There is a variety of gear in Returners. There are weapons, armor, and accessories that you can equip your heroes with, and enhancement materials are required to upgrade them. All gear is separated into Normal, Rare, and Legendary rarity; they are also ranked by stars. The star rank shows how much the gear has been enhanced and scaled, while the Normal, Rare, and Legendary tiers show how good that gear is overall, which is the most important part.

For example, the Knight Captain Great Spear, a 5-Star Legendary weapon, can be enhanced up to a 6-Star Dark Knight Great Spear and has its overall basic stats increased. The add-on stats from the enhancement will disappear once it is upgraded, so it may seem like the gear’s overall stats have fallen behind, but enhancing it further afterward will make the equipment become even more powerful.

On the other hand, a gear’s rarity (Normal, Rare, Legendary) shows how good that item is fundamentally. Unlike the Star rank, you cannot change this rarity by enhancing or upgrading it; it is simply one of the basic things that cannot be changed about your gear.

Gear comes with higher basic stats as the rarity goes up to Legendary. Let’s say you have obtained a 4-Star Legendary gear and a 6-Star Normal gear at the same time. At first, the 6-Star Normal Gear would have a higher stat as it is easier to enhance scaling. However, as you enhance and upgrade the 4-Star Legendary gear to a 6-Star Legendary, there eventually will be a huge gap between the stats of the two.

This is why you need to try hard to get gear with higher rarity, not higher Stars, in Returners. Although, it is hard to obtain all Legendary gear you want since gear is obtained based on RNG; this is why you need to know where and how you can get what gear while having the patience to upgrade good gear one by one.

How can you get gear in Returners? There are several ways you can obtain some, but the main ways to get them are by going to the shop and drawing them with Bluestones and participating in raids and getting them as rewards.

The kinds of draws you can do at the shop are Normal gear draws using Friendship Points and Rare gear draws using Bluestones. The Normal gear draws come with Energy as well; they usually come with low rarity gear so it won’t be much help when you are trying to get good gear.

On the other hand, Rare gear draws come with a high chance for rare gear as well as Legendary gear if you are lucky. Also, based on how many Bluestones you use, you will be able to draw Loyalty gear with Loyalty Points; Loyalty gear may fall behind Legendary gear but they do come in handy in the early phase when you are lacking in good gear.

If you don’t feel like purchasing Bluestones or think it takes too long to collect them from daily missions, then aim for raid rewards. After the League has ended, raids are held every weekend, which you can get a variety of rewards from. Notably, if you manage to defeat raid bosses in the frenzy state, everyone in the same league can get either Rare or Legendary gear, regardless of participation, which is a great chance for you to get high-quality gear.

Until you build up a good armory of equipment, just use the low-quality gear you get from Adventure stages. However, avoid spending gold and materials on them, since they’re not worth the cost even when upgraded.

There are many kinds of equipment in Returners and players use different gear combinations even if they use the same hero. There are popular gear combinations, but it is hard to get all of the gear in a set since they’re all obtained randomly.

That is why you should take a look at the items you currently have, pick out the best, and then sell the rest when you are still in the middle of scaling in the Adventure mode.

Skill cooldown is a fairly good stat for gear in most cases, regardless of your hero type. Even if your hero relies on basic attacks, there are many times where they’ll need to reinforce themselves through using skills.

Physical attack, critical rate, attack speed, etc. are good for fighters or rangers since they need to physically attack an enemy to inflict damage. Skill cooldown is most common for mages or supporters, while options for tanks should mainly focus on survivability and skill cooldown so that they can use taunting skills more often.

This is not the answer for everyone though since those specific builds aren’t always the best for each character type. For example, let’s look at Hong Gil-dong; although he is a fighter, he is a hero you use for his CC skills and ult damage, so it’s better to use gear with skill cooldown. For now though, don't worry about the combinations too much until after you have actually obtained a good armory of quality gear. For now, it is better to complete stages in Adventure with moderately useful gear until you become a veteran.

If you have equipped the gear you want, play League and Arena instead of Adventure and enhance your gear gradually. To enhance gear, tap on the hero that’s equipped with the gear in the 'Team' tab, and tap on the 'Enhance' button. If no one is equipped with it, then go to your inventory to enhance right away.

You can basically use all other gear to enhance your best gear -- you can use other weapons or even accessories to enhance a weapon and increase its experience points. However, it is better to use the same type of gear to enhance since it provides 50% extra EXP.

Also, there are enhancement materials that you can obtain from the Dungeon. Enhancement materials provide even more EXP than using regular gear to enhance, and 3-Star silver enhancement materials give more EXP than 4-Star regular gear. However, the Dungeons are places you visit for specific purposes (ex. to get Rune Bits, enhancement materials, etc.) and give very little EXP/gold, so it is recommended you don’t spend too much Energy in the Dungeons.

When you are enhancing, remember to use the same type of gear to enhance. The amount of gold used when enhancing is the same for each enhance material slot, regardless of the EXP you obtain, so it is more efficient to use the same gear type.

Gear can be enhanced up to level 20, though 6-Star gear is an exception. 6-Star gear can be enhanced up to level 20, but you can then increase the maximum enhancement level by 1 if you use ‘Unleashed Gear’ and by 2 if you use identical gear and Unleashed Gear to enhance. You can increase the maximum enhance level to 25, which will activate a hidden stat, making the gear even more powerful. Unleashed Gear can be bought with Demonstones at the shop, as recurring Loyalty products, or from the League.

■ Basic Guide to Gears: Efficiently Getting Gear & Enhancing - TL;DR

  -  Rarity is more important than the gear’s Star rank.
  -  Don’t enhance & upgrade Normal gear with less than 3 Stars; use them till you get better equipment and then sell.
  -  Skill cooldown is a fairly good option for all classes.
  -  It is more efficient to use the same type of gear to enhance.