Armaments are where accounts quietly lose the most value, because three different systems all look like "upgrade the armament" and only one of them is the thing blocking you. This guide covers the two stones, the chest that feeds them, and the order to spend in.
1. Two stones, two completely different jobs
These share a shelf and get confused constantly. The in-game tooltips, verbatim:
| Stone | Icon | What the tooltip says | What it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transmutation Stone | orange | rerolls the attributes of inscribed legendary armaments | the dice |
| Conversion Stone | blue | converts legendary armaments to the same type for other formations | the mover |
The decision test — ask which half is wrong.
- Wrong stats, right armament → Transmutation
- Right armament, wrong formation → Conversion
Neither stone does the other's job, and burning the wrong one is a pure loss with nothing to show for it.
2. Conversion Stones are the binding constraint, and it isn't close
⚠️ This is the single most useful line in the guide. Conversion Stones are dramatically scarcer than Transmutation Stones.
When a new formation or variant launches, the game runs a Conversion Support quest ladder paying out roughly 3 Conversion Stones total. Measure that against the real bill:
| Job | Realistic stone cost | What the ~3-stone subsidy covers |
|---|---|---|
| Move one full armament set | 4–8 stones | between a third and three-quarters |
| Everything-build | ~40 stones | under 8% |
So plan armament moves around Conversion Stones and treat Transmutation Stones as the freer resource. Chasing better rolls is cheap; moving a set between formations is not.
3. Where inscribed armaments come from — and the odds
A Formation Choice Chest lets you pick which formation's armament pool you draw from. That choice is the value of the chest. What you cannot choose is the quality tier, and the in-game odds table is blunt:
| Outcome | Probability |
|---|---|
| Inscribed Legendary Armament | 12.472% |
| Legendary Armament (plain) | 87.528% |
An inscribed legendary carries rolled bonus attributes on top of the base armament — it is the version Transmutation Stones exist to reroll. Roughly one chest in eight. The other seven pay a plain legendary for the formation you chose.
How to open them well
- Lock your formation first. The choice is the entire value. Opening before you've settled your main formation converts a targeted draw into a random one.
- Expect plain legendaries. At 12.5%, inscribed pulls are the bonus, not the plan. Ten chests yield about one inscribed piece in expectation. Anyone promising you an inscribed set from a handful of chests is selling you variance.
- Bank chests across a formation change. Unopened chests are formation-agnostic; opened ones are not. That flexibility has real option value and it dies the moment you open.
4. The spend order that follows from all of the above
The three systems interact in one direction, so there is a correct sequence:
- Settle the formation. Everything downstream is formation-locked.
- Assemble the set — open choice chests into that formation, accept plain legendaries.
- Convert only what your main formation actually equips, against your Conversion Stone count.
- Reroll last, with Transmutation Stones, once the set is assembled.
⚠️ Rerolling before step 3 wastes the rolls. Attribute rerolls on an armament you later convert are gone. This is the most common self-inflicted loss in the whole armament economy, and it comes from treating the two stones as interchangeable upgrades.
The whale path
Inscribed-set completion is a volume game: at 12.472%, chest count is the real variable, not luck management. Price any "finish the inscribed set" push in chests-needed-at-one-in-eight and then decide with a number in front of you.
On conversion: if you're moving a full competitive set to a new formation variant, **count your stones before committing to the variant.** The support event's ~3 stones will not cover a whole-set move, and the shortfall is a genuine purchase decision, not a rounding error. Deciding the variant first and discovering the stone bill second is how a "free" meta shift turns into an unplanned spend.
The budget path
**A plain legendary armament in your correct formation beats an inscribed one in the wrong formation.** Take the 87.5% outcome gladly — it is still the right slot, and the right slot is what's producing stats.
Convert only the armaments your main formation actually equips. Reroll only after the set is assembled. If you follow the section 4 order, you never spend a Conversion Stone you didn't need to, and that is the whole game at low spend.
*Everything above is from the in-game tooltips and the in-game odds table. Where the corpus does not have a number, this guide does not supply one.*