Basics about Socketing, Familiars and Soulstones
Socketing refers to equipping Familiars or Soulstones on equipment with open socket slots. Familiars can be equipped only on weapons. Soulstones can be equipped on both weapons and armors. Soulstones equipped on weapons will give you more offense, while Soulstones equipped on armors will give you defensive stats. At launch, only Familiars will be available. Soulstones will come with the Elemental Raids update. Also, armors will not have socket slots until the Elemental Raids update.
Every piece of equipment has a different number of total socket slots. This number varies on equipment's grade (normal, magic, rare, unique, legendary, heroic) and level. Endgame weapons (Unique and Legendary) have a total of 4 socket slots. Endgame armors have a total of 3 socket slots for Unique armors and a total of 4 socket slots for Legendary armors (you can only equip a maximum of 3 Soulstones on an armor - the 4th slot will always remain empty).
Socket slots on a fresh piece of weapon/armor can be either unlocked or locked. It's random how many socket slots are unlocked. You might be lucky and drop a Primal weapon with all 4 socket slots unlocked, but you might drop the same weapon with only 1 unlocked slot and 3 locked slots. The locked slots can be unlocked with an item from cash shop. You might also obtain this item from leveling rewards, daily attendance or in-game events.
How to Equip and Unequip Familiars and Soulstones
To equip a Familiar or Soulstone, unequip your piece of gear, then right click it and choose Socket Management option. Afterwards, drag your Familiar or Soulstone from your inventory into an open socket slot. There are some restrictions to equipping Soulstones, which you'll find more about later on in the guide.
To unequip a Familiar or Soulstone, purchase an orange-looking item from S-Coin NPC, then follow the steps above to open Socket Management window. Right click on an equipped Familiar or Soulstone to unequip it.
Familiars
Every Familiar has a "required level". You can only equip a Familiar if your equipment's level is the same or higher than your Familiar's level. For example, if you have a level 45 weapon and a level 55 Familiar, then you won't be able to equip that Familiar on your weapon. If your Familiar is level 45 or lower, then you'll be able to equip it on your level 45 weapon.
Familiars with higher level and higher grade (normal, magic, rare, unique) have better stats. The maximum level of Familiars is 55. Low-level familiars drop randomly from Grace City and Ruin Fortress dungeons. You can obtain level 55 Familiars from endgame dungeons and Gray Familiar Cubes purchased from Booker TV NPC in District 6 or Golden Citadel area for 1000 BP. Unique Familiars only come from Gray Familiar Cubes, Primal dungeon and Elemental Mode of Casual Raids.
For PvE, the only Familiar worth going for is the one that gives Critical Damage. A level 55 Unique Familiar can give you between 270 and 300 Critical Damage. There's also a Familiar that gives Attack, but the maximum it can give is only about 100 (I don't remember the exact value). Getting +100 Attack also means you're getting +80 Critical Damage (that's how this game works). This is, of course, better than nothing, but overall you'll deal better average damage if you're using Critical Damage Familiars. This is especially true if your Critical Rate is high.
The other PvE Familiars are pretty useless, as they give non-offensive stats like HP, Stamina, Soul Vapor gain, Accuracy, Evasion, Defense, etc.
You can also obtain Familiars for PvP from a differently-colored Familiar Cube purchased from Booker TV NPC in District 6 or Golden Citadel area for 1000 BP. There are Familiars that give you up to +5% damage in PvP, as well as Familiars that give you up to +5% Damage Reduction from PvP.
All PvP Familiars can only be equipped on weapons, just like with the PvE Familiars.
Soulstones
Soulstones can be equipped on any weapon or armor that has empty socket slots. There is no restriction of gear's level when equipping Soulstones. This means you could potentially equip a high-level Soulstone (or two) on a low-level weapon with empty socket slots and use that weapon to clear dungeons faster on your low-level alt character.
Soulstones come in 9 levels. Higher-level Soulstones give better stats. You can drop level 1 Soulstones in Elemental mode of Casual Raids and Elemental mode of Golden Citadel or craft them at Zenith NPC in every town. You can upgrade your Soulstones up to level 9 at Zenith NPC. You can also obtain level 2 Soulstones from completing blue quests in Elemental Mode of Casual Raids.
Soulstones come in 6 elements: Dark (purple), Light (yellow), Fire (red), Ice (blue), Poison (green) and Health (white). Elements form 3 opposing pairs: Dark-Light, Fire-Ice and Poison-Health.
Soulstones can be upgraded by using Elemental Shards. You can drop Elemental Shards from minibosses and bosses in Elemental dungeons. Elemental Shards can drop in one of three Grades: Small, Medium and Large. The chance to drop higher Grades of Elemental Shards is low. You can only drop Elemental Shards of the same element as the enemy's elemental resistance. For example, when fighting a boss that's resistant to fire, he can drop Fire Elemental Shards of random Grade. You can easily tell what element can drop from enemies by looking at their aura. The enemy's aura will be the same color as the color of dropped Elemental Shard's element. For example, a boss emanating a green aura has a chance to drop Poison Elemental Shards, because Poison element is green.
Elemental Shards can be upgraded at Zenith NPC. You can craft Medium Grade Elemental Shard from ten Small Grade Elemental Shards, and you can craft Large Grade Elemental Shard from ten Medium Grade Elemental Shards. You can also exchange Elemental Shards for different elements at Zenith NPC.
Equipping Soulstones
There are a number of rules and unique properties when it comes to equipping Soulstones:
1. Soulstones equipped on a weapon will give you Elemental Attack of your Soulstone's element and give you a chance of dealing elemental bonus damage in battle.
2. Soulstones equipped on an armor will give you Elemental Defense of your Soulstone's element and give you a chance of protecting yourself from receiving elemental bonus damage in battle (mostly important in PvP).
3. You can equip up to 3 Soulstones on a piece of gear, even if your gear has 4 empty socket slots. This means your Primal armors will always have their 4th socket slot empty.
4. You can only equip a maximum of 2 Soulstones of the same element on a piece of gear. This means you cannot, for example, equip 3 Dark Soulstones on your weapon.
5. You cannot equip Soulstones of opposing elements on a piece of gear. This means you cannot, for example, equip 2 Dark Soulstones and 1 Light Soulstone on your weapon at the same time.
How Soulstones Work
There are a number of things you should know about to better understand how Soulstones work:
1. When attacking, you have a chance to activate "elemental bonus damage". You can only activate elemental bonus damage of one element. If you have two or three different elements equipped on your weapon, only one of them can activate.
2. To see if you activated elemental bonus damage, and how much bonus damage you did, you must enable damage to be shown in your chat window. To do that, first press Enter to activate your chat, then right click on your active chat tab's name and check the box that makes damage you deal to enemies appear in the chat window. Attack an enemy a few times and take a look at the chat. If you see a line like "Dealt 10000 damage", then that hit didn't activate bonus elemental damage. If you see a line like "Dealt 14000 (+4000) damage" and the number in parentheses has a different color, then you activated bonus elemental damage of 4000 and dealt a total of 14000 damage (10000 base damage + 4000 elemental damage). The color of the "+4000" indicates which element got activated: purple is Dark, yellow is Light, red is Fire, dark blue is Ice, green is Poison and light blue is Health element.
3. Normal enemies in the game are weak against all elements (their resistance to all elements is zero). Enemies in Elemental mode of dungeons are weak to one element (their resistance to that element is zero), very resistant to one element and slightly resistant to the rest four elements. In PvP, you opponent's resistance to each element is based on what kind of Soulstones he has equipped on his armor.
4. To determine which element has a chance to activate when attacking an enemy (if you have two or three different elements equipped on your weapon), you need to calculate (for each element) the difference between your elemental power and your enemy's elemental resistance. You will activate the element that has the highest difference between those values. If that difference is the same for two or three of your weapon's elements, then you will activate one of your elements in this order: Light > Dark > Ice > Fire > Health > Poison. For example, if you equipped one Dark, one Ice and one Poison Soulstone of the same level on your weapon, and your enemy is equally resistant to all elements, then you'll have a chance to activate Dark elemental bonus damage only. You will never activate Ice or Poison element in this example.
5. There is no good way of knowing exactly how much elemental resistance enemies have to each of the elements. You can safely assume that if an enemy is weak to an element, then its elemental resistance to that element is zero. If an enemy is slightly resistant to an element, then its elemental resistance to that element is a couple hundred. If an enemy is very resistant to an element, then its elemental resistance to that element is a couple thousand.
6. You can increase your chance to activate elemental bonus damage by:
- Equipping Soulstones of higher level.
- Equipping two Soulstones of the same element instead of one Soulstone.
- Equipping Soulstones of the opposing element to your enemy's elemental resistance. For example, when fighting Light elemental boss in Golden Citadel, you have the highest chance to activate elemental bonus damage if you're using Dark Soulstones.
- Having a third Soulstone equipped. For unknown reasons, having a third supplementary Soulstone equipped can increase the chance of dealing elemental bonus damage by a few percent. For example, having two Health Soulstones and one Light Soulstone equipped on your weapon will activate the Health elemental bonus damage more often than when using just two Health Soulstones (assuming your enemy isn't resistant to Health element)
7. You can increase the bonus elemental damage by equipping two Soulstones of the opposing element to your opponent's elemental resistance (for example, equip two Ice Soulstones when fighting a boss resistant to Fire) and leveling up those Soulstones as high as you can (up to level 9 maximum).
8. If you're wearing level 9 Soulstones on your weapon, then you're likely to deal bonus elemental damage about 50-80% of the time in PvE, depending on the enemy you're fighting.
