Equipment & Crafting

Every hero has three equipment slots — Weapon, Armor, and Accessory — filled with items crafted by your professions or dropped by monsters. Two specializations open a fourth slot: the Warrior's Guardian and Paladin's Protector unlock a 🛡 Shield slot (see Shield Smith), and the Rogue's Outlaw unlocks an Off-hand slot. The off-hand is a full second attack, not a top-up: it carries the hero's stats and armour just as the main hand does, swinging the off-hand weapon in place of the main one at 60% effectiveness.

The Hero’s Ark alchemy crafting screen, listing healing potion recipes with their herb and potion-base costs, level requirements and Alchemist experience yields.
Recipes are grouped in ten-level bands. The band header shows how many you can craft with what you are carrying.

Item Tiers & Name Colors

Item names are color-coded by the level of gear they represent, so a bag or market listing reads at a glance:

ColorItem Level
Muted grey1–9
Green10–19
Blue20–29
Purple30–44
Orange45–69
Red70+

Two special cases outrank the ladder: ✨ Excellent items (cyan) — an Excellent item carries five times every stat of its base version (ATK/DEF/MAG, attribute bonuses, heal amounts and buff strength — mana restoration is the one thing that stays unchanged). Excellent food and potions stack per slot just like their originals, in their own separate stacks. And Unique items (gold), like the Potion of Forgotten Self and the three Jewels.

Where Excellent items come from
Every single craft rolls a 1-in-1,000 chance to come out Excellent (a 5× or 10× multi-craft rolls each item separately), and every daily dungeon chest makes two independent 1-in-100 rolls — one for an Excellent weapon, one for Excellent armor, each drawn from the highest-level recipe at or below the dungeon's level and mailed to every winner of the party roll-off. The Sigil of Excellence (Diamond Mall) doubles both: 1-in-500 crafts and 1-in-50 chest rolls.

The Six Professions

You choose exactly 2 at character creation, both starting at profession level 1, and can buy more at the Diamond Mall — three additional at 500/1,000/2,000💎, plus Shield Smith at a flat 250💎 (free for Guardians and Protectors, granted with their spec). Profession levels rise by crafting, unlocking higher-tier recipes.

ProfessionProduces
WeaponsmithWeapons — a starter ladder (Rusty Shortsword up to the Mithril Blade), then at each of levels 10–100 a full zone set: a Blade (ATK+STR), Staff (MAG+INT), Longbow (ATK+DEX), Dagger (a cheaper crit knife, ATK+LUK), Vanguard Sword (ATK+VIT), and a pure-ATK Axe with the highest raw damage of the tier
ArmorsmithArmor — a starter ladder up through Mithril Plate, then per zone tier a DEF piece for every attribute (Warplate STR, Robe INT, Shadow Leathers DEX, Bulwark Plate VIT, Ranger Harness LUK) plus a pure-DEF Aegis Plate with the highest raw defense
Shield SmithShields — a DEF-focused gear piece for the game's new 🛡 shield slot, which only the Warrior's Guardian and Paladin's Protector specializations can equip. A generic ladder (Wooden Buckler at level 1 up to the Mithril Bulwark), a zone Aegis at each of levels 10–100 adding VIT, and a pure-DEF zone Rampart at the same tiers with the highest raw defense. Every level-5+ shield requires Shield Boss, a component earned only by salvaging (destroying) a shield — the level-1 Wooden Buckler needs just wood, bootstrapping the loop. Guardians and Protectors learn this profession free when they choose their spec; anyone else can learn it for a flat 250💎 at the Diamond Mall
JewelerAccessories — rings and amulets carrying secondary attributes; each zone tier offers one accessory per attribute (with two DEX options, the herb-based Swift Band and wood-based Hunter's Charm), all at matching material costs
ChefCooked meals — Banquets grant +Max Mana for 10 minutes, arriving filled (restoring that much on eating), at every tier from Aldenmoor (level 10) up to Dragonspine (level 100). Hearthmeals are the HP counterpart: +Max HP for 10 minutes, healed on eating, across the same ten tiers. Feasts grant a 10-minute attribute buff — every attribute has a level-100 Dragonspine Feast at the full +60. Only one food buff can be active at a time — eating another while one is live opens a confirmation showing the active buff, its time remaining, and the new buff before it overrides anything. Alchemist elixirs are potions, not food, and coexist with a food buff — but any food or potion whose stat buff would land on a live buff of the same attribute also asks before overwriting it. Party auras always stack and never trigger or suffer an overwrite
AlchemistPotions — instant-heal Restoration Potions and mana potions at every zone tier 10–100, plus 10-minute attribute elixirs; every attribute has a level-100 Dragonspine Elixir at the full +60

Salvaging

Destroying a finished item breaks it down into the profession component that made it — and higher-level gear yields far more of it. What you get back depends on the item's level, not yours (a hero with the Mithril Recycler from the Diamond Mall collects double every figure below, and can set it to break down junk automatically):

Item levelComponents returned
1–91
10–192
20–296
30–4412
45–6918
70+24

Which component you receive follows the item's slot or type: sharpening_stone from weapons, smiths_hammer from armour, shield_boss from shields, filigree from accessories, chefs_kiss from food, and potion_base from potions. An Excellent item salvages for the same amount as its ordinary version — so think twice before breaking one down.

Materials

Recipes consume gathered/dropped materials — ore, wood, herb, gem, and meat — plus profession-specific components (like sharpening_stone or smiths_hammer) earned from dungeon chests, from salvaging finished items (see Salvaging), from Veteran kills in dungeons — each has a 1-in-10 chance to spill 1–25 of a random component (Shield Boss excepted, which only salvaging provides) — and from repeatable diary-page rewards (see Quests). Each zone also offers a themed set of recipes at each of levels 10 through 100, named after that zone (e.g. an "Aldenmoor Blade" at level 10, a "Thornwood Blade" at level 20), scaled to match the zone's monster levels from Progression. Materials live in your resource bag (10 slots to start, expandable to 50; stacks of 99 per slot, deepened up to 999 by the Bottomless Satchel) — when it fills up you can deposit into a holding's stockpile, spend them crafting, or click a stack in the Inventory tab to destroy any amount and free the slot.

Crafting XP

Every successful craft grants profession XP toward your next profession level, gating access to that profession's higher-tier recipes — independent of your character level. Each profession level needs 30% more XP than the last, so chasing a tier means crafting near the top of your current band. With an active Subscription you can multi-craft 5× or 10× of a recipe in one click — it spends the full materials, grants the full XP, and rolls each item's Excellent chance separately.

Rarity

Most crafted and dropped gear has no rarity tag at all — it's just judged on its stats. A small number of items instead carry a Unique rarity: one-of-a-kind effects that can't be crafted or bought, only earned. The Potion of Forgotten Self (see Progression and Achievements) is the first of these.