Gear pieces are items that are collected, equipped, upgraded, and to some degree even customized, all with the purpose of conferring stat boosts on your heroes. Each currently released gear piece occupies one out of 5 separate slots and can only be equipped to one hero, and no hero currently has more than one gear piece able to be equipped in any one slot. At this point in time, all gear that occupy similar slots across heroes boost the same stats and have the same effect if of the same level.
Level 1 gear for most heroes can drop from operations; the only exceptions are for arena, challenge, and store-specific characters, with such characters' gear being found in the same place.
Every battle in the Campaign have a chance of dropping one, or several (for battles 6, 12, 18, and 24 for each chapter) specific pieces of gear. The gear level varies from 1-10 (normal) or 2-20 (heroic). While only battles 6, 12, 18, and 24 can be repeated, some other battles can drop gear that those battles do not include. For example, one of the battles before heroic battle 24, chapter 8 drops level 20 Gloves for Blademaster Robin that the final battle does not include.
Raid completion rewards may also include 3 pieces of higher level gear (20, 30, 40, 50 reported).
There is a cap to how many pieces of gear can be owned (estimated ~2500). If you reach the cap, it is impossible to obtain more gear and excess ones must be shattered. Gear obtained from Campaign may be automatically converted into 500 or 1000 credits if you reached the cap.
Warning: if you claim gear from Achievements (applies to a number of heroes including Arkham Knight Batman, Heartbreaker Harley Quinn, etc.) while having the maximum amount of gear allowed, you may not receive the gear and you may not be able to obtain them otherwise.
Upgrading and shattering gear
Gear is upgraded using Gear Material. Gear Material can be obtained by shattering other pieces of gear (hopefully, spares).
It is recommended that, if you obtain a duplicate piece of gear at level 1, you first upgrade it before shattering it. This will cost you 20 more gear material at first but net you 20 more gear material upon shattering (net cost 0), but will slightly increase your chance of getting a Gear Reforge.
Chance effects
Gear can have 1, 2 or 3 chance effects at gear level 5, 20, and 40. They are random addition effects are vary from different pieces of even the same type of gear. 1 Gear Reforge can be spent to reroll a chance effect, similar to rerolling Talents. The Gear Reforge is still consumed even if you choose to keep the original chance effect.
Set bonus
Each hero has a "Gear Set Bonus" depending on the number of items equipped. These provide further boosts. These are available at 2, 3, 5 pieces equipped, no matter which.
Aesthetics
Equipping all 5 pieces of gear changes the hero's appearance, both the model and the card. Evolving all 5 pieces to at least level 60 changes it again more noticeably (with glowing effects on most heroes), and the gear pieces themselves also change in appearance. Exceptions are cards based on other media (e.g. Arkham Knight Batman or Multiverse Supergirl), which remain unchanged.
Trivia
- While there is an achievement series for upgrading a piece of gear to certain levels, it is possible to complete it by obtaining a piece of gear that is already at that level, e.g. obtaining a level 20 piece of gear from raids will complete any such achievements at 20 or below.