STARTING OUT Tips - Gear

SWU has some fairly deep gameplay which can be confusing at first.  Here's a running list of things you may find useful.

Gear?

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to glom all varieties of items into one term, GEAR.  Most of the concepts in the game apply to Clothing, Weapons, Crew, and Components.  Where they differ I'll complain and bitch and tell you what the difference is.

Why do I need Gear?

Gear is used for two purposes.

1. Improving your character
   Every piece of gear has attributes that improve your character's abilities and increase your character's Player Rating (PR).  Equiping your character with better and better gear improves their damage, defense, accuracy, speed and can add special skills.
   
   
2. Creating blueprints
   Every time you discover and max a complete set of gear you gain a blueprint.  Blueprints are required to level up your crew.  For this reason, DON'T SALVAGE ALL THE GEAR YOU AREN'T USING.  Level it up, complete the sets, and upgrade them to pieces of new sets.
   

HOW the FUCK do I get GEAR?

Calm the hell down! You can get gear in multiple ways.  Clothing, Weapons, crew and Components are rewarded by doing Missions, completing Crew Runs or by spending Chromium (IGC) or Scrip in the Supplies shop.

Gear Rarity

All gear you get has an associated Rarity, denoted by the the border colour and the star number in the lower right corner.  These are:

• ★1 - Common - Max Level 10
  
• ★2 - Uncommon - Max Level 20
  
• ★3 - Rare - Max Level 40
  
• ★4 - Rarer - Max Level 65
  
• ★5 - Rarerer - Max Level 90
  
• ★6 - Rarererer - Max Level unknown
  
• ★7 - Legendary - Max Level unknown
  

Improving Gear

Gear you discover while completing your missions can be improved by leveling and upgrading.  Leveling your gear increases its stats while upgrading it increases its rarity and will change the item into a new item in your armory.  The process works similarly for all gear, with subtle differences.

Weapons upgrade in sets of three.  Each available weapon in SWU has three tiers (I am referring to these three spots as tiers, cuz I don't know how else to name them).  For example, a Rough Relby Repeating Pistol will upgrade to a Retooled Relby Repeating Pistol and then a Sporting Relby Repeating Pistol. You can see this progression from tier one to tier three in your armory:


Clothing can also be upgraded, but the number of times depends on the costume set.  If you browse your armory, you will see two Hutt Guard sets; Damaged Hutt Guard and plain old Hutt Guard. If you tap on either of these your'll see a popup with both. This means that if you discover a piece of the Damaged Hutt Guard costume you can upgrade it to a piece of the Hutt Guard costume.  Then you're maxed out.  Hutt Guards quit after one lazy-assed upgrade.  No frills.

Other clothing comes in sets of threes. Smuggler has multiple sets of three which can be seen in the armoury. Weathered Smuggler becomes Patched Smuggler becomes Refined Smuggler. Stock Smuggler becomes Altered Smuggler becomes Revised Smuggler. Standard Smuggler becomes Refitted Smuggler becomes Perfect Smuggler. Finally, Smuggler becomes Improved Smuggler becomes Specialized Smuggler. It's like a fucking SMUGGLER fashion show up in this bitch.  

Regardless of how many times you can upgrade an item, it is worth considering which rarity of an item to level and upgrade.  A general rule of thumb is this:

If you plan to use the item or its upper tiers, level and upgrade the RARER version.

If you are just completing a blueprint, level and upgrade the MORE COMMON version.

Each weapon you discover can be upgraded twice, from tier one to tier two to tier three, so a Common (★1) can be upgraded to a Rare (★3) max.

For example, I have a ★1 and a ★2 version of Damaged Survivalist Mitts.

If I want to be using Survivalist Mitts now or later, I should concentrate my efforts on the ★2 version. As you can see, the ★2 has much better stats.  Also, if I keep leveling and upgrading this item I will end up with a ★3 version of Survivalist Mitts.  


The flip side is that leveling rarer items costs more credits and more components. So if you just want to complete your set to get a blueprint, concentrate on the common version and save some credits.

Comparing Gear

A quick little tip in case you may not know... Tap-and-holding on an item in your inventory will bring up the stats of that item AND the currently equipped item of that type so you can compare.