Unique Variant

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A unique variant Jelly Helm with an increase to elemental defense is denoted by a star.

When crafting an item, there is a low probability that you may get a randomized unique variant, a special version of that item with an added bonus. You cannot choose the unique variant you obtain. When upgrading the item the unique variant can be transferred to the new item. "Unique variant" is commonly abbreviated as UV.

These bonuses appear apart from, and are not affected by, other bonuses that come with the original item. They do stack with other bonuses following the rules in abilities. Only one UV is possible per item.


Crafting

Receiving a unique variant while crafting a Haze Bomb.

There is a low chance of creating a unique variant each time that you craft a new item. This is the only way to obtain unique variants at the moment: pre-made items purchased from vendors will never come with a unique bonus.

When crafting or upgrading, unless an existing unique variant bonus is explicitly transferred to a new item (as described below), each step in the item creation process provides a new chance at a new unique variant. For example, a unique variant may appear when initially crafting a cutter, as well as when the cutter is upgraded into a striker. For items with long crafting chains, this may provide as many as five chances at obtaining a unique variant bonus per item.

When upgrading, it is possible to transfer an existing unique variant bonus on the base item to your upgraded item. In the upgrade menu, the option to transfer the unique variant bonus to your upgraded item is pre-selected. If you de-select this option when upgrading, the resultant item will not retain the existing unique variant bonus. It will, however, have a chance at becoming a new unique variant, with a new unique variant bonus or nothing.

When upgrading a unique variant, the recipe screen will have an option to "Transfer Unique Variants."
A transferred unique variant crafting message looks the same as the initial creation of a unique variant.

Crafting Strategy with Alchemy Paths

Due to the ability to transfer a variant through multiple steps, a relatively economical way to obtain unique variants is to mass produce the first item in a crafting chain. For example, a unique Ash of Agni (crafting cost: 800 energy) can be produced by crafting a large number of haze bombs (10 energy each) and upgrading only the haze bomb that has a unique variant.


Types of Unique Variants

A normal Haze Bomb (left) compared to a Haze Bomb with a unique variant of "Damage Bonus vs Slime: Low."
When viewing equipment in your arsenal, you will see the equipment's icon, whether or not the item has a unique variant (yellow symbol), and its star level.

Weapons

In general, weapon bonuses will make your weapon more effective. Bonuses are not equally useful for every weapon. For example, charge time reduction on the Haze Bomb line is a lot more useful than a damage bonus since such bombs are used for inflicting status rather than dealing damage.

Weapons can gain one of the bonuses listed below. These bonuses seem to be percentage based depending on the base stats of the weapons, check the Abilities for such info.

  • Attack speed increase (ASI) (can't be obtained on bombs)
  • Charge time reduction (CTR)
  • Damage bonus vs (construct, gremlin, fiend, beast, undead or slime)

A weapon can only have one UV. For example, a Striker can have "Attack speed increased: High" or "Damage bonus vs Beasts: Medium," but not both.

Weapon UVs come in Low, Medium, High and Very High. Weapon UVs are never Ultra or Maximum.

A total bonus of Ultra or Maximum can be obtained by combining the UV with the inherent bonus on a weapon or armor as explained in the Abilities article. For example, a Combuster UV ASI Very High will become Maximum when a Vog Cub Coat is equipped since the Vog Cub Coat has Sword ASI Medium. The Character Tab displays the combined abilities of weapon bonuses.

Armor

Armor unique variants focus on adding protection against damage or status effects. Unique variants can either add defense against attacks that the armor would not normally protect against or stack with existing defenses on the armor.

Possible types of unique variants are:

  • Bonus damage protection from: (normal, piercing, elemental or shadow)
  • Bonus status resistance against: (stun, freeze, sleep, poison, fire, shock or curse)

A piece of armor can only have one UV. For example, a Wolver Cap can have "bonus protection vs shadow: medium" or "bonus freeze resistance: low," but not both.

Bonus damage protection, much like base damage protection, increases with the star-rating. For example, a low elemental UV on a 4* helm could appear longer than a medium elemental UV on a 2* helm. This assumption is made based on watching the tooltip, and remains untested.

The possible UV values an armor can have are: Low, Medium, High, Maximum. There are no Armor UVs with the values of Very High or Ultra.

Shield

Shield unique variants are as with Armor, except they can have grant bonus protection against damage types (normal, piercing, elemental or shadow), and not status resistances.

Probability

Chance of an UV on bombs seems to be around 10% [1][2]

Probabilities on bombs seem to be approximately as follows: [3]

Low: 65.74% ± 8.95%

Medium: 21.30% ± 7.72%

High: 7.41% ± 4.94%

Very High: 5.56% ± 4.32%

Chances for armors and other kinds of weapons remain to be tested.

Ability Ratings

Unique variant bonus amounts and addition are described by ability ratings, whether or not the stat is displayed by a bar.

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