Applying Augments to gear and Transmuting are currently the two most efficient ways to improve existing gear in Project: Gorgon.

Augmenting will enable you to add one mod of your choice. Transmuting will enable you to change the existing ones (including the one added by Augmenting) into any of the myriad of skill and ability bonuses that can be randomly generated on looted or crafted gear.

There are drawbacks of course: finding the exact Augment (standalone bonus) that you want can be difficult, applying it can be done by anyone but creating it requires enough mastery in the long and costly to master [gear type] Augmentation skill - plus, there are four of them to master in order to be able to generate any possible Augment!
As for Transmutation, it’s less difficult to master but the outcome is partly random so there is a chance that you will never get what you want, and you can only try four to five times a week for each gear.

Note : There are less powerful yet easier ways to improve your gear, feel free to check our other guide for an overview of all the five of them.

Note 2 : We are deliberately using the expressions “Augmenting” and “Transmuting” instead of “Augmentation” and “Transmutation” in order to distinguish the mechanics (the first) from the Skills (the seconds). They do not refer to the same thing especially when considering “Augmenting” and “Augmentation”.

Now, do you want to know how to apply an Augment or transmute your gear? Are you curious about how Augmenting and Transmuting mechanics work? Are you maybe dreaming of mastering them yourself?

Then this guide is for you!

Augmenting in particular is easier to understand if the notions of Skills, Abilities, Actions, Recipes and Passive Abilities and their relationships are clear. Let’s recap briefly :

A Skill is a grouping of related Abilities, it can be leveled up to 50 / 60 / 70.

An Ability always depends on one skill, enables our character to interact with PG’s universe and has to be unlocked (by training it with a NPC or doing a specific action or reaching a certain skill level).
There are three types of Abilities :

• Action Abilities (like “Fireball” under the “Fire Magic” Skill) : they trigger actions impacting PG’s Universe. They are listed under the “Abilities” tab of the “Skills” GUI (staff icon on the right) and can be assigned to a hotkey bar,
  
• Recipe Abilities (like “Flatbread” under the “Cooking” Skill) : they generate an item or effect by mixing reagents through a recipe GUI. They are listed under their parent Skill on the Recipe GUI (cauldron icon on the right).
  
• Passive Abilities (like “Enter Myconian cave” or “grow Cotton” or “earn Favor with Sir Arif”) : they aren’t listed anywhere, we know that we have acquired one when something that we couldn’t do before becomes doable and we now that we have used one because we suddenly earn xp in the Skill it is affiliated to.

Another terminology adjustment should be done before we start : you may have heard of the words “Mod” and “Augment” :

• “Mod” stands for “Modification”, it refers to a bonus effect existing on a piece of gear (natively or not) that is applied when the gear is being used. All the mods are displayed on the gear’s tooltip when we hover it with the mouse. For instance : “+15% base fire damage”, “+5 direct cold mitigation” are Mods.
  
• “Augments” are items holding one bonus effect that has been extracted from a gear by using the relevant “Extract [gear type] Augment” Ability of the relevant “[Gear type] Augmentation” Skill. They can be applied to a gear (with a few prerequisites) by using the relevant “Apply Augment to [gear type]” Ability of the “Lore” Skill, which will add a Mod to that gear holding the same bonus as the one held by the Augment.
  
• “Augmented Mod” is a more specific way to refer to a Mod indicating that it was generated by applying an Augment to the gear

Be aware that if you apply an Augment to your gear or transmute it, you won’t be able to sell or gift it to NPCs, and nobody else will be able to wear it ! It will become your little private gear :)

The purpose of Augmenting is to let players add one Mod to their gear by applying one Augment item to it.

When applying an Augment on a piece of gear, players should be aware of its Enhancement Points’ (EP) gauge.
Enhancement Points are a way to limit the number of improvements that a piece of gear can receive.
All items in the game have a certain amount of enhancement points : 100 for looted items, 120 for crafted ones.

These points can be used up by adding any of the following improvements :

• Inventory slots (12 per)
  
• Augmentation (100)
  
• Shamanic infusion effect (100)
  
• reinforcements made through blacksmithing (20).

If the points are consumed by an Augment or Shamanic infusion effect and only in these cases, you can remove this improvement and restore the points it was using on the gear thanks to the "Undo Augment for [gear type]" Ability of the relative “[Gear type] Augment” Skill.

NB : in the Beta version of PG, EPs are sometimes referred to as APs, Augmentation Points.

What confuses a lot of players in Augmenting (we experienced that first hand) is that usually all semantically related Abilities are grouped under one only Skill. For instance, Transmutation is a skill regrouping all the Abilities relative to the Transmuting mechanic. But it’s not the case with Augmenting, there are many Skills involved, and even though the word “Augmentation” can be read and heard quite often in game and in the wiki, there is no actual Skill with that name !

There are two sets of Abilities involved, grouped under two different Skills :

First, the Apply Augment to [gear type] Abilities are affiliated to the Lore Skill (20 different Abilities)

Then, the Abilities:

• Extract Augment from [gear type] (to create an Augment by extracting a Mod from a gear)
  
• Undo Augment from [gear type] (to delete a Mod from a gear and let it regain its AP)
  
• Decompose [gear type] (to get the raw Skill specific reagents + reagents used in Transmuting)

are affiliated to their respective [Gear type] Augmentation Skill (there are 4 gear types here which makes 12 Abilities).

Be careful, [gear type] has different variations in the Lore Skill context than it has in the [Gear type] Augmentation context.
Let’s understand what they do, and then we will see how to learn them and how to use them.

Apply Augment to [gear type] Abilities

Apply Augment to [gear type] are Recipe Abilities that enable players to apply one Augment of their choice to a piece of gear, in order to add one Mod to it.
If one learns the “Apply augment to sword” Ability for instance, one can then directly apply his Augment to his sword (provided he also has at his disposal the - reasonably common - lootable reagent required by the recipe - more on that in “How to use these Abilities”).

Notes :

• IMPORTANT : Applying an augment to a piece of gear will attune it to you. This means that you can no longer sell it, nor gift it, and no one else can use it.
  
• It’s possible to apply an Augment to a gear whatever its rarity or highest mod Tier.
  
• It’s not possible to apply more than one of the same Augment (of any tier) to a piece of gear. Currently the Beta version PG allows you to do that but turns your item into “Legacy” which means that it becomes unusable.

These Abilities are affiliated with the Lore Skill. The way we understand it, Lore is a general skill that regroups all the Abilities (in other words, the ways of interacting with PG’s universe) that don’t intrinsically require to develop mastery in order to be achieved - for instance, reading notes are Passive Abilities under the Lore tree, reading them lets you earn Lore xp.
Hence, applying an Augment is considered quite casual in PG’s universe which is good for us players because it means that there are low prerequisites to do so ;)


[Gear Type] signification here

Gear Type here means each armor slot and each possible kind of weapon.
In other words, there is one “Apply Augment to [gear type]” Ability for each armor slot (gloves, helmet, leggings, rings...), and one for each kind of weapon (staff, sword, beaker…).
Which makes 20 in total!



We saw that applying an Augment is easy. What takes mastery is generating these Augments or deleting them from gear, and that’s what the [Gear type] Augmentation Skills’ Abilities let you do.


[Gear type] signification here

As previously mentioned, be aware that the [gear type] variations for these Skills aren’t the same as for the “Apply Augment to [gear type]” Abilities in the Lore Skill. Here there are only four gear types and each lets you work with two weapon or armor slots :

• the “Weapon Augmentation” Skill lets you work with main hand and off-hand weapons
  
• the “Jewelry Augmentation” Skill is for rings and necklaces
  
• the “Armor Augmentation” Skill is for chest pieces and leggings
  
• the “Ancillary armor Augmentation” Skill is for Head and boots

Then, each of these Skills has three kinds of Abilities (with various mastery levels). Let’s examine them.


Extract Augment from [gear type] Abilities

These Recipe Abilities enable you to generate an Augment item containing a bonus effect that will be applicable on another piece of that gear-type. This bonus effect is not generated out of thin air, it has to be extracted from a piece of that gear-type, that is destroyed in the process. The control over which Mod will be extracted isn’t 100% because you can only set to which Skill it is related, if there are multiple mods for the same Skill one of these will randomly be extracted.

These Abilities use the Skill, level and gear-type specific reagents that can be obtained by using the Decompose [gear type] Ability of the same Skill on gear (read the paragraph about Decomposition for more detail).
They also require a gem specific to the skill that the Mod you want to extract applies to. That gem is the element that sets the Skill to which the Mod to extract should be related. If the gem used doesn’t correspond to any skill, the gear and the gem will simply both be destroyed.
You can find which gem to use in the Gems wiki page[wiki.projectgorgon.com].


Undo Augment from [gear type] Abilities

These Abilities enable you to delete from a gear (of that gear-type) a mod that was added using :

• Any Apply Augment to [gear type] Ability
  
• Any Shamanic Infusion Ability

Note that :
-> The gear is preserved but no Augment is generated, the bonus is lost.
-> Removing the mod lets the gear regain the EPs that were being used by the augmented Mod
-> Even if your augmented Mod has been Transmuted the game will keep track of it and know which one to remove
-> Other players are able to do this for you if you don't have the skill !

These Abilities do *not* enable you to delete the following modes from gear :

• Pockets
  
• Armor reinforcements

Note: The EP used by these improvements are lost forever :(

These Abilities use the Skill, level and gear-type specific reagents that can be obtained by using the Decompose [gear type] Ability of the same Skill on gear (read the paragraph about Decomposition for more detail).


Decompose [gear type] Abilities

These Abilities enable you to generate reagents by destroying magical (non-white) pieces of gear.
These generated agents are of two kinds : ones specific to this Skill and prisms.

A - Skill specific ones are the reagents used by the two other Abilities of the same Skill : Extract Augment from [gear type] and Undo Augment from [gear type]...
They can be, depending on the type of gear (and thus, Skill) :

• Ring / Necklace Baubles for Jewelry Augmentation
  
• Shoe / Helmet Contraptions for Ancillary Armor Augmentation
  
• Chest Pieces / Leggings Ornaments for Armor Augmentation
  
• Main-hand, Off-hand or Glove Beads for Weapon Augmentation

B - Sometimes, a prism is also generated. Prisms are used by Transmutation’s Skill Ability “Distillation”. They can also be looted from enemies.

The number of reagents obtained vary in number depending on the gear’s rarity (color).
They also all vary in tier depending on the gear’s highest Mod’s tier :

• Levels 0-30 : Small
  
• Level 31-60 : Medium
  
• Levels 61-90 : Large

Nightshade[wiki.projectgorgon.com] in Kur Mountain’s inn (NW of the map) will teach you all of the Abilities for the price of some Councils, without any favor prerequisite (incredible, right?! It is so rare in PG!).
There are a lot of Abilities and their price can decrease from about 10Kc to 500c if you gain his favors so it is still worthy to do so :)



As you may have guessed, these end game skills cannot be learnt with a few prerequisites!
There again you will have to see Nightshade[wiki.projectgorgon.com] in Kur Mountain’s inn (NW of the map), he will ask you as a Favor to visit each of the four NPCs who train a skill. Then you will have to come back to Nightshade, and then go back to each NPC, as the favor missions stipulates. Once you have done that the trainers will offer to teach you everything they can about Augmenting, provided that you have reached 25 levels in two related Skills. But you won’t need to raise their Favor for that.

Here are the links to all the trainers and the prerequisites, by Skill:

• Jewelry Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com] can be learned from Poe[wiki.projectgorgon.com] and requires Alchemy & Toolcrafting level 25
  
• Weapon Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com] can be learned from Malgath[wiki.projectgorgon.com] and requires Alchemy & Blacksmith level 25
  
• Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com] can be learned from Syndra[wiki.projectgorgon.com] and requires Alchemy & Leatherworking level 25
  
• Ancillary-Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com] can be learned from Gribbun[wiki.projectgorgon.com] and requires Alchemy & Tailoring level 25

Note: All of the skill and trainer names link to their respective wiki pages.

In order to apply an augment to a piece of gear by using the “Apply Augment to [gear type]” Ability (from the Lore Skill), you need :

• An augment that has been extracted from an item
  
• The reagent required for applying the augment (it can be found on the Lore/ Recipes wiki page [wiki.projectgorgon.com])
  
• The piece of gear you want to apply it to.

Access the Recipe Ability “Apply Augment to [gear type]” in the recipe book (cauldron icon to the right) under the “Lore” Skill menu..
There you can find the list of all the “Apply Augment to [gear type]” variations’ recipes with their respective required reagent.
Or right click an Augment and select “Apply Augment”.

Place the augment you want to apply into the X Augment Slot, the reagent into the reagent slot, then place the gear you want to improve into the gear slot and click “Apply Augment”.
After applying it, the augment will appear as a new mod on your gear, and the gear's Augmentation points will be lowered by 100.

Important: Applying augments will attune the piece of gear to you. This means that you can no longer sell it, and no one else can use it.



In order to extract an Augment from a piece of gear, you need :

• the correct amount of baubles/contraptions/ornaments (usually 20/25) as specified in the Skill’s wiki page (listed here again for your convenience : Jewelry Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Weapon Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Ancillary-Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com])
  
• The correct type of gem that matches up with the skill for the mod you're trying to extract. For example, if you're trying to extract the "Sword Base Damage +20%" mod, you'll need the gem for the Sword Skill: carnelian. A full list of gems and the skill they are associated to can be found on the Gems wiki page[wiki.projectgorgon.com].
  
• The piece of gear from which you want to extract the Mod.

Tip : if there is more than one Skill corresponding to the type of the gem, the nature of the Augment can be either of them, so it’s safer to choose gear with only the Mod that you want for this Skill.
Tip 2 : You can only extract Mods that are affecting a combat Skill or combat Ability (not generic or Endurance Mods).

Access the recipe “Extract Augment from [gear type]” for your gear type in the recipe book under the parent Skill “[Gear type] Augmentation”’s menu, drag and drop the gear and reagents, validate.

The item will be destroyed and you will receive a brand new Augment containing the extracted Mod’s bonus effect.



In order to undo an augment, you need

• An item with an applied Augment (or Shamanic Infusion effect)
  
• The correct amount of baubles/contraptions/ornaments as specified in the Skill’s wiki page (listed here again for your convenience : Jewelry Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Weapon Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com], Ancillary-Armor Augmentation[wiki.projectgorgon.com])

Access the recipe “Undo Augment from [gear type] for your gear type in the recipe book under the parent Skill “[Gear type] Augmentation”’s menu, drag and drop the gear and reagents, validate.

The Augment will disappear and the piece of gear will regain the enhancement points that were being used by the mod.

Tip : Other players are able to do this for you if you don't have the skill.



After you've purchased the Ability from his trainer, you can simply right click on the equipment in your inventory and click "Decompose into Baubles", and your recipe list will be brought up with the slot filled by the item to decompose.

Or you can access the recipe in the recipe book under the parent Skill “[Gear type] Augmentation”’s menu.

Transmuting is another powerful way of improving existing gear. Whereas Augmenting enables to add one chosen Mod, Transmuting enables to modify each existing Mod (including an Augmented one) until all of them are exactly what we want them to be. But, of course, it can take time (and sometimes, just forever) because “rolling Mods” involves a luck factor :)

Transmuting doesn’t add an improvement, so it doesn’t deplete the EP gauge of the gear.
But another system is here to ensure that you will be really happy when you manage to get all the Mods that you need : Durability!
Every piece of gear has the Durability gauge, it starts at 100% and can be seen on the gear’s tooltip only when it starts to get depleted.
Every time you Transmute a Mod on your item, that gauge loses :

• 25% for a combat Ability Modifier
  
• 20% for a general or Endurance Modifier

As you probably have guessed, you can’t Transmute a Mod on a piece of gear if it doesn’t have enough durability.
Note that having 0% durability on your piece of gear will NOT prevent you from using it.

A Transmutation Skill Ability will allow you to repair that durability only once every few days.
When the Transmutation Skill is maxed, this cooldown takes 7 days, which implies that you can roll a mod on the same piece of gear only 4 or 5 times a week.

This time the mechanic is pretty straightforward, there are only three involved Abilities, all are grouped under the Transmutation Skill :

• Distill [n tier] magical item Recipe Ability
  
• Repair Transmutation Damage [n tier] Recipe Ability
  
• Use transmutation workbench Passive Ability (hidden, automatically learnt with the Skill)

Also, in order to Transmute, you will need to interact with a fixed environment tool, the Transmutation workbench !

The Transmutation Skill and its Abilities up to the level 50 can be learnt from Makara[wiki.projectgorgon.com] in Ilmari Desert.
Levels 50+ unlocking and Abilities are taught by Sona[wiki.projectgorgon.com] in New Prestonbule Cave[wiki.projectgorgon.com], in Gazluk.

The bonuses applying to these elements can be rolled :

• Any combat Skill
  
• Any combat Skill’s Ability
  
• Endurance Skill
  
• Generic

The bonuses applying to these elements can not be rolled :

• Pockets
  
• Augments
  
• Shamanic Infusions
  
• Reinforcements

Transmuting an item at an Item Workbench (or transmutation table) requires at least level one in the Transmutation skill.

It consumes Phlog and durability (the Phlog can be obtained by using the “Distill [n tier] magical item” Ability of the Transmutation Skill) :

• 35 phlog and 25% durability for a combat Skill or combat Skill Ability Mod,
  
• 20 phlog and 20% durability. for a generic or Endurance Mod.

Reminder : Having 0% durability on a piece of gear will NOT prevent you from using it.
The tier of the required phlog is determined by the Tier of the highest Tier’s Mod of the piece of gear you're transmuting.

• 1-10 : Shoddy
  
• 15-25 : Rough
  
• 30-40 : Crude
  
• 45-55 : Decent
  
• 60-70 : Nice
  
• 80 : Quality

When you are ready to transmute, go to a Transmutation table, there are currently 4 :

• In Serbule, in the room adjacent to Marna's shop
  
• In Ilmari, at Makara's house
  
• In Rahu, in the house of the community library
  
• In Gazluk, in the New Prestonbule cave

Unequip the gear, interact with the table, drag the gear to the slot and choose the mod that you want to re-roll.
-> When you select a mod to re-roll, you get a prompt telling you how much phlog and durability will be consumed. Cross your fingers and validate. Voilà !

Be careful : if you click again, you may roll a different mod than the one you think. It is safer to close the interface and re-start the process. (Thank you Wiki for this important hint.)

Also, remember that Transmuting the item will attune it to you!

Each piece of gear (armor slot wise : gloves, leggings, off-hand…)’s Mods can affect a distinct and specific list of elements (cf before : any combat Skill’s Ability, the Endurance Skill or a generic element). And each of these elements has a distinct list of possible Mod bonuses, each with various Tiers.

The parent - child relation can be represented like this :
Gear slot > Element > Modifier > Tier

For example :
Gloves > Fire magic > Firebreath hits all ennemis in 8 meters (..) > Tier I

The new Mod will be chosen from the list of Modifiers available for the Element.
Its tier (level) will be the same as the original Mod’s tier.
It will NOT be the same as the one it was just before that roll, whatever the tier.
It will NOT be the same as any of the other Mods already on the gear, whatever the tier.

With that in mind, adding an Augment containing an unwanted Mod bestens the chance to get the wanted Mod while rolling. The Augmented unwanted Mod can always be removed after the rolling.

These great tips were extracted from the wiki, it (or the Forum) may receive new tips overtime, feel free to consult them from time to time!

Because of the random factor in Transmuting, the process can be very frustrating or very satisfying. You should be aware that you can roll many times without getting the mod that you want.

As mentioned before, transmuting a Mod on a piece of gear depletes its durability gauge. You're able to restore that durability by using the Repair Transmutation Damage [n tier] Recipe Ability affiliated to the Transmutation Skill.
Each reparation incurs a cooldown during which you are unable to repair again.

The consumed reagents are prisms.

Currently, there are five different recipes to repair items :

• Repair Transmutation Damage 1 uses 4 prisms to restore 30%-60% of a level 0-30 item's durability and incurs a 4 days cooldown.
  
• Repair Transmutation Damage 2 uses 6 small prisms to restore 60%-100% of a level 0-30 item and incurs a 6 days cooldown.
  
• Repair Transmutation Damage 3 uses 8 small prisms to restore 100% of a level 0-30 item's durability and incurs a 7 days cooldown.
  
• Repair Transmutation Damage 4 uses 8 medium prisms to restore 100% of a level 31-60 item's durability and incurs a 7 days cooldown.
  
• Repair Transmutation Damage 5 uses 8 large prisms to restore 100% of a level 61-90 item's durability and incurs a 7 days cooldown.

In order to use this Ability, access the recipe “Repair Transmutation Damage [n tier]” for the Tier corresponding to the Tier of the highest Tier’s Mod in your piece of gera. It’s in the recipe book under the parent Skill “Transmutation”’s menu. Drag and drop the gear and the reagents, validate.

In order to transmute gear, you need an ingredient called "phlogiston", or "phlog".
It can be obtained by destroying magical items with the “Distill [n tier] magical item” Recipe Ability affiliated to the Transmutation Skill.

This recipe itself requires a reagent : a prism, whose Tier must correspond to the Tier of the higher mod of the distilled item.

• 0 - 30 : Small
  
• 31 - 60 : Medium
  
• 61 + : Large

The prism is a catalyzer, there is but a % of chance that it will be consumed every time you distill a piece of gear. That % is listed in each recipe, some have it higher than others.

You can distill any non-white piece of gear (anything that has a mod) into phlog, as long as you have the corresponding prism and Transmutation Skill “Distill [n tier] magical item” for the tier of the highest Mod of this item.

After acquiring the skill and its abilities, right-click on an item and click "Distill into Phlogiston". The generated Phlogiston will appear directly in your inventory. The kind of phlogiston you get is determined by the Tier of the highest Tier’s Mod of the piece of gear you're distilling.

• 1-10 : Shoddy
  
• 15-25 : Rough
  
• 30-40 : Crude
  
• 45-55 : Decent
  
• 60-70 : Nice
  
• 80 : Quality

That's all, we hope this helped some of you better understand and appreciate the mechanics of Augmenting and Transmuting!
This guide is the result of the conjoined efforts of Sims and Nel Od Ciegh, with a lot of insight borrowed from the wiki.