I've got really excited after receiving so much activity on [my last article about EOS Knights](https://steemit.com/eos/@grintsch/getting-started-with-eos-knights) that I want to share some advanced strategies. As there's quite a lot to talk about, I'll start with the most substantial topics: how to best utilize your material as well as craft and trade items.

# Material
So, here we go. Material is categorized into 5 types (Nature, Iron, Bone, Skin, Mineral) and 5 grades (Normal, Rare, Unique, Legendary, Ancient). As I wrote in my last post, you get one material per knight whenever you rebirth. The actual material that you get depends on a lot of factors and is determined by the loot system. Without going into too much detail:

- Upon killing a goblin, each of your knights has a chance of dropping a material; you can see the actual drop rate for each knight in the main screen 
- You eventually get the best material of all materials that have dropped during the last fight round. The "quality" is determined by the material's rarity. If you want to find out how rare a material is, go to Material -> Book
- The type of material that gets dropped is randomized. The likeliehood of gettinga particular type depends on the stage that you're in. Tap on the stage button on the main screen to see the distribution

Once you've got some material, there's basically three options of what you can with them:
- Trash
- Sell
- Craft

## Trashing Material
When you trash material, you get magic water. Magic water is really important, so make sure you regularly trash some of the material that you don't want to sell or craft items from.

The amount of magic water (MW) you receive depends on the rarity of the material. For each type, the cheapest material gets you 1 MW, the second cheapest 2 MW, and it doubles with every rarity step.

An example for the Nature type:
- Wood gives you 1 MW
- Smelting Stone gives 2 MW
- Papyrus 4MW
- Poisonous Mushroom 8MW

and so on.

## Selling Material
If you decide to sell material, have a look at the prices on the marketplace, first. Most of the material with Normal rarity doesn't really sell well, with very few exceptions. It gets more interesting with Rare material, for which the minimum price is 0.005 if you want to sell. I haven't seen much material consistently trading at significantly higher prices, but if you can sell 10 rare material per day, it's at least a start. From my experience, the rare materials that sell fastest are:
- Titanium
- Tiger Leather
- Opal
- Velvet
- Cat's Eye

Note that if you want to sell material to buy magic water it's typically a good strategy - you get 0.005 EOS per sale (minus the 3% fee), so you'd need 41 sales to buy 2000 MW, making 48 MW per material. If you trash Titanium, you only get 32 MW, though.

As for higher rarity material, I mostly sell them whenever the price is good. I don't want my stash cluttered with all kinds of material I don't need, and mostly I don't want to get involved with the randomness of crafting items with shitty percentages.

## Crafting items
This is the most complex part. Go to Item -> Book and tap on an item you're interested in to see what you need to craft it:

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![image.png](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/grintsch/ISI5o2Fq-image.png)
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Sometimes the items you craft sell at higher prices than the individual material, so make sure to check the market prices for ideal results.

Try to craft the best item for a certain type and rarity, as you'll be able to keep them longer, and they sell at higher prices. Don't be afraid to craft duplicates - you need them to synthesize which will become *the* most important technique to advance in floors.

# Items
Items add to your knights' stats, so they are an essential piece of the game. Try to balance your knights so they have similar stats, and try to optimize for Attack. Attack gives you higher chances to get good loot, and as you will make it to higher floors, the drop chance will even increase further. Therefore, if you have the choice between equipping a Pterosaur Ring and an Admiral Ring, I'd go for the latter, even if a Pterosaur Ring is more difficult to craft.

In the long run, you'll want to have specialized weapons equipped (except if you can get Excalibur for all of your knights, but that's unlikely if you read this post), that means 
- Your Knight gets an axe
- Your Archer gets a bow
- Your Mage gets a staff

As for the other items, I don't have strong preference except the one above towards Attack. However, there are some items which you can buy cheaply on the market because they're easy to craft, but they have nice stats. This goes especially for Accessories, e.g.:
- Bone Ring
- Special Medal
- Admiral Ring
- Marionette
- Flamberge
etc.

By getting e.g. Level 5 Bone Rings for all your knights, you can boost your Attack for probably less than 0.3 EOS for all three knights.

## Percentage
All items have a percentage value that shows how much this very item is utilizing its range of stats. The higher the percentage, the better the item in general. This is not entirely linear, though, so watch out for the stats you prefer when you have two items with a similar percentage but different stats.

When crafting items, also pay attention to the likelihood of actually having stats or not:
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![image.png](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/grintsch/S2nkKMGi-image.png)
</center>

That way, a 13% Admiral's Robe will only have Hp, whereas a 73% Admiral's Robe will also increase your Defense.

## Levels
Levels of items are really important. You can synthesize your items to create items of higher levels. The resulting item will always have the percentage of the one you view when clicking Synthesis, so always throw lower-percentage items into better ones. As a rule of thumb, items with >= 80% are good ones, so I typically (not always) make sure I get one of those of a certain item before I level them up. That way, you don't run into the risk of spending MW twice.

The higher the level of the item, the more items you need to synthesize in order to level up:
- 1 item for level 2
- 2 items for level 3
- 4 items for level 4
- 8 items for level 5

Per level, the stats improve by 20% (from level 1 to level 4) or 50% (from 4 to 5). You should really go for lower-rarity but higher-level items because they are typically cheaper to craft or buy. Only reach for items with a higher rarity once you've maxed out your items.

Leveling up also costs magic water. For unique items, this can easily be a limiting factor, so make sure you level up items (and max them out) that you can keep for a while. They also sell at a higher price on the market (obviously).

When you synthesize two items, and you put an item in that is of higher level, don't worry. No items and levels are lost. So if you've used 4 Bone Rings to create a level 3 Bone Ring with 80%, and then you craft a Bone Ring with 90% that you want to max out, if you synthesize the level 3 ring *into* the 90% level 1 ring, you'll be able to immediately level the 90% ring to level 3 (with one "XP" left over). Sometimes it seems that the future outcome of a synthesis is displayed incorrectly, but really don't worry, it all works fine. However, you will have to level the new item up again, which you'll have to pay MW for.

# Conclusion
Items are *the* most important mechanic in the game. Get a grasp of what really works for you, but you'll probably make the fastest progress if you follow some of the simple rules I've mentioned above, especially when it comes to synthesizing and high-level but low-rarity items. You don't need to invest much EOS, but it would obviously help.

If you have any questions or experiences you'd like to share, please do so in the comments. Also, if you haven't started playing but would like a 1000 MW kick start, comment with your EOS account name and both of us can get 1000 MW due to the referral program.

There's still some more stuff to discover, so stay tuned if you want to learn more advanced tactics for EOS Knights.