Equipment & Slots

Equipment does three jobs in Taro Bay: it makes you faster, it shields you in a fight, and some pieces are the key that opens a diving zone. All gear is craftable and freely tradeable on the player market — never bought with real money.

The slots

You have fourteen equipment slots. Most carry stats, five take armour, and two are for combat:

• Armour & jewellery: head, body, legs, gloves, shoes, plus necklace, earrings and ring.
• Diving & activity gear: suit, helmet, lamp, boat.
• Combat: weapon and offhand. The weapon you equip decides your fighting style when you go hunting; the offhand holds a companion piece — a short blade like the Tantō or the Wakizashi that lends a little extra bite alongside any main weapon.

Each slot holds one item at a time. Equipping a better item in a slot replaces what was there. Profession tools are not equipped here — they live in your Dōgubako (see below).

Speed stats

Much of your gear carries a speed stat — a percentage that makes actions faster. Some bonuses help a single skill, some help everything. A few examples of what's in the water today:

Item	Slot	Bonus
Diving Suit (tier 1)	Suit	+2% Diving
Diving Suit (tier 4)	Suit	+8% Diving
Coastal Boat	Boat	+6% Fishing
Ryūgū Boat	Boat	+10% Fishing
Pearl Necklace	Necklace	+1% Diving
Pearl Earrings	Earrings	+1% Diving
Copper Hoe	Dōgubako	+2% Farming
Silver Jewelry	Ring	+2% Artisan

These stats add to your buffs in the same way — see the speed formula in Provisions: Food, Drink & Kampō.

Profession tools & the Dōgubako

Every gathering and crafting profession — everything except diving and the combat styles — has a tool line, five rungs deep: Copper → Bronze → Iron → Steel → Tamahagane. A tool is forged by a smith from that tier's metal plus a grip carved by a carpenter (the grip decides which tool it is — a rod grip makes a fishing rod, a hoe grip a farm hoe, and so on). Because grips and metals are freely tradeable, a specialist smith can supply the whole village while a generalist forges their own.

Tools do two things:

• They gate the higher tiers of their profession. From level 25 onward, an action needs the matching tier of its own tool: tier 2 at level 25, tier 3 at 40, tier 4 at 60, tier 5 at 85. A skill card (or a crop) that is level-ready but tool-locked tells you exactly which tool to forge or buy. Simply owning the tool clears the gate — it can sit in your bag, unequipped; you never need the Dōgubako to unlock a tier, only for the speed bonus below. (So don't buy a Dōgubako just to reach the next tier — the tool alone does that.) Smithing and mining are the exceptions — a forge or a mining action needs only the previous tier's tool. That keeps the whole ore → bar → tool supply chain able to bootstrap itself: you can always dig the next metal and smith the next tool with the tool you already have, never asked for one you cannot yet make.
• They speed the profession up — +2% at Copper rising to +10% at Tamahagane — but only while they sit in your Dōgubako.

The Dōgubako (道具箱)

The Dōgubako is a carpenter's tool chest you buy once from the village trader. Your first compartment is free — it opens the moment you own the box; each further compartment is unlocked for mon (the price climbs steeply). A tool dropped into a compartment speeds its profession automatically, online and offline — no re-equipping between actions. You can only hold one tool per profession at a time, so there is no stacking the same bonus twice. Pull a tool back out and it returns to your bag, its speed bonus ending at once.

One quirk worth knowing: a farm (or basin) tool only affects crops planted after you slot it. A crop already ripening keeps the speed it was sown with (even if you pull the tool out afterwards), so slot your farm tool before you plant.

Armour: your five fighting pieces

Five of your slots — body, head, legs, gloves and shoes — take armour, and armour does one thing: it soaks damage in a fight. Every piece you wear adds to your mitigation, the flat amount you shrug off each blow, on top of whatever your Defense level already gives you (see Combat & Hunting). Armour carries no speed bonus — it defends, it doesn't hurry your gathering.

There are three armour lines, one for each way of fighting, and every line runs a full five tiers:

• Samurai plate (the Dō / Kabuto / Haidate / Kote / Kōgake set) — hammered out by a Smithing hand from metal bars, cord lacing and battle hides. It leans hard into physical guard, so it's the wall you want against boars, pirates and anything with teeth.
• Archer's cloth (the Kyūdō-gi / Kasa / Hakama / Yugake / Waraji set) — woven by a Weaving hand from yarn, cloth and pelts. It splits its guard evenly between the physical and the spiritual — an all-rounder for a hunter who moves between quarries.
• Onmyōji's robes (the Kariginu / Eboshi / Sashinuki / Tekkō / Asagutsu set) — also woven, but bound with yōkai essence so it turns aside spiritual blows above all. Wear it where the enemy strikes at your spirit rather than your body.

Each line climbs the same material ladder as its craft: a T1 samurai body piece is copper-plated (Copper Dō), the T5 is folded tamahagane (Tamahagane Dō); the cloth sets run from bamboo fibre at T1 up to premium Nishijin brocade at T5.

How much a piece is worth

You don't need a spreadsheet, just two ideas:

1. Each tier has a defence budget, and it grows fast up the ladder — a T5 set guards far more than three T1 sets stacked in your imagination.
2. The budget is shared out by how much cloth a piece covers. The body takes the lion's share, then head and legs, then gloves, and the humble shoes carry the least. So a chest piece is always your single biggest defensive upgrade, and a full matching set beats a grab-bag of odd tiers.

Then the line decides which kind of guard those points become — mostly physical for plate, mostly spiritual for robes, even for cloth. Mix and match if you like: there's no set bonus for wearing five matching pieces, so a smart hunter can pair a plate chest with cloth gloves to balance their defences against a particular foe.

Weapon and offhand

Your weapon is the heart of a fight — it sets your attack, how often you strike, and which of the three styles (Blades, Archery or Onmyōdō) earns the XP. The three weapon lines, their tiers and who forges them all live in Combat & Hunting.

The offhand is a lighter companion. Today it holds a pair of short blades — the early Tantō and, later, the Wakizashi — whose small attack bonus adds straight onto your main weapon's before your style sharpens it, so it helps whatever you wield, but only ever with a weapon in hand; an offhand alone does nothing. Any defence an offhand carries counts the moment it's equipped.

Tiers and zone gates

Some pieces of gear are tiered (tier 1 through 5 — higher is better). For armour and weapons the tier simply tracks power. For a few diving zones, tier is a key, and the rule is simple:

A gear requirement is met when the item in that slot is of tier equal to or higher than the one the zone asks for.

So if a zone asks for a tier-2 diving suit, a tier-2, tier-3 or tier-4 suit all satisfy it — you never have to keep an older, weaker suit around. In the current version the zone gates use the suit and boat slots (the lamp is reserved for a future dark-water gate). Which zone needs what is laid out in Diving Zones & Gates.

The diving suit is a pure depth key — nothing more. It speeds your diving and unlocks the deep, but it carries no combat value at all: don't expect a suit to shield you on a hunt. That's what armour is for.

The boat is the opposite key — reach, not depth. Where a suit takes you down, a boat takes you out to waters too far to swim to. You have one boat slot, and three vessels climb the Carpentry ladder: the Coastal Boat (level 40), the Deep-Sea Boat (level 60) and the Ryūgū Boat (level 85). Each is built from planks, ship's nails, a woven Sail Cloth and the signature good of the tier below, and each carries a bigger Fishing speed bonus than the last. As with suits, a higher boat satisfies every lower boat gate, so you only ever keep your best one. The Coastal Boat unlocks the Wreck Grounds (and the pirate hunting ground); the Ryūgū Boat unlocks the Ryūgū Depths. The Deep-Sea Boat gates no zone yet — for now it is simply the fastest fishing vessel afloat, waiting on the offshore hunting grounds still to come.

Crafting and level gates

Every weapon and armour piece is made, not found — a kill hands you hides, shells and essence, never finished gear (see Combat & Hunting). Each recipe asks a crafting level in its skill, and the levels climb roughly in step with the tiers: the entry pieces sit around level 10, then the ladder passes through the mid-twenties, the forties and the sixties on the way to the top-tier work near level 85 (heavier pieces, like a chest plate, ask a touch more than gloves or shoes of the same tier). Gather the materials, level the craft, and the next rung unlocks itself.

Practical advice

• Upgrade your diving suit early — it both speeds up diving and unlocks the next zones. Just remember it does nothing in a fight.
• Before a hunt, get an armour body piece in the right line first — it's the biggest single boost to how much you can take.
• Match your speed gear to what you do most: a better boat for fishing, and keep your Dōgubako stocked with the best tool for each craft you push.
• When a profession stalls at level 25, 40, 60 or 85, it usually means you need the next tool tier — forge or buy it, then slot it.
• Outgrown a piece? Sell it on the market — someone a few levels behind you needs exactly that.