Before you get to Level 65 you can only enchant gear. At level 65 you’ll get access to equipment that can be Upgraded into superior items, allowing you to progress your equipment to higher and higher levels without needing to buy, find or craft new equipment.
Enchanting
Weapons, body armor, hand armor, and foot armor can be enchanted. It can speed things up in earlier levels and become a critical aspect when you hit end game and your final gear set.
To enchant your gear click Forging at the bottom of your inventory. From there you can access the Enchantment and the Upgrade. Equipment can’t be equipped or have gems in it to be enchanted or upgraded.
If you play PvP and are enchanting end-game gear, there is a chance you might damage your equipment while enchanting. Repair will let you repair your equipment if it gets damaged.
Enchanting gets more difficult the higher up you get. Every time you fail to enchant an item you’ll get a percentage bonus to your next attempt until you succeed. Once you succeed the fail bonuses will be used and you’ll have the next level of difficulty to face.
Once you get to end-game gear your equipment can earn item XP. Gear that is equipped when you complete daily quests will earn Item XP that will increase your odds. Once you've successfully enchanted (or upgraded) your item, your Item XP total will be reduced by the amount of Item XP required for that level.
Upgrading
At level 65 you’ll get a quest that gives you access to end-game gear, equipment that can be upgraded as well as enchanted.
The Guardian gear set will provide you with upgrade-able and enchant-able weapons, body armor, hand armor, and foot armor. Guardian gear can progress through tiers to Twistshard, Frostmetal, Stormcry and finally the extraordinarily difficult to achieve Heroic Oath gear set (and to those of you who have achieved these lofty heights, we salute you).
The Prospect gear set will provide you with upgrade-able rings, necklace and circlet. Prospect gear will progress to Bellum, Daylight, Entropy, and then to Ethereal.
Your end game brooch will be Parthian. It can then be upgraded to Simple Empowered, Empowered and then to Quatrefoil.
To upgrade gear based on the Guardian gear set, you need to get it to the maximum level of enchantment for that tier. Once you get to maximum level, you’ll be able to upgrade instead of enchant. Like enchanting, you have to roll to succeed. Your chances to succeed increase with every failure and you can accumulate item XP to improve your chances.
For gear that doesn't need enchanting (Prospect and Parthian) you can directly upgrade from one level to the next.
Upgrading an item turns it into a new item with a much higher power level. Any etchings will be lost, dual effects will be lost, and your enchantment level will be zero.
Enigmatic Gear/Sealed Items
All of the end-game gear is enigmatic. That means that when you first equip it you will identify what magical effects you’d like it to have. Effects that are in yellow mean that they are recommended for your character class.
You can use semi-enigmatic scrolls to change the magical effects. How many scrolls you need varies depending on the effect.
Dual Effects
You can purchase dual effects for upgradeable end-game gear. This lets your gear have two sets of magical effects you can alternate between. To start with, the second set of effects will be selected at random, but you can change these using semi-enigmatic scrolls.
To switch between effect settings on your item, you can manually select it or press Shift + Right Click.
Exodor Gear
At level 68 you'll have the ability to get special enchant-only equipment. Released in v86, Skywatch: Aerial Island, it provides a different kind of end-game gear to explore. They can sometimes get damaged while enchanting and need to be repaired, and sometimes the wear and tear of enchantment attempts, especially at higher levels, may cause them to lose a level of enchantment.
See the Skywatch: Aerial Island patch notes for more information.
Liberation Scrolls
Liberation scrolls are a way of liberating some high tier end-game equipment. If gear can be liberated it will say what criteria it needs to meet on the gear’s description (for example Gatebreak gear will say that it can be liberated when enchanted to +7). Gear can be liberated once and if it has that ability it will say “Can be liberated 1 time” next to the Soulbound description.
Because gear can only be liberated once, any gear you purchase from the Trade Broker can’t be liberated. Liberation scrolls can be purchased with EMP or can be purchased from the Trade Broker.