Beginner's Tips - Weapons and Armor

A guide with information on how to get better armor and weapons earlier in the game.

Introduction - THIS GUIDE IS OUTDATED, YO

Turn around. Find another guide. Enjoy your time.

Gear with Options

In your adventures, you may have encountered gear drops from enemies that have what the game refers to as "Options" on them. Other games may call these enchants, variants, etc, but basically, they're additional bonuses to that particular gear that another similar copy of that item may not have.



As we can see here, these two Round Bucklers have different options on them. The one on the left has none, and has black text, whereas the one on the right has three and comes with orange text. In the Party Options, under Pet Acquisition Limit, you can see that the game assigns names to these different colors. Orange, in paricular, is referred to as "Rare".

Depending on how lucky you are, you can up to four options on one item, which will give the item red text (referred to as "Legend"). Chances are, not all of these options will be really great, but if you get super lucky and have a ton of different options that benefit your play style, you'll have a piece of equipment that will outshine most others, and last you a long time, as long as you know what to do.

Special Weapons

Carrying on from what we learned in the last section, if you'll look at the Pet Acquisition Limit menu again, you'll see that at the bottom, there is deep blue text that says "Special". This quality of gear is found only as a rare drop from particular monsters, or given out as a reward for specific quests. When I started playing La Tale, the drop rate for these was so low, I didn't learn about their existance until someone gave me one to help get me started, but since Season 2 (and especially since we seem to have item drop rate increasing events pretty often), these are getting a bit more common.

These Special Weapons/Armors can also easily be found on the Auction House, and most (but not all!) can be obtained from Toma by trading in a Weak, Strong, or Advanced Special Weapon/Armor coupon, which are obtainable either as a LaDeck prize, from special events, certain quests, or bought from other players.

Speaking of Toma, she's an excellent NPC to go to for you to be able to check what Special gear is available. Like I said, she doesn't carry all of the weapons and armor available in the game, so some things get to be super secret!

Just so that we're all clear, Toma is located in Belos through this warp:

Directly to the left of the town stone.

For the most part, the only special weapons she doesn't carry are weapons that the bosses themselves drop, such as the Invoke Great Sword or Hyunmu Mountain Shield. If you want those, you'll have to either buy them from another player, or defeat the boss and hope to get lucky! However, for all of the beginner Gunslingers and Bards out there, Bloody Cubes in the desert drop the Bloody Cube Pistols and Bloody Cube Guitar, which Toma does not carry. Likewise, she doesn't carry the Canine God's Dual Blades (for newbie Bladers) or the Canine God's Orb (for sorcerers). Just like with boss weapons, if you want these, you'll either have to buy them from another player, find a weapon crafter, or defeat those monsters until they drop what you came for.

EDIT: Upon visiting Toma again recently, you can indeed get the Bloody Cube Guitar/Guns and Canine God Spirit Blades/Orb using a Weak Special Weapon Coupon.

The weapons are typically worth it, and often complement different playstyles. For example:


I use the Coa Blood Red Hook as my One-Handed Sword. Just look at how it compares to that similarly leveled weapon! So many passive benefits in comparison to the run-of-the-mill weapon. It's also a bit stronger, you'll notice.

Naturally, if you have a basic weapon with good options, one that has been enchanted, or both, you'll probably have a weapon that gives bonuses too good to let go of. If that's the case, carry on with it.

Special Armor

Just like with weapons, there are also Special quality armors. Unlike these weapons, though, the armor comes from instance dungeons. Some people may refer to these armors as Instance Dungeon Armors - they are:

-The Invoke Flame Set (Lair of the Evil Dragon)
-The Hyunmu Mountain Set (Shangri'la)
-The Sphinx Pharaoh's Set (Pyramid Treasure Vault)
-Vintor's Frozen Set (Frozen Labyrinth).

There are also Shining versions of each of these armors available to you once you reach a high enough level to effectively clear the Time Attack Instance Dungeons.

These armors have passive bonuses that will help you get through the instance dungeon, such as Fire Resistance on Invoke's set, and in general, they remain much stronger than basic armors at a higher level (again, options and enchantments not withstanding). They do take some effort to get, as only monsters unique to that particular instance dungeon drop them. While this is simple at first (all of the monsters in Lair of the Evil Dragon are unique to that area) it becomes increasingly difficult, as the drop rate seems to go down every dungeon, and by the time you reach Pyramid Treasure Vault, there are only four unique enemies that have the potential to drop the Sphinx Pharaoh's Set (outside of the boss itself, that is).

With special armor coupons, or the more recently added boss coupons, you can get these armors from Toma as well. The downside to this is that none of them will come with options. There are also scrolls that players can learn now that allows them to use their crafting skill to make a piece of armor, but the recipe is often very expensive and time consuming.

Important to note: Instance Dungeon armor cannot be upgraded. When you outlevel its usefulness, it's basically worthless. Just food for thought.

Colisseum Gear

This stuff is different enough to warrant its own unique section, I think. As you may know, at the far end of Belos is a warp to the Colisseum (if you didn't know, run all the way to the right in Belos, you'll find it!).

If you spend enough time in the Colisseum, you may encounter drops from the enemies that aren't Monster Beads and Monster Badges, specifically Colisseum weapons and armor. These weapons have attack and defense stats that are through the roof, but often don't have the passive bonuses of their monster drop counterparts. For example:

Notice that the defense on the Colisseum version is extremely high, even though they have similar levels. However, it doesn't give the passive stamina boost, or the HP and SP restoring effects. Choosing a Colisseum weapon boils down to which is worth more to you: bonus effects and passive buffs, or blunt, unaltered stats.

Notice also, at the bottom, Colisseum gear comes with the distinct downside of being untradeable and non-transferrable. When you have a friend that wants a certain piece of Colisseum gear that you found, this stings quite a bit.

Colisseum Armor, unlike Instance Dungeon armor, can be upgraded, and the Advanced Colisseum Weapons, as you can see in that screenshot, can be upgraded well beyond the standard limit of +9. In terms of base weapon power, a +20 Colisseum weapon is the strongest the game has to offer, but actually managing to upgrade them to +20... well... good luck!

Class Specific Armor

As an alternative to both Colisseum and Instance Dungeon armor, once you hit level 50 and undergo your first class change, you can use Incomplete Class Armor Tokens to trade for "Incomplete" Class Specific Armor. These incomplete sets give players new to their class upgrade a taste of what the Class Specific Armor is like, and are a bit stronger than generic armor of the same level.

Once you reach level 80, however, you can outfit yourself in your new Class Specific Armor. These are much like Special Weapons, as they can be upgraded and do not change their form. They also share similarities with Instance Dungeon armors, since they provide passive bonuses based on how many pieces you're wearing, and even provide a full set bonus for going out of your way to wear the whole thing.

The major downside to class specific armor is how much of a drag it is to try and get some. You can get basic pieces from Ignate if you have a Blacksmith's coupon, but those are outrageously expensive when you consider people often sell Class Specific Armors with options in the auction house for a fraction of the price. Players who chose armor crafting can manufacture these armors, but the toll is pretty steep, and they'll need a friend who is a refiner to make crystals for them. More recently, it seems that the amount of class specific armor available has gone down, but maybe I'm just not paying attention?

As a side note, Class Specific Armor can only be upgraded to +4, which is 50 levels of enjoying that armor. After that, you can move on to the second set of Class Specific Armors, which starts at around 130 (so, think of the first set as your Second Job Armor, and the second set as your Third Job armor). The set bonuses change, but the passive buffs stay mostly the same.

Upgrading

So, I've mentioned upgrading a few times today and haven't even really gone into it. Time to remedy that!

If you open your inventory, you'll see a set of buttons at the bottom. These might seem kind of foreign to you at first, but they're all actually really useful. As you can see here, I've moused over the one important to us: Upgrade Item (hotkeyed to U for me... I never actually use that keybind).


When you click on this, you get a basic interface:


Now it's a simple matter of drag and drop. Almost every item in the game can be upgraded, and it's totally safe to find out if you can upgrade or not: just drag the item you want to upgrade into the slot on the far left. If it can't be upgraded, your info feed in the chat box will display a red message telling you so.

Let's look at some upgrade features:

I've picked up some Copper Short Swords, and now I'm a high enough level to upgrade them! Let's see... One has Max Physical Damage +1% on it, that's pretty neat, I think I'd like to keep that!


So, now that we have it in the left hand box, the game tells us what we need to use to upgrade it, and what we'll get. In this instance, I'll need three Normal Mineral, and for my trouble, I'll get a Katana, the hardest metal known to man. Seems like a fair deal to me! Also, notice that the newly fabricated Katana will keep my Max Physical Damage +1% Option!

Let's get to work...


Aaand...

I have a shiny new Katana! I promise I folded it over 1000 times according to long held Japanese tradition. What's this though? My Copper Short Sword had an Upgrade Durability of 119, and my Katana only has an Upgrade Durability of 116? The simple answer here is that when you upgrade an item, its durability drops by a marginal amount. This isn't necessarily trouble, surprisingly. A normal weapon like this can be upgraded indefinitely until you either break it in the upgrade, or it reaches the end of its line (which, for this particular weapon, will be a level 198 or so sword). Note that if your Upgrade Durability ever falls below 100, your chance of failure and subsequently, breaking your item, goes up. This is one reason why high durability items are highly valued.

Special weapons go through the same process, but require more materials to upgrade, and can only be upgraded to +9. Interesting to note, a Special Weapon requires another of itself to upgrade with:

Looks like my Coa Blood Red Hook is close to the end of its line. It'll serve me well until that day, though!

Final Notes

Hopefully this guide was helpful to those of you who are new to the game and felt as if the weapons you had just weren't cutting it. Remember, none of this costs any real money, so you're free to customize and create your own personalized weapon without worrying too much.

I mentioned Enchanting briefly, and would go over it in this guide, but it's such a complex system with so many ins and outs that it essentially warrants its own guide, and my own experience with it hasn't been consistent enough to really write about. As a quick summary, it works a lot like upgrading, but takes a bigger toll on your item's durability, and also has a higher failure rate unless you get certain items to help you.

So, get out there and get your dream weapon, and have fun playing La Tale!

[Lumina]

Nice guide, i'll be adding it to the sticky in OGP forums! Good job!