Revision 1

Everything you equip that is not a weapon falls into two families. Armour covers the head, chest and feet slots and is where most of your survivability comes from. Accessories cover the belt, the necklace, two rings and a back slot, and they are where the sharper build choices live, because each accessory slot leans toward a different kind of stat rather than simply adding more of the same.

Together with the weapon slot that makes nine equipped pieces. This is by some distance the largest item group in Soulbound: Online, and it is also the group where the acquisition rules vary most: some pieces are forged, some drop only from dungeon chests, and a whole family of rings and necklaces arrives from gathering nodes rather than from combat at all.

The Slot Layout

The back slot is the outlier. There is no current-tier back gear at all, so in practice the slot holds cosmetics, backpacks and capes rather than anything with combat stats on it.

Vitality is the single most common stat across the whole armour and accessory pool, followed by Power, Attack Speed, Will and Duration. That distribution is what makes armour the survivability half of a build and weapons the damage half.

Two Families of Ring and Necklace

The ring and necklace slots each hold two separate item families, and this is the part that most often catches players out.

Tiered pieces sit on the normal tier ladder, drop from dungeon chests and roll a bonus package like any other gear. There are eight tiered rings, all at Tier 3, and they are named for the ability they support rather than for a material: a Pyrosphere Ring, a Kusarigama Ring, a Drone Base Count Ring, a Catalyst Ring, a Double Tap Ring, an Always Catch Ring, a Ring of Avoidance and a Ring of Intimidation. Each carries a utility stat pair plus one line that changes how an ability behaves, such as an extra projectile or an extra scythe.

Untiered jewellery is the other family. It has fixed stats, never rolls, and turns up as a rare bonus from Mining, Fishing and Foraging nodes, with a handful more from enemies, vendors and quests. Most of the game's rings and a good share of its necklaces arrive this way, which means the ring slot is one of the few places where life skills feed your combat power directly rather than through crafting.

Tiered Necklaces

Necklaces are the accessory you are most likely to craft, and the roster is organised into naming families that repeat as you climb the tiers rather than into one item per tier.

Treat the family name as a naming convention rather than a promise. The entry-level pieces do what their names suggest: the Brawler's Pendant carries Physical Damage and stun resistance, the Elemental Pendant carries Critical Strike Chance and Damage, and the Gunner's Pendant carries Duration. Further up the ladder the stat lines drift, and a top-tier member of the same family often trades that flat damage bonus for Attack Speed, Duration or Cooldown Reduction. Read the actual tooltip rather than the name.

The last row is different in kind: those four are the Tier 3 necklaces of the four gear sets, and each set continues its own necklace line through Tier 6. Necklaces were also reworked after launch so the core Tier 3 to Tier 6 pieces carry built-in secondary stat packages, and duplicate recipes at the lower tiers were removed.

The Belt Lines

Belts are the elemental slot. Through the middle tiers each belt is a flat percentage bonus to one damage type, and the six damage types get one belt each per tier, so the family is unusually easy to read.

At Tier 5 and Tier 6 the pattern changes. The six top belts are the Emberline, Frostline, Stormline, Ironline, Blastline and Voidline, and instead of a flat elemental percentage they carry Duration, AoE Radius and DoT Potency, so they support damage over time and area builds rather than one element. The Ironline pair keeps a physical profile of Heavy Hit Chance, Knockback and Physical Damage, and the Voidline pair adds Cooldown Reduction. All six were named in Patch 3's pass over legendary dungeon items, so their presence in the build is confirmed by the studio rather than only by player documentation.

Where Pieces Come From

Head, chest, feet and necklace pieces are forged at the armour bench, which goes by the Armour Station in game and is listed as the Gearforge among the crafting stations. Crafting yields the base version at its base rarity, and since Patch 4 an armour recipe finishes in five seconds at every tier.

Belts and tiered rings cannot be crafted at all. They drop, and only drop. If you want a Tier 6 belt there is no bench route to it, which makes the belt slot one of the most reliable reasons to keep running the higher rungs. Everything else on the list can arrive either way: a crafted copy with base stats, or a dropped copy carrying a bonus package and possibly a higher rarity.

A Legendary drop additionally carries a legendary effect, a triggered power that cannot be crafted. That was briefly untrue after Patch 3 and was reversed in Patch 4, so the drop-only rule stands. Which effects land on which pieces is on Gear Sets.

Stats by Slot

Each slot pulls in a different direction, which is what makes mixing worthwhile rather than wearing a matched set for its own sake.

• Head, chest and feet carry Vitality and Max Health for survivability, plus Power, Will, Focus and Heavy Hit Chance.

• Necklaces carry Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Duration and Critical Strike Damage.

• Belts carry the elemental and damage-over-time stats: DoT Potency, AoE Radius, Physical Damage, Cold Damage and Lightning Damage.

• Rings carry utility: Cooldown Reduction, Duration, Projectile Count and Dodge Chance.

Some of those stats apply to everything you do and others are bound to a single ability, which is the distinction the Stats and Attributes page covers in full. Match the slots to the role you want: Vitality and Max Health for a tank, Critical Strike Chance and Damage for a damage build, Dodge Chance to avoid hits outright, or Buff Power, Healing Power and Cooldown Reduction to support a party.

Sets and Tiers

From Tier 3 upward armour comes in four themed sets, each covering a head, chest, feet and necklace piece per tier. Foundation leans on Will, Vitality, Shielding Power and Healing Power; Lunar on Focus, DoT Potency, Cooldown Reduction and AoE Radius; Neotilus on Power, Ferocity, Physical Damage and Critical Strike Damage; Virelda on Power, Critical Strike Damage and Ferocity. No set covers belts, rings or the back slot, so a full set is never a full loadout.

Higher tiers carry higher combat skill requirements to equip. Hovering an item shows what it needs, and it is common early on to own a piece you cannot yet wear.

Equipping and the Cosmetic Slots

Open your bag with B and your character profile with C, then drag a piece into its slot, or right-click it in the bag and choose Equip. The one thing to watch is that a right-click Equip can put a piece into the Cosmetic slot instead of the gear slot, which leaves you looking correct and statless.

Cosmetic pieces grant no combat stats. They override your appearance in the head, chest, arms, feet, back and Follower slots, and because they live in their own parallel set of slots you can chase the strongest stats and the look you want independently. Most cosmetics are bound to your account and are not tradable. The wider cosmetic system is on Gear and Cosmetics.

Slot layouts, stat lines and acquisition rules all describe the Early Access build and are being tuned as it develops. For the weapon slot see Weapons, and for how a dropped copy earns its bonus package see Dungeons.