Introduction

Crafting some equipment for your Lord can give you useful boosts for both combat (like Artillery, Infantry, Operative and Vehicle Attack), economy (like Food Production increase) and development (like Construction and Research Speed). This guides explains the basics of manufacturing equipment. The guide does not deal with pre-manufactured equipment.

How to Manufacture Gear

In the Armory (can be build once Command Center has reached lvl 10) there is a possibility to Manufacture equipment. There is a list of recipes for Helmets, Body Armor, Sidearms, Weapons and Accessories. To be able to Manufacture equipment you need to have at least the required amount of each of the materials (but it is good to be careful with manufacturing equipment with materials of mixed quality, more about that below), a required amount of Energy and a minimum required level for your Riggs Hero. Manufacturing does not happen instantaneous, it takes time like Construction and Research. You only see the time required once you start the Manufacturing process. By default the highest quality of each of the required materials is used, if you want to change this to a lower level (e.g. when you want to manufacture an all blue gear and not waste one golden material) you can change the materials in the final screen before starting the manufacturing process. You do this by first clicking on the material you want to change at the top, in the recipe, after which all the materials of that type are shown and you can click on the grade you want to use.

How the Boosts Work

Your Hero needs to be wearing equipment for the corresponding boosts to work. When exactly the Hero should be equipped with the equipment depends on the type of boost. For Research, Construction, Troop Training, Trap Training, Manufacturing the commander should be equipped with the corresponding gear at the moment you start the activity. Afterwards you can change your Hero's gear. For combat, troop load, gathering boosts the commander should be equipped with gear during the activity. One example where this goes wrong a lot is that players gathering on a resource tile with their Hero (which I personally do not do because he can easily be taken) and later change their Hero's gear, which potentially results in resource tiles not being depleted. On a side note, the boosts of Hero skill points work in the same way.

Equipment for Each Activity

Beginners sometimes make the mistake of working on only one gear set that they use for various activities, but ultimately you should have a specialized gear set for each activity. This might not be possible yet because there is not that much equipment available yet, but this will likely change in the future. For now consider that you might have separate equipment that could help with contruction and research, and another that helps with doing combat, although later you might even have different specialized equipment sets for different troop types. In the Data menu there is a Boost Types overview that gives a set of best and available gear for each boost type, useful when deciding on specific gear you might want to build. There is also a Gear overview with all available equipment.

Ideally you not only change your equipment but also respecify your Hero Skill points before an activity. It can be important you take full effort to get maximum boost for each activity, whether that is Research or Infantry Attack.

Speed Boosts vs Time Reduction Boosts

CUrrently there is not much choice, but if for research or construction a choice is offered for equipment that reduces time with a fixed amount of minutes or one that increases the speed with a percentage, always opt for the increase in speed. Timers will get longer and longer and very soon the redcution of 10 minutes from a timer will feel useless.

Finding Materials

It is not easy to find materials. In the Data menu there is an overview of all Materials, with for each Material the location where I have found it so far (tiles, gifts, crates, rebels etc). This should help you focus your efforts. I will write a separate guide going into a bit more detail on finding materials.

Quality Levels and Combining

There are six quality levels, indicated by colors, the same for materials and equipment. If you use all materials of the same quality level you are guaranteed you also get the equipment of the same quality level, if you use materials of mixed quality levels the game indicates a chance (e.g. 70% purple, 30% gold) you will get a gear of certain quality level. In the Armory you can combine materials (4 of one level to 1 of one level higher). If you have plenty of materials you might combine them to gold, but I find it better to only combine to green or blue first and only if I know I am going to craft certain equipment possibly combine the required materials higher. My motivation is that in some situations I will not be able to manufacture with all gold materials, and I typically prefer to craft with all blue, rather than 3 blue and one gold.

Waiting for the right Materials and Gambling

Two of the more difficult decisions when manufacturing gear is whether to wait until you have enough of the quality level 6 or gold materials to craft with all gold materials, and if you do not, whether to gamble or for example craft with all purple, or blue or even all green materials.

There is no one answer that fits all situations. I tend to look a several of the following factors in deciding what to do.

How fast does the boost of the gear decline with declining quality level. With most basic gear this is declining quite slow, typically often a level 3 or green gear gives still a little less than half of the boost that a level 6 or gold gear gives. If you for example consider the Shrapnel Helmet the green gives you a 16% Troop Armor and 1:15 Construction Time Reduction and gold 39% Troop Armor and 2:00 Construction Time Reduction. For some similar games purple would only give half of the boost of gold, and that might also change in the future for this game, so keep that in mind. If that becomes the case in my eyes it is more worthwhile to wait longer until you get gold.

Problem is that besides buying packs there are no easy ways to get specific event materials, e.g. Winter Camo Cloth and Winter Nylon Strap. Likely there will only be more events with hard to come by materials, it might not be realistic to try to get gold gear for those without spending big.

The necessity to have gear. Since you are likely nonstop researching and constructing, having good boosts is giving great benefit early on. If I do not have any gear for an activity, I am more likely to settle for lower quality first. Similar as with construction and research you need at least one good combat set and it is better to how something of lower quality than nothing at all, also because you need something to add your Emblems too.

I do not often gamble when manufacturing in these type of games. If I do have mixed materials (e.g. some purple, some blue) I tend to just manufacture with all blue and keep the purple for possible other gear.

Emblems

After manufacturing equipment, do not forget about the emblems. They are not available for all activities (yet), but for those that they are available for, mostly combat, the Emblems can give significant boosts. I will discuss about these in a separate guide.

Common Mistakes

There are two common mistakes that are being made, which can both prove very costly, as materials are in general difficult to come by, so expensive to waste.

One mistake is making what you currently can make instead of planning to make what you really need. Take your time to look at the possible equipment and figure out what best fits your style of playing and work towards that equipment rather than browse through the list and just make the different equipment pieces you can make now.

Another mistake is not paying attention to material levels. Players manufacture something with a mix of lvl 1 to lvl 4 or even 5 or 6 mats and end up with useless piece of lvl 1 gear. It is easy to be tricked by the interface, because the boosts are shown of the highest possible grade you can get, not the most likely one. Manufacturing anything of mixed quality level materials should be a very conscious choice.

Conclusion

I hope the above gives you some guidelines what to manufacture and when to manufacture or wait for better materials. If you have any questions or tips to share, let us know.