Mastery Chain

Mastery Chain

A mastery chain allows you to boost specific parts of your build. The more experience you earn, the more boosts you can apply. These boosts come in the form of chain links that you add individually to your chain, with experience gain allowing you to add progressively more links.

Your mastery chain is arguably the most powerful upgrade tool available to Outlands players, but it is also the most time-consuming system to level. There are a few key elements to this progression system, so let’s break them down:

• The mastery chain, like a codex, will gain experience from the start of your play, even if you don’t own a chain (a relatively new change).

• They are player-crafted by a tinker.

• Chain links are individual items that you add to your chain, and each link provides a unique bonus (more on this soon)

• You “unlock” new slots for links by gaining experience, with each new unlock costing more experience than the previous unlock.

• Mastery chains are blessed and bound to the player. Only your character can gain the benefits of your mastery chain. However, be protective of your chain. Never remove it from your inventory except to wear it. Never put it in another container inside of your inventory. Never trade it to another player. 

How Links Work

Each link you add to your chain provides a persistent, passive buff. You don’t need fuel. You don’t need to assign or manage points. Install the link, equip the chain, and you can gain the benefits of your link indefinitely.

What exact benefits a link provides varies substantially. You have dozens of options for links. For example, a tamer will probably use Follower Damage links to boost the damage output of pets while a melee character might use Attack Speed links to, well, attack more quickly. Nearly all builds will use a variation of Aspect Special Chance links, which increases your chances of aspect procs. 

Links come in four different quality types:

• Bronze

• Silver

• Gold

• Corrupted

For bronze through gold, the difference is probably what you would expect: Bronze is okay, silver is better, gold is best. Corrupted links are a special kind of link that provide a bonus greater than gold links, but they decay with use. The benefits you gain from a single link likely won’t be noticeable, but since you can have 10 of the same type of link installed in your chain, you could, for example, increase your tamer’s follower damage by 30% with 10 gold links.

Even though gold is theoretically the best, they are also the hardest to get, so many players compromise and settle for bronze or silver links, especially early-on in their character progress.

How to Get Links

Because of their end-game value, links are not easy to acquire. A solo player will most likely get a link from the following sources:

• Spending society points – Completing weekly jobs or challenges relevant to your character earns you points that you can cash in for a link (learn more about societies here)

• Spending achievement points – Completing certain player milestones earns you points that you can cash in for a link (learn more about achievements here)

• Spending faction silver – Participating in factions earns you silver that you can cash in for links (learn more about factions here)

• Spending arena points – Participating in arena PVP events gives you points that you can spend for links (learn more about the arena system here)

• Buying them – Players are often selling and trading links

We have covered a lot of material in this guide so far, and I just introduced three other systems to you. If this is feeling overwhelming, you can skip the rest of this section for now, but remember this: Start doing societies as soon as you can by going to the society hall in north Prevalia. Monster hunter societies are often the easiest place to start for newbies, and you can earn society points even when you don’t own a mastery chain.

For the sake of being thorough, there are other ways to get links, but most of them require a group or a guild:

• Lore tomes

• Level 8 treasure maps

• Omni tomes

• Omni bosses

Each of these sources has their own mechanics, but those aren’t important right now.

Selecting and Reforging Links

Since links can be pretty expensive, you should do some research into your chosen build before making the investment. The viability of builds evolve alongside the growth of the server, so I can’t give specific advice here around what exact links you should pick. In general, though, the links you select will likely be a key factor in your damage output. Unfortunately, that’s not always immediately intuitive.

For example, Spell Damage links might sound like a great choice for a caster, but you will get a bigger return from Spell Aspect Special Chance links because procing your aspect more frequently will give you more overall damage output than boosting the damage of individual spells by a small amount.

Like I said before, you have time to figure this out, and if you ask on Discord for advice, you will get several recommendations from veteran players.

Lastly, the link you get is not the link you are stuck with. A link reforge tool allows you to change a link into the link of your choice, so if you acquire a link that you don’t like, you can sell it, trade it, or reforge it.

Big takeaways for this category:

• A mastery chain gives you the option to install links, passively buffing your character for as long as you wear the mastery chain.

• Links come with a variety of potential benefits and potential strengths that you can mix and match to optimize your build.

• If you don’t like a link, you can use a reforge tool to change it to the link of your choice.

• You can add more links to your chain by unlocking new slots with experience gain.

• While mastery chains are player-crafted, links can be acquired through a variety of systems, societies being especially important.

• A mastery chain is blessed, bound to your character, and extremely valuable, so never take it out of your pack or put it inside of another container. 

• Mastery chain experience is shared across all five characters on that account, but it is not shared with your other accounts.

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