Special Upgrades

Click here list of weapons compatible with special upgrades in this generation.

Custom List: In addition to the above list, the following weapons also have special upgrades enabled by the game devs:

 

• Arbalest

• Composite Bow

• Crossbow

• Battle Sword

• Dustin Silver Knight Sword

• Rapiers

 

 

Keep in mind that Special Upgrades are currently capped at step 3 in this generation. This means that spirit weapons won’t be grossly outclassed by R6 weapons and can actually catch up with blue upgrades on physical weapons.

 

Blue upgrades are recommended over red upgrades early on, especially with the step 3 cap where you will require lots of damage to make red upgrades overtake blue in terms of average damage.

 

Due to the cap on special upgrades, the breakpoint values where red surpasses blue is greater compared to step 6 due to the smaller boosts.

 

For physical weapons, red will begin to surpass blue upgrades at around 390 to 400 balanced damage at step 3. Balanced damage is not the same as max damage, since balance is capped at 80% for physical attacks, you are not guaranteed to strike for your maximum damage every hit. Balanced damage is a much more accurate method of determining your character’s damage output than simply looking at your max damage. The formula for finding your balanced damage is [(max-min)*balance]+min where balance is a decimal number.

 

How to raise balanced damage? If you already have 80% balance, then there’s not much you can do besides raising your min damage to reduce the min-max gap. Otherwise, you should raise your dex or mastery skills that boost balance. Then you can keep raising your maximum damage as usual, which will of course raise your damage output. Also note that critical hit must absolutely be rank 1, and you need to be able to hit the critical cap on whatever enemy you’re fighting, otherwise red upgrades will do you very little good.

 

For magic weapons, you should always do blue upgrades due to magic damage scaling better than crit modifiers. Magic can reach 100% balance, but there is still variance in damage due to the different spell constants that magic skills use in damage calculation. Rapiers are advised to go blue since they carry immensely powerful magic attack boosts.

 

In this gen, Volcano Cylinders are advised to go red since Flame Burst crits with no problem, Hurricane Cylinders should go blue for boosted freezing time, and Tidal Wave Cylinders can go either way depending on how much crit you can muster for Water Cannon.