A detailed description of the mess that is the current upgrade system

[thelee]

8 hours ago, Baraz said:

I believe it. 
Just reporting that in my test, removing my Fine armor did not reduce my spell damage in the above set-up. Possible explanation: does the game just check the highest tier among the equipped gear?  Or maybe there are nuances we do not know about. 

here's the video link: 

the youtuber in question had an update and apparently by their findings it's not average, it's literally just the highest tier out of your loadouts and armor. so this would match with your theory. so higher armor only matters insofar as it's better than other stuff you got.

so for casters, you can get away with just upgrading armor.

[Baraz]

58 minutes ago, thelee said:

[...] the youtuber in question had an update and apparently by their findings it's not average, it's literally just the highest tier out of your loadouts and armor. so this would match with your theory. so higher armor only matters insofar as it's better than other stuff you got.

so for casters, you can get away with just upgrading armor.

n1ck_knack wrote (in the update you mention) : "the game calculates your character's tier is by simply picking the highest tier out of your first loadout, second loadout, and armor. Whatever item has the highest tier is what the game chooses when comparing you against the enemies."

Example: you can have in hand a Common grimoire, but have a Fine weapon in your second loadout (not in hand), and you are therefore Fine tier.

For players reading here : That said, upgrading your grimoire gives casting bonuses (reduced cost & cooldown). Upgrading weapons still boost their damage/stun. BUT you will not be hit by the tier buff/debuff if at least one item equipped is high enough tier (even if not in hand).

[Silvaren]

1 hour ago, Baraz said:

n1ck_knack wrote (in the update you mention) : "the game calculates your character's tier is by simply picking the highest tier out of your first loadout, second loadout, and armor. Whatever item has the highest tier is what the game chooses when comparing you against the enemies."

Example: you can have in hand a Common grimoire, but have a Fine weapon in your second loadout (not in hand), and you are therefore Fine tier.

For players reading here : That said, upgrading your grimoire gives casting bonuses (reduced cost & cooldown). Upgrading weapons still boost their damage/stun. BUT you will not be hit by the tier buff/debuff if at least one item equipped is high enough tier (even if not in hand).

It seems like it's better to focus on upgrading single item (preferably weapon in most cases) just to avoid penalty while fighting enemies at higher tiers and upgrade the rest just to keep up with stats.

[thelee]

16 minutes ago, Silvaren said:

It seems like it's better to focus on upgrading single item (preferably weapon in most cases) just to avoid penalty while fighting enemies at higher tiers and upgrade the rest just to keep up with stats.

though with some exploration, you can ugprade several items no problem. it's upgrading across tiers that's really expensive.

for this reason i think it's kind of a mistake that hte game was apparently changed to let you upgrade common items across tiers. it's basically a trap. uses way too many resources and basically means you never have to sell items or engage with vendors at all. IMO it'd be better if you had to find uniques or scrounge up cash for a tier up, and upgrading is a system in parallel with that, not in conflict.

Edited February 26 by thelee

[Silvaren]

I verified that without metagaming it's still possible to upgrade unique weapon to excellent and unique armor to fine even before dealing with rebels.

I didn't take scavenger perk until late phase of Dawnshore. There is enough adra and unique items in Dawnshore to make excellent uniqe weapon.

I was confused before by the trigger which allows to craft awakened adra. It looks like you don't need to salvage excellent unique nor find awakened adra in the Emerald Stairs to do this. There is no option to craft it until you upgrade any unique item to level Fine 3/3. Reaching the treshold to higher tier with unique upgrade unlocks option to craft higher tier adra.

Edited February 27 by Silvaren

[saeran]

Thank you everyone for putting in the work to "decipher" this system! I don't think I'd have ever figured out myself. I am an older cRPG player and for me the idea that the power of my mage's spell depends on the quality of any of her equipment is just weird. They could have made it at least dependent on mage items, like grimoires, that would make a bit more sense.

[thelee]

10 hours ago, Silvaren said:

I verified that without metagaming it's still possible to upgrade unique weapon to excellent and unique armor to fine even before dealing with rebels.

I didn't take scavenger perk until late phase of Dawnshore. There is enough adra and unique items in Dawnshore to make excellent uniqe weapon.

I was confused before by the trigger which allows to craft awakened adra. It looks like you don't need to salvage excellent unique nor find awakened adra in the Emerald Stairs to do this. There is no option to craft it until you upgrade any unique item to level Fine 3/3. Reaching the treshold to higher tier with unique upgrade unlocks option to craft higher tier adra.

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

[omgFIREBALLS]

36 minutes ago, thelee said:

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

Yes, as soon as you have an item in need of it, you learn the recipe to upgrade Adra. If you have a Fine +3 item, you learn how to combine 3 Adra into 1 Awakened Adra. And then at Exceptional +3 you learn how to make Corrupted Adra and then finally Adra Bán.

Note that this also seems to be exempt from any Scavenger mechanics. The upgrade always costs 3, with or without Scavenger.

[Silvaren]

13 hours ago, thelee said:

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

Yes. I wasn't sure how to unlock higher tier Adra and then when I hit breaking point between fine/excellent I was able to make awakened adra. 

[Wormerine]

18 hours ago, thelee said:

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

Aye, you can combine any lower tier upgrade materials into higher tier upgrade materials.

Personally, while I am not fan of the upgrade system, (I find it very contrived and therefore not rewarding), I didn't found it troublesome. I managed to upgrade most of my equipped gear to fine, even before I discovered you can scrap spare items for upgrade materials. I definitely can't upgrade everything I would want to, but I can upgrade all I need and then some - even more so, now when I am scrapping all the spare stuff I find rather than selling it.

Some shops also have small amount of crafting materials that can be purchased for little coin (though not much in stock in one go). I usually pick those up whenever I shop.

[thelee]

4 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Aye, you can combine any lower tier upgrade materials into higher tier upgrade materials.

Sweet jeebus, I must have just completely missed the option. I only ever saw the breakdown option, so I thought lower level mats were only if for some reason I wanted to upgrade extremely under-tiered uniques or something.

[Baraz]

10 hours ago, thelee said:

Sweet jeebus, I must have just completely missed the option. I only ever saw the breakdown option, so I thought lower level mats were only if for some reason I wanted to upgrade extremely under-tiered uniques or something.

It is under the Crafting tab on the camp's Workbench. 

Edited March 1 by Baraz
More specifically on the Workbench.

[Dunge]

Just to be sure, this concept of looting unique quality is the same as your best item quality:

Is it per category or global? In other words, is upgrading a common weapon to the max enough or do I need to upgrade one weapon and one armor?

Do you need to have it equipped? In the inventory? In the chest? Just had one once in your lifetime?

[Amentep]

I moved this topic to the new "Character Builds" forum as it seemed more on topic there.  If that's not correct let me know and I'll move back to general.

[Silvaren]

10 hours ago, Dunge said:

Just to be sure, this concept of looting unique quality is the same as your best item quality:

Is it per category or global? In other words, is upgrading a common weapon to the max enough or do I need to upgrade one weapon and one armor?

Do you need to have it equipped? In the inventory? In the chest? Just had one once in your lifetime?

It's based on category - weapon/offhand are separated from armor in terms of quality scaling.

So one weapon and one armor. It will be your best quality but +0/3. If you for example upgraded a weapon or offhand to superb, +3/3 every unique weapon and offhand you'll find will be superb, +0/3.

[cedarrapidsboy]

20 hours ago, Silvaren said:

It's based on category - weapon/offhand are separated from armor in terms of quality scaling.

So one weapon and one armor. It will be your best quality but +0/3. If you for example upgraded a weapon or offhand to superb, +3/3 every unique weapon and offhand you'll find will be superb, +0/3.

Can you help me understand where I went wrong trying to get a fine quality Stelgaer's Pride (medium armor)?

1. I found the treasure chest -- did not open
2. Returned to camp, town, camp again to upgrade my Common Breastplate (Medium Armor) to fine +0/3 -- it is equipped
3. Returned to the treasure chest and opened it -- to find a Stelgaer's Pride common +2/3

I've misunderstood something, obviously, regarding how the uniques scale with equipped gear.

Appreciate the help.

[Silvaren]

1 hour ago, cedarrapidsboy said:

Can you help me understand where I went wrong trying to get a fine quality Stelgaer's Pride (medium armor)?

1. I found the treasure chest -- did not open
2. Returned to camp, town, camp again to upgrade my Common Breastplate (Medium Armor) to fine +0/3 -- it is equipped
3. Returned to the treasure chest and opened it -- to find a Stelgaer's Pride common +2/3

I've misunderstood something, obviously, regarding how the uniques scale with equipped gear.

Appreciate the help.

This is strange. As long as you won't force the game to display an item tooltip the quality of such item isn't determined. I went for the purple chest from treasure map near the river and didn't even look at the shield nearby, I went back there later and picked excellent unique shield.

Also I didn't point any chest with unique items before I was ready to pick them up. Maybe loot is determined in the moment you "look", I mean - point at the chest, close enough to saw opening interaction popup. Maybe even if you didn't open the chest, game already determined what's in the container.

When exploiting scaling of unique items I didn't find any Item with lesser upgrade. Every item was at +0/3. So Stelgaer's Pride with +2/3 looks odd.

 

 

[cedarrapidsboy]

2 hours ago, Silvaren said:

This is strange. As long as you won't force the game to display an item tooltip the quality of such item isn't determined. I went for the purple chest from treasure map near the river and didn't even look at the shield nearby, I went back there later and picked excellent unique shield.

Also I didn't point any chest with unique items before I was ready to pick them up. Maybe loot is determined in the moment you "look", I mean - point at the chest, close enough to saw opening interaction popup. Maybe even if you didn't open the chest, game already determined what's in the container.

When exploiting scaling of unique items I didn't find any Item with lesser upgrade. Every item was at +0/3. So Stelgaer's Pride with +2/3 looks odd.

 

 

When I initially "saw" the chest, I had on a +1/3 Common breastplate (confirmed with a save I created prior to upgrading the breastplate to fine). I unfortunately can't rule out that I got close enough to see the "Press 'x' to open" prompt. I can only be certain I did not open it.

Thanks for considering this. It may be fair to conclude that proximity to the chest or, more likely, triggering the interaction prompt generates the final contents. I may have a save file even farther back to do some more troubleshooting with this particular chest.

[Baraz]

On 3/6/2025 at 1:25 AM, Dunge said:

Just to be sure, this concept of looting unique quality is the same as your best item quality:

Is it per category or global? In other words, is upgrading a common weapon to the max enough or do I need to upgrade one weapon and one armor?

Do you need to have it equipped? In the inventory? In the chest? Just had one once in your lifetime?

On the question of do you need to upgrade only one weapon or only one armor to uplock a new Tier, I just wanted to add that your highest weapon tier also applies afterwards to looted Unique shields and grimoires.  It is not obvious, so thought it might be useful to mention. 

While your highest armor tier only affects looted Unique armors. 

nb: I believe the highest tier item must be equipped, but I did not test without them equipped. 

Edited Friday at 08:28 PM by Baraz

[Baraz]

On 3/6/2025 at 11:54 AM, Amentep said:

I moved this topic to the new "Character Builds" forum as it seemed more on topic there.  If that's not correct let me know and I'll move back to general.

I really do not think this is at all about builds. 

This is really just players trying to understand the base gameplay system, where the player is hit by massive debuffs if below tier, the player gets lower tier Uniques (that cost A LOT to upgrade) if they do not have a higher tier item equipped before looting a Unique, etc.  It is core information that should have been in the game.  I would even dare say it is a design issue. 

It is not about builds at all.  No one here mentioned anything about skills, nor about using any specific type of weapon, not even combat style, etc. 

Edited Friday at 08:27 PM by Baraz

[thelee]

5 minutes ago, Baraz said:

I really do not think this is at all about builds. 

This is really just players trying to understand the base gameplay system, where the player is hit by massive debuffs if below tier, the player gets lower tier Uniques (that cost A LOT to upgrade) if they do not have a higher tier item equipped before looting a Unique, etc.  It is core information that should have been in the game.  I would even dare say it is a design issue. 

It is not about builds at all.  No one here mentioned anything about skills, nor about using any specific type of weapon, not even combat style, etc. 

eh, historically in other games the "builds" section of the forums was about diving into the mechanics of the game, not just builds, so i think that's what's happening here.

[Baraz]

1 minute ago, thelee said:

eh, historically in other games the "builds" section of the forums was about diving into the mechanics of the game, not just builds, so i think that's what's happening here.

It is not my experience, but if you say so.  The moderator will decide. 

[cedarrapidsboy]

4 hours ago, Silvaren said:

This is strange. As long as you won't force the game to display an item tooltip the quality of such item isn't determined. I went for the purple chest from treasure map near the river and didn't even look at the shield nearby, I went back there later and picked excellent unique shield.

Also I didn't point any chest with unique items before I was ready to pick them up. Maybe loot is determined in the moment you "look", I mean - point at the chest, close enough to saw opening interaction popup. Maybe even if you didn't open the chest, game already determined what's in the container.

When exploiting scaling of unique items I didn't find any Item with lesser upgrade. Every item was at +0/3. So Stelgaer's Pride with +2/3 looks odd.

 

 

While I wait for my first reply to be approved (thus is the plight of the initiate -- and thanks for the hard work, mods), I did some testing on Stelgaer's Pride.

• "Common" Breastplate equipped
  • got near unique chest but not close enough to trigger interaction prompt
  • went back to camp and upgraded to "Fine" breastplate
  • went back to chest and opened to find "Fine" Stelgaer's Pride
• (reverted to save) "Common" Breastplate equipped
  • got near unique chest, brushed up against it, but did not trigger interaction prompt
  • went back to camp and upgraded to "Fine" breastplate
  • went back to chest and opened to find "Fine" Stelgaer's Pride
• (reverted to save) "Common" Breastplate equipped
  • got near unique chest, triggered interaction prompt but did not open the chest
  • went back to camp and upgraded to "Fine" breastplate
  • went back to chest and opened to find "Common" Stelgaer's Pride

I believe this is hard evidence that the chest contents are rolled when the prompt is displayed, whether or not the prompt is a preview of what's inside.

[Amentep]

58 minutes ago, thelee said:

eh, historically in other games the "builds" section of the forums was about diving into the mechanics of the game, not just builds, so i think that's what's happening here.

This was my rationale.  Both PoE games tended to talk a lot about mechanics in the character builds forum to get the most out of a character build.  That may not be the case in Avowed, though. 

[Boeroer]

"Character builds, Strategies [...]"

Waiting to even look at unique items until I get higher quality gear sounds like a strategy to make the game easier to me. At least it's a strategy this info will lead to. 

In the PoE and Deadfire forums this would be the subforum where I would look for stuff like this. The report on the "loot uniques" mechanic immediately leads to behavior how to play the game in order to make the character better. Essentially it's the same as discussions about random loot tables, Strand of Favor, Attack Speed, Lash mechanic, PEN vs. AR etc. in PoE and Deadfire. 

In addition to that it also helps that this subforum permits spoilers. Discussing these thing in the General subforum (which is supposed to be spoiler free) is therefore not ideal for users who don't want to be spoilered. 

If it helps I would've no objections to rename the subforum to "Character Builds, Strategies and Mechanics - as well as a lil' bit of the Unreal Engine".

Edited 18 hours ago by Boeroer