Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Guide to Upgrading Your Equipment

Key Takeaways

1. Upgrading your equipment is essential for boosting power and unlocking new abilities in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
2. There are two main ways to upgrade: increasing item levels and enhancing rarity, both of which significantly impact your equipment’s effectiveness.
3. The Caretaker’s Workshop and item duplication are your key resources for maximizing gear upgrades.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard offers an immersive progression system where your character’s strength hinges on upgraded skills and optimized equipment. While finding new gear in the game is always thrilling, the ability to upgrade existing items means you can refine your preferred weapons, Armor, and accessories to perfection. This guide will break down everything you need to know about upgrading equipment boosting both levels and rarity to make your items powerful assets in your journey through the game.

Understanding Equipment Upgrades: Level vs. Rarity

There are two primary ways to enhance your gear: increasing its level or upgrading its rarity. While both methods will boost your equipment’s stats, each offers unique advantages. Leveling up improves the item’s overall power, while enhancing its rarity provides additional benefits, including new passive abilities. To fully leverage these upgrades, you’ll need to master both approaches.

How to Increase an Item’s Level: Unlocking the Workshop

Step 1: Access the Caretaker’s Workshop To start leveling up items, head to The Lighthouse, your main base of operations, where the Caretaker’s Workshop is located. After progressing a few hours into the story and completing the quest “The Singing Blade,” the Workshop unlocks. Here, you can speak to the Caretaker and access the equipment upgrade menu.

Step 2: Gather Essential Materials Each level upgrade requires specific resources, such as Flawless Crystal, Imperial Weave, Pure Ore, and rarer items like Fade-Touched Crystals. The exact materials depend on the item’s current level and rarity. Basic materials are abundant, but rare ones may require dedicated exploration or battles with elite enemies.

Step 3: Increase Workshop Rank with Mementos To raise an item’s level further, you’ll need to upgrade the Workshop itself. Starting with Level 0, items can be leveled up to a maximum of 10, but only if the Workshop has reached the necessary rank. To rank up, collect Mementos scattered across the world. These act as tokens of power, increasing the Workshop’s rank once you gather enough. When the Workshop reaches a new level, you can upgrade items accordingly.

Benefits of Leveling Up Equipment Upgrading through the Workshop adds a +1 level to your items and enhances their stats. For instance, a weapon with a base damage of 50 could have its damage increased to 60 or more after an upgrade. This system lets you keep using your favorite items while consistently improving their effectiveness.

Improving Item Rarity: The Key to Unlocking Abilities

Rarity System in Dragon Age: The Veilguard Items are categorized by color-coded rarities, similar to other RPGs:

• Grey: Common
• Green: Uncommon
• Blue: Rare
• Purple: Epic
• Orange: Legendary
• Red: Unique (these items are fully upgraded from the start and cannot be enhanced further)

Upgrading Rarity Through Duplication Upgrading an item’s rarity in The Veilguard requires finding or purchasing duplicates of that item. Whenever you acquire an identical item, it’s automatically applied as an upgrade to the original, increasing both its rarity and power. This means that even basic Common gear can eventually become Legendary if you collect enough copies.

Finding and Buying Duplicate Items Duplicate items are scattered throughout the game, found in treasure chests, merchant inventories, and as rewards for defeating challenging foes. Completing side quests or exploring faction-based areas (like Treviso for faction-specific gear) often yields duplicates of your current equipment. Shops in major areas can also restock specific items, and their inventories can be expanded by spending resources and building faction reputation, offering even more opportunities to find the duplicates needed for rarity upgrades.

Unlocking Abilities Through Rarity Upgrades Increasing an item’s rarity not only boosts its stats but also unlocks new passive abilities. For example, an Epic sword may grant extra critical damage or elemental resistance as it reaches higher rarity levels. As your gear ascends from Rare to Epic to Legendary, these unlocked abilities provide powerful enhancements that can significantly impact your build.

Upgrading Weapons and Enchantments: Maximizing Combat Effectiveness

Weapon Upgrades at the Caretaker’s Workshop In addition to armor and accessories, weapons can be upgraded at the Caretaker’s Workshop. As you rank up the Workshop, more powerful upgrades become available, adding substantial improvements to your weapon’s damage, critical chance, or other key stats.

Enchanting Your Gear Eventually, as you progress through the game and complete higher-level quests, the Workshop will gain the ability to apply enchantments to gear. Enchantments are unique modifications that can be applied individually to each piece of equipment. From elemental damage boosts to improved defense against certain attack types, enchantments give you one more way to fine-tune your loadout for specific combat scenarios.

Tips for Efficiently Upgrading Your Equipment

1. Prioritize Items that Fit Your Build: Not every high-level item will align with your character’s strengths. Focus on upgrading items that enhance your build’s primary stats.
2. Collect Mementos Regularly: The more Mementos you gather, the faster you’ll be able to upgrade the Workshop, allowing you to reach higher equipment levels quickly.
3. Stockpile Rare Resources: Resources like Flawless Crystals and Pure Ore are required for leveling up high-tier items. Don’t waste these on items you’ll soon replace; save them for your most important gear.
4. Check Merchants for Duplicates: Regularly visit merchants and buy duplicates of useful items, especially those that are challenging to find in the wild. These duplicates are the key to upgrading item rarity.
5. Use Companion-Specific Gear: Certain items are associated with specific companions or factions, and these can be upgraded by visiting faction merchants or completing side quests. This is especially useful for tailoring your companions’ gear to maximize their combat roles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I upgrade unique items? A: No, unique items with a red border are already at maximum strength and cannot be upgraded further. However, they are often powerful enough to remain viable even at higher levels.

Q: What’s the best way to get rare materials? A: Rare materials are commonly found by defeating boss enemies, exploring secret areas, and completing challenging quests. Shops sometimes stock these as well, though you may need a high faction reputation to access them.

Q: Do rarity upgrades apply to all types of equipment? A: Yes, rarity upgrades apply to weapons, armor, and accessories, allowing you to customize and enhance each piece of gear.

Q: Is there a limit to how many times I can upgrade an item’s rarity? A: You can upgrade an item’s rarity as many times as you can find duplicates, allowing even Common gear to eventually reach Legendary status.

Q: How do I know when new enchantments are available? A: Enchantments become available as you level up the Caretaker’s Workshop. The Workshop’s enchantment options will update automatically as you gain new abilities, so check in periodically.

By taking full advantage of both levelling and rarity upgrades in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can forge an arsenal tailored to your playstyle, pushing your character’s abilities to new heights. With the Caretaker’s Workshop at your disposal and plenty of exploration awaiting, the path to powerful gear is open so go forth and make every weapon and piece of armour count!