FAQ/New Gear

Q. How can I get new gear?

A. Several ways.

1. The easiest is to go to a vendor NPC. The blacksmith, tailor or craftsman. They will sell you gear. You need to go to a level-appropriate city, since each one sells gear of a different level (first the starter cities, then Archosaur, then Dreamweaver and finally 1k Streams). The gear they sell is white-gear, the weakest for that level.
2. Next up is random monster drops. This will often have a blue star indicating magical bonuses, which can raise the item up above the average.
3. Crafting comes next. There are whole guides to this. Crafting is almost the only way to get two-star gear, but can also make three star gear if you're lucky, or white "vendor trash" if you're not. Unless you have a streak of good luck, this tends to be quite expensive.
4. Quest gear comes here - early on it's pretty good, but you're stuck with the exact same stats as everyone else who did the quest. Of special mention are the items in the Supply Stash. gear. (Most gear awarded from high level quests is, frankly, a joke.)
5. Next is boss drops - three purple stars makes it the best 'normal' gear for that level, though the number of sockets and magical bonuses will vary wildly. It's not exactly unheard of for one-star gear to end up being better - but the best three star gear is very very good.
6. The gear crafted from the Twilight Temple (TT) materials comes here. Starting at level 60, TT gear can be crafted, which is typically very very nice. Some three-star gear is better, most is worse.
7. Next up are molds. They are usually dropped by bosses (though many normal mobs have a tiny tiny chance too) These have a mixture of fixed and random stats and are typically better than anything else available at that level. But they need lots of materials to craft and are relatively rare.
8. Some molds are available from the mysterious merchant in 1k springs, in exchange for mysterious chips. Beware, though, there is a coin fee too which is only shown to you once you have enough chips.
9. And - now - there is the divine quest. The rewards from this can be traded in for some very decent weapon molds.
10. Rank and Reputation gear, which has a reputation requirement as well as a level requirement, tends to be overpowered even when compared to higher level equipment. The higher ranks rare very expensive to attain, however.
11. TT-Gold gear is crafted in exactly the same process as normal TT gear, but requires much rarer drops (some of which can be got through the mysterious merchant) and is correspondingly better. It is all bound to your character though, and cannot be resold later.
12. Gear also drops in Lunar Valley, Frost City, etc. which is very nice. This is high level stuff though, 85+. 90+ for the Old Heavens Tear items that can be crafted.
13. Palace of Nirvana offers a process to turn certain items of very high level gear into even better gear.
14. Event gear. Theoretically available in game, but basically only acquired from lucky-token packs, this is the real end-game gear.
15. And finally, Warsoul weapons can theoretically be acquired. Talk to the sword thingy in the very middle of Archosaur. Then stump up $36,000 for the required items.

Of course - you can always buy your gear from other players who have acquired it in those ways. You'll often find gear which they have outgrown (or which just doesn't happen to be right for their build) available in cat shops and the auction house.

Not all gear can be got that way though - a lot of the gear available from quests, and a lot of the higher-end gear from instances and events cannot be traded.