An introduction to the Item Tiering system

Tiering guide
The Tier Increase and Enhancers system was implemented as part of release 10.6, dating back to December 17, 2009.

Tiering is a mechanism that will allow you to upgrade specific items, and thus tailor them to specific needs you might have. Examples of this include increasing the range of mining tools or weapons, or increasing the Critical Hit ability on weapons.

How to tier your items?
Before you can consider tiering your items, you will need to use them. Items always start off at Tier 0, and the only way to raise their tier is simple use. How soon your items “tier up” depends on their tiering numbers, which can be found in the item description. (See screenshot). Lower numbers mean it will take longer.

The exact mechanism on how these numbers affect the updating is not known, but it is generally assumed that every time you use the item, you will have a chance of a tier upgrade taking place. Once your item reaches tier 0.9, you will receive a message that it can now be upgraded to tier 1. In the case of Limited items, this will happen automatically, but for Unlimited items, you will have to do this manually.

The tiering process explained
Tiering up an item will require a number of resources. Most tiering recipes will typically require mined resources like Oil, Lysterium Ingots, or crafted components like Basic Filters, Simple I Conductors or Simple I Plastic springs.

Which resources are used differs from item to item, with the items available in the TT Terminal requiring relatively cheap materials..



Tiering risks
With the arrival of VU 11.4, the requirement for (and thus risk of losing) a second item similar to the one being tiered has been removed. Where before, generally 90% of all the TT value of the ingredients was returned, nowadays, the tiering system will return a percentage of the ingredients in the form of residue. The exact percentage is determined by the skill of the person performing the tiering, with higher levelled people obviously salvaging more of the value.

Tiering
Once you have all the ingredients collected, you can right-click the item you want to tier, and select the option “Tier Upgrade”. You will now be shown a new screen, informing you of the ingredients required. You simply drag the ingredients from the inventory to the window.

Above the window, you will see a progress bar indicating the earlier mentioned maximum salvage percentage.

Once all ingredients are in place, you hit the "Upgrade item" button, upon which you you will start the tiering process. When you are done, you will have tiered up your item, and will receive part of the ingredients back in the form of residue. Depending on your skill, and a factor of luck, you might be able to tier your item for a maximum of 0.4 levels.

Enhancers
Once you successfully tiered your item past tier 1, it will be possible to add enhancers to the item. This can be done by dragging one (or a stack) of enhancers into the now available Enhancer Socket. To remove the enhancers again, right-click on the socket, and select "Detach enhancers".

The cost at which these enhancers work is a bit of a guess, as they are spent randomly. In any case, make sure you have a stack of them if you want to be sure that you get their benefits!

For an oversight of the different ways Enhancers work to improve your items, please see the Guide to Enhancers by kosmos.

Tiering services
Should you feel you do not have the proper skills to tier up your items yourself, there are tiering services out there. Auktuma runs a free service for most of the low-level items (Auktumas Charitable Tier Upgrading Service, or ACTUS), as the ones available in the Trade Terminal, or Shogun armour. Akoz offers a similar service called Akoz' tiering service.

Guide courtesy of EntropiaPlanets. Contributors: GeorgeSkyWalker, Tass, VF.

 

The guide has been updated to reflect the new changes.