Hitting level 50 in Throne and Liberty is the moment the real game starts. Your leveling gear is disposable; the endgame is a long climb through traited blue and purple weapons, set bonuses, and a deterministic upgrade system that rewards patience far more than luck. Knowing exactly where the grind walls are is the difference between a clean two-week ramp and a frustrated month of running the same dungeon for an item that never drops.
The gear tiers you are actually chasing
Throne and Liberty's progression runs through three meaningful rarity tiers at endgame: Rare (blue), Epic (purple), and Legendary (orange). You will spend most of your time on Epic gear, because Epic items can be upgraded to Legendary through the Lithograph and growth systems rather than dropping fully formed. A purple weapon at +9, fully fed with growthstones and traits, frequently outperforms a freshly looted orange that you have not invested in yet.
The two pieces that dominate your power are your weapons (you run two equipped at once, since builds are defined by weapon pairings like Greatsword/Dagger or Staff/Wand) and your set bonuses. Armor and accessories matter, but the weapon-trait spread is where most of your damage and survivability live, so prioritize finishing weapons before chasing every armor slot.
Traits and the Lithograph: the part that eats your week
Every Epic item rolls a hidden pool of traits — secondary stats like Heavy Attack Chance, Cooldown Speed, Max Health, or Hit. You unlock and level these by feeding the item duplicate gear or trait extraction stones. This is the quiet time sink nobody warns you about: getting a single weapon to max traits can demand dozens of duplicate drops or a large pile of Lithograph resources.
The Lithograph system lets you target specific Epic and Legendary blueprints and craft toward them deterministically, which is a relief compared to pure RNG drops. But "deterministic" still means farming the underlying materials, and those come from Co-op Dungeons, field bosses, and contracts on a daily/weekly lockout. The lockouts are the real cap on your speed, not your skill.
Where the time actually goes
- Daily Co-op Dungeon clears for growthstones and trait materials — capped per day, so missing days directly slows your curve.
- Field and world bosses (Open World Bosses) for Epic weapon and accessory drops on contested timers, often requiring a coordinated group and a good loot-roll position.
- Weekly Boss and arch-boss content for the rarest blueprints.
- Resource farming — Sollant (gold), Lucent (premium currency), and the dozen consumable mats needed to push upgrade levels.
The upgrade wall: where most players stall
Gear upgrades in Throne and Liberty are deterministic in cost but escalating in price. Each upgrade level on an Epic weapon needs more growthstones and a higher Sollant cost than the last, and the jump from roughly +6 to +9 is where the material demand spikes hard. Many players hit a comfortable +6 in a couple of weeks, then grind for just as long again to reach +9 on a single weapon. Because you run two weapons, that wall is effectively doubled.
This is the honest dividing line for whether to spend or play it out. If you enjoy the daily dungeon loop and group boss fights, the climb is the game — keep running it. The lockouts mean nobody, paid or not, skips the calendar. But if your bottleneck is purely volume of farmable materials and duplicate gear for traits, that is the one area where buying time is a rational trade.
Where a carry genuinely saves time — and where it doesn't
A carry or boost makes sense in Throne and Liberty when the blocker is a group-gated, time-consuming farm rather than a personal lockout. Concretely:
- Open World Boss and Co-op Dungeon farming runs — having an experienced group clear efficiently means more material per hour and fewer wiped attempts on mechanically tight bosses. A few focused carried sessions can compress what would be a week of pugging.
- Trait-material and growthstone farming — the most repetitive part of the game, and the easiest to hand off if your time is worth more than the grind.
- Specific Epic/Legendary blueprint targets — when you need one item from a contested boss and the roll keeps slipping away.
A boost does not bypass daily and weekly lockouts on your own account, and it cannot fast-forward the deterministic Sollant cost of upgrading your equipped weapon — those scale with your character regardless. So treat a carry as a way to maximize material throughput and skip the worst repetition, not as a one-click path to a finished build. If you are still early and enjoying the ramp, just play it out; the carry value is highest for the mid-to-late grind when you know exactly which boss or material is blocking you.
A sane progression order at level 50
- Finish a full Epic weapon pair before touching Legendary chases — two solid purples beat one half-built orange.
- Push your main-damage weapon to +6, then start its traits before pushing higher; raw upgrade levels without traits underperform.
- Lock in a 2-piece or 4-piece armor set bonus that matches your build before perfecting individual armor slots.
- Only after both weapons are traited and around +9 should you commit serious resources to Legendary upgrades via Lithograph.
Throne and Liberty rewards a focused, deterministic climb more than most modern MMOs — there is far less pure RNG heartbreak and far more "grind the known material." That makes it easy to plan, and it makes it easy to identify the one or two farms eating your week. Clear those efficiently, whether by grouping smart or buying back the hours, and the rest of the progression takes care of itself.