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Intermediate Guide

This guide assumes that you have read the previous guides, have arrived at level 80, finished the Taming the Abyss questline and have several pieces of T5 gear. This guide will cover the progress through level 80 (T5) to level 115 (T7) and will be mostly freeform without set goals, as anything beyond this point doesn't matter as much as before.

The calm before the frenzy

The first order of business is to get every gear to T5, slowly. An important note is to get your T5 mainhand weapon with at least puncture 3 (use it before reinforcing!), as there is no T6 mainhand weapon and thus you will be keeping it for a long time. If you find yourself with a need to empower a T5 gear, the mainhand weapon is the one to do it. Otherwise, I recommend waiting until combat level 115 and make a push for T7 gear, completely skipping the T6 gear similar to how T4 gear was skipped. There isn't really any point to upgrade to T6 gear as there aren't many gains to be made. The 3rd dungeon definitely requires T7 gear with empowerments. The only noticeable gain to be made is from clearing the daily quest Purge the Scourge from Abyssal Riches daily questline since the reward of 300 condensed vapor is worth around 500k gold in the market. However, that requires sacrificing many actions for it since you are sacrificing many max kills.

To get the T6 augments, which are a major part of this guide, we need to complete the Abyssal Pressures questline, which involves several abyss monsters. Getting the T5 gear allows us to kill the requirement monsters for the quest easier, and also allow us to max kill the early abyss monsters. This questline, while critical for progression, is not so yet, as the results won't matter until we hit level 100. Any mainline quests after this point are simply not worth it before getting the T7 gear.

Slow Advance Through Questline

As we're nearing combat level 100, you should start to finally complete the Abyssal Pressures questline to acquire the T6 augments. These augments, as of writing this guide, is the latest tier item of their slots, meaning you want to go all out for these ones. As they aren't craftable and only given from quest rewards, we will need to improve, energize and empower on our own. Very rarely, they are sold at the market as some people retire and give their items to others and they sell their less empowered items. However, each item will cost an additional 10M gold due to redeeming coins to transfer the items. I suggest simply improving the item on your own.

While doing the questline, we'll likely not be able to achieve max kills, but keep at it while injecting lvl 2 brutality and lvl 1 juggernaut injections to help kill more. However, with full T5 gear, we won't struggle that hard to finish the questline. There really isn't much to talk about that questline: just kill some monsters, buy some monster drops and proceed.

The great T6 Augment Preparation Phase

As T6 augments will (currently) forever stay as your equipped gear, you should invest as much as possible for these. All your gold should be invested in these gear, with the minimum goal of max reinforce, appropriate energizements and 9* empower.

Reinforce % Energize

First, your gold should go for buying the quality reinforcements and energizing shards to upgrade these. While reinforcing, go for 10%. While energizing, try to get some pierce, as T5 gear doesn't have pierce energizements on them; pierce only starts appearing on T6 gear. Also, the exo-arm should have the 13% damage energizements on it.

If you are planning on getting a VIP (next part), wait until then to reinforce as VIP also adds a flat 5% success chance to reinforce, bringing you from 10% to 15% success chance.

The Empowering struggle

Second, after finishing the reinforcement and energizement, we come to another core part of the game which defines the late game that we have skipped over until now: Empowerment. Up to 9*, every empower gives base stats that are then multiplied from the energizements. The most important ones are, as always, the hardest ones to achieve: the 7th, 8th and 9th empowerments. These give 10 pierce, armor and speed. As there are multiple reinforcements that give armor and pierce but none for speed, the 9* one is the most valuable one and the critical goal of empowering. The later ones give 1% stats, but early on these don't matter that much, as we don't have the base stats from all of our gear's energizements yet. The 1% stat increase is also the hardest in terms of success chance, standing at 30% while the 9* speed one is at 40%. The downgrade chance is also similarly worse for 10* and above than 9*. I recommend stopping at 9* empower until we have all our T7 gear and then push for the 1% stat empowers.

The following sub-sections are about how to prepare, how much to buy/hoard, when to buy and VIP timing.

VIP timing

Empowerment success chance starts from 100%, decreases until you hit 9* empowerment, where it drops to 30%. There is also a downgrade chance that also goes up as you progress. VIP adds a flat 5% success chance, and is quite helpful at the highest levels on empowerments. Things can do wrong easily and we may suffer greatly. Adding a 5% chance to not suffer is quite a good deal.

There is only 1 time to buy the VIP, and that's after you've completed your hoarding, reached level 100 and are finally ready to put on the T6 augment gear on yourself. My suggestion is to just buy the starter pack directly and support the game developer. It's the price of a coffee after all. The starter package will give you 20 credits (that may be sold to bankroll this investment!) and 3 days of VIP. Otherwise, you can buy 10 credits from the market (approximately 20M gold cost) and activate VIP for a week when you're ready to empower.

Ores & Us

Every single empower costs some gold, some cheap monster parts, and definitely not cheap 12800 ores. The type of ore rotates, starting from Orthoclase and going to Anorthite and so on, every 2 empower levels. Since there is a chance to fail and there is a chance to downgrade, it's better to stock up on the higher ores more. Try to match the ratios stated below when hoarding ores. My pessimistic estimate of the ore cost for getting a T6 augment from 0* to 9* is:

  • 2x 12.8k Orthoclase (1-2 empower)
  • 2x 12.8k Anorthite (3-4 empower)
  • 5x 12.8k Ferrisium (5-6 empower)
  • 8x 12.8k Rhenium (7-8 empower)
  • 3x 12.8k jaspil (9th empower)

The reason for these ratios are the success rates and downgrade rates. The first 3x empowers are 100% chance and then it drops by 10% each level until 30% chance to get 10* and above. We will stop at 9*, which is 2 levels of the first 4, then 1 level of Jaspil. We are guaranteed on Orthoclase, near guaranteed at Anorthite so those are only 2x ore amount. Ferrisium empowers will mostly pass, but sometimes downgrade from Rhenium, which means we got to use it again: that's why it's at 5x ore amount. The most used ore is easily Rhenium, with 50-60% chances to pass. The 9* has a 40% chance to downgrade, meaning we're just as likely to succeed on 9* than to downgrade twice and have to spend Rhenium again. The jaspil one is only 3x because there is only 1 level and it's a 40% (45% with VIP) chance.

There is also the gold and monster drop cost. The monster drop cost is very insignificant, around 10k gold. The raw gold cost however, is significant: at 400k. With our estimate of 20 empower attempts: this totals out to 8.2M gold for a single T6 equipment.

By our 20 empower attempts for 9* estimate, empowering a T6 item to 9* empower requires 256k ores. Since ore prices are similar to each other and, at their lower points, cost around 40 gold on market (with buy orders at right times), the ore cost is: 10,24M gold. Combine gold and ore cost and we get an estimated 18.44M gold cost for a single T6 equipment to empower to 9*.

Since we have 4 T6 augments, we need to 4x it all too. That means a hefty 74M gold. If you also want to add in the new shoulder equipment slot that opens at T6, add in that too while you have the VIP. That means, for 5 T6 pieces to 9*, you need to spend 92M gold. Give or take a few million depending on chance.

How do we get that much ore???

Check the market. Generally after corporation donation event runs out, the prices drop by quite a lot. 2-3 days after the event end is the best time to buy the ores. Make buy orders for it and be patient. However, you have until level 100 to hoard all your ores. After all, we want to switch to better abyss monsters and be able to actually contribute on corporation incursions (level 4 is the best for now). Remember that this investment will stay until the game gets updated and T8 or higher augments are in place. For now, it's a permanent upgrade that will stay there forever: think about that when you are shaking your head at the colossal amount of gold you have spent. It will be worth it!