Upgrade your favorite pieces of gear to keep them useful as you battle through the Japanese countryside in Rise Of The Ronin!
In RPGs, you're bound to come across loot that you want to keep using even after it's no longer useful. Whether it's how it looks on your character or bonuses applied to a loadout, there are many reasons to fall in love with a certain weapon or armor piece, but as you continue to level, you must cycle in new equipment constantly or risk becoming underpowered.
Rise of the Ronin seeks to combat this issue head-on by letting you increase an item's stats, allowing you to continue using the gear you love even after you receive stronger alternatives. You can also continuously strengthen gear you currently have equipped and imbue it with additional stat bonuses to increase its effectiveness.
How To Upgrade Gear
To upgrade your gear,you need to travel to a blacksmith, which you can find dotted around the map, usually in settlements. Once there, navigate to the upgrade option, and you'll be able to increase each piece of loot's stats, either attack or defense, depending on whether it's a weapon or piece of armor.
The loot's current level will be displayed, and you'll be shown how many levels you can increase it by, as well as how that will affect its rating. These upgrades will cost you currency and resources that you've collected while playing the game, and materials like ore can be found as you traverse the world, or acquired by disassembling unused gear en masse, letting you purchase the upgrades you actually want.
By going to Longhouses, you can override the appearance of your gear , letting you wear the weapons and armor you want while maintaining competitive stats.
How To Perform Bond Transfers
As you begin to collect higher rarity loot, you'll notice each piece comes with several small bonuses attached. These can be as simple as increasing attack or defense, or as granular as buffing certain attributes at nighttime, and if you come across an item that has an empty perk slot, you can do something called a Bond Transfer.
Bond Transfers allow you to take a buff from one item and attach it to another; in addition to money and materials, these also require a specific item, a Bond Jewel, and it will destroy the item you're transferring from. However, you might find this sacrifice worth it if you're attempting to craft the most overpowered build that you can.
