Shadow of War: Upgrading equipment Middle-earth: Shadow of War Guide

On this page of our guide to Middle-earth: Shadow of War you will find information on how to improve Talion's equipment. We also present the main types of quality for the equipment acquired across the game.

• Basic information
• Quality of equipment and additional characteristics

Basic information

Your equipment will be constantly upgraded throughout the entire game.

Talion, during his journey, finds better and better equipment. Items can be collected from fallen enemies but we usually get them by completing missions. We have six slots that can be used for the following types of equipment:

1. Sword. Talion uses a sword in close-combat which allows him to go through armies of orcs. Swords have attack factor that determines how much damage we can deal with our melee attacks.
2. Dagger. Dagger's attack factor determines how powerful our stealth attacks are. Better and more powerful weapons allow us to deal more damage while using stealth attacks.
3. Bow/Forge hammer. Just like with the weapons described above, the attack factor determines strength of our ranged attacks. We can also choose between a bow and a forge hammer. The choice itself isn't that important.
4. Armor. Armor determines amount of health points of our character.
5. Cape. Cape is responsible for our stealth capabilities. Better capes make us harder to detect by enemies when we, e.g. sneak right on them.
6. Ring. Ring determines our maximum Focus.

Quality of equipment and additional characteristics

Better gear can be acquired mainly through missions.

We have discussed the basic functions of our equipment so now it is time to take a closer look at various versions of our gear:

1. Regular items. Their color is white and they don't offer anything more than what was described above. They are the worst items that should be discarded and exchanged for Mirian.
2. Rare items. These items offer additional bonuses but they are connected to additional challenges that your character must beat. For example, a rare dagger may require you to poison enemies three times and when you do that, you get a bonus that increase your damage to poisoned enemies by 40%.
3. Heroic items. These items offer one bonus right after acquiring them and another one can be unlocked in their challenge.
4. Legendary items. The best gear that offers two bonuses right from the start. In addition to that, each item offers an upgrade that increases that item's level. Equipping legendary items that are part of the same set give you access to unique bonuses, e.g. 4 parts of Bright Lord set gives you a full set of elven arrows when you kill an enemy during Elven Rage.