Avowed guide — Upgrading armor, weapons, and unique items

Upgrading your gear and enchanting the unique items will go a long way to helping you succeed in The Living Lands, so here's our Avowed guide with more info.

Heidi Nicholas

Published 15 Feb 2025

This guide for how to upgrade weapons and armor and enchant unique items in Avowed will hopefully help with surviving all the dangers of The Living Lands, particularly in the early game, and arm you for unlocking the Avowed achievements. Already available via preorder early access, Avowed is rapidly shaping up to be one of the best Game Pass games (or technically it will when its full Game Pass launch happens next week) so if you're looking for more info, read on...

Upgrading armor, weapons, and unique items in Avowed

Xbox Game Pass players can start Avowed when its full launch takes place on February 18
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Windows
Xbox Game Pass tier: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass

Keeping your weapons and armor upgraded is vitally important in Avowed. As we mentioned in our 5 tips for Avowed, enemies don’t level alongside you, so to make sure you can tackle tougher opponents, you need to invest in your gear.

Weapons include wands, grimoires, firearms, axes, bows, daggers, spears, shields, swords, and two-handed variants of these, such as great axes or the two-handed Arquebus. You also have varieties of light, medium, and heavy armor. On top of this, there are the unique pieces of gear you can find, along with later, more powerful options which we won't spoil here. As usual, you can take a look at the different stats to find your preferred way to play: more powerful weapons which cost more stamina to swing, for instance.

How to upgrade armor and weapons in Avowed

At your party camp, you’ll find a workbench where you can upgrade your regular armor and weapons. What you most need to keep an eye on are the quality tiers. The first items you’ll find will likely be of common quality, and can be upgraded within that quality tier three times. For instance, the first time you upgrade a common quality wand, you’ll see it go from Common quality 0/3, to Common quality 1/3, within that common quality tier.

When you reach 3/3, your next upgrade will take you to the next-highest quality tier; for instance, from Common to Fine. You can upgrade across five tiers: Common, Fine, Exceptional, Superb, and Legendary, using rarer resources as you move up those tiers.

Unique items and enchantments

Then there are unique armor and weapons to take into account. These can also be improved at the workbench, but you'll need to move to the enchanting station to take a look at improving their respective enchantments. Here, you can see your unique items, each of which will have two enchantment options to choose between, as well as the resources you’ll need to do so.

Upgrade and enchantment resources

As for the resources themselves, there are plenty of different types to take into account. Armor upgrades usually require pelts and hides, while weapon upgrades need things like iron chunks and softwood branches.

Plant resources are also necessary, particularly Paradisan Ladder. This plant is usually found in out-of-the-way places, or wherever the game considers to be a "tough" area. It's an important upgrade material, so it's definitely worth heading off the beaten path and checking every corner.

More common materials can be found scattered throughout The Living Lands, or in chests or from enemies. Monster parts are what you'll need for enchanting unique weapons, so you'll also want to hang onto loot from any monsters you defeat.

While common resources are used for early-game upgrades, you'll need rarer resources to upgrade weapons in higher quality tiers. You can craft rarer resources out of more common materials; for instance, using four iron chunks to get one steel chunk. Other rare resources are more difficult to find: one of the more valuable of these is Adra.

Adra is of vital importance in the world of Avowed, but it's the small chunks you'll need for upgrading, especially to higher quality tiers. Armor and weapons can be broken down for more common materials, while rare resources like Adra can be found, outside of bosses or high-value chests, by breaking down unique items. It’s worth bearing that in mind when deciding which pieces to keep or sell, and it's a good way to get some use out of a unique item which otherwise doesn't fit your playstyle.

Hopefully, this round-up helps with upgrades when starting out in Avowed. How are you finding Avowed so far? Let us know in the comments, and for more info on the game, here's our Avowed review!

More Avowed stories:

Guide Xbox Series X|S

Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.