A weapon or a suit of armour can be upgraded one dice roll at a time. The higher you push it, the bigger the risk that a failed roll breaks it.
Where the dice come from
Charge Dice are the only way to upgrade, and no shop sells them. They come from player events, where every clear pays everybody who took part, and from the deeper dungeons.
Rolling one
Click a Charge Dice in your bag, or choose Upgrade on a weapon or a suit of armour, and the upgrade window opens with everything you are carrying and wearing that can take it. Pick the item and roll.
- Every dice says what it does. Its card shows the step it takes an item to and its chance of success before you use it. The bigger the step, the lower the chance.
- A success adds the step. Every step adds to the item's own figures: damage and accuracy on a weapon, armour and evasion on a suit.
- A failure uses up the dice. The first steps are safe. Further up, a failure can also break the item, and the higher the step the likelier that is.
- A broken item is gone, even if you were wearing it at the time.
When a weapon starts to glow
Push a weapon high enough and it begins to glow: faint at first, and brighter with every step after. It breathes slowly, leaves a trail when you swing, and throws off little motes as you move. Everybody who sees you can see it. Armour does not glow.
Elements
Elemental dice give a weapon or a suit of armour an element, such as fire, water or thunder, each with a ladder of its own. On a weapon, every step adds a bigger share of every blow in that element, on top of the element you fight as. On armour, every step makes you tougher against blows of that element. The elements beat each other round a wheel, and Elements has the whole wheel and how each element looks on a blade.
Tiers
Every piece of equipment also has a tier, and a better tier makes every figure on the item bigger. A tier and an upgrade stack, so the best an item can be is the top tier pushed as high as the dice go. Equipment tiers covers tiers in full.
Upgraded and tiered items keep their upgrade and their tier through a trade, the post and the bank, and two items that differ in either never stack together.