Upgrading weapons to next rarity level?

[Santa Claus Jr]

Simple question, I've basically fully leveled the crafting skill tree and able to craft legendary items now, but I'm confused if I upgrade an iconic weapon a certain amount of times it will 'level up' its rarity? Or do I go to crafting menu and craft a new one of higher rarity?

[skOsH♥]

it will not automatically level up rarity, but you should be getting crafting blueprints for guns that you have, such as iconics, automatically after some time, so you can craft epic+ versions of them, and then level up those

[marstinson]

You have two options when upgrading. The "Upgrades" tab raises the stats of a weapon within its current rarity level. It's partially tied to your level and you can only upgrade so far, but a Rare (blue) weapon will always remain Rare when upgrading, and the number of mod slots is whatever it was to start, with with mostly the damage stats changing.

The "Crafting" tab, allows you to upgrade the rarity of the weapon (Common -> Uncommon -> Rare -> Epic -> Legendary) IF you have taken the appropriate perk to be able to craft that level of gear AND if you have the appropriate schematic (always the case with Iconic weapons, but not with the rest) AND you have sufficient components of the appropriate rarity level. This usually adds mod slots, up to the max of six at Legendary, but it doesn't always (RNGesus occasionally gets fumble fingers).

As a general rule, crafted weapons will appear in your inventory one level below whatever your current level can handle (you can upgrade once before you're level-blocked). Looted weapons are whatever they are and you may be able to upgrade those several times before you're level-blocked. If you increase the rarity level, you'll be able to upgrade once before being level-blocked. I've found that the better crafting strategy is to upgrade until you're level-blocked (eats a lot of components, btw), then increase the rarity where you can get one more upgrade. And search like all get out to find the crafting spec for the next higher rarity level if you can. You do not want to be upgrading a Rare-quality item from Level 12 to Level 50 unless you have a bottomless well of Rare components.

[Bogmore]

Some Iconic weapons you need to have the original to upgrade to Blue>Pink>Orange and it consumes the previous one and others you need to just do a normal upgrades, Usually 5 times to Rare and 12 times for Legendary. The latter means you need 17 levels left after you get the item to make Legendary.