**Dust Rates Explained** **What are Dust Rates?** You may find yourself looking at weapons or equipment and seeing something like this: *Blue Dust Rate:40 *Red Dust Rate:40 *White Dust Rate:40 *Gold Dust Rate:20 *Silver Dust Rate:10 Dust rates represent the durability of specific dust stockpiles. Each successful weapon swing deducts one point from the counter. When the counter reaches zero, one dust unit is consumed and destroyed from your equipped stockpile. For example, with a Blue Dust Rate of 40, you can hit a monster up to 40 times before losing one dust unit. Any item in the game that features a Dust Rate contributes to your total Dust Rate. The current counter before a dust is consumed can be located just below the equipped dust on the players Equipment window. Players can view their total Dust Rate by clicking the 'Stats' button in the Equipment window. Refer to [[Stats|Player Stats]] for more details on stats and their significance. **How do I increase my Dust Rate?** There are multiple ways to increase your Dust Rates. *Craft or equip better gear, especially weapons, as they are the primary source of increased dust rates. *Craft or equip 'Wings', which also provide dust rates. Learn more about Wings in [[Crafting_Extras|Crafting:Extras]] *Upgrade items that have dust rates. Upgrading such items typically results in further increases to their dust rates. Learn more about upgrades in [[Upgrade_Explained|Upgrade:How it works]] **My Dust Rates are too low!** If you find yourself with very low dust rates and are consuming dust too quickly, this is a common issue for new players, especially with lower-level gear that has lower dust rates. As you level up and equip better gear, your dust rates will naturally increase, making things easier. A highly effective solution is to use Staffs. Even the weakest staff (Pine) can debuff an enemy for 3 seconds per hit. Upgrading the staff consumes a dust of the corresponding type but increases the charge amount (durability) and extends the debuff duration. Each additional upgrade further enhances these benefits. Using dust to upgrade a staff yields significantly higher 'Dust Rate' returns compared to early weapon dust rates. The trade-off, however, is that using a staff does not deal damage simultaneously. For more information, refer to [[Crafting_Staffs|Crafting:Staffs]] to learn about crafting staffs and [[Upgrade_Staffs|Upgrade:Staffs]] to understand the upgrading process." **Notes** *When equipping a weapon that reduces your dust rate, if the new rate is lower than the current counter for that dust, the counter adjusts to match the new rate. Conversely, if the dust rate is increased, the counter remains unchanged.