Guide to gear up in Runes of Magic

- Outdated guide: with new instances and new NPC's new versions of same items are out and the attack requirements have raised considerably, but for most part it still holds true-

Methods of gearing up

1. Ancient mementos. They drop in all instances above 55-level in different amounts. Most effective way to farm Ancient Mementos is usually instances that you can repeat lot of times inside short time period. For this reason easy and normal mode difficulty levels or 60-level Raksha Temples higher difficulty modes suit memento farm the best.

- edit: Raksha and lower instances are still fine for above mentioned reason, but depending on what party you can get (mainly the speed) also any instances 15 levels or more below cap would do - just don't consider going above 60lvl before all of you have completed at least half of your "final" items and clearly exceed the outdated requirements lower below

Items cost around 1000 mementos per attempt:

* 85 level pants, cloak and belt with healing bonus and critical hit rate from Wailing Fjord
* 90-lvl rings and with critical hit rate and either healing bonus or attack power from Salioca Basin
* 90-level cloaks with critical hit rate and attack power from Salioca Basin
*92-level necklaces with healing bonus, magical attack or physical attack and critical hit rate from Kashaylan

-edit 28/2/2018 new versions are out, rule of thumb is to check from any NPC's that say "Black Codex" at 3 newest zones

2. Easy modes

* 87 Pillars of Morfan easy mode drops pants with around 500 magical or physical damage
- edit: generally any easy mode after Morfan will drop item similar to this in usefulness and Morfan pants should not be used anymore unless you can buy old ones that are already upgraded


3. Crafted gear

Crafted gear is usually cheap and easy to get so it servers well as many players first gear. It looks nice and purple and some pieces are actually good, but others are not. One should be careful when picking crafted pieces because picking wrong pieces will actually make you fail in meeting minimal requirements of being useful. You know item is crafted when items name starts with "Transformed..."

* Never trust set bonuses. In fact avoid set bonuses because with no exception those require you to wear something that makes you loose more than you are gaining
* Make sure each piece you are wearing has both attack power and critical hit rate, not only either because otherwise you can be sure you are missing better options that are just as cheap and easily available
*In healers case make sure each crafted item you choose to wear has healing bonus and crit rate except the robe, or otherwise you are missing better options that are just as easily available
* Always check crafted items of many levels, not only current level caps level for comparison

- edit 28/2/2018 this section haven't changed a bit

4. Phirius shell system 

Phirius shells come from minigames: two of them are at clown called Malatina at Varanas Central Plaza, one is Andor training range right next to Malatina, one is Goblin Mines at Silverfall Aslan Valley, and ones entrance NPC you will get transported to once per day from Varanas Central after you have took a quest that looks like daily quests on map but doesn't count as one.

For phirius shells you can buy rewards most of which are completely useless for wearing, but hold pretty good stats to be added to other items:
* strength/physical attack for rogues, wardens, warriors and scouts
* dexterity/physical attack for rogues and scouts
* intelligence/magical attack for mages and warlocks
* stamina/defense for druids, priests and knights
* strength/stamina for mage/warriors swap gear

They also give plenty of stats that should absolutely and definitely not be used in main gear because their excessive amount of stamina that is useless for PVE content, but that do great in PVP gears for those players who are making separate PVP gear, for example:
*intelligence/stamina for mages
*stamina/physical attack for rogues, wardens, warriors and scouts
*stamina/dexterity for some of the rogues who feel like using it

. edit 28/2/2018 still holds true


5. Buying actual hardmode gear

Biggest lesson for gear shopper in Runes of Magic is stop obsessing over items exact level because game just doesn't work like that.

In Runes of Magic items take relatively long time to farm and make but they also have long lifespan. For this reason newest sets of current level caps level are close to impossible or in best case very expensive to buy and mainly limited to use of people who are able to farm their own. And even many of them will still choose to continue using lower level set for practical reasons because farming hardmode gear in Runes of Magic truly takes time.
So in practical you won't see almost anybody in newest level caps gear until few months after cap came out, and even then it will not be majority like in some games. Not even all the endgamers. This is also not required in game dynamics or requirements of new instances.

* When you search to buy hardmode armors, go for five or ten levels lower level set than the current best set is in order to stand a chance of buying full set
* For upper body, shoulders, hat and boots this means level 80 or 85 sets since endgamers are still farming 90 set for their own use and if any parts are sold out they are expensive and not worth the money
*For gloves, belt, pants and another ring this would mean level 82 set since 92 instance is not down yet and endgamers are farming 87 version for their own use, but unfortunately it's not easily available either so just go for random parts and hope you can eventually find or farm either of sets
* Pay attention to statting: while low level of your set or even low level of stats in it is not going to make you bad geared, wrong stats will. Many old damage dealer items still have lot of stamina in them and since health points and defense are nowadays literally useless for damage dealers but attack requirements have raised, item should ideally have no stamina if it's meant for DPS character.

-edit 28/2/2018 only thing that has changed is the level cap and among it the exact levels of items to aim for, however anything above 87 is still okay

Goals of gearing up/ Minimum requirements for not being fully useless

Below are current character stats needed in minimum for running any content / being helpful in any party.
Attention! These aren't endgame requirements: they are general requirements to make sure you are even marginally useful to your party in any content typically done by parties of high level characters:

Mage/Warrior: 40k health, 100k magical attack unbuffed, 11k magical damage , +16 rings and 70% crit chance + requires strengh/stamina statted swap gear that doesn't need to be good
Mage/Druid: Same as above but doesn't need swap gear and can sometimes get to parties as support with less gear
Mage/Warlock: 40k health, 50% crit chance, no other requirements
Warlock/Mage: 40k health, no other requirements
Warrior/Mage or Knight/Mage:  40k health, 100k magical attack unbuffed, 3000 weapon magical DPS value (magical dmg/attack speed), +16 rings and 70% crit chance
Rogue: 40k health, 100k patt unbuffed, 4000 dagger DPS value, +16 rings and 70% crit chance
Scout/Warden or Scout/Rogue: same as Rogue but needs a crossbow instead of dagger
Warden/Warrior or Warrior/Warden: 40k health, 100k patt unbuffed, 5000 weapon DPS value, +16 rings and 70% crit chance
Druid/Warrior, Druid/Warden or Druid/Scout: 100k health, 15k healing bonus, 8k magical damage, 30% crit chance, at least one +12 ring
Priest: 100k health, 10k healing bonus, 4k magical damage, 50% crit chance, +12 rings
Knight or tanking Warden/Warrior: 250k health, 200k pdef, solid talent point situation

If your combination wasn't mentioned, use closest correspondent and add +20k to attack requirements because you are likely using under powered combination that is going to need better gear to get to the same number.
For healers these stats depend largely on their party and my minimum is meant for healers who have relatively strong or at least average party who knows where to stand and how to use hp potion if necessary.

- edit 28/2/2018 obviously these numbers no longer get you that many parties but they can still give you a good general idea about what it takes to be able to hit anything that's not 40 levels under cap