Invention is tricky to understand with all the different components and its difficult to know what combines with what to get something that may help you get a bit more damage in combat or a few useful perks. There are lots of spreadsheets out there and posts but they seem to be written in code most of them so I’ll try to go through from a beginners point of view to help you understand how to start perking your armour and weapons and a suggest few nice ones to add to help start out.
First Step – Augmenting
The first thing you need to do to your weapon or armour is augment it. You can make an augmentor or buy it on the grand exchange. To make it you need divine energy, base parts, flexible parts, tensile parts, enhancing parts and powerful components. These all take time to get so if you don’t have time or have money then just buy one on the grand exchange. Once you have one just use it on your weapon or armour piece you want to augment and it will turn into an augmented version ready for the next step.
Second Step – Gizmos
So gizmos are things you need to make and on them you can generate perks which then attach to the augmented armour or weapon to provide a bonus. To start with you need to make gizmo shells (you can’t buy them). There is a weapon gizmo shell and an armour gizmo shell, you can also get a tool gizmo shell which I won’t be covering in this post. You make the weapon gizmo shell with blade parts, crafted parts and strong components at the invention bench. You make the armour gizmo shell with deflecting parts, crafted parts and protective parts at the invention bench. Once you have the shells then you can click on them “add materials” to get to the next step.
Third Step – Adding Materials
So clicking “add materials” on a gizmo shell will bring up a new window:
As you can see from the image above, you click or drag the materials onto the five slots to see what possible perks you can get and then can create it if happy. When you click create you will not necessarily get the top one and may have to re-roll it a few times until you get what you want, you can also fail it. If you have enough materials to try again it will let you re-roll on another gizmo shell but it will use a new one, not the previous one. “But how the hell do I know what materials to add for what perks?” I hear you cry. Well that depends what you want to get out! In the next section I give some tips for those who want to add stuff but don’t want to research the full ins and outs of whats available.
Non-elitist Ok Perks To Get Started
On an augmented two handed weapon you can add two weapon gizmos, otherwise you can add one gizmo to main hand and one to offhand. Generally I would aim for precise and aftershock perks on weapons if you are after adding extra damage. The pros go for Precise 4 + Equilibrium 2 in one slot and aftershock 3 in the other but you don’t have to get those exact numbers, even aftershock 1 is better than nothing.
On armour you can have two gizmos on legs and two on tops. The main ones to aim for are crackling, enhanced devotion, impatient and biting. The pros will go for things like biting 3 which requires nox components and is too expensive for my tastes but you can get biting 2 for nowhere near the cost and is very helpful.
Weapons – Precise Perk
So to make the first one you want precise really, you can use precise 1-5 on its own instead if you can keep re-rolling until you get what you want. To get precise 5 add 5 armadyl components to the gizmo shell. You can’t get that many have a look at the other suggested combos on the wiki page which includes getting equilibrium with it:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Precise
Weapons – Aftershock Perk
Now aftershock perk can seem expensive as you need to use Ilujankan components which come from Anima Core Zaros items which are 18mil at the time of writing but only get you 1 component for disassembling but don’t panic, there is a way to get more. You buy an Anima Core Legs of Zaros and Anima Core Body of Zaros then augment them both (you don’t need gizmos on them). Then level them up to level 9 in combat and disassemble which will give you more Ilujankan components and enable you t make this expensive perk. More details and combos on the wiki page:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Aftershock
Armour – crackling
Crackling 3 is great and can be reasonably cheap to get by using explosive components gathered by disassembling hand cannons. Even if you only have crackling 1-2 its better than nothing. You can get it with secondary perks too as shown on the wiki:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Crackling
Armour – Enhanced Devotion
This one is gained by using Faceted components which can be gathered by disassembling crystal items. A cheaper way to do it is by disassembling crystal flasks or light orbs. You can get enhanced devotion 2-3 quite easily:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Enhanced_Devoted
Armour – Impatient
Now this one can cost some money as it needs Zaros components and Zamorak components specially if you are after 3, I would go for 1-2 to start with as its a lot cheaper:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Impatient
Armour – Biting
Now as I said above biting 3 is not worth it for most people but biting 2 can be got quite easily and cheaply using direct components. You can also try to get it with a secondary perk like venonblood/reflexes/mobile. The compnents you need for this are suggested on the wiki:
https://runescape.wiki/w/Biting
Summary
Now if you have learnt anything from this I hope it is that perking is worth it and doesn’t have to be expensive. Start with adding a few small cheap perks to get the hang of it and you can easily replace them over time when you get more cash or components.
