So you’re wondering how to get better gear. There are many ways to achieve that : crafting / looting / bartering / buying to other players / buying back in NPC’s shops. But think about all the skills and abilities in this game, enabling so many combinations. Getting directly a gear that will be right for you may prove difficult…

Don’t you worry, Project: Gorgon allows you to customize existing gear in order to make it meet your exact needs. Yay!

Currently in PG, there are 5 different ways you can modify existing gear.

• Add pockets
  
• Reinforce armor
  
• Infuse with an animal power (easy, few choices)
  
• Apply Augment (advanced, a LOT of choices)
  
• Transmute a Mod (mildly advanced, various possible outcomes, a luck factor!)

This guide will provide an overview of these 5 elements and all the references you need to obtain the gear of your dreams!


First of all you must know that any looted item natively has 100 “Enhancement Points”, let’s call them EP. Player crafted items have a little more : 120 EP. Each bonus that you could add to you gear has an EP cost, applying it decreases the remaining available EP on that gear, and of course you can only apply a bonus to a gear if there are enough EPs left on it to pay what it costs. (NB: the number of remaining EP can be seen on the gear’s tooltip but it only appears if the EPs are not at their maximum value.) As we will see later, the EPs can be recovered if the Augmentation is removed.


Let’s also clear up the meaning of a few words that we will be using a lot :

A Skill is a grouping of related Abilities, it can be leveled up to 50 / 60 / 70.

An Ability always depends on one skill, enables our character to interact with PG’s universe and has to be unlocked (by training it with a NPC or doing a specific action or reaching a certain skill level).
There are three types of Abilities :

• Action Abilities (like “Fireball” under the “Fire Magic” Skill) : they trigger actions impacting PG’s Universe. They are listed under the “Abilities” tab of the “Skills” GUI (staff icon on the right) and can be assigned to a hotkey bar,
  
• Recipe Abilities (like “Flatbread” under the “Cooking” Skill) : they generate an item or effect by mixing reagents through a recipe GUI. They are listed under their parent Skill on the Recipe GUI (bread icon on the right).
  
• Passive Abilities (like “Enter Myconian cave” or “grow Cotton” or “earn Favor with Sir Arif”) : they aren’t listed anywhere, we know that we have acquired one when something that we couldn’t do before becomes doable and we now that we have used one because we suddenly earn xp in the Skill it is affiliated to.

Now that we are sure to understand each other, let’s dive in! Here are the 5 ways of improvement listed before, with a little more details. It may help you choose what is the best for you now and, why not, plan ahead a little!

Equipping a piece of gear that has pockets adds slots in your inventory, as long as the piece of gear remains equipped. Pockets are applicable to chest and leggings gear only, 1 pocket generates 2 additional slots when added on a cloth armor and 1 for leather armor, they can’t be used on metal armors.

You can apply multiple pockets, each one costing 12 EP to the piece of gear (so you can add up to 10 pockets on crafted gear : 10 * 12 = 120).

Note than pockets can’t be “unapplied”. PG tailors use very potent cotton string.

“Add pockets to [gear type]” are Recipe Abilities belonging to the Tailoring Skill. If you want to apply pockets, learn Tailoring by visiting Thimble Pete or ask other players to do it for you. You can even provide the cotton for it by picking it up in Eltibule’s ground and / or grow it (growing cotton is a Passive Ability requiring Gardening Skill level 35).

Each body part’s armor has a specific Recipe Ability in the Blacksmithing Skill’s list enabling to reinforce it for the cost of a few metal slabs.

Reinforcing increases the max armor value by a fixed amount, costs 20 EP to the modified gear and is not stackable.

Note that gear can’t be “un-reinforced” either.

Tadion in Serbule gladly teaches Blacksmithing to anyone who has level 25 Armor Patching, or you can ask another player to reinforce your armor parts for you.

This time we are not looking at a few Abilities but at a dedicated Skill that allows you, through all of its gear type (equipping slot wise) specific Recipe Abilities, to add one determined effect to a piece of armor.

An example : when you reach level 17 in Shamanic infusion you can learn the Recipe Ability “Novice boar foot infusion” that lets you “infuse” a +25 Max armor modification to any piece of gear that is worn on the foot, and the reagents are 4 pig feet and 3 boar tusks.
Other bonuses that you can infuse are : max armor, max health, max power, 2 power regens, sprint speed, bonus damage to a type of attack, range damage evasion.

Infusing a piece of armor with SI costs it 100 EP. The infused bonus can be “un-applied” by using an Ability belonging to another Skill, the Augment Skill, which will let the armor recover its AP. You will be able to learn more about the Augmentation skill later on this guide.

The Shamanic Infusion Skill and its Abilities are taught by Gershok in Serbule Hills.

This way of improving gear is recommended for newbies because of its few prerequisites, low cost reagents (common animal loots such as claws / tails…) and straightforwardness.

NB : once a piece of gear has been infused, Transmutation can’t be used on it. But it is possible to undo the infusion (with an Ability relative to the Augmenting mechanism), Transmute the gear, and infuse it again.

This one gets trickier :D

An “Augment” is a bonus improving one Skill or Action Ability, which had been automatically generated on a looted / crafted gear’s creation, was detached from it by a player (through another Skill’s Abilities) and can be attached to the same kind of gear (body part / weapon handling hand wise) by using the relevant “Apply Augmentation to [gear type]” Recipe Ability.

Examples of Augments would be : “+10% to Fire magic base damage” (that Augment modifies a Skill) or “your Electric blast attack also stuns” (that Augment modifies an Ability).

Applying one Augment through these abilities costs 100 EPs to the piece of gear as well as one - reasonably common - lootable reagent, specific to the kind of gear (thus, to the Ability). (This reagent can be seen in the wiki’s Lore page.)

Brace yourself, there is a distinct Ability to train for each armor body-part and weapon-type which makes a lot of them, 20 in the current version! Nightshade in NW Kur Mountains teaches them all for a price that can be drastically lessened by gaining his favors (from almost 10K to 500c !).

It is worthy to note that all “Apply Augmentation to [gear type]” are Recipe Abilities that are children of the Lore Skill. They are not Skills (even though they seem like the counterparts of the “Augment [gear type]” Skills). So you can use them by opening your recipe book at the “Lore” Skill sub-menu, don’t look for them in your Skill list!

This would be the most flexible way to customize your gear, although you should note that getting your hands on an “Augment” reagent will rely on you or other players having mastered another difficult craft Skill called “Augment [gear type]” (which enables, not to actually *augment* gear, but to *generate the “Augment” items* that “Apply Augmentation to [gear type]” uses, by extracting them from gear).

Also note that this process attunes the gear to you, meaning that you can’t sell it nor gift it to NPC’s anymore and nobody else can equip it.

NB1 : The applied augment (only that one) can be “un-applied” ( and be lost ) by using an Ability related to the Augment mechanism, which lets the armor regain its EP.
NB2 : Or you can choose to extract your augment from your gear in order to be able to apply it somewhere else, which would require the mastery of another of the Augment mechanism Ability, and would destroy the gear that was bearing the augment.
NB3 : If you would like to extract and remove Augments yourself then you can read the last paragraph and / or check another guide available on Steam which details the Augment mechanism !

This Skill works differently from the previous ones because instead of adding a bonus to your gear, you can modify an existing one (including one that was added manually).

Any bonus can be modified (Skill, Ability, Endurance, Generic one…). You have limited control in the outcome, but you do have some. What you can assume is that the resulting bonus will be :

• Different from the original one, whatever the tier
  
• Different from all the other existing ones on the gear, whatever the tier
  -> This means that applying a temporary augment with an unwanted bonus will give you better chances to get another, wanted, bonus
  
• Of the same family as the original one (Combat Skill, Endurance, Generic one)

Transmuting doesn’t consume EPs but there is a durability system specific to Transmutation that only allows you to transmute (or “roll”) the same piece of gear up to 4 to 5 times a week at max Skill level, less under, and even then it requires reparations done with one of the Skills Abilities (costing Prisms).

Transmuting has to be realized in a Transmutation table which is a fixed interactive element found in most cities and uses the following reagents:

• Phlogiston, that can be found by using the “Distill [n tier] magical item” Recipe Ability (belonging to the Transmutation Skill) on any magical gear. Higher level items’ transmutation requires higher level Phlogiston obtained on higher level gear. Distilling destroys the piece of gear.
  
• Prisms, that only have a chance of being consumed, and are obtained either as loot on some monsters or by using one of the Abilities of the Augmenting Mechanism (“Decompose [gear type]”, which is also used on gear and destroys it).

Makara in Ilmari teaches the Transmutation Skill. She should be accessible at low level even though the area is designed for higher level players.

Note that this process attunes the gear to you, meaning that you can’t sell it nor gift it to NPC’s anymore and nobody else can equip it.

Also note that gear that has a Shamanic Infusion effect applied cannot be transmuted, the SI effect has to be un-applied for that, but it can be reapplied after the transmutation.

If you would like to read in-depth information about Transmuting there is another guide in Steam that explains it in depth.

A lot of references have been made about the Augmenting mechanism. Let’s shed some light on it.

First let’s underline again that despite the name, the four “[Gear type] Augmentation” Skills’ Abilities do not enable to augment gear. The Lore Skill’s Abilities “Apply Augment to [gear type]” taught by Nightshades do.

The four Skills all work the exact same way, but for different types of gear (two for each Skill), hence the [gear type] part.
These skills’ main purposes are to :

• Create the items called “Augment” by extracting them from gear (which destroys the gear)
  -> the Recipe Abilities “Extract [gear type] Augment” does that
  
• Un-apply an Augment or Shamanic infusion from a piece of gear (which destroys the bonus on the gear and restores its EPs)
  -> that is done by the Recipe Abilities “Undo Augment on [gear type]”
  
• (A third declination of Abilities called “Decompose [gear type]” generate the required reagents for that, through the destruction of magic gear. It also generates the prisms used by two Transmutation Skill Abilities)

Each [Gear type] Augmentation Skill (together with its respective Abilities) is taught by a specific NPC and each teaching has to be unlocked by doing a prequest starting with Nightshade in Kur’s Mountains.

As said before, for more in-depth information, there is a in-depth guide about Augmenting and Transmuting mechanisms available here on Steam.

(This part is borrowed from PG’s wiki :)
As stated on the Transmutation wiki page, you can visit Gorgon Explorer[www.gorgonexplorer.com] for a player-run database of every mod (the Mod and Build Planner tabs are particularly useful).

Mods are also available on the wiki, directly accessible in game by typing /wiki <skill name>/Treasure Effects.

This was an overview of all 5 mechanics, I hope it helps you determine what is the right option for you now.
This guide was written by Nel Od Ciegh with the help of Sims and with much insight borrowed from the wiki pages and to PG’s Help channel dwellers.