Crowns, conduction and gear

Two kinds of weapon

• Primitive weapons are the bow, the sling and the spear, the workshop's atlatl, composite bow and knife, and a Shaper's thrown stone. They are cheap, they can be made again, and a crown feeds them.
• Salvage is what came through the Rift: the rifle, its power cells and the Rift med-kits. It is strong and it is finite. Lose it and it is gone.

The enemy's weapons count as neither. Court glass and Choir stone-glass never get conduction. The Court's soldiers are crowned, and their lances still don't.

Conduction

A crowned exile adds their crown's tier to the damage of every primitive weapon they use, so a Tier III crown adds the most. The Shaper's first gift, Driving Force, multiplies that bonus by 2. The rifle never gets it.

That is the game's spine. The rifle is the best weapon in the squad on the first day. As crowns and tiers come in, crowned primitives catch it up and pass it, and the rifle's carrier is the one exile whose crown does nothing for their gun.

Aim with each kind

• Combat Arts adds +2 Aim per level with primitive weapons. The atlatl adds more on top.
• Power & Electronics 3 or better adds +5 Aim with salvage.
• A Romantic gets +5 with primitive weapons and -5 with salvage.
• Drills at camp add up to +5 primitive Aim. See work orders.

The rifle and its cells

The squad takes at most 1 rifle. Every shot spends a power cell. It carries 3 cells into a mission as standard, and more with:

• The Span, the Court's cell-works, once the exiles take it: +3 on every mission
• the Deep Charge study: +1 on every mission
• spare charged cells from the camp's store, loaded at squad select, up to 2

When the cells run out the carrier fights on with a spear, which they always carry for that.

If the rifle's carrier dies, the rifle is lost, and any spares loaded into it go with it. With a salvage bench at camp and the field held at the end, it comes home damaged instead and can be repaired. Spare cells that come home are put back in the store, the spent ones as spent cells.

Spent cells can be recharged at the camp's charging frame, once the Cell Resonance study is done. New cells are rarer still: about one arrival in 3 brings a dead cell through the Rift. See the crown forge and salvage.

Crafted gear

The workshop makes better primitive gear: points and edges for the main weapon, a knife as a sidearm, a field pack, and kit to use in the field. Each exile has 2 kit slots, 3 with a field pack. Conduction applies to every crafted primitive. See items.