What does an item upgrade from +1 to +10 give in EQ Legends?

Each tier adds 10% of the item's base stats, with a guaranteed minimum of +1 per stat, so a tier-10 item sits at +100% of its base, and every value rounds down: AC 17 reads 20 at tier 2. Measured in game, three things break that rule: weapon damage gets no minimum, resistances and haste go up by exactly +1 per tier, and weight goes down by an amount that does not fit a clean formula. Armour also gains SV Void equal to its tier from +2 up.

How many duplicates does it take to reach tier 10 on an item?

1023 experience in total. A tier-0 copy donates 1, and the value doubles each tier: a tier-4 copy is worth 16, a tier-9 copy 512. Climbing on tier-0 drops alone means merging around a thousand of them.

Does upgrading a weapon reduce its delay?

No, the delay never decreases. Weapon damage rises 10% per tier and, unlike other stats, gets no minimum of +1: a base damage of 6 reads 8 at tier 4. Weight goes down slightly, and upgraded armour gains SV Void equal to its tier from +2 onwards.

Should I use motes or duplicates to upgrade gear?

The developers describe motes as a catch-up path rather than the main one, meant for gear you cannot easily farm duplicates of, such as epics and long quest rewards. Farming duplicates is the primary route for droppable items.

EQ Legends Guide ›

Item upgrade, +1 to +10 — what each mote tier actually gives

Updated 25 August 2026 · per-tier rates re-measured in game after the 25 Aug patch

Before you sink a thousand duplicates or a rare mote into a piece of gear, see what it buys. Pick an item, drag the tier: every stat is recomputed the way the game does it, along with the merge experience each rank costs. Looking for spells instead? The spell version is here.

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Item upgrade tiers, +1 to +10 — the cost and what it buys

Rank by rank. Every tier adds 10 % of the base, with a guaranteed minimum of +1 per stat, so a tier-10 piece sits at +100 % — the growth is linear, not compounded. Every value rounds down: AC 17 reads 20 at tier 2, not 21. A negative stat is left alone, and a weapon's delay never decreases.

Checked against the game, not just the patch notes. Eleven upgraded items were read side by side with their unranked entry, from +1 up to +8 — 24 stats, no deviation from the rule above. A Bronze Mask at +0 matches its database entry exactly (AC 5, weight 1.9), which is the reference the rest is measured from. Two behaviours do break the published rule, and the calculator follows the measured one:

Weapon damage gets no minimum. A Flaming Fist with base damage 6 reads 8 at +4 and 9 at +5 — not 10 and 11. Damage takes its 10 % and nothing more, which is why a low-damage weapon climbs so slowly.

Haste is the real exception. A Flowing Black Silk Sash reads 24 % at +3, up from 21 %, and a Mithril Two-Handed Sword 33 % at +2, up from 31 % — one point per tier, not ten percent. At +10 that is 41 %, not 62 %.

Resistances are not an exception, though they look like one. A Silver-Plated Bracer goes from 5 poison to 9 at +4, which reads as +1 per tier — but it is the guaranteed minimum winning over 10 % of a small base. On a resist of 40 the percentage takes over. The calculator applies the general rule.

Why your item can read higher than this page. Merge experience carries between merges, and the stats climb partway through a tier, not only when it flips. An item sitting at +4 with its bar half full is already worth a little more than a clean +4. This page shows the clean tier, so treat it as the floor for a partly-filled bar.

Upgrading grants SV Void, and nothing tells you. Void resistance appears on 3 items out of 11 069 in the database, yet every upgraded piece of armour carries it: 2 at +2, 3 at +3, 4 at +4, 5 at +5, 8 at +8. It equals the tier.

Two limits, both measured: the two items seen at +1 have none at all, so it seems to start at +2, and weapons don't get it — a Flaming Fist at +5 shows its fire resistance and no Void.

What counts as a duplicate. Straight from the client's own help file, section 4.3: the item's + modifier does not matter as long as the base item is the same. A Rusty Short Sword merges into a Rusty Short Sword +2 without trouble — but a Rusty Short Sword and a Short Sword are two different items and will not combine. Any copy you find is fuel, whatever tier it dropped at, and it donates what its own tier cost.

Upgrading unlocks Exaltations. Section 4.4 of the client help: once an item is upgraded you can lift an effect off one piece and put it on another, provided both share the same slot, the same class restriction and the same upgrade level. A +4 Gnoll Hide Lariat's stun proc moves onto a +4 Mithril Two Hander; it will not move onto a +4 Dagger of Marnek, because the Lariat was never usable by a Necromancer. There are four slots — Focus, Click, Worn and Proc — which is why an upgraded item shows four empty Exaltation lines. Effects themselves never scale with tier, but this is how you move a good one onto better gear.

Weapon damage is an estimate, not a rule. Ten weapons read off a live client on 25 August 2026 put it near +12 % per tier, truncated — that fits eight of them: Mithril 21→26 at +2, Silver Plated War Sword 15→20 at +3, Flaming Fist 6→8 at +4. But Aldryn, Blade of the Ocean read at two tiers of its own breaks it: 20 → 23 at +1, then only 25 at +3, where the rule wants 27. Two tiers earn less than the first one alone. And at the same +3, Aldryn and the Silver Plated War Sword both gain exactly +5 from different bases. It is not a percentage. Treat this line as ±2 points at high tiers.

Weight, honestly. It goes down, but the step doesn't fit a formula yet: 1.9 becomes 1.8 at +1, 1.0 becomes 0.8 at +2 and 0.7 at +4, while 0.2 is still 0.2 at +5. Rather than print a number that would be wrong, the table leaves the base value and says so. It has no bearing on anything but your encumbrance.

What it costs. Reaching tier 10 takes 1 023 experience. A duplicate donates what its own tier cost: a tier-0 copy is worth 1, and it doubles every tier — a tier-4 copy 16, a tier-9 copy 512. Climbing on base drops alone means merging on the order of a thousand of them, which is why a high-difficulty drop, already several tiers up, is worth so much more than its count suggests.

Motes are a bad deal on gear — and that is deliberate. The same mote pays two completely different amounts depending on what you feed it to. Into a spell, a rank-N mote gives its total value, which doubles every rank: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. Into an item, the very same mote gives only its rank number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. A Mote of Major Potential is worth 16 to a spell and 5 to a piece of gear — against the 32 that tier costs.

A mote must also out-rank the item: a +4 item only accepts rank-5 motes and above, so past +4 you are forced onto expensive motes that pay 5. That is the cliff, and it is why the developers call motes a catch-up path rather than the main one.

The trick worth knowing: load a duplicate, then merge it. An item merged into an item pays like a mote into a spell — the full doubling value, not the linear one. So don't feed good motes to the piece you are wearing. Take a second copy, pour your cheap motes into that one, and merge the loaded copy in.

The split that follows: high motes into spells, low motes into duplicate gear, and spend Void-touched Potential on items — three a week from raid activity, each worth a full rank. A spell can be finished with whatever motes you happen to own; an item cannot. (Mote values are player-stated and consistent across two independent accounts; no developer post tabulates them.)

Motes or duplicates? The developers are explicit: motes are a catch-up path, not the main one — “mostly meant to help out with items you really don't want to farm duplicates of, like long quests, epics, and such”. For anything that drops, farming copies is the intended route. And Void-touched Potential, earned from raids up to three times a week, raises any item a full rank — worth most at the top, where a single rank would otherwise cost 512 copies.

Item data from the guide's own database, all 11 069 items — 6 590 of them carry at least one stat a tier can raise. Upgrade rules from EQL Tools, checked against live client readings. Part of the EQ Legends guide.

Full 1–50 trio guide → Chapter 11 — Legends systems: merging, motes and spell ranks