Gear
In the above images you can see two examples of the Gear interface. On the left you will find the Commander Info page which can be reached by clicking on your Commander portrait in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
On the right side is an example of what you see when you access the Gear tab in the Gear Factory.
They are both the same thing with the exception of the Commander info which is missing from the Gear Factory.
What is Gear?
Gear is the first thing that unlocks in your Gear Factory. There are three sets of Gear, with six Gear pieces per set.
The three sets of Gear that can be added are War Set, Builder Set and Tech Set.
You may purchase all six beginner two star war set items in the Alliance Shop for 50,000 alliance coins each. You may also purchase three, four, and five star battle gear (War Set) from the Mall under the Battle Gear tab.
The Builder, and Tech Sets were once purchasable from the Mall in three star, four star, and five star, however it now appears these are no longer available to purchase. (It also appears that the promoters used to promote these gear sets are also no longer available for purchase)
Enhancement and Promotion
Once you have a set of Gear, now its time to enhance and promote it. Gear enhancement is pretty easy. You will find level 1 gear enhancers in the Alliance Shop, but you can also find level 2-4 gear enhancement material in various places throughout the game.
You can find them in Enhancement boxes you can win as a reward for certain events. You can find them by defeating Zombie Lairs and opening the Supply Boxes you will find in your bag’s Gadget tab. Enhancing your War set gear is really easy.
Promotion on the other hand is much harder. Gear promoters can be found in many of the same ways: Rewards, Promoter Boxes, and Defeating Zombies, and Zombie Lairs. However, the drop rate has been greatly reduced, and the time it takes to promote a single piece of gear has increased dramatically.
This is of course because you can always purchase the promoters from the in-game Mall for real money.
(You can no longer find Builder and Tech set gear promoters in the mall.)
But now that you know how to get this stuff, what is its purpose? How do we best enhance and promote our gear?
| Gun | Shield | Vest | Helmet | Ring | Boots | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fighter ATK |  | | ||||
| Fighter DEF | | | ||||
| Fighter HP | | | ||||
| Rider ATK | | | ||||
| Rider DEF | | | ||||
| Rider HP | | | ||||
| Shooter ATK | | | ||||
| Shooter DEF | | | ||||
| Shooter HP | | |
In the table above you can see what each piece of gear does. The Gun gives a bonus to your Rider ATK, your Fighter DEF, and your Fighter HP.
Each piece of gear gives its own bonuses. And Each piece of gear adds a certain amount of Might to your overall Might. Enhancing the gear with gear enhancement materials will increase the Might of the gear, but also increase the bonus each piece of gear gives to your Troops.
You can see when you hit the Enhance button for any piece of Gear, that it shows you what kind of bonus enhancing the gear will grant, but it also shows you what going up a level does to the enhancement. In the example above:
Rider ATK 119% ⇒ 134%
Fighter DEF 119% ⇒ 134%
Fighter HP 119% ⇒ 134%
When enhancing levels the gear from +16 to +17 the bonus is increased by 15% to each stat.
These cumulative stat bonuses stack together, and are collectively applied to your Troop Boosts.
These numbers as you can see define how much damage your troops do, how much damage they absorb, and how much health they have before they end up in the infirmary.
These bonuses are essential to being effective in events, hunting zombies, lairs, and sanctuary hits. Enhancing your gear is essential.
However, enhancing your gear is only one part of the equation. A piece of gear can only be enhanced so far before it reaches a limit and requires that you promote it, in order to continue enhancing it further.
Promoting your gear adds additional stars to it. If you have a two star gun and you promote it, it will become a three star gun.
Promoting gear requires gear promoters and getting them is more difficult than getting enhancers. But it is essential to promote your gear. The stronger it is the more effective the boosts are. If you never promote your gear you will never enhance it more than 100%. With promotion the bonus stats you can add to your Troops will exceed 100%.
How do I know what to enhance and promote?
Well stick to the basics first. If you are using Fighters, enhance the gear items that give bonus stats to your fighters, first. That would be: Gun, Vest, Helmet, and Boots. Each of these gives bonuses to Fighters. You would do the same thing for Riders: Gun, Shield, Helmet and Ring. And for Shooters: Shield, Vest, Ring, Boots. (Don’t ask me why the gun doesn’t give bonus stats to shooters, you might as well be asking me what a singularity is?)
Once you have enhanced and promoted each piece of gear that corresponds with your chosen troop type, that is choose to enhance the gear first, that benefits what you have chosen to make for troops: Fighters, Riders, or Shooters.
But once you have done this and you do not have enough promoters or enhancers to go further in this moment, its ok to enhance and promote your other gear. In fact, I like to keep all my gear around the same level, but it takes a lot of materials to do this, and you should prioritize those gear pieces that will benefit you the most. When you are a high enough level all of your gear should be at least five star, before working on a sixth star (red star) I made sure all of my gear was at the same level.
Even if you only intend to use Fighters as your main, there is no reason not to build a march of Riders and Shooters, because events like Sonic Decoy require many different marches, and having a contingent of each troop type helps. When someone is rallying a Zombie Lair with Fighters, but you are a Fighter main, you do not want to send Fighters to compete with theirs in the rally, so sending Riders or Shooters will help save casualties for everyone.
By enhancing and promoting other gear pieces, you ensure even your second and third troop contingent maximizes its damage.
