Strong gear builds strong squads — but only if you upgrade it with purpose instead of spreading scarce materials across every hero you own.
Dismantle and hold rules
- Dismantle Blue and Green gear on sight. These are outdated the moment you have anything better and only exist to be scrapped for materials.
- Hold Purple gear until all your main-squad heroes have at least a Purple piece in that slot. Don’t dismantle it early just because it’s not your endgame tier — it’s your bridge to Legendary, the same way Purple heroes bridge you to UR heroes.
- Salvage extra Purple gear once Squad 1 and Squad 2 are both dressed to +10. At that point, duplicate Purple pieces are worth more as crafting material than as backup gear.
- Craft Legendary (Gold) gear as soon as you can. It provides the best stats and the most upgrade headroom of any tier, so it’s worth prioritizing over topping off Purple.
The source infographic behind the role-priority and upgrade-path sections below states this more simply as “scrap SR & SSR gear, craft UR gear ASAP” — treat that as the general direction, but the hold-until-replaced rule above is the more precise version worth actually following.
Enhancement: know where each tier stops
- Enhance a new piece to +10 right away to unlock its first enhancement bonus — don’t leave gear sitting at +0.
- Purple gear stops mattering past +10. Once a Purple piece hits +10, further enhancement material is better spent elsewhere.
- Legendary (Gold) gear keeps going past +10 — it has real upgrade headroom that Purple doesn’t, which is part of why it’s worth crafting Legendary as soon as you can rather than perfecting Purple first.
- Never enhance Blue or Green gear. It’s getting dismantled anyway, so any material spent enhancing it first is wasted.
Gear priorities by role
Two tanks in front, three attackers in back — and each role has its own priority order for which slot to upgrade first:
| Role | Priority 1 | Priority 2 | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontline (tanks/bruisers) | Helmet | Vest | Survival first — keeping your frontline standing protects the whole squad. |
| Backline (damage/support) | Rifle | Scope | Damage first — more damage means faster wins. |
The Backline order (Rifle, then Scope) matches Squad Leveling & Composition exactly. The Frontline order doesn’t: that guide’s source material puts Vest first, Helmet second, the reverse of this infographic. Both are community-sourced and neither has been confirmed against actual in-game item stats, so this is left as an open conflict rather than silently picking one — try both orders against your own battle reports if you want to settle it for your account.
The three-stage upgrade path
Gear progresses through three upgrade stages, each gated by a different material:
| Stage | Materials | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1-40 | Refined Stone + Oil | Standard leveling. Farm these daily from events, missions, and raids — they’re not especially scarce. |
| Stars 1-4 | Conductive Crystals + UR Blueprints | Promotes a piece from 1★ to 4★. Both materials are limited — spend them deliberately rather than on whatever piece is closest to hand. |
| 5-Star | Mythic Blueprints | Extremely rare. Required to push a piece to 5★ — don’t waste them on a piece outside your main squad. |
See Mythic Gear for the full level-by-level cost table once a piece reaches the Mythic tier specifically.
General principles
- Better gear on tanks means a stronger squad. Keep your frontline alive before chasing damage elsewhere.
- Strong backline gear kills enemies before they become a threat. More damage, faster wins.
- Upgrade consistently. Don’t let gear fall behind your hero level progression — a well-leveled hero in weak gear underperforms a lower-level hero in strong gear.
- Focus, don’t diversify. One strong squad beats several average ones — the same principle behind concentrating resources into your main squad applies just as much to gear as to heroes.
Evidence:The dismantle/enhance rules (what to scrap on sight vs. hold, the +10 enhancement milestone, Purple capping while Legendary continues) are the site author's own personal rules relayed directly. The role-priority order (Helmet then Vest for Frontline; Rifle then Scope for Backline) and the Level/Star/5-Star upgrade-material path are transcribed from a community infographic ('Gear Priorities', credited to ViolentBunny from GOON on server S40) — the same source credited elsewhere on this site for the Giant Invader and VS Event guides. Gear rarity naming (SR/SSR/UR) is treated as equivalent to this site's existing Blue/Purple/Legendary(Gold) gear-tier naming from Squad Leveling & Composition and Heroes overview, since both use the same hero-rarity letter/color pairing (SR=blue, SSR=purple, UR=gold) — not independently confirmed as identical systems for gear specifically. This infographic's Frontline order (Helmet, then Vest) conflicts with Squad Leveling & Composition's source material (Vest, then Helmet) — both are community-sourced and the conflict is left open rather than resolved.