rank I runes (like on the image) or rank 2-5 runes of lower tier. Better skip the rank 1 runes (you get some tier V runes in the quests at Yastra Labyrinth) and use the runes which boost critical strike chance, lower or increse threat etc. You will get them at Scilla Steppes minigame (treasure seekers)

Tier
Items with higher tier have better basic stats: physical/magical attack/defense. Each tier gives +10% bonus to stats. Exaple
Tier 3 hat have 100 magical defense
Making it Tier 4 will increase magical defense to 110
Tier 5: 120
and so on.

If the item is high dura:
120 on tier 3
132 on tier 4
144 on tier 5
and so on

It's not worth tiering up anything but weapons. It's extremely expensive to get tier 4 and better armor parts and put stats on them at the same time. Tactic: use armor parts for stats, and weapons to tier up. It's good to have t6 weapon (+30% damage bonus) or even t8 (+50%) getting t8 isn't that hard on weapon. t9 and t10...forget about that until you are going to spend dozens of millions of gold on this.

Stats - lighblue frame
Last, but not least. This is the essence of gear upgrading: putting stats on items. There are two general rules:

1. You can put up to 6 stats on the item
   
2. While transmuting items, the 6 worst stats are transfered.
   

Stats can have rank from I to XI (1 to 11) The higher rank, the better stat.
You will find all stat names with the bonus their provide here:
http://www.theromwiki.com/Equipment_stats
Generally it's better to use "enchanted stats" Knowledge will provide better intelligence bonus then intellect.
Also focus on using "Character Attribute Stats" Their better then others. Don't use "Health/Mana Stats" Why? Look at this:
Potential X gives 142 hp
Physique X gives 40 stamina. 40 stamina=200 hp, 8 health per second regeneration and 60 physical defense.
The same goes for the "Element Resistance Stats". This system in Rom doesn't work. Maybe in future, but this haven't changed since the beta.
You can use some attack stats (might, attack, energy, acumen), but still - attribute stats are better.

Those where "green" stats. One stat=one bonus.
But there are also "yellow" stats. Yellow stat gives 2 bonuses. In the endgame you will change your green stats got from quests into the yellow stats farmed in instances.
Knowledge X = 40 intelligence = 80 magic attack
Illumine VI = 30 intelligence and 75 magic attack. Total = 105 magic attack.
Illumine VI is drop from Kalim Shirne.

Free stat
Sometimes you can get item with extra stat. Usually it's health points bonus on blue and purple drops from bosses. It's counted as 8th stat. You can still put 6 stats on this item (using arcane transmutor) and enchant this item for 7th stat.

StatRating addon
http://rom.curse.com/downloads/rom-addons/details/statrating.aspx
Makes stats summary and can compare two items (equipped and the one you want to equip). Easier to decide which item is better.


End of part one...

3. Gear upgrading: enchanting, high dura, rune slots
3.1 Getting high dura items
All items-rewards from quest have 80 durability (except the Vahtos jewelery set which is random). If you want a high dura (106+) items you will have to:

• Farm monsters/instances till you get one
  
• Buy on AH
  
• Craft it
  

Whatever you choose you will spend lots of time on farming/carfting or spend a lot of gold on AH. Most players prefer to buy high dura clean items (without stats) on AH, and use low-dura drops from instances as the source of the stats.
You can also use Golden Repair Hammer from item shop: 19 diamonds. It will double the durability of the item
80/80 will become 160/80. You can't repair this item until the current durability drops below maximum.
To be honest: wast of gold. Better buy high dura items.

3.2 Enchanting items
To enchant the items you use the special jewels

• Star Jewels for weapons
  
• Moon Jewels for armor
  
• Sun jewels for jewelery
  

You can buy jewels fro refining master (Vanras, Obsidian Stronghold, Boulderwind Village and Green Tower). Each one cost 2k gold.
Those you buy from merchants have quite low chance for successful enchant. If you fail, you will downgrade the item. You can't drop below 0 (you can't make cursed items with negative enchantment)
With those jewels you can make up to +2 enchantment. Making better is quite impossible. Making +6 would require milions of tries. It's cheaper to buy diamonds on AH and use them to buy jewels in item shop.

Item shop jewels:
Depending on the item level you need to buy different jewels. Everything is explained in tooltip, so I'll focus on other things.
Jewels bought for diamonds give reasonable chance to make +5 items. +4 is easy to get, +5 harder. But it's still possible. Getting +6 is really hard (but not impossible). My little advice: better use those jewels to make +5 enchantment and then buy Perfect jewels in ruby shop to make items +6. Perfect jewels have 100% success rate.

3.3 Making rune slots
To make slots in items, you need drillers.

Basic driller - 1st rune slot
Advanced driller - 2nd rune slot
MAster driller - 3rd slot

You need different drillers for weapons, armor and jewelery.

3.4 Runes for rune slots
Everything is here:
http://www.theromwiki.com/Rune_Transmutation

Use tier V rank I rues for rune slots, or other, higher ranked runes.
You will get rank 3,4,5,6 and 7 runes from the minigame at Scilla Steppes.
The best to use are:
Fatal (increases physical crit rate) - imba rune
Burst (increases magical crit rate) - imba rune
Reconciliation - lowers aggro. Good for casters/healers
Hatred - increases aggro - good for tanks
Experience & loot - not available
Potential - bonus to all atributes (+6 to all at tier 3)

4. Arcane transmutor
4.1 Basics
Take a fusion stone and item. Put them in Arcane Transmutor and combine them. You will get mana stone.
Take 3 mana stone of the same tier and one item and combine them in transmutor. You will get item with stats from the mana stones.
Remember the following rules:

• You can put up to 6 stats on the item
  
• While transmuting items, the 6 worst stats are transfered.
  

4.2 Getting mana stone
Lets say we have a phusion stones with the following stats:

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dark I
  

Combine each with one tier 3 item, where it have good stat. For example: Stamina X, Intellect X and Strength X
You will get 3 mana stones with the following stat:
Mana stone tier 3 #1

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dark I
  
• Stamina X
  

Mana stone tier 3 #2

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dark I
  
• Intellect X
  

Mana stone tier 3 #3

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dark I
  
• Strength X
  

Now, take clean item (high dura preferably), put this item and your 3 mana stone in arcane transmutor. Check out the item previv. You will get the item with 6 stats:

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dark I
  
• Strength X
  
• Intellect X
  
• Stamina X
  

Easy, right? Each mana stone had 3 identical stats (Intellect I, Stamina I, Dark I). You can't put two identical stats on the item, so those where counted as one. This gives 3 extra slots for stats. Those slots where used by X runes.
If each of the mana stone would have different I stats, only those I stats will come to final items.

4.3 Getting gearing up for the next level
In the previous case we used the "3-stat phusion stons) it's quite easy to get, but...let's say that putting 3 good stats and 3 bad stats on the item isn't best idea. Better use "2-stat phusion stones". This will give you 4 slots for good stats.
You can buy them from merchant (buy stones with 2 stats and one random attribute, there is a chance to get a 2-stat one) or from AH (better idea. 2-stats stones cost 30-80k. You can spend even 400k in the shop and still don't get the 2-stat stone)
Take your 2-stat stone and combine them with 3 items with good stats. For example you will get:
Mana stone tier 3 #1

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Stamina X
  

Mana stone tier 3 #2

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Strength X
  

Mana stone tier 3 #3

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Dexterity X
  

Now put those 3 in Arcane transmutor. Now you need an high-dura item with one good stat. Lets say it's a dagger with Potential X
Put all of them in transmutor and check preview. You will see 6 stats. 2 dirty and 4 good.

• Intellect I
  
• Stamina I
  
• Potential X
  
• Stamina X
  
• Strength X
  
• Dexterity X
  

That's much better.


4.5 Other Phusion stones
You can use purified fusion stones (no stats on them) from item shop (39 diamonds / 1150 phurius tokens) to make items with 6 good stats. This is your end-game goal.
But before that (40 diamonds...thats about 350k gold for 1 stone. you need 6 for one item. Total 2.1M gold. insine) you can farm nagas at Weeping Coast. From each Killed Kaa you will get dog Tag. Exchange 50 dog tags for rewards. There is chance of getting 2-stat fusion stones with III - V stats or 1-stat fusion stones.

5. Tiering items up
Item tier 4 will be better then tier 3. But how to get them?
If you transmute item tier3 with phusion stone, you will get tier 3 mana stone.
Combining 3 mana stones tier 3 will give you 1 mana stone tier 4. Remember the rules: only 6 worst stats will be placed in mana stone tier 4.
You can get 3 mana stone tier 4 and combine them with item of lower tier. This will make this item a t4.
To make a tier 4 item you need 9 mana stone tier 3.
You are right: this will cost an insane amount of gold if you want want having tier 5 items (or better) with good stats.
Thats why people upgrade armor/jewelery only to tier 4.

5.1 Tiering up weapon
Weapon with higher tier makes lots of more damage. To get a weapon t8 you need:
3 mana stone t8, so you will need
9 mana stone tier 7, so you will need
27 mana stones tier 6, so you will need
81 mana stone tier 5, so you will need
243 mana stones tier 4, so you will need
729 mana stone tier 4

Insane, isn't it?
Getting 729 identical tier 3 mana stones is impossible.
Thats why people do not do this, and make t6-8 weapons with totaly random dirty stats. Still, it's better then t3 weapon with good stats.

5.2 Getting tier 4 mana stones
Here's the trick:
Blue, tier 3 item, level 55 with X stat combined with phusion stone will make mana stone tier 4
Purple, tier 3 item, level 50+ with yellow V stat combined with phusion stone will make mana stone tier 4

That's why when you start transmuting gear to put yellow stats, you will automatically tier it up to t4.
You can use this to lower the cost of getting t8 weapon: transmute dirty items(yellow stat+2 green stats) which give t4 mana stones. You will lower the total cost 3 times. Before you buy/farm/craft good weapon, worth tiering up, you sure will get some tier7 mana stones.

Malatina dungon: survival game have the 100% chance to give you one item which will make t4 mana stone. If you have a bit of luck you can meet there boss, which can drop items giving t4 mana stones (10% to meet boss, 20% that item will make t4).
All V or better yellow stats will give t4 stone.

5.3 Green vs yellow
I case of the stats order, green stats are "better" the yellow. So combining stats
#1

• Green I
  
• Green I
  
• Green I
  
• Green I
  
• Green I
  
• Green I
  

#2

• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  

Will result the following stats:

• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  
• Yellow I
  

You can use this trick to make t8 weapon with 6 random yellow stats, which will be much better then 6 random, dirty green stats.

6. Your Goal

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Good

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missing one. Share the screenshot
AssKicking crazy axe +6