Understanding how to upgrade weapons in Wartales is one way to keep up with the difficulty. Regardless of which difficulty/exploration mode you pick, you’ll need to stay on top of your gear. You’ll likely struggle if you only rely on the stat boosts from your characters leveling up.
So if you manage to find a really strong weapon early on in your Wartales playthrough, it’s worth knowing how to upgrade it. This helps keep a unique weapon relevant regardless of the region you’re fighting in. Also, this guide covers other tricks to improve your gear further down.
How to Upgrade Weapons in Wartales
What Weapons Types Can You Upgrade?
The costs can quickly add up especially if you’re working on a low-level weapon.
The main struggle with upgrading weapons is that they need to have the purple rarity. You can see this by checking the item’s background in your inventory, character screen, or by hovering over it. Otherwise, if it’s a lower rarity like blue or gold, you won’t be able to upgrade it at all.
If you have a purple rarity weapon, you’ll see a tag at the bottom of its description like, “Bow – Upgradable”. This clearly indicates that it’s a weapon you can upgrade if you have enough money to do so. However, you’ll need to make your way to the right place before being able to.
Brotherhood Training Grounds are a great way to learn new skills, upgrade skills, and more.
Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as going to a town blacksmith where you can use the anvil. You’ll instead need to find a Brotherhood Training Grounds location. There are several of these spread throughout Wartales with one even in Tiltren County. As shown in the screenshot below, you can find it near the Edoranian Border Crossing.
Make sure before you continue along the road to the border crossing that you head south and then west. Or if you prefer, just make your way to the left(west) of Old Wilburt’s Fishery, near the pond. Once you’ve cleared the fog of war, you can pretty much see both locations on the same screen.
The process for upgrading weapons in Wartales is pretty much the same regardless of the Brotherhood Training Grounds you’re at. However, if you visit the Tiltren County one, talk to the Hired Goon Pietamens NPC. While a couple of features may be locked depending on your path progress, the Upgrade button will be available.
Click into the Upgrade menu where you’ll see each of your unique purple rarity weapons. Then, you can right-click the item over to the other side. This will reveal a Krown cost depending on what level it is. Be careful to not level it up too much to the point that your party can no longer equip it.
Explore tombs and compete in arenas for a chance at getting unique purple weapons. You may even get one as a reward from a side quest.
Nothing prevents you from upgrading a weapon past the level your party can use. And that’s the last thing you want unless you’re preparing for a party member to level up soon. Regardless of your plans, you can see the increased stats by hovering over the item on the right.
For an example of upgrading a weapon in Wartales, you can compare the screenshots above and below. In this case, I’m upgrading the Narses’ Bow that I got from the Ludern Tomb. It costs 840 Krowns to raise its level from 9 to 10. This will increase its dexterity by 11.
How to Make Your Gear Better Without Upgrading
Even though you can only upgrade purple weapons at the Brotherhood Training Grounds, there are a few tricks to get more out of your gear. When crafting your own gear at a Blacksmith, the stats are impacted by the minigame. So if you’re good at timing each hammer hit, you can end up with better gear overall.
This can also lead to extra armor layer slots giving you further customization and extra stat buffs. Such as an increased critical hit chance, more armor, more strength, etc. With that said, you’ll need to get the armor layer recipes from the many Tracker Camps throughout Wartales.
Work your way through each of the four paths for knowledge buffs like an extra armor layer slot. This is the Champion Craftsmen knowledge under Power and Glory.
As far as making your weapons stronger aside from upgrading them, you can apply different oils. These are more catered toward the end game or at least the last couple of regions when the difficulty ramps up. But, if you’re playing with the adaptive exploration mode, you may need them earlier.
Oils are an item you can apply to a weapon to get major buffs. And once you reach level 7 in the Mysteries and Wisdom path, you can apply two oils to a weapon. Here are several buff examples you can get by using them:
- Acidic Oil I: Every time a skill deals damage, has a 50% chance to apply Burning.
- Alertness Oil I: Damage from attacks of opportunity +15%.
- Perforating Oil I: The attacks dealt ignore 50% of the target’s Guard.
- Bleeding Oil I: Every time a skill deals damage to a bleeding enemy, has a 25% chance to trigger Bleeding damage.
It’s worth noting that you can buy oils from some apothecary shops but you will need to clear rat nests if you want to craft them. Therefore, they can be a bit more limited if you’re not frequently clearing rat infestations. Especially if you’re trying to apply oils to a larger party size in the late game.
That’s all there is to this in-depth guide on how to upgrade weapons in Wartales. While the upgrading mechanic is relatively simple, there is a lot more to improving your equipment for sure.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.