1. Equipment: The Core of Combat Power
Hello, this is 재뷰리, a Server 1 player.
Neuphoria is a war game. And in a war game, what matters most is strength — in other words, Combat Power.
Combat Power is made up of many different elements — Tactics, Soldiers, Guardians, Helmets, and more all come together to form it, and you need to raise it to take down those cocky opponents.
Among all the elements that make up Combat Power, the one with the biggest weight — the truly core spec — is Equipment.
Equipment consists of three pieces in total.
First, the Longsword
The Longsword increases ATK, DEF, and E.Def.
Second, the Tower Shield
The Tower Shield increases DEF, E.Def, and HP.
Third, the Plate Armor.
The Plate Armor increases ATK and HP.
You raise your equipment's base level from 1 to 40,
then use Enhancement Stones, Gold, and Blueprints to raise its Star Grade,
eventually taking it all the way up to 5-star Mythical equipment.
Equipment also comes with a separate option that increases all stats for a specific role,
and this option rolls randomly at 2%, 3%, 4%, or 6%.
You can reroll it randomly with Gold,
and of course, the role absolutely must match your Guardian.
If it's a 2% piece, reroll without hesitation; 3% is decent enough to keep using,
and it's best to treat 4% as effectively your final-spec equipment.
The odds of rolling a 6% are extremely low, so unless you have plenty of Gold to spare,
don't reroll recklessly —
I recommend saving up around 8000 Gold and rerolling in one go.
There's also Safe Reroll, which costs 400 Gold per attempt and lets you reroll while keeping your current stat,
but rather than using that feature,
from what I've seen so far, spending 50 Gold to increase your equipment reroll count is the better deal.
2. Which Equipment Should You Upgrade First?
The sources of Equipment Enhancement Stones are fixed,
and Blueprint sources are even scarcer.
Even if you buy Blueprints with real money, you're capped at 3 per day,
so focusing your resources is extremely important when upgrading equipment.
Let's go over where each material comes from.
You can get Equipment Enhancement Stones from the Guild Duel reward box, which gives 3500 every single day,
as well as Beast Hunt ranking rewards, Guild Fortress Warden rewards, the Equipment FlaFla Roulette, buying with Diamonds at the Guild Shop, and so on.
Of these, buying Equipment Enhancement Stones with Diamonds is terrible value, so I don't really recommend it.
The FlaFla Roulette is essentially cash content, so it's not easy for F2P or regular players to access.
What I recommend are the Guild Duel reward box, Beast Hunt ranking rewards, and Guild event Warden rewards —
unlike other currencies, Equipment Enhancement Stones come in at a decent rate just by diligently participating in content every day,
so even relatively light players can save up for a few days and find equipment enhancement quite manageable.
My recommended equipment enhancement priority is
Longsword - Plate Armor - Tower Shield.
The Longsword would have been first priority for its ATK alone, but it's a complete package that also boosts DEF and E.Def, so unless it's for a Tank Guardian, always raise it first.
Next in line is the Plate Armor — the ATK is a bonus, and the HP it gives is very high, making it second priority.
Every Guardian already has base DEF and E.Def, so pumping up their HP is far more efficient than you'd think.
The Tower Shield gives DEF, E.Def, and a bit of HP — it's only slightly lower in priority,
and of course even damage dealers need DEF so they don't get burst down in one hit, so eventually you'll raise them all.
Most damage dealers and Supports
should upgrade in the order of Longsword - Plate Armor - Tower Shield,
while Tanks and warriors whose front-line tanking matters
should go Tower Shield - Plate Armor - Longsword.
For reference, getting all of your first-string Guardians' equipment to level 40 as a baseline
is well worth it for the efficiency.
3. Whose Equipment Should You Focus On First?
We covered which equipment takes priority above; next is whose equipment to funnel resources into.
Of course, if you're a heavy spender and can max out all your first-string Guardians, that's obviously great,
but realistically that's hard to do, so setting priorities and funneling resources is far more efficient.
All five of your first-string Guardians are precious, but not everyone can be the protagonist.
If there's a protagonist at the heart of the deck, there are bound to be friends backing them up.
Even with the same resource investment, the value of equipment effects on your main versus your subs is never the same.
My personal recommendation for priority is 'main damage dealers first'.
Among the five Guardians in the first-string main deck you have in mind,
take care of the equipment upgrades for your No. 1-2 main damage dealers first,
and push sub damage dealers, front-line Tanks, and the rest relatively further back.
Raise your main damage dealers first, following the equipment priority I described earlier,
then go front-line Tank - sub damage dealer next,
because even if you make the same single upgrade as everyone else and your overall Combat Power number rises the same, it's far more efficient —
when the two of you clash, the difference will clearly show.
4. Blueprint Star Grades: The Main Event of Equipment Content
Keep sections 2 and 3 above firmly in mind,
and let's get into the guide for Blueprint Star Grade content — the crown jewel of equipment content.
Honestly, reaching equipment level 40 is the basics of the basics,
and it's the Blueprint-based equipment Star Grades that decide Combat Power afterwards.
In this game, even without spending money, by diligently gathering resources and participating in content every day,
you can absolutely get strong if you keep at it long enough,
and while the value of spending real money is generally quite poor,
if there's one purchase I recommend even to F2P and light spenders,
it's the Equipment Blueprints you can buy every day at the Package Shop.
Blueprints are 5500 KRW each, and you can buy 3 per day, so 16500 KRW in total.
Expensive if you call it expensive, manageable if you can manage it — that's about the level of spending we're talking about,
but if you're truly willing to spend at all, this is where your money goes furthest.
Nothing shows your Combat Power climbing as visibly as equipment Star Grades,
and nothing delivers such an immediate return on investment.
It's best to make good use of the extra options gained with each Blueprint Star Grade upgrade.
The number of Blueprints needed per 1-star equipment Star Grade upgrade is as follows.
1 Star - 5
2 Stars - 10
3 Stars - 15
4 Stars - 20
5 Stars - 10 Mythical Equipment Blueprints
Each Star Grade upgrade requires going through the previous 4 upgrade steps,
and those upgrades cost Equipment Enhancement Stones and Gold.
Now, taking Mythical equipment as our example — here is a Mythical Longsword.
If you look at the Promotion Stats section below, the milestone options are listed from the top in order of 1 Star, 2 Stars, and so on,
and that 5% Damage Increase option attached at 2 Stars and 4 Stars is incredibly efficient for raising Combat Power.
Likewise, if you look at the Plate Armor's 2-Star option, there's a 5% Damage Increase attached, right?
On top of that, look at the 1-Star option: the basic Plate Armor, which only has ATK and HP,
gains 1000 each of DEF and E.Def, turning it into a complete package.
So the most cost-effective Equipment Blueprint upgrade combo is Longsword 2 Stars plus Plate Armor 2 Stars.
F2P and light spenders should aim for this first.
Equipment priority was all explained above,
so lastly, my recommended Mythical option priority:
at 5 Stars, the options added upon reaching Mythical are, respectively,
Longsword: Critical Damage +30%
Tower Shield: Critical Damage Taken Reduction 30%
Plate Armor: CRIT Rate increase +5%.
Of these, the one worth securing first
goes in the order of Longsword - Plate Armor - Tower Shield,
and while the Plate Armor's CRIT Rate increase option, back when CRIT Rate was hard to secure,
even took priority over the Longsword for certain Guardians,
with the recent patch adding faction-wide CRIT Rate boosts via Skill Books
and the Hall of Legends patch making CRIT Rate much easier to secure than before,
it can no longer beat the value of the Longsword's Damage Increase option.
Mythical equipment may be the endgame of equipment content,
but you can pretty much only get Mythical Blueprints through monthly spending on the Equipment FlaFla Roulette,
and aside from the Longsword's Mythical option,
the remaining options aren't the kind of thing where lacking them spells disaster or losing to opponents,
and looking at it coldly, they're poor value for the money, so reaching around 4.4 Stars is plenty.
5. Closing
That covers the many things I've experienced and come to know about equipment.
Equipment is such an important and vast topic that I may have missed something,
so give it a read, and if there's anything you're curious about, whisper me and I'll do my best to answer when I have time.
Thank you for reading this long post.