Heyo Everyone,
Earlier this month, we released an Introduction to Itemization dev blog. After sharing the first looks of Itemization, we got a lot of messages from players. We collected over 13 pages of feedback, questions and concerns. As promised, we’re following up on them.
While we cannot answer all of those questions yet, as some things are still being decided and iterated upon, we wanted to answer a batch of them today. We will continue to share more answers as we move closer to release! We want to hear more of your feedback and opinions through this dialogue.
Note: All of the questions we’re answering in this are pulled directly from the comments on the Forums, Reddit and Discord. We kept the players’ wording instead of writing our own questions.
In case you missed the other comms:
Before we dive in, we want to make it clear for those who might’ve missed prior communications: WE ARE BREAKING THE LOCKS WITH THIS REWORK. 
Questions From Players
Blessings / Transferring Weapons to New Systems
Question
When StrawHat said that players will begin with a headstart in the new system, does that mean that we won’t have access to blessings we did previously and therefore forcing us to grind for the tiers all over again?
Answer
No, the actual blessing sticker book will be translated to experience into Mastery. It does mean that you actually can even learn blessings you didn’t before if wanted.
Question
What if I already have a perfect 550?
Answer
Already owned weapons won’t be touched, they’ll remain intact.
(Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)
Question
Soooo… my old weapons don’t just disappear right? Guys, it took me 500+ hours to get all the stuff I want through your RNG casino, so that would be more than just a little bummer. Will already unlocked weapons be converted 100%?
Answer
No, they won’t disappear and they will stay 100% intact as they are. You will keep the entire arsenal of weapons that you have acquired previously.
(Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)
Mastery and Expertise Systems
Question
How does Mastery XP work? Do you get more for higher difficulty missions? What if you fail a run?
Answer
The amount of Mastery XP is based on what difficulty the player plays. The higher the difficulty, the higher amount of XP is awarded. Experience gained will remain the same, no matter the weapon you use the most during a mission.
If you fail a run, you will be awarded a portion of the XP just as with normal Experience and Ordo Docket rewards.
Question
Mastery is not tied to a specific weapon in your inventory. It has its own progress per weapon family that includes all marks, that unlocks blessings and perks for that weapon family. Do I have that right?
Answer
Yes. Playing with any weapon (different marks) within a weapon family will progress that entire weapon family’s Mastery. Note: There can be several weapon families within the same school of weapons, such as Lasguns and Autoguns. They each have multiple weapon families, containing a number of Marks (e.g. Infantry Autoguns and Braced Autoguns).
TL;DR - If you play with a Lasgun Family A Mark X, you will progress your Mastery into Lasgun Family A. So every other weapon mark in Family A will benefit from the Mastery progression into Mark X.
Question
There’s no farming blessings at all anymore. You just directly unlock the ones you want with the Mastery points. At full Mastery you’ll have all blessings at all levels unlocked. (Yes or no?)
Answer
Yes. As you gain Mastery with a Weapon Family you unlock blessing points (among other things); these points can then be freely used to unlock any blessing of your choosing: the more blessings you unlock, the more powerful versions of blessings you are able to unlock. When you have reached full Mastery with a weapon family you will have unlocked all the blessings available for that family. Moreover, in the new system, you’ll be able to freely swap out any blessings and perks on any weapon, at any level of Mastery, without them becoming locked after two changes.
Question
So every weapon we buy/earn has a random-ish stat cap, and our Mastery of that weapon’s family (so autoguns, shotguns, etc) lets us build that up via expertise?
Answer
Yes. We are still working out the finer details of this system. But in essence, as you gain Mastery you will unlock more Expertise within that weapon family. You can then choose to invest into that weapon and increase the stats of the weapon while keeping the predetermined stat distribution the weapon was created with.
Miscellaneous Concerns
Question
This system is the anti-choice system, it’s the system that forces you to grind every single weapon family before you can try a build.
Answer
The Mastery system is an addition to the existing crafting system that allows players to steadily unlock every Blessing for a weapon family, instead of relying exclusively on RNG to obtain them.
True, there will be some grind to fully unlock all the blessings at their most powerful tier for a weapon family. The system however lets you have full freedom in which blessings you unlock, and in what order, so being able to unlock a specific blessing for a build should be a manageable time investment. We are still experimenting with the exact time investment needed to fully unlock all blessings for a certain weapons family. We are also adding more tiers to most blessings, making previously higher tier blessings available at lower tiers.
Also, loot is still part of the system. The fact that we are still keeping the RNG loot system in place (Emperor’s Gift, Sire Melk’s Requisitorium, The Armoury Exchange, and the ability to Consecrate weapons at Hadron’s Shrine with random upgrades, etc) will allow players to get to weapon builds that they have not unlocked in their Mastery before they actually get there. The loot system will be able to shortcut you to things that you have not yet unlocked.
Question
If the only way to upgrade a weapon is to use it, players won’t want to try new weapons because of the marked drop in power they’ll have to put up with for as long as it takes to grind out the upgrades.
Answer
Powerful weapons will still be distributed through stores/Emperor’s Gift. You can start with already high tier weapons to grind the Mastery, similar to what the game proposes at the moment.
Mastery will just open the toolbox to the player for them to experiment.
Mastery doesn’t “gate” a person from acquiring a weapon with a given blessing, it only gates you from freely being able to add it to any weapon of your choosing. The loot system can still allow players to shortcut to a more powerful blessing before they unlock it in the Mastery.
Question
Is ‘weapon potential’ a new stat? Is it tied to the base power level? If it is a new unrelated stat does that mean a 371 power weapon with a low weapon potential rating has less possible power increase than a say 342 power weapon that has a high weapon potential rating? Please give us examples with actual numbers to compare.
Answer
Weapon Potential just refers to the stats distribution. For any weapon in the game, they actually have the potential to be maxed out. Every weapon now has the potential to reach a 380 stats rating. Note that maxing out does not mean reaching 80% on each stat: every weapon is created with a pool of stat points that have been distributed in the different stat buckets, and every weapon has the same potential maximum number of stats that can be distributed.
DISCLAIMER: The following images are NOT representative of the final UI / work for Itemization. They are meant to illustrate the different potential stat distributions of a maxed out weapon (the darker grey number).
Weapon Sharing
Question
Sorry if this has been asked, but with this itemization rework, will characters that can use the same weapon archetypes have a shared inventory to those weapons? So no more fancy lasgun that only my Psyker can enjoy, now my Veteran and Zealot can too? This has been one of my biggest gripes.
Answer
No, it will remain as it is today, where any item is unique to the character that has it.
However, we can say that we’re opening up more weapon families to be shared between all classes. It’s still case by case, but for example, shotguns will be available for all classes.
Question
Given that blessings are currently shared across characters, it’d be a massive step back if progress was silo’d.
Answer
The Mastery / blessings unlocked are shared by account. However, any applied Expertise is at an item level and character level.
Essentially, if you have the Infantry Lasgun weapon family at 100% unlocked on Character 1, when you go to Character 2 and find a new Infantry Lasgun, you’ll have all the blessings unlocked on the new gun. But you’ll need to spend the materials to apply any Expertise changes on Character 2.
Alright, that answers the first batch of questions. We will answer more! If anything in this post is unclear, please let us know below. This will help us collect more feedback and ensure we answer them in our future posts.
Thank you!
(mostly joking)