Building the top set

There are ten tiers of mastery equipment, from Bloodangel to Lightning, and they do not go up in a straight line. Armor opens before weapons, the second tier has less raw defense than the first, and part of the top set bonuses are switched off on purpose. Building this in the wrong order costs refining and jewels that do not come back.

• 10armor tiers
• 5pieces per set (4 on some classes)
• +45defense per tier, from Soul to Lightning
• +66defense that +15 adds to a piece

The ladder, start to finish

1. 1
   Bloodangel

   The only tier that uses the normal level as its requirement. The natural entry point as soon as you close out 400.

   armor 400 · weapon 400
2. 2
   Darkangel

   Bigger set bonus, but less raw defense than the Bloodangel. See the warning below.

   armor 500 · weapon 600
3. 3
   Holyangel

   Picks the curve back up: 160 defense on the Dark Knight chest piece, against 135 on the Bloodangel.

   armor 600 · weapon 800
4. 4
   Awakening Soul

   Starts the top family, with a fixed progression of 45 more defense per tier on every piece.

   armor 700 · weapon 900
5. 5
   Blue Eye

   Lines up with the fourth class mark. From here on the requirement is always total level.

   armor 800 · weapon 1,000
6. 6
   Silver Heart

   294 defense on the Dark Knight chest piece.

   armor 900 · weapon 1,100
7. 7
   Manticore

   339 defense on the Dark Knight chest piece.

   armor 1,000 · weapon 1,200
8. 8
   Brilliant

   First legendary tier on the rarity ladder, even with no excellent option at all.

   armor 1,100 · weapon 1,300
9. 9
   Apocalypse

   The set with the most set bonuses in the game: eleven effects with the four pieces.

   armor 1,200 · weapon 1,400
10. 10
    Lightning

    474 defense on the Dark Knight chest piece. The weapon opens at the last possible point of total level.

    armor 1,300 · weapon 1,500

Base defense per tier

The values below are from the Dark Knight line, at +0. Each top tier adds exactly 45 defense to every piece, and refining up to +15 adds another 66 per piece on top of that.

How the set bonus lights up

The bonus comes in three steps, by the number of pieces of the same set you are wearing: two, three and four. Each step adds on top of the previous one. That is why half a high tier set usually loses to a complete set one tier below.

The order that saves resources

1. 1Close the set before refining

   Four pieces of the same tier are worth more than two refined pieces. The set bonus is the biggest gain per piece there is.

2. 2Refine the chest armor first

   It is the piece with the highest base defense in the set, and the refining table adds the same to all of them: the relative return is equal, the absolute one is bigger on it.

3. 3Then the weapon

   The weapon is what multiplies your damage, and each excellent option on it also doubles the resale value.

4. 4Wing last, and without rushing

   It goes up on its own: the fourth generation one goes from 140 to 1,384 defense from +0 to +15, and the fifth generation one goes from 900 to 2,737.

5. 5Only then switch tiers

   Switching with the set half done throws away the refining you did, because jewels do not come back.

From +0 to +9 refining is done in the inventory, with jewels. From +10 to +15 it moves to the Chaos Machine, with the risk of losing the piece. That border is the right moment to stop and think: up to +9 the cost is linear and the risk is known, above it the game changes.

The requirements that actually block you

• Total level, not level. From the Darkangel up the requirement looks at your level plus your master level. Since the normal level caps at 400, an item asking 600 would never be equippable if it only looked at that.
• A weapon is strength or energy. Meet one of the two and you equip it. The rule exists because the strength Dark Knight and the energy one use the same weapon, and it never locks anyone out: it is always slack.
• Mastery shields are energy only. And here the math bites: a Bloodangel Shield excellent at +13 asks for around 1,097 energy, which in practice means a pure strength Dark Knight does not equip a mastery shield. The exception is the Dark Lord shield, which asks for strength and agility.
• Excellent and ancient raise the requirement. The excellent bonus adds 25 to the effective drop level and the ancient one adds 30, and it is on that number that the stat requirement is calculated.
• Each refining level adds 3 to the effective drop level, which also raises the requirement. A piece at +15 asks for a lot more stats than the same piece at +0.

So the realistic target today is a different one: a well refined classic ancient, with a Harmony option and sockets, plus the six classic top weapons that now drop (Beuroba, Phoenix Soul Star, Stryker Scepter, Air Lyn Bow, Chromatic Staff and Raven Stick). The Gemstone that opens harmony and sockets drops in Kanturu, at 0.5% on monsters of level 93 or higher.

• Mastery setsThe ten tiers in detail, with bonuses per class.
• Mastery weaponsThe 130 pieces, tier by tier.
• Maximum gear scoreWhat each choice is worth in the final count.