Forspoken: How to Upgrade Gear

You’ll want to make sure you upgrade your gear in Forspoken alongside upgrading magic in order to keep up with the game’s increasing challenge. Not only do you need to get the materials to do it, you have to unlock the upgrades themselves.

Read on to find out both how to unlock and how to craft gear upgrades in Forspoken.

How to Upgrade Gear in Forspoken

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Forspoken features three main equippable gear pieces: Cloaks, necklaces, and nail designs. While all of them offer their own inherent stats and benefits, only cloaks and necklaces can be upgraded. 

By default, cloaks and necklaces offer three slots that can be affixed with any manner of upgrade ranging from basic stat boosts such as adding 5% more health to more situational benefits such as recovering from debuffs more quickly. 

Basic stat upgrades can be crafted using the normal materials found throughout the game world such as Balm Flax and Anglestone. The materials required for straightforward stat upgrades are typically so abundant that they’re not worth worrying about. 

However, more situational and complex upgrades require advanced crafting materials. As a simple example, there’s an upgrade that increases Frey’s critical rate depending on how frequently she casts spells. This upgrade requires Wild Musk and Welkin Bloom, which are some of the more uncommon materials. Luckily, you’re able to craft Welkin Bloom using Welkin Clusters, which are more common. Advanced materials can also drop defeated enemies. 

Upgrade slots are not fixed in place. At any time, you can swap out an existing upgrade for something else. If you want to go back to a previous upgrade, however, you will have to consume crafting materials all over again.

The base stats for cloaks and necklaces can also be upgraded by hovering over the stat in question. This manifests as an upgrade to health and defense for cloaks.

On the other hand, necklaces let you upgrade their defense, purple magic, red magic, blue magic, and green magic. Some pieces of gear are also tagged as upgradeable, which means different things depending on the gear. One necklace might just increase its base stats across the board whereas another unlocks an additional slot with a new upgrade immediately affixed to it. 

How to Unlock New Upgrades in Forspoken

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Most additional upgrades are unlocked through the merchant stalls in Cipal right beside the town square in the city’s lower hold. These are the only merchants in the entire game, so they’re difficult to miss. 

When in Cipal, speak to the book shop keeper next to the trader. While there’s no harm in interacting with the trader, he’s not useful for the purposes of this guide. This book shop merchant has a bunch of gear upgrades that can only be purchased with old coins. 

Old coins are found in chests throughout the open world or within points of interest such as guilds and fortresses. Because of this, we always recommend performing a cuff scan by pressing up on the directional pad when using a controller. This will make is easy to find anything interactive with the short radius around Frey. There’s no way knowing which chests feature which items, so it’s worth opening everything you see. 

Especially noteworthy points of interest include locked labyrinths and fortresses with the necklace icon. Many necklaces and cloaks will come with at least one upgrade already installed. Acquiring any gear with a pre-installed upgrade unlocks that upgrade it for use with any other gear. 

There’s also a fourth necklace upgrade slot tied to one of the Founts of Blessings. Open up the magic menu and navigate to Olas’ magic tree. From here, look for the Diversify ability, represented by a question mark on the skill tree.

When on a PlayStation controller, use the touch pad while hovering over the skill to see the location of the fount in question. After dipping into the fountain, you’ll get to add one more upgrade to those precious necklaces. 

As in any RPG, upgrading your gear is paramount to progressing easily in Forspoken. You’ll want to make sure to keep your magic upgraded as you push through the game as well, and know how to fast travel.

Featured image via Square Enix