20 Fun Facts About Item Upgrades

Path of Exile Item Upgrades
Item upgrades are a common and crucial method to enhance the performance of many items in Path of Exile. They can be a fantastic source of extra damage or more AD or even more affixes.
Rare-grade equipment can be superior to modernized Common or Magic gear because of their high requirements.
Armor
Armor upgrades can be applied to both weapon and armor items. They improve the stats of the item that they are attached to. Armor upgrades can be found in the game's world and can be purchased from Blacksmiths at any bonfire. They can also be salvaged using a specialist or higher salvage kit to salvage upgrade components from other items.
The amount of damage an armored item or weapon is able to absorb is dependent on the degree of upgrades. The damage absorption of an item of armor will increase when it is upgraded to the highest upgrade level. However, it's important to note that this will also raise its weight, requiring it to weigh more than it was before.
There are many different kinds of armor upgrades that are available in the game. Each one has a distinct impact. For example, some upgrades give the armor a certain amount of additional health points, while others make it stronger and lighter. The name of the armor upgrade will tell you the kind of upgrade the item can be given, as illustrated below.
A few upgrades are magic or a hybrid of technology and magic, which is indicated by an "Magic" or "Hybrid" entry in the table below. Certain upgrades require charges to use. These are indicated as "Charges" entries in the table. The charges for these upgrades refresh daily or never expire according to the upgrade.
Iron Ore is the cheapest method to upgrade your armor. You can locate it by exploring and looting small loot chests. Titanium is more costly, however, it is available at the smelters of Orgrimmar and Stormwind City. Certain upgrades, such as the Reforge and the Hot Potato Books, can only be applied to high-level armor pieces. These upgrades can give significant boost to performance and are worth the investment, particularly for one-handed weapons.
The player should be aware that upgrading a piece to the maximum upgrade level will increase its defense value. However, it can also affect its agility and its speed. This is why it is generally not recommended to upgrade armor pieces beyond +9, since the added defense is typically not worth the extra weight and power cost of the improvements required.
Weapons
Weapon upgrades allow players to enhance certain aspects of their weapon. For example an upgrade could improve the damage that is caused by shotgun shells or the accuracy of a rifle that snipes. Certain weapons come with special upgrades to improve their inherent capabilities. They include Frictionless Materials (improves stability and decreases the chance of weapon overheating) and Kinetic Coils (increases the speed of projectiles to cause more damage).
Most weapon upgrades require three Power Dices, a different amount of Minerals and Erons, and a whetblade for applying. They can be obtained by completing Side Quests or by killing a certain number of bosses and monsters.
Upgrading a Weapon, Equipment Set piece or Whetblade requires visiting the NPC [Armor] Boboko in Central Flarine and paying her an upgrade price that is based on a specific number of Bars. The higher the upgrade level, the more bars are required to complete it. The cost of upgrades will be lower if have more than one of the upgrade materials.
In Chapter 2: Season 5 the way you upgrade your weapon and equipment sets has changed. Before, you could seek out an Upgrade Bench and pay a set number of Bars to upgrade your equipment or weapon to an increased quality. You could continue doing this until you reached the max upgrade level of the equipment or weapon, after which the upgrades would be reset.
You can still do this, however, the process is high on RNG and low on agency. Instead, you're much better off going to the stores and buying gear with low upgrade levels, but good base scores and stat distributions. They will also have a better chance of bringing you the most prestigious perks and blessings.
Most players will want to prioritize upgrades to the weapons they most often use to make sure they are able to level up faster. In addition players, they should also consider upgrading the weapons favored by their teammates to make them more powerful as well. For instance, Shepard should consider upgrading the M92F to unlock the Beretta M93R to enhance its effectiveness when accompanied by biotic specialists like Grunt and Tali.
Jewels
Jewels can be used to boost the stats of a character or to provide additional effects on weapons and armor. Jewelry crafting is the process of creating them. You combine a gemstone with a number specific reagents on a jewelry table. The higher the grade of the jewel has, the more powerful its secondary effect. item upgrading can be obtained around the world through Treasure Goblins, World Bosses and, sometimes, by salvaging Legendary gear. You can also purchase them from The Jeweler in exchange for Scattered Prisms and gold.
The quality of a gem can be improved upon by the Jeweler, with stages that range from Crude to Royal. The boosts to stats will differ depending on the level the jewel is at when it's inserted into jewelry, weapons, or other gear.
The Jeweler can create all tiers of gems, with the exception of rare and legendary ones that you must be at an appropriate level to obtain. Jewels can be substituted with another jewel without damaging the original. However, you can only replace the jewels in a piece of equipment once.
It is common to use more jewelry for aesthetic reasons. In addition to enhancing performance, the diamonds create a surface that is harder than metal, so repeated friction from pivots won't damage them as easily.
A Glyphmaster can offer glyphs to improve the appearance of your shields and weapons. These provide a small bonus and are able to be swapped easily, but are not guaranteed to drop as loot. Glyphs are upgradeable, as jewelry, by visiting the Jeweler for gold, and also a scattered Crystal. Glyphs can also be removed and returned to the inventory. Other upgrade components like traits or aegis cannot be exchanged, and can only be recovered with an Upgrade extractor or salvaging with the Black Lion Salvage Kit, or Ascended Salvage tool.
Trinkets
Trinkets can be used to give your character a variety of small, but useful benefits. They can be obtained in the beginning areas as loot, personal story rewards, from vendors, and through doing road interactions. They can also be made by jewelers and later found or purchased from the Trading Post.
The first trinkets a player is able to unlock is the cloak, which gives an unimportant but beneficial boost to movement speed and the ability to escape. Then, they can purchase amulets, rings and necklaces in the same way to how a player can acquire weapons and armor. Each piece of equipment comes with a slot for an upgrade that can be either universal or jewel. Universal upgrades are smaller and are able to be used on any piece of equipment. Jewels are not upgradeable or replaced and only work with certain trinkets.
These trinkets also provide additional bonuses and abilities that are active when the hero is not in combat. This lets the hero perform better when they are not active and also helps to compensate for the absence of a strong team or the absence of any slots in the talent tree that would normally be filled with the hero's best stats.
A good guideline for trinket upgrades is to prioritize BiS (Best-in-Slot) items that you aren't planning to replace in the near future, then any items with desirable stats that are less important than the iLevel of the item being upgraded. This is especially true if an item has multiple stats that you wish to upgrade, as it's usually more beneficial to upgrade one crucial stat than two subpar ones.
In the beginning of the game players in the jungle are likely to upgrade their trinket to a red, while top and mid players usually choose the pink or green ward (depending on the matchup). These choices can affect the ability of a hero to control the map.
Apart from the things mentioned above, players can find other items in the form of trophies and awards. They can be earned by completing certain milestones within the story, like completing a chapter's main quest or killing a certain boss. These can be viewed by selecting the appropriate achievement from the reward tab of the hero menu.