Freedom Wars: Late Bloomer Weapon Guide

All right hello everyone! Here im gonna explain in the simplest way possible how to create a Late Bloomer Weapon in Freedom Wars a game for PSVita.

Step 1- Get your hands on a Rarity 6-8 Late Bloomer weapon either by manufacturing or looting

First let me explain what a Late Bloomer Weapon is. A Late Bloomer Weapon simply refers to a weapon that is in the 15% damage range of that weapon. Let say you want a Damascus Knife, Damascus Knife has a level 1 possible damage range of 172-227 so the Late Bloomer(LB) variant would have 180 damage or [(227-172)*0.15]+172.

LB Weapons have the lowest damage earlier on but they outperform everybody else later on. For Example a LB Advanced level 10 EZ Katze has a maximum raw damage of 1196(before mods), whereas the Early Bloomer version would hit a ceiling of 940 which is a very big difference.

Note that mods can affect the damage displayed. “Power UP” mods in particular increases the base damage, so you’ll need to account for that in your calculations. Using the earlier example, a level 1 Damascus Knife with “Power UP L” mod increase damage by 20%, and therefore can have damage up to 216 and still be considered a Late Bloomer (180.25*1.2). The “+/- X% Damage Variation” mod appears to impact damage after the fact, which can be ignored for the purpose of this calculation.

Step 2- Upgrade the Weapon to level 5

Pretty Self explanatory

Step 3- Upgrade the Weapon one more time and choose one of the advanced models

You could choose any of the advanced model in theory, but it's recommended that you go with the first one (Impact) as opposed to the elemental versions. Reason is that you can add elements in the next step, so you might as well pickup some Impact here to help with staggering abductors.

Step 4- If need be, maximize the weapon’s damage by combining it with a “best-in-class” weapon

The point of this step is if your Late Bloomer is not already best-in-class (right at 15%), feeding it a best-in-class from any of the four brackets will bump your main weapon damage up to its maximum potential.

Best-in-class refers to the damage of the weapon relative to its bracket. Remember how a Late Bloomer is a weapon in the bottom 15% bracket of the possible damage range? There are four such brackets: Late Bloomer (0-15%), Random (16-35%), Normal (36-47%), and Early Bloomer (48-100%). Best-in-class refers to weapons that has the highest damage for the bracket it is in. In other words, any weapons right up to the 15%, 35%, 47%, or 100% mark is best-in-class for their own bracket.

Using the earlier example, if your level 1 Damascus Knife happens to be 175 damage, we know it’s a Late Bloomer, but also that it’s below the theoretical max of 180. This means when you level it up, it will scale accordingly and always fall behind another Late Bloomer that started out at 180. Now, if you feed it with, say, another Damascus Knife with 227 damage (best-in-class from the Early Bloomer bracket), it will bump your Late Bloomer’s damage up to theoretical max of 175, and it will scale up from there as you upgrade. Again, you could actually feed your main weapon with any weapon type of any damage bracket, as long as it’s the highest damage of its bracket.

Step 5- Maximize the weapon's elements by feeding it elemental weapons

Follow same procedure as the above step, but instead choose weapons with high elemental attributes as the fodder. Now that your main weapon is already best-of-class it’s raw damage will remain the same after combining, but 20% of the fodder’s highest element will be added to your main weapon.

For Fire/Ice, the quickest and cost effect way is to buy the Adelring and Creamy Screamy from Zakka and use them as fodders. The Adelring and Creamy Screamy would give the main weapon 4 and 2 elements per merge, respectively.

For Electric/Will'O, the quickest way is to buy the blank level 5 weapon from Zakka for 1000 entitlement points, upgrade that weapon right away to an elemental version for 30+ elements, which would give you 6 elements upon merging. You can buy the first mat from the vendor in Cell Garden, and the second two by farming 2-4 and 7-5.

Maximum on any one weapon is 100 points total, and generally people go with all 100 in one element, or 25 points across all four.

Step 6- Add desirable mods to your weapon

Follow same procedures as the above step, but choose fodders that have desirable mods, and you will want to utilize that third item (materials) slot to get the outputs that you want.

Core Concepts:

• "Desirable mods" will depends on what you want to do with the weapon. Focus on criticals for a crit happy weapon like Hawkshadow? Elemental mods to maximize burn/freeze/will-o explosions? Raw damage increase? This is what will determine what mods you're looking for. 
• When you combine the weapons, one of four things will happen at random. 1) “Maintain” a mod from main weapon, 2) “Inherit” a mod from the fodder, 3) “Add” a mod from the material, or 4) “New” randomly generated mod. 
• Depending on rarity, the number of Maintained and Inherited will always add up to a fixed number during modding, with Added/New making up the remainder. Rarity 6 will always have 4 Maintained/Inherited, Rarity 7 will always have 6 Maintained/Inherited, and Rarity 8 will always have 7 Maintained/Inherited. 
• For example, if you have a Rarity 6 weapon with two mods prior to combining with a blank weapon (nothing to Inherit), both mods are guaranteed to be Maintained after the mod; if the Rarity 6 weapon had five mods prior to combining, only four of the mods will be maintained. 
• If you want an undesirable mod removed, you can pay the Fraternity dude in Cell Garden to do so for a low, low rate of 5,000 entitlement points per mod. 
• Since you can use Selenium as a material to ensure 3 mods are Inherited, ideally you want fodders are ones with 1-3 desirable mods that you do want, and nothing else. You can craft desirable fodders by combining weapons, adding materials, and/or removing undesirable mods. 
• Mission 2-4 is a good place to harvest Seleniums. Mission 3-4 and 7-3 are good places to farm fodders - just camp near the exit and farm the endless respawning sinners. 

General Workflow for Modding Weapons:

1. Find/Craft Modders with 1-3 desirable mods. 
2. Feed main weapon with fodder with Selenium 
3. Pay 5,000 Entitlement Points to remove undesirable mods 
4. Repeat above until you have a weapon with desirable mods only 

Save Scum Method:

1. Save your game(Easiest way is to online save on PSN or with PC/PS3) 
2. Mod your desired weapon 
3. If the randomly generated mods are not satisfactory, quit the game, reload and repeat 

Sources where i got the data:

http://www.reddit.com/r/FreedomWars/comments/2leubo/dummys_guide_to_optimal_weapon_crafting/
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/715590-freedom-wars/70478375
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/715590-freedom-wars/70483249