But while some of the best individual items fall into your lap through story progress or side quests, to equip Frey with the strongest additional effects you’re going to have to do some exploring. You can collect new cloaks and necklaces from many different points of interest across Athia: including Locked Labyrinths, combat challenges, and guild towers - just to name a few. But to create Forspoken’s best gear, you need to combine as many of the most powerful effects you can muster into one item, forming a truly top-tier piece of equipment. As well as clothing and jewellery, Frey can also take advantage of the Tanta’s signature nail art technique, where they paint intricate patterns onto their fingernails to further boost their abilities. Frey can wield a different set of nails on each hand, letting her double-up on a particularly useful buff, or mix-and-match to get the most out of the best spells in Forspoken. To save you from searching high-and-low for the tools you need to create the strongest build, here’s all of the best gear we’ve found in Forspoken so far, as well as where to find it. That includes the best cloaks, best necklaces and best nails throughout Athia. These picks are all of our most-used choices so far, but if we find any other great ones from post-game bosses and the like, we’ll add them as an update to this page.
How does Gear work in Forspoken?
In Forspoken, cloaks and necklaces can be won from points of interest - usually after defeating a boss or waves of enemies - around the open world, occasionally bought from merchants in Cipal, and received from friendly characters during story and side quests. Cloaks and necklaces each give a bonus to Frey’s health and defense, and have three slots for additional buffs (until you unlock a fourth slot for necklaces in the late-game). Once you add a cloak or necklace to your inventory, you unlock its signature effect which you can then imbue into any piece of equipment at a crafting table. Crafting tables are next to the door in every Refuge. If you’ve been wondering what all the plants, stones and ores you’ve been collecting are actually used for, it’s this. By using Wild Musk and another resource, you can imbue each slot with an additional effect and enjoy its benefits in battle. But that’s not all. By unlocking the Vivify skill from Frey’s magic tree, Amplify from Sila’s, then later Fortify and Diversify in the late-game, you can spend resources to increase the base defense and health buffs you gain from cloaks and necklaces. This means that rather than focusing on the base stat boosts offered by a cloak or necklace, you should be more concerned about the unique abilities, since it’s very easy to upgrade something using surplus materials. Therefore, you can wear whichever cloak you think looks the best, because you can just boost the base stats to be as good as any other and imbue it with your most powerful effects. On the other hand, there are three necklaces that are worth seeking out because they have three free slots as standard and good base stats to save on upgrade resources. They are:
Phool Sa - Won from Thane in the Blessed Plains south of Cipal Nemeni Prisaha - Speak to the Archivist after you’ve defeat the first main story boss and they’ll send you to Pronoia in Middle Praenost. Defeat the enemies there and return to Cipal for the necklace Naee Aasha - After defeating the second main story boss, again speak to the Archivist and they will hand over the necklace
So with that in mind, below are the locations of the best effects we’ve used. Use them to turn your most-liked cloak and necklace into the best gear in Forspoken.
Forspoken Best Gear - Cloaks and Necklaces
Critical hits can poison enemies
Gear Type: Cloak (Bonifate) Location: Locked Labyrinth - Field in the Humble Plain far to the west of Cipal, past the Water Garden
While it’s only available relatively late in the main story, this is a truly fantastic effect which dovetails beautifully with the improved critical hit rate of the Blessed nails. Poison is very strong because it allows you to get constant damage on flying and aggressive enemies which are by far the toughest to deal with because you have to expend so much effort dodging their attacks.
Support magic deals extra damage
Gear Type: Necklace (Sarka) Location: Ruins of Pagus - North of Praenost Castle Ramparts
Support magic is the most fun part of Forspoken, so how can you go wrong with a simple, effective and powerful blanket buff to its damage?
Auto-heal effect triggered when enemy defeated
Gear Type: Necklace (Orison) Location: Locked Labyrinth - East, just to the southeast of Cipal
If you’re clumsy like me, then you will often be taking small hits of damage as you make your way through Forspoken that don’t quite call for a healing salve, but still need attention. This early-game pickup is well worth adding to your inventory because it’s always useful for keeping Frey healthy in battle and topping up her lifebar without constantly expending finite resources.
Casting frequency boosts surge magic recharge rate
Gear Type: Necklace (Yavuz Gagnant) Location: Colline in The Fountainfields, west of Cipal and southwest of The Water Garden
Like I said before, magic and support magic in particular is the best part of Forspoken, so it pays double to grab an additional benefit as you fire off fancy abilities all day long. You can either cash in your surge magic ultimate attack as soon as it’s ready every time, or you could combo this with an early-game nail set, Slay, which boosts your support magic damage when your surge is fully charged, to make sure you’re getting that buff as consistently as possible.
Attack magic triggered during parkour deals extra damage
Gear Type: Cloak (Unstoppable) Location: Militis Academy in The Mustering Ground south of Cipal
One of Frey’s biggest advantages against the torrent of attacks thrown at her by Athia’s demonic enemies is her manoeuvrability. Throughout your adventure, you’re more than likely going to have your finger clamped on the Circle button to try and dodge as much as possible. This additional effect turns that defensive reflex into an offensive boon, giving extra bite to your retaliatory attacks as you flit around the battlefield, safe from harm.
Critical hits can restore health
Gear Type: Cloak (Pelerine) Location: From the Poppet trader in Cipal
Another decent survivability tool, you can get this cloak relatively early on in your adventure too, which is also when you’re most likely to need the additional healing.
Forspoken Best Nails
Improved Critical Hit Rate (Blessed)
Location: Chichek in The Water Garden, west of Cipal
Critical hits are not to be underestimated in Forspoken. While we’ve mostly highlighted their synergistic potential with the Pelerine and Bonifate cloaks here, there’s still something to be said about the raw power of dealing more damage more consistently. This is definitely worth at least one hand.
Killer blows generate shockwave (Aftershock)
Location: As you enter Praenost Castle
An early-game nail set that stayed with me throughout almost the entire game, Aftershock adds a powerful extra explosion to the finishing blows where you press Triangle to take out a downed enemy. Killer blows are great. They restore a ton of health, take out enemies quickly and seem to give you a period of invulnerability while you perform them - why not make them even better by dealing a load of damage to nearby enemies too at the same time? The damage from this ability is such that it almost feels like hitting one killing blow is as good as hitting two or three regular ones.
Support magic deals more damage when surge magic is fully charged (Slay)
Location: Unlocked from start
Another good, solid buff that’s available as soon as you get the ability to paint your nails, Slay rewards you for keeping your surge magic in your back pocket for when it’s really needed while also helping to take out weaker enemies with your basic abilities. For more on Frey’s magical journey, these are our top early-game Forspoken tips to get you started in Athia.
