Important Terms: 

 

Hongmoon Gear-  As you level through B&S you will get rewarded with Hongmoon Gear (weapon, necklace, earring, ring.) These are your endgame gear, handed to you practically for free, however you are expected to gear it efficiently as you continue to level. It'll go through multiple stages, breakthroughs, and evolutions before it is finally complete. You receive the last piece, Hongmoon Ring, on Chapter 17: The Test of the Eight. By this point you should have your Hongmoon weapon at it's first Stage 10, while the rest of the accessories may still be at Stage 1. (Estimated level: 17-18.)

 

Stages-  Each piece of Hongmoon gear has to go through ten stages of eating fodder before it can evolve into the next strongest Hongmoon gear that will also need to go through another ten stages of eating fodder, over and over, until this repetitive process gets you the gear of your dreams.

 

Sockets- Weapons have four sockets that gems can be placed into to give bonus stats and benefits. As your weapon grows and you grow in level, you unlock more of these sockets, or you can unlock the sockets sooner with Gem Hammers from cash shop. You can craft the gems as part of Radiant Rings crafting job, or you can farm them by defeating Giganura for his treasure box. Which gem you receive is entirely RNG. Location: Pondskip Vale, Croaker Lagoon. As you progress through the game you will need to use Transmute to obtain better gems via using gem fragments. Giganura gems will work fine to endgame but obviously upgrading your gems is something to think about. (Detailed explaination on using Transmute will come later.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sealed- When a piece of gear has a tag on it, and requries an "Unsealing Charm" to be worn. (Bound to no one.)

 

Unsealed- When a piece of gear does not have a tag on it, and you are unable to trade it or use it as Breakthrough/Stage Evolution Fodder. (Bound to you.)

 

Fodder-  Since you are given your endgame gear from the start, it may be confusing why there are so many different kinds of weapons and accessories dropping from monsters and being handed to you as rewards. These items are intended to be fodder. Fodder is when you use one piece of gear to make another piece of gear stronger. Gear does not need to be unsealed (via unsealing charms) to be used as fodder. In short understanding, you give your Hongmoon gear any gear you come across so it can eat it and climb through it's stages of life, or until it hits breakthrough.

 

Breakthrough- When a piece of gear (weapon and accessories) is upgraded to Stage 5, it is locked at that stage until you feed it the specific piece of fodder that gear asks for. Unlike fodder used in the previous stages, Breakthrough and Stage Evolution fodder must be unsealed.Once you unseal that piece of fodder and obtain the bonus material requested (poison, trans. stone, etc) you can breakthrough the barrier preventing your weapon from reaching Stage 6. Then on you are able to upgrade your weapon until it hits Stage 10, where it will arrive at a new barrier locking it in place.

 

Stage Evolution- Once your piece of gear has reached Stage 10, it can no longer go any higher. You will require the next level of weaponry or accessory to be fed like fodder to your maxed out Hongmoon gear so it can start a new process of Stage 1-10 to grow stronger.

 

Soul Shield (Pizza)- In your inventory you will find a circle cut into eight triangles, similar to the renowned pizza formation, that will need to be filled. Now, just like how there is fodder gear that drops from monsters and given out as quest rewards, all of the soul shields that drop this way are also fodder (whether used to raise the stats of a better Soul Shield set, or to dismantle to obtain Fusion Powder). Soul Shields dropped in Instances (large dungeons, usually requiring a strong full party) and won from Wheel of Fate are the ones you want to actually apply to your pizza formation as a set to keep and upgrade for a while.

 

Fusion Powder (yellow dust)- is the fodder material used in upgrading the stats of your Soul Shield pieces, alongside the fodder soul shield. You obtain Fusion Powder from salvaging (dismantling) soul shields.

 

Soul Shield Explanation

 

Soul Shield Fusion-  Soul Shields don't actually have stages for you to try and fill up with fodder feeding, or at least not in the sense that your weapon and accessories do.  You will use weaker/ lower level soul shields to upgrade the stats on your main Soul Shield set, however there is a limit on how low an item can be to be used as fodder on higher level shields, because if they are too weak then they can't be used at all. You cannot use soul shields that are part of the same Soul Shield Family either. Also, if you wish to upgrade the critical stat on a soul shield, you will need to find another soul shield with critical stats to feed to your soul shield to boost that stat, however how high or low it is boosted is RNG. You will want to aim for when it tells you you've reached "Critical Max" but again, that is entirely RNG and it could take you hundreds of critical soul shield fodder before you accomplish that.

 

Set Effects: There are eight soul shields per set and three set effects that can be accomplished. You will get the first Set Effect if you have three Soul Shields of the same family, the second one will be added when you have five of the same set, and the eighth will be added when you obtain the full set for one Soul Shield Family. Below are the list of Soul Shield Familys that are not fusion fodder. (Though they can be used as fusion fodder on higher level (than themself) Soul Shield Familys.) These sets are obtained from the Wheel of Fate and Instances. The list below should help you in knowing when and what you should upgrade your soul shields to. Depending on how skilled you are will decide whether or not some shields can be skipped. For example, it is often that players go straight from Stalker to Golden Deva, then Golden Deva straight to Infernal (therefore skipping blight and scorpion). If you want to put in the extra work to go in the exact order as below to gain small amounts of stats gradually than by all means go right ahead. However, this process may actually slow down your leveling because you are spending more time obtaining shields than getting exp. The second soul shield listed below (Blackram Critical) is an example a fodder soul shield set. It is neither Expert nor Heroic grade.

 

Gear Rating Tip: Heroic gear is not tradeable and is the highest grade currently (though I've noticed an orange grade has been ninjaed in? Future endgame gear might be orange instead of purple (heroic)? Expert is blue and is decent when it comes to soul shields, but should never be kept for long, just to make obtaining the next best Heroic is easier for you. Green is always fodder, whether for salvaging for fodder material or using directly as fodder.