Question on upgrading gear

[Vichax]

So I have been playing the game for two day's now and would like to know is it best to save most of my currencies till I am max level on my character or does that not matter? So far I am level 16 and it does seem like gear scales up with your level which makes me think its best to not spend to much.

[Coth]

Yes and No. You might wanna buy new weapons every 5 levels, but save up for when you hit 30. That's when power level the limitations are gone and you can go ham on weapon gambling

[Zee_]

You can go ahead buy new weapons if/when needed while leveling up. But save your plasteel and diamantine until lvl 30 and you start getting some good weapons that are worth upgrading.

Good being roughly item level 360+ with good stats, if you find something around 350 with good stat allocation than that's worth upgrading as well and will last you a while. The most important part is good stat allocation.

You'll also wind up spending a bit of plasteel and diamantine rolling for blessings.

[insufferable-child]

dont spend any of your plasteel until you're level 30 and find a weapon with decent base stats. feel free to buy stopgap weapons from brunt if the emperor gives you trash rolls.

[Ghoul Hunter]

I saved all my cash and resources until I was max level. It works.

[WhiteCrow]

Don't go too crazy but don't go overboard either. You'll reach a point where you'll have a pretty good surplus just from playing, so you can dip in a long the way. The closer you get to 30, the less risk you have in upgrading because those weapons will last you quite a bit longer and still be viable.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Vichax:

So I have been playing the game for two day's now and would like to know is it best to save most of my currencies till I am max level on my character or does that not matter? So far I am level 16 and it does seem like gear scales up with your level which makes me think its best to not spend to much.

Just use what you get at the end of missions. You outlevel your items too quickly.

Once you get to level 25ish, check the store and keep your eye open for items of item modifier 370+. This is not the item rating, it is the modifier for the stats. When you see one of the variety you like, that has 370+ buy it. Don't go into damnation with items below a 350 item modifer and below 300 for heresy. No matter your skill, your gear isn't made for that difficulty and you need 1-2 more hits than you normally would. Damage % is almost always your preferred stat. Mobility and defense is generally a dump stat.

If you see an item with a tier 3 blessing, buy that one too (except if its in Melk's store). Tier 3 blessings are super rare in Brunts store, so don't worry if you don't see them.

Use your time leveling to find weapons you enjoy using. So use any and all Emperor's Gift weapon you haven't used at least once. See how you like them.

Fill your Curioslots as they become vailable. Focus on Toughness or Wounds. A single +3 Stamina Curio can help, depending on your build. Only take as many Wounds as you need. Taking more Wound Curios as you need means you'll have about 20% less Toughness or health. All wounds do is let you go down one additional time. It does not give you more HP or anything.

Once you are level 30, upgrade a weapon you want to use to gold, with 2 blessings and 2 . You want two of them, both 370+. One Melee, One Ranged. Upgrade your Curios to at least +20% Health / +16% Toughness and +3 Stamina versions of the base. Don't have +Ordo Dockets, + EXP or +Curio chance on your Curios.

Curios can have +4% health and Toughness perks. +Toughess Regen is also nice. For damage resistance pick what gets you most often. If its dogs, do dogs.. if its snipers do snipers.

The color of a melee or ranged weapon goes from green (1 perk) to blue (1 perk & 1 blessing) to purple (2 perk & one blessing) and gold (2 perks & 2 blessings). The final item level should be as close or ideally exceed level 500.

The way you pick perks for an item? Check its damage break down (inspect the weapon) and see which armor class its weak against or strong against. Boost that damage (if it does next to no damage to carapace, don't bother giving it +carapace damage).

Try out your gear in the Psykhanium (where you had to go for the tutorial test with the Psyker lady south of Hadron) in the Damnation setting. Ideally you want no more than 3 swings for horde enemies (poxwalkers, groaners and the melee scabs and dregs).

For the elites test what you are strong against in the Psykhanium... check how easy you can kill Sniper (also at a large distance), the two ragers and the Mauler (he is over with the gunners). Ideally you want to OHK the sniper at distance. Two hit kill at most. Unless you are using a recon lasgun, laspistol or a braced autogun you should not need more than 2 hits for a sniper. If you do, reconsider your loadout.

The Scab Rager is Flak armor (Psykhanium tells you the damage type) and the Dreg Rager is Maniac armor. One of the two you should be able to deal with quickly. If not, back to the drawing board.

Mind you, all of this is once you hit level 30 and start to work at your gear.

Don't just blindly copy builds off the Internet. Try to learn the game and why things work the way they do.

This should give you a good start into your gear journey.

[Vichax]

Gotcha thanks for info all.

[Bomoo]

Yes, save your currency for max level, then look out for a weapon with 365ish to 380 base power rating to invest your saved up currency on upgrading, once you're 30.

[Arani]

Originally posted by Vichax:

So I have been playing the game for two day's now and would like to know is it best to save most of my currencies till I am max level on my character or does that not matter? So far I am level 16 and it does seem like gear scales up with your level which makes me think its best to not spend to much.

It's ok to spend some money but save your materials, seriously. The blessing and perk tiers both depend on the level when you obtained the item. Below level 30 you'll basically only get tier 1-2 attributes, with a small chance for T3's. Because endgame is all about those T4 (or sometimes rarely T3) blessings and perks too, you want to save your resources until then. That plasteel is precious after all. And because you need to first get a blessing to then sacrifice the item and unlock it to your account permanently, you really want to be at level 30 before you start doing it to maximize your chances of getting those T3-4 blessings when you upgrade those items.

So again, in short, only use (some) money when required for leveling. Do NOT burn materials for it, ever. You won't need them anyway. Unless ofc, you're not interested in endgame but just wanna play to 30 and quit then it doesn't matter what you do. But Darktide is all about that endgame. :>

About gearing in general, there's basically 2 ways to do it (after you're level 30):

The slow, extremely RNG, but very cheap way:

• Do your weeklies and check Melk's daily refreshing store for good items or items with good blessings you might want
  
• Check the hourly store for good quality weapons. Note that greys and greens are usually better, because upgrading yourself gives way higher perk & blessing tiers than what the store has. If you have money, sometimes even buying blues with really good stats can be worth it, but at that point you have 50% less odds for good attributes since the item already likely has a trash perk & blessing.
  
• Even weapons that you have no plans of using now can be worth buying, just in case one day you might want to give them a try. Remember that it costs around 15k to buy something like a 370+ base score item with great stat distribution off the store, while it basically averages 300-500k to buy the fresh grey weapons yourself off of Brunt's Armoury just to get a single good one.
  
• These things are something you should always be doing with all your characters. Because over time, you're going to unlock tons more blessings, and get way more high quality weapons cheaply than you would just crafting everything yourself. But because it's RNG, it's not something you can plan for but just something that happens in the background and pays itself back over time.

The fast, high agency, but extremely expensive way:

• Use Brunt's Armoury and buy a RNG grey version of the exact weapon you want, and then upgrade them yourself.
  
• This will typically cost 200-500k just to get a single good one. It can cost MILLIONS to get even 2 good perks/blessings, so you can then change the other 2 for a specific high quality item. For example it cost me around 4+ million and 40-50k plasteel to get a single high end hammer, so when I say expensive, I mean *expensive*. But it's RNG, sometimes you get lucky and get the perfect stats and upgrade for the perfect attributes with a fraction of that price.

Overall remember that while everyone here talks about base score (at level 30, base score 300 is min (iirc), 380 max), it's not that simple. Most weapons prioritize dmg, penetration/stopping power, and ammo, and the rest of the stats are varying degrees of useless by comparison. So even a base score 330 item with ideal stat distribution can easily be better than a max 380 base score item that has trash for damage but super high mobility. But this varies per item. Flamer / Purge staff for example aren't dmg based weapons, for them you want a high Burn and Cloud Radius because most of the damage comes through that. Likewise low dmg weapons like knives have such a low base damage that even at 60-70% there's not going to be much difference, but the crit chance and multiplier are a far bigger deal. And then you have some weapons like Trauma and Void for example where no stat is a true dump stat, so you absolutely need a high base score AND a good stat distribution both for the biggest impact.