Guide on how to select the most effective accessories for your character.
Since most of the characters are so diverse in this game, its difficult to just give a list of equipment and say “This is what you should be wearing.” But at the same time, picking your equipment correctly is extremely important and on top of this its really easy to pick equipment that doesn’t exactly accentuate your character’s abilities (Like wearing a Song Buff increase Necklace on Kirito w).
There are a lot of variables that go into picking your equipment such as the type of character you are playing or even the kinds of things you are going to be doing with that character.
For that reason, I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all list of equipment. But I can present you with potential equipment sets that will would benefit the various kinds of characters in the game.
I want to emphasize that these lists are my personal preference. For example, I don’t consider wearing defensive equipment for quests outside of HP increase items. My policy on the defense stat is “Ah Waste of time. Just don’t get hit.”
Obviously not everyone will play the game like I will so its up to you to experiment with different kinds of equipment that will suit your playstyle. The purpose of this post is to just provide you with some guidelines on what to look for when equipping your character.
Also, this post will not be touching anything on how to obtain equipment. I have already made a DATABASE containing all the equipment in the game as well as methods on how to obtain them:
Important Charms/Amulets
Generally speaking, your Charm/Amulet slot should only be occupied by one of two items. When you are a youngster or are in the process of leveling, you should be wearing Crest of Yggdrasil. This item increases all round experience gain by 40%. This affects the rate of leveling Sword Skills and Buff Skills. So just having this on while you play normally will allow you to strengthen your character without the need to spend time grinding out skills for the sake of levels.
The other important Charm/Amulet is the Full Resist Talisman (Nulls all status ailments). Once you have maxed your character you should stop wearing Crest of Yggdrasil and wear this instead. But also, since Full Resist Talisman negates bad statuses, you should also equip it when you go out to fight a boss that constantly uses some annoying status effects like Abaddon, Death or Hel. [Note: The Full Resist Talisman does not nullify Stat Debuffs like Def Down]
There is another important Amulet/Charm, being the 小妖精の涙《光》(Light Pixie Symbol?). This item reduces Cast Time by 40%. This should be worn by SAO Healer characters as it will allow you heal teammates more efficiently when they take damage.
Important/Noteworthy Rings
There are so many useless rings in this game (X_X) The noteworthy ones are:
- Trinity Luna (Cooldown Time -30%)
- Radiant Ring (Max HP +50%)
- Tritone Ring (Max MP +50%)
- Lazuli Ring (Rare Drop +25%)
- Vampire Ring (Regain 10% of Damage of HP)
Here, what you are going to be doing with your character will dictate the kind of ring you pick.
AW Characters should pick either the Trinity Luna or the Vampire Ring. The Trinity Luna is a good look since they have no other way of reducing the cooldown times of their Incarnate Skills (SAO character’s can get “Cooltime Reduce” passives on their weapons.) Yuna should also wear this ring because her buff skills have some lengthy cooldown times.
Wearing the Vampire Ring on AW character’s allows them to be able to heal themselves by dealing damage which is very desirable.
For a session on dedicated Sword Skill leveling, wear the Trinity Luna.
When farming for weapons, wear the Lazuli Ring. It will help tremendously for getting Rare Drops.
When doing high difficulty quests and you aren’t confident in your abilities to stay alive, wear either the Radiant Ring or the Vampire Ring. These rings will allow you some breathing room if you make a mistake and get hit by attacks.
When you are a designated Healer in high difficulty quests, wear the Tritone Ring. When your party members get slapped around by an Abaddon or an Arngrim like the butt cheeks of a little kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, your normal MP will not be enough. Chain casting Refresh is the quickest way to deplete your MP gauge. For that reason, extra MP will come in handy.
Necklaces
Lots of good Necklaces in the game ranging from Damage Type increases to Critical increases to Taming & Song Buff increases.
The ones that I wear on almost all my characters are the “Cruxes” (Factors in JP version). These increase a specific Damage Type by 15% (All of them are found in chests in AW stages).
On SAO characters, I select the Factor that corresponds to the Damage Type of the weapon they are using.
- Slash Crux: Dual Blades, 1Hand Sword, 2Hand Sword, Dagger, Axe, Katana
- Crush Crux: Mace, Knuckle
- Pierce Crux: Rapier, Spear, Bow
However, if I am farming one specific boss, I will wear the Elemental Crux that corresponds to that boss’ weakness.
Outside of the Cruxes the Boss Killer/Balrog Choker necklace is a good pick (Use this on AW characters when you don’t know what their Damage Types are).
The Taming Necklaces only increase familiar abilities and are completely useless on characters that don’t have familiars. I haven’t experimented with them but they seem promising. You might be able to make Pina into a legit Healer with one of those.
The Song Buff increase Necklaces should only be used on Pookas or Yuna. There are two of these Necklaces and one increase the duration of Song Buffs while the other increases the range of Song Buffs. I don’t use these on my Pooka characters because I feel like you can just cast the Song Buff again, you know? On those characters I pick an Attack orientated necklace instead.
For Yuna, I would highly recommend one of these Necklaces. Yuna is unable to attack so it helps if she is strengthened in her abilities to offer support.
AW Enhanced Armaments
AW Characters have 6 slots for Armaments. The kinds of Armaments you fit your character with can subtly affect their combat abilities. If you have read through my entire site with a keen eye, you might have noticed that I haven’t touched on this at all. The sole reason for that is that confirming what kind of Damage Types AW characters have relies on trail and error (I still can’t believe this isn’t in the Strategy Guide). On top of this, these AW characters aren’t limited to one kind of damage type in their list of Sword Skills
For example, both Lotus and Pile have certain sword skills that deal Slash Damage and other Sword Skills that deal Thrust Damage. This makes my job a nightmare (X_X)
In any case, another reason why I haven’t touched on the AW Armaments is because I wanted players to experiment with them on their own and come up with their own Armament combinations that help aid their very own playstyle.
But of course, in true BK fashion, I will tell you which kinds of Armaments I use.
Elemental AW Character:
- Element Enhance (Reduces Opposite Element)
- Element Enhance (Reduces Status Ailment Resistance)
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 1
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 2 (Matching Damage Type as Enhance 1)
- Cyan Wing
- Lime Wing/ Experience Gain Armament**
Non Elemental AW Character:
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 1
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 2 (Matching Damage Type as Enhance 1)
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 3
- Slash/Thrust/Blunt Enhance 4 (Matching Damage Type as Enhance 3)
- Cyan Wing
- Lime Wing/ Experience Gain Armament**
**The Experience Gain Armaments were added in version 1.20 as a part of the “AW Item Set DLC”
Before selecting which physical Damage Type enhancer to go with, I would experiment with each of the 3 Enhances to deduce which Skills on my AW character have which kind of type of damage.
If I find that a non-elemental character only has one kind of Damage Type, I will drop Enhancers 3 and 4 and BP Booster or the other Experience Gain item (Yes, there are two in the DLC).
NEW: With the Version 2.00 Infinite Dungeon, having negative physical resistances is incredibly dangerous. That’s practically answering to get One-Shot. For AW characters, you don’t have to fill up every slot of their armaments. Its okay to leave some pace open so for high difficulty quests, I would advise you to not equip any armaments that yield negative physical resistance. Unless of course, you’re completely confident in your abilities.
I know that this isn’t exactly helpful, but I don’t know the Damage Types of every single AW character’s individual skill so I can’t just lay that information bare in their respective character pages (as much as I really want to). If you want to get serious about an AW character, you will need to test their Damage Types.
Or at least talk to someone who has.
…
Thank you for reading.