Similar to Destiny 2, Defiance 2050 has a power level system which determines the damage you can deal and the damage you can take.
Defiance 2050’s max power level is 5000 and there are several ways to earn new gear to increase your power.
Again, similar to Destiny 2, your power level in Defiance 2050 is an average of your two equipped weapons, your shield and your grenade.
When you’re playing through Defiance 2050, you may come to a point where you notice you’re not getting gear drops higher than your current power level, this is where enhancing comes in. You can enhance your weapons to increase their power level, which in-turn increases your characters overall power level. This should then start getting you higher level gear from drops.
Salvage – where to get it
To enhance your weapons you need salvage, luckily, there are a ton of ways you can get salvage in Defiance 2050.
The main ways to get salvage are:
- Arkfalls
- Sieges
- Main Missions
- Side Missions
- Dismantling unwanted weapons
You can also get salvage from completing co-op maps and PvP matches.
If you are still below EGO level 50 and have a lots of Main Missions and Side Missions to complete, then these will likely be the quickest way to rack up some salvage.
Don’t worry about using your salvage early on in the game, as there is tons of side missions plus Arkfalls you can do to grind for salvage.
Salvage is also limited to common(white) salvage up until power level 1000 (source: defiancedata.com) which only increases the weapon rank by 10, later on you will start getting uncommon (green), and rare(blue) salvage which gives you more enhancement points to rank up your weapons. Rarer weapons will require more salvage to rank up.
Enhancing your weapons
Now you know where to get salvage, let’s enhance our weapons and increase their power level.
you can enhance your weapons by first going to your character by hitting options to access the radial menu.
Once you are in the character screen, highlight the weapon you want to enhance and hit X. As you’ll most likely be enhancing your currently equipped weapons, I find this the quickest way but you can also access the weapon enhancement screen via your main inventory screen.
Next, you will find your self in the weapon inventory screen. Make sure the weapon you want to enhance is highlighted, then hit TRIANGLE to open up the weapon enhancement screen.
Now that you are in the weapon enhancement screen, press TRIANGLE to enhance the weapon. This brings up a list of the salvage you have on the left hand side. You’ll notice that there is lots of different types of salvage.
There is a salvage type for each different type of weapon.
- Light Machine Gun Salvage
- Assault Rifle Salvage
- Pistol Salvage
- Detonator Salvage
- Rocket Launcher Salavage
- Shotgun Salvage
- Sniper Rifle Salvage
You can put any type of salvage into any type of weapon, but you will reap the most benefits and gain the most enhancement points if you use the correct salvage on the correct weapon. For example, use only Assault Rifle salvage when enhancing an assault rifle.
The rarer the salvage the more enhancement points it will be worth, for example rare (blue) salvage will give you more enhancement points than uncommon(green) salvage.
To enhance your weapon, highlight the salvage you want to put in, then click X to add the salvage.
Salvage you add will show up on the right hand side. To enhance the weapon and use the salvage, hit TRIANGLE to Enhance, there will then be a confirmation box, select OK and your weapon will be enhanced.
The goal is to enhance your weapons up to their maximum rank. Each rank will increase a weapons power level by 10. Different weapon tiers can be enhanced a certain amount of ranks.
- Uncommon weapons(green) – 10 ranks
- Rare weapons(blue) – 15 ranks
- Epic Weapons(purple) – 20 ranks
- Legendary Weapons & Prototypes(orange) – 25 ranks
Lets say you have two rare weapons equipped and they are both enhanced to their max rank and are at 2000 power level each, and you also have a 2000 power level grenade and shield, this would put your power level at 2000.
Now let’s say you go do a seige and loot some new weapons, maybe another two rare weapons, but they have only dropped at power level 1950, 50 levels below your current power level. You might think, this is not that great, but, your two new weapons can be increased by 150 power levels each (15 ranks for a rare weapon, 10 power levels per rank = 150 power level increase)
This would bring the power level of each weapon up to 2100, add in a higher grenade and shield that you might loot and you can see your power level slowly but surely increasing.
I noticed the level of power increase slow down quite a bit once hitting about 2000 power level. I had done all the main story missions and side missions around that time.
Some players have stated that the weapons you get from main missions cap at 2500 power, so it might be worth while grinding as high as you can before completing the main missions that grant you weapons.
If you need more information on Defiance 2050 and the games mechanics, check out Defaince Data, which has been an invaluable source of information when I was learning about the game.
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