Rarity and Gear Score

Every equipment item in Zaikan has a color and a number. The color is the rarity, which you read at a glance on the ground, in the slot and in the tooltip. The number is the gear score, which measures strength continuously and feeds the character panel, the site ranking and the Discord card. Both come from the same signals, but neither derives from the other.

• 5rarity levels
• 3ladders that define the color
• 270maximum gear score of an item
• 3000maximum gear score of a character

The five colors

1. 1
   Common

   No excellent option, no ancient, outside the mastery line.

   gray
2. 2
   Uncommon

   One excellent option, or one wing option.

   green
3. 3
   Rare

   Two options, or any ancient, or the first three mastery tiers.

   blue
4. 4
   Epic

   Three options, or the mastery tiers from Awakening Soul to Manticore.

   purple
5. 5
   Legendary

   Four options or more, or the Brilliant, Apocalypse and Lightning tiers.

   gold

The three ladders

Rarity does not come from a single test. There are three independent readings of the same item, and the highest of them always wins. No ladder demotes the result of another.

Two examples that close the rule: a Bloodangel sword starts at rare by the tier ladder, and with four excellent options it climbs to legendary. A Lightning sword with no excellent at all stays legendary, because the tier ladder alone already puts it there.

• Socket does not count toward rarity. It counts toward gear score, which is the continuous reading.
• The Horn of Fenrir is a coded exception: on it the option field stores which Fenrir it is, not a count. So the gold one is legendary, the blue and the black ones are rare and the colorless one is common.
• The classic pets have a ladder of their own that lives only in the client: the first evolution ones (Guardian Angel, Imp, Horn of Uniria) are common and the second evolution ones (Dinorant, Demon, Spirit of Guardian, Rudolf, Panda, Unicorn, Skeleton, Dark Horse, Dark Raven) are rare.

Gear Score

The gear score of a piece adds up six parts. It is the same calculation everywhere: character panel, ranking and Discord all show the same number.

The character gear score is the sum of the twelve equipped pieces. The server's declared calibration is: a starting character close to 100, mid game close to 1200, and everything at its best close to 2900, with a soft ceiling at 3000.

The five ranks

The gear score is also translated into a rank, with an insignia and a name. It uses the same five colors as rarity, but it is measuring something else: rarity measures luck, rank measures strength. The character steps were calibrated on real progression milestones, not on round fractions of the ceiling.

The rank shows up in the character panel, in the strip right below the level: insignia, rank name in a serif font and the number in large type, all in the prestige color. In the item tooltip it shows up the same way, measuring that piece on its own.

Where the color shows up

• Anatomy of an itemReading a whole tooltip, line by line.
• Item optionsWhat the excellent options the ladder counts are.
• Maximum gear scoreThe real ceiling of each slot and how to get close.