Equipment upgrade guide

This guide attempts to explain how equipment upgrades work as of version 1.7.20 of Wing Fighter, where the evolution system was made much more powerful but also complex.

**Rules and Information**

* The star system is now gone. Levels are now indicated primarily by colors (not friendly to color-blind players unfortunately) and by stars within the higher colors. The color progression, and rough equivalents to previous version star levels are such:

 ⭐⭐
 ⭐⭐⭐
 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (New)

* ( not sure if any of this is true. I can’t fuse anything other than the same exact items) Players have choices now on how equipment evolves, and in many cases equipment can be fused with other equipment (always in the same category though, i.e. maingun with maingun only, but not maingun with missile). Consequently, auto-add is gone and players now have to specifically select what to fuse. However, in lower levels (gray, green, blue) the game still "suggests", via the placement of red exclamation marks, what equipment should be fused together, since at those levels there are no alternative choices for fusion.
* From purple level and higher, there are sub-levels, indicated by stars. We'll use the nomenclature P for 0-star purple, P1 for 1-star, B2 for brown 2-star, etc.
* The game contains a guide for fuse requirements, which also shows all the equipment levels. It's accessible via the little Info icon in the fuse screen (image on the right)
* There are wildcard pieces, also called "jokers", which are not usable as weapons, but can be used for fusion whenever a "generic" piece of equipment is called for.
* "Generic" equipment can be used to fuse starting at purple levels, when indicated by the guide. The fuse screen will also advise when a generic piece can be used, indicated by colored icon with an all-white equipment image:

* When a generic piece is called for, you can either use a wildcard piece, or any equipment piece of the same kind (maingun, missile, drone etc.) and color, it could be the same as the equipment you're evolving or different.
* **Strategy hint:** Use wildcards first. Then, find "sacrifice" equipment pieces and use those as generic fuse fodder.
* Equipment at Red or higher levels can be Reset - this is now called "Grade Down" in the equipment screen. Lower levels can not be reset. When resetting, the equipment returns its underlying resources, with one big exception: All "generic" equipment that was used to evolve it is returned as wildcard pieces.
* **Caution**: When using equipment as generic pieces, you are truly sacrificing that equipment. You can't get it back in its original form.
* Brown equipment pieces are used very heavily in fusion, with purple pieces being secondary. When upgrading to red or higher, make sure you have sufficient brown.
* **Stragegy hint**: If you have multiple red pieces of the same type of equipment, keep one (the one at the highest level) and grade down the rest, to get brown pieces to use in fusion. Then pick your sacrifice equipment (brown or above) and grade those down as well. You roughly need an equal amount of sacrifice/wildcard browns as specific equipment pieces in order to evolve.
* You can NOT use pieces with stars as fusion fodder. The only weapons with stars should be the ones you're actually upgrading.

The following image, made by Discord user and veteran player Gaby, shows the overall fusion requirements

* The same applies to Thor and Conqueror gears. You may use the standard gear to raise the level of the item to a maximum before it goes to the next colour. Then you'll need that specific gear again. Don't underestimate the power of these gears. A light blue version of these gears outmatch Red/Brown standard gear and the power level is a lot higher then standard gear of the same color.

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