So you just reached level 30? Well seems you're in the first step to become the mightiest hero [Or villain] around the block. While you reached the maximum possible normal level in DCUO, there's another leveling system within Gear Progression known as Combat Rating and Tiers. You heard that right. Combat Rating is another stat that lets you participate in certain content once you met its requirements, and it goes up as you collect better gear from win instances. Every instance as a main boss, and defeating certain bosses give source marks, along with a choice reward for a job well done. What we're after is those mystical boxes that give gear scaling to your CR, to which naturally evolves over time as you reach a certain CR threshold. The more you farm, the better gear you obtain, and so on and so forth. Starting out, you're only able to do Tier 1 instances, to which I'd highly recommend doing solos like 8th Precinct as an example. As far as source marks go, there's a very useful NPC that sells Source Gear within the Hall of Legends, where you can spend source marks to attain such gear. In addition, there's also artifacts and allies to assist as well after completing those subsequent journal entries. As far as buying Source Gear goes, it's best to buy equipment that replaces your lowest item level within that slot. Say that you're unable to find a decent face piece due to bad luck. Well never fear, cause for the low, low price of 4 source marks, you can easily attain a new face piece that's already at the maximum item level for that tier respectively. It's super nifty to get maximum gear in the shortest amount of time. Now that you've completed your first instance and attained better gear, it's time to salvage the old gear for exobytes. These useful components help you fuel your exobyte fortification system, where you are able to achieve bonus stats from every rank depending on which one you fortify. As for damage focusing, you may want to focus on Might Exobyte tanks, where the red Exobyte Components give an experience boost due to matching colors. Using up every last exobyte to rank these capsules up is the way to go, but since we have 4 to work with, it's best to balance things up and rank the lowest ranking capsule first as the scaled dismantled gear assist that capsule with catching up. Now this is where the real farming begins. Win Instances -> Equip better gear from unattuned gear boxes (usually the top choice) -> Dismantle Gear -> Fortify Exobytes -> Check source mark accumulation. Rinse and Repeat the process until attaining the maximum item level for that Tier and moving on to the next. End Goal is attaining a combat rating of 327 to unlock the time gear (being the save the universe vendor), in addition to unlocking Tier 6 once hitting 299 CR. Tier Spectrums Tier 1 - 30 to 49 CR Tier 2 - 50 to 99 CR Tier 3 - 100 to 149 CR Tier 4 - 150 to 209 CR Tier 5 - 210 to 298 CR Tier 6 - 299, 310, 320, 327. Time Pieces (unlocked around Tier 3) are rewards from Save the Universe instances, and are loot locked depending on the instance's respective restriction. I'd recommend saving those up for later content and higher CR thresholds since opening unattuned boxes scales with your current CR. At around 320 CR is when you'll hit a plateau, where it's entirely dependent on Flashpoint Gotham Dailies to attain Item level 284 gear, to which lets you become 325-327 CR depending on your pieces from 280 item level gear. Once all your pieces are at least item level 280, that is when you will hit 322 CR. If all pieces are item level 284, then you will have 326 CR, which is 1 point away from attaining the 327 threshold, and small investment in time pieces will aid in giving that final push to 327 and finally unlocking the best of best gear as a result, to which the final spectrum of gear progression begins with farming time pieces. This guide was forged from personal experience along with sourcing some assets from the wiki. I was 98 CR when I returned to the game from 8 years prior (which was Tier 5 at the time), and quickly skyrocketed to 327 CR within a matter of days (results may vary depending on person's preferred playstyle.)
