Gearing is one of the most important ways that you can improve the power of your Hero in Fellowship. This guide will run through how gearing works in Fellowship and provide you with the easiest path to gear your Hero correctly at each stage in the game.
Gearing For Contender And The First Capstone
On your first character, your goal will be to get into Contender as fast as possible. The first pieces of gear you’ll want to acquire are the Quartermaster Tokens, ilvl 35. To obtain these quickly, the easiest thing to do at this time is to spam Quickplay to farm Supplies. Quickplay is also one of the best ways to get Marks of Fellowship. This currency is needed to get Material Boxes, which we will talk about a bit more later.
You can enter low Contender with as little as 5-10 ilvl. As the first levels of Contender not having any timer, you can take your time in clearing it. This will allow you to gear up early on as you’ll get a piece every time you finish a dungeon. This is also more efficient than Quickplay as challenge dungeons will give you score, giving you progression on both the left reward track and the Contender Track. Don’t forget to scrap any bad items!
With loot from Contender dungeons, the reward track and Quartermaster Tokens, you’ll easily reach ilvl 60+. If you need a bit more help, you can spend a few gold on upgrades, but don’t use any materials (or the fewest possible) to reach ilvl 60.
Using The Crafter
Don't forget that you can also use the Crafter. At the Crafter, you can find a few options to help with gearing:
- Unstable Reforging, to reroll one piece of gear into another piece.
- Imbued Reforging to reroll one piece into another one, but with 3 choices.
- Arcane Reforging to reroll one piece into another piece in the same category.
During your rise from Contender, you don’t want to use your expensive materials in Imbued or Arcane Reforging as those materials will come in handy later and you will really miss them if you start consuming them too early. But you can consume a bit of materials in Unstable Reforging to fight bad luck.
Gold isn’t as valuable, as you’ll get a good amount while climbing. If you really need to get an ilvl upgrade, it’s better to upgrade gear than using the crafter.
Gearing For The End-Game (Eternal)
Once you’ve reached ilvl 60-70, the Adept league will become available. In this section, we will focus on the gearing philosophy from Adept to Eternal.
As you reach each new tier/difficulty, you will usually be pretty undergeared. The first thing you can do is run the latest capstone dungeon a few times. This is for several benefits:
- You’ll get a good amount of currency;
- You get two gear pieces per run (at least); and
- Capstone dungeons award very strong set pieces. Every capstone dungeon offers a very strong set that you can look for to increase your power.
Once your ilvl is a bit higher, you can start running lower tier dungeons and try to time them. As you get more gear, keep these rules in mind:
- Keep any gear piece that is a set piece or which has sockets;
- Once you’ve reached higher tiers, use Unstable Reforging as it can be a great way to complete a full set of new gear when entering a new tier;
- Don’t prioritize stat weights, especially early on, as ilvl is king;
- Use gold to reach ilvl caps as fast as possible, but limit your use of Materials and Magic Essence;
- Upgrade priority is: anything with Armor for Tanks then weapons, for DPS and Healers, upgrade your weapon first and then the gear piece with the highest primary stat; and
- Try to find your BiS Trinkets & Weapons as you will need these as you progress much later into the game.
The first time that we'd recommend spending resources on Arcane Reforging is to get your BiS Weapon in Champion+. Arcane Reforging will grant you your BiS Weapon no matter what if you haven’t found it yet. In Champion+, Weapons will also have Traits.
You see them your Weapon Traits by clicking right on your Weapon or by visiting the Shrine of Infusion. Once you get a Weapon with Traits, the priority is to unlock every trait in your weapon.
Don't worry too much about getting the BiS Weapon Traits early on as Legend Godstones are pretty rare.
Suggested Gear For Each Difficulty
By farming, scraping, and upgrading, you should get close to the next tier ilvl. Here’s what I would recommend:
- Aim for 120-130 for Tuzari.
- Aim for 180-190 for Wraithtide.
- Aim for 240-250 for Drakheim.
Regarding Legendaries, you don’t have an easy way to farm them. They have a chance to drop once you reach Champion, but the chance is very low. You’ll most likely find your first Legendary in Paragon. Even if you don’t find your BiS Legendary yet, any legendary is worth equipping as it’s 300/330 ilvl and every gem socketed in them is way stronger (100%).
Finally, Gems can be very powerful! The best way to use them while gearing is to simply to get a lot of bonuses everywhere, as you won’t have enough gems to get far enough into one gem power track. Once you’ve gathered a lot of gems, you can start using the crafter to transform unwanted gems to the right colours. Using the Imbued Transmutation at the crafter is the best option, as it helps your odds to find the right colour.
Gearing in Eternal And Beyond
Once you reach Eternal, you will be able to obtain the highest ilvl on dropped items (270). Therefore, upgrading gear soon becomes the best way to increase your ilvl.
In Eternal and beyond, you should aim for this late game set up:
- BiS Legendary & Weapon;
- 2 Sets (4 pieces), usually Darkheim + Tuzari or Cithrell;
- BiS statted gear; and
- As many gem sockets as possible.
Use Arcane Reforging to find your BiS Weapon. Once you’ve found it, you want to upgrade it to 300 ilvl to unlock all traits and then take a look at your traits. Method's Hero Guides provide a tier list for each Hero's Weapon Traits.
Gold should be spent on upgrading your best pieces with BiS stats or sockets. Any excess gold can be used in the Shrine of Infusion to upgrade your best weapon traits.
For Relics, keep any Relic you find. You should aim to have 1 of every Relic, just to cover all bases. Once you’ve found some duplicates, if you have enough Arcane Mithril, you can use Arcane Reforging to get the ones you want.
If you need to farm in Eternal, stay in the lower Eternal ranks to maximise gearing efficiency.
NOTE: Remember to continue with Quickplay to farm Marks of Fellowship to always keep the Artisan Supply Boxes on CD.
Gearing Alts In Fellowship
Alts are very easy to gear, here are the main ideas:
- Use spare Supplies to get as many tokens as possible. Aim for 135 ilvl tokens.
- Farm Quickplay to get Supplies. The best thing I would recommend is to spam Quickplay until you have a full 135 set. This can be a bit tiring, but it’s the most efficient way to get supplies and Marks of Fellowships for Artisan Supply Boxes.
- Once you’ve reached 135, clear Cithrell & Heart of Tuzari.
- Stay in low Champion or in Heart of Tuzari to find Weapons and Trinkets. Use one Arcane Mithril to get your BiS Weapons. And then go forward from there as you did with your main!
Alts are a great way to gather Marks of Fellowship while building another character.
