Crafting

How do Equipment Blueprints Work?

As you acquire equipment, you will notice that they come with many different stats that describe their performance. These stats are a combination of two things: the base stats of the equipment piece in question, and the effects of Advantages, Quirks, and Gremlins (Traits) on the equipment. When a piece of equipment is taken from a Belle, dropped as a map reward, or given out as a reward for Daily Missions or Weekly War Plans, the equipment will come in its stock state with 0-4 Advantages, 1 Quirk, and 0-6 Gremlins.

	Advantage
	Quirk
	Gremlin

Any piece of equipment when stock has a predetermined list of Traits (i.e. they are not random). Before you do any research on a piece of equipment, you cannot see what the Traits are; however the stat buffs or nerfs applied by the predetermined Advantages and Gremlins do apply to the stats shown in the Inventory.

Note that the effects of Quirks are not applied when they are undiscovered.

The goal of R&D will be to initially remove harmful Gremlins and give stat buffs to your equipment; later you will be able to mix and match discovered Advantages and Quirks onto other equipment to make customized, powerful gear for your Belles.

Getting Started with R&D

R&D Berths come in Gold and Blue, Gold berths providing more research rolls per cycle

To get started with R&D:

1. Select an R&D Berth
2. Select an item and pay the resource cost to CONFIRM. It will be converted into a blueprint, and research will begin
3. After the timer has elapsed, you can view the results of your research

R&D Results

As you view the results of your research, there are a few possible results:

• Stat bonus - The type of bonus received depends on the equipment type, and can be increased to a predetermined maximum (if you research long enough, you will eventually get every stat buff possible, and you can't "brick" equipment by getting unlucky stat rolls)
• Reveal a hidden Advantage, Quirk, or Gremlin
• Unlock an Advantage or Quirk Slot
• Reduce the Difficulty of a Gremlin
• Remove a Gremlin

To be specific, there are 3 different rolls you can get:

1. A stat bonus to one stat,
2. Unlocking an Advantage or Quirk slot (which also reveals that Advantage or Quirk if the slot is occupied),
3. Reducing the Difficulty of a Gremlin (which will either reveal the Gremlin if you have not seen it before, or remove it if your roll reduces the Difficulty of the Gremlin to zero).

As you gain stat buffs, reveal hidden Traits, reduce the Difficulty of Gremlins, and remove Gremlins outright, your Research percent will increase towards 100%. A Blueprint may require dozens or even hundreds of R&D cycles to reach 100%, so please be patient Captain!

Each Gremlin has a predetermined amount of "Difficulty" assigned to it. Every Gremlin reduction roll will reduce a Gremlin's Difficulty by -1, -5, or -10 and when the Gremlin's Difficulty reaches 0, its penalty is removed from the gear. Note that the penalty is not reduced by lower Difficulty, so a Gremlin at 100 Difficulty has the same negative effect on your equipment's performance as a Gremlin at 1 Difficulty.

Gold R&D berths give you an extra "roll" for your blueprint, which makes them valuable for equipment with a lot of difficult Gremlins and/or equipment that is expensive to R&D - fewer cycles means fewer resources spent. You only get one Gold berth for free, so make good use of it!

In addition, when a blueprint has available stat boosts remaining, it will always gain +1 roll that is guaranteed to be a stat boost. This means a Gold berth will give 3 rolls (of which 1/3 is guaranteed to be a stat boost) and a Blue berth will give 2 rolls (of which 1/2 is guaranteed to be a stat boost).

Advantages, Quirks, and Gremlins

As you research your gear, you will be discovering Advantages, Quirks, and Gremlins on your gear.

• Advantages are simple stat buffs and/or tradeoffs, but usually give more benefit than downside
• Quirks are special, and can come with rare or unique stat changes
• Gremlins are almost always problematic and reduce the performance of your gear, and will be removed over time with R&D

Once you discover an Advantage or Quirk, it is permanently unlocked as a Trait and saved to your account (so deleting the piece of gear with the unlocked Advantage or Quirk will not result in loss of the Trait in your encyclopedia). Building a collection of powerful Advantages and Quirks is necessary for effective equipment production, and some equipment that has weak stats can still be useful to acquire as they come with powerful Advantages and Quirks that can be discovered and applied to gear with more powerful base stats.

Production

Production also comes in Gold and Blue, Gold berths reduce the difficulty of newly-added Gremlins

Getting started with Production:

1. Click on the PRODUCTION tab at the right edge of the Dry Dock screen.
2. Select a Production Berth
3. Select a Blueprint. - Note you cannot produce a blueprint that is already in an R&D Berth, nor one that is being used in a different Production Berth
4. Press PRODUCTION to move onto modifying the Advantages and Quirks applied to the blueprint
5. If you are satisfied with the current Advantages and Quirks on the equipment, simply press BUILD, pay the resources, and wait for the timer to elapse and receive your gear

If you want to add any Advantages or Quirks to a piece of equipment, this will incur a Difficulty cost, shown in the UI. In general, more powerful Advantages and Quirks will incur a steeper Difficulty cost. When researched to 100%, all equipment will have 4 Advantage slots and 2 Quirk slots.

Traits can be selected.

If you choose to add Difficulty to a blueprint through the addition of new Advantages and Quirks, you will need to wait for the timer to elapse to see the damage. When you get the newly-modified piece of gear, it will come with around a dozen randomly selected new Gremlins with total difficulty equal to that of the sum total Added Difficulty for the new Traits. Rev up those R&D Berths, because the gear will now go back into R&D to iron out all the shiny new Gremlins that were added as a byproduct of your new Traits, which probably make your new gear nigh-unusable.

Note that Gold berths reduce the difficulty of new Gremlins caused by adding Traits - NEVER use a Blue berth to add Traits to equipment! Use your Blue berths for mass-producing finished blueprints, and use your Gold berths when you are preparing a new piece of equipment. This can save you days of R&D time, especially for complicated equipment!

R&D% will go back down due to the added Gremlins - just go back to the R&D grind

What should I research first?

Just join the Discord and ask around, you'll get multiple conflicting answers about what is the most important early

As a starting point:

1. A good lightweight Director
2. A good lightweight Rangekeeper
3. A Scout plane (SOC-1 because it's perfectly good without any research at all - just R&D once to make it a blueprint and start printing them, it has no innate gremlins)
4. A good DD gun that works at 100% R&D stock
5. Fish for traits
6. Start on custom gear