The Scribe
The Scribe takes a piece of Avatar gear and transcribes it into a Note — a distilled copy of that gear's stat lines that you can carry, trade, and etch into another piece. It's how good rolls stop being trapped on a single item. Transcribing is a Kitchen recipe in the Arcanist craft, unlocked by owning The Scribe's Primer book.
Unlocking Transcribe — The Scribe's Primer
Transcribe is gated by a single item: The Scribe's Primer, a recipe book. Own the Primer and the Transcribe recipe appears in your recipe picker under Arcanist; without it, transcribe is locked.
You cook the Primer from Pages — you don't buy it, and it never drops from a pack:
- Collect 5 Volcanic Pages (the Missing Pages currency for the Cinderfall/Ashen world).
- Cook the assemble recipe — it turns your 5 Pages into 1 Scribe's Primer (a book cook can't fail).
- The Primer lands in your inventory. Transcribe is now unlocked, permanently — the book is never consumed.
The Scribe's Primer is base access and doubles as the volcanic / Ashen Scribing book, so it alone lets you transcribe Ashen and Cinderfall gear. To transcribe gear from a deeper world you also need that world's book:
| Gear's world | What you must own to transcribe it |
|---|---|
| Ashen / Cinderfall (volcanic) | The Scribe's Primer |
| Stillair (storm) | The Scribe's Primer + Stormswept Scribing |
| Meridian (tidal) | The Scribe's Primer + Barnacled Scribing |
Each world book is cooked from that world's Pages, the same way as the Primer. Kitchen-gear melts only ever need the Primer.
Transcribe: melt gear into a Note
Transcribe is the Scribe's core action. In the Kitchen recipe picker, open Transcribe (under Arcanist) to launch the melt screen. You pick one or more pieces of Avatar (Arena) equipment — you can batch up to 20 at once — pay the inputs, and the Scribe destroys the gear and mints a Note in its place, instantly.
What a Transcribe costs
Each piece melted costs:
| Input | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The gear piece | 1 | An Avatar/Arena equipment item. It is consumed (burned). |
| Role-matched Score | 1 | Must match the gear's combat role — Striker, Anchor, or Mender. |
| Resonant Ink | 3 | A crafting material, held on a linked wallet. |
| Avatar Essence | 10 | The same Essence you spend on Forging and Ascension. |
A melt needs 10 Essence, 1 role-matched Score, and 3 Resonant Ink on a linked wallet. If you're short on Essence the melt returns an "insufficient Essence" error — top up before you transcribe. (Melting a Kitchen gear piece skips the Score — it has no combat role — but still costs the Ink and Essence.)
What you get back
One Note, minted instantly, at the same rarity as the gear you melted, and carrying the same stat lines that gear had. The rarity reads at a glance from the note's gem:
| Gear rarity | Note rarity | Gem |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Standard | Steel |
| Rare | Rare | Cyan |
| Mythical | Mythical | Violet |
| Legendary | Legendary | Radiant gold |
A Note shows its benefit lines exactly the way the original gear did — nothing is lost in translation.
Before you melt
- Only Avatar/Arena equipment can be transcribed — not Kitchen cultivators or Kitchen equipment.
- Unequip it first. Gear that's equipped on a fighter can't be melted until you take it off.
- Melting is permanent. The gear is destroyed. If the piece already has Notes socketed into it, the Scribe asks you to confirm — those socketed Notes are destroyed along with it.
Etching Notes into gear
Etching (socketing) a Note into a piece of gear grafts that Note's stat lines onto the piece — it's what Notes are for. Your earned Notes live on the Notes shelf in the Research Center; each Note carries an "Etch onto gear" action that opens a gear picker.
How etching works
Pick a piece of gear, pick a Note you hold, and etch it in. The Note's stat lines are added to the gear on top of whatever it already carries. You can etch several Notes into one piece until you run out of Frequency or Note slots (both below).
A Note is spent the moment you etch it — it leaves your Notes shelf for good and becomes part of the gear. You can remove (pop) a socketed Note to free its Frequency and slot for a different Note, but removing it destroys the Note — it is not returned to your shelf. Because that's irreversible, the app makes you confirm before it destroys a socketed Note. Etch deliberately, and only remove a Note when you're sure you're done with it.
Frequency — the socket budget
Every piece of gear is stamped with a Frequency capacity when it's minted or forged, and each Note you etch spends some of it. Higher-rarity gear has more Frequency to spend; higher-rarity Notes cost more to fit:
| Gear rarity | Frequency capacity | Note rarity | Frequency cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 10–20 | Standard | ~10 | |
| Rare | 20–40 | Rare | ~20 | |
| Mythical | 30–50 | Mythical | ~30 | |
| Legendary | 50 | Legendary | ~40 |
A Frequency meter (◆◆◆◇◇) shows how much of a piece's budget is used and warns you when a Note
won't fit. Capacity is rolled once at mint and frozen, so a high-Frequency Mythical is a prized
socket base — hold onto it.
Note slots — the hard count limit
Frequency isn't the only ceiling. Each piece also holds a fixed number of Notes by its rarity, and you can't exceed it even if the piece has Frequency to spare:
| Gear rarity | Note slots |
|---|---|
| Standard | 2 |
| Rare | 3 |
| Mythical | 4 |
| Legendary / Celestial | 5 |
When a piece is full, the etch is blocked until you remove a Note to free a slot — and removing one destroys it (see the caution above). So the practical limit on a piece is whichever runs out first: its Frequency budget or its slot count.
Where a Note can go — the world and item-level gates
A battle Note remembers both the world and the item level of the gear it was melted from, and two gates decide which pieces it can etch onto:
- World gate (primary). A Note carries up the world ladder, never down — you can etch it onto gear from its own world or a deeper one, but not an earlier world. A Note melted from a Stormswept (storm) piece fits Stormswept or Barnacled (tidal) gear, but won't fit Ashen / Cinderfall (volcanic) gear.
- Item-level gate. You can also only etch a Note onto gear whose item level is at least the Note's (item level rises with the gear's world band). The Note's big stat line is calibrated to its bracket, so this stops you from bolting it onto starter gear for a lopsided boost.
Both must pass. In the gear picker, a piece a Note can't reach is greyed out and tagged with the
reason (needs Stormswept+ world, needs ilvl 50+), so you're never left guessing.
Both gates are for Avatar (Arena) gear only. Kitchen Notes carry no world or item level and are never gated. Legacy Notes from before this system are ungated too.
Elevate: merge three Notes into a stronger one
Small Notes don't have to stay small. Elevate is a Kitchen recipe that merges three Notes of the same rarity and domain into one Note of the next rarity up — your route from a pile of Standards to a Rare, Rares to a Mythical, Mythicals to a Legendary. Like Transcribe, it's a cooking recipe: it appears in your recipe picker, and you launch it there.
- Inputs: 3 Notes, all the same rarity and the same domain — three Avatar Notes, or three Kitchen Notes, never mixed. All three are consumed (burned).
- Output: 1 Note, exactly one rarity higher. Legendary is the ceiling — you can't elevate a Legendary.
- What it keeps: the elevated Note carries more stat lines than any one input, drawn from the combined pool of all three inputs' lines. The Elevate screen previews the pool and how many lines the result keeps (e.g. "keeps 3 of 7"); which lines survive is rolled when you cook, so treat it as a gacha, not a hand-pick.
Because Elevate burns three Notes to make one, feed it your worst duplicates and keep any standout single Note to etch as-is.
| Inputs | 3 Notes — same rarity and same domain (all consumed) |
| Output | 1 Note, next rarity up (Standard → Rare → Mythic → Legendary) |
| Ceiling | A Legendary Note can't be elevated |
| Lines | More lines than the inputs, drawn from their combined pool (rolled on cook) |
Costs at a glance
| Unlock | Own The Scribe's Primer book (cooked from 5 Volcanic Pages) — plus the matching world Scribing book for storm / tidal gear |
| Per melt | 1 gear piece + 1 role-matched Score + 3 Resonant Ink + 10 Essence |
| Melt output | 1 Note, same rarity as the gear, carrying its stat lines |
| Per etch | 1 Note (consumed) → 1 piece of gear, spending the Note's Frequency cost and one Note slot |
| Etch gates | Note carries up the world ladder (never down) · target item level ≥ the Note's · piece has a free Note slot — battle gear only |
| Remove a Note | Frees its Frequency + slot, but destroys the Note (confirm required) — never returned to your shelf |
| Elevate | 3 same-rarity, same-domain Notes → 1 Note one rarity higher (inputs consumed) |
Tips
- Melt your worst pieces of a good roll, keep the best. A Note preserves the stat lines, so a gear piece you'd otherwise sell can become a portable copy of its stats.
- Match the Score to the role. A Striker piece needs a Striker Score, an Anchor piece an Anchor Score, a Mender piece a Mender Score. The wrong Score is rejected.
- Take gear off first. Equipped pieces can't be melted.
- Batch it. Transcribe melts up to 20 pieces at once — clear a pile of unwanted rolls in a single pass.
- Save your best Notes for high-world gear. A Note from a Stormswept or Barnacled piece won't etch onto low-world Ashen gear — and a high-Frequency Mythical is the best socket base to hold.
- Elevate duplicates instead of hoarding them. Three same-rarity, same-domain Notes you'd never etch merge into one of the next rarity up — a tidy use for a drawer full of Standards.
- Removing a Note is a one-way door. Popping a socketed Note frees its Frequency and slot but destroys it — it never comes back to your shelf. Plan the piece before you fill it.
See also
- Cooking Specializations — the Arcanist discipline that Transcribe belongs to
- The Research Center — where your Notes shelf and etching live
- Item Sources — where Pages (for the Scribe's Primer) come from
- Avatar Equipment — the gear you transcribe
- Avatar Essence — the Essence a melt spends