How to Build an Enhancement
Have you ever killed an enemy and all of a sudden a message pops up: “Recipe Found!”? Well, the recipes you find are part of building Invented Enhancements (learn more about those here). All you’ll need now are the salvage pieces that go into making whatever Enhancement the recipe builds, as well as the influence to build it and the enhancement table to build it on.
Training, Dual-Origin, and Single-Origin enhancements cannot be built, only bought. However, Invented Enhancements can be built, and this is the only way you're going to get some of the cool Enhancement Sets onto your character (Miracle, Performance Shifter, etc.). Below are the steps to building an enhancement. (My level 35 Corruptor Salartha served as the model for these screenshots, so you will see a lot of Enhancement Sets that I got to help her along.)
Step 1: First, click "Recipes" on your Power Tray menu bar (which reads "Powers Inspirations Enhancements Salvage Recipes"; see it on the Screen Illustration Module). If you have any Invention Recipes, they will display like the image below:
In the previous image, you can see that I've got several Rare (dark brown) recipes, as well as an Uncommon (dark yellow) recipe. When the recipes are ready to be built, the dark brown text will lighten to a bright orange, and the dark yellow text will brighten to a bright yellow. Common recipes, like those of basic Invention Enhancements, will be in dark gray text until you have everything to build them, at which point the text will light up white.
Step 2: Expand the recipe in your Recipe Inventory to see what kinds of salvage it needs. Usually, recipes need 2-5 pieces of salvage to build. Also, check to see how much influence it takes to build this particular Enhancement (the cost varies greatly depending on what kind of Enhancement it is). You can see all this information when you expand the recipe, like the image below:
In the previous image, the items in red text are the ones I currently don't have available in salvage, letting me know that I still can't build this recipe. You can also see that it takes 66,200 influence to build this particular Enhancement (seen under the "Need" column).
Step 3: Check your own salvage storage, your Supergroup’s salvage racks, or go to Wentworth’s to obtain the pieces of salvage you need. Beware: some of the prices for common salvage at Wentworth’s are greatly inflated! You may need to go to the AE building instead of going to Wentworth's, especially if you have a lot of AE tickets to spend and not a lot of influence.
Step 4: Once you have the salvage and the influence you need, head to the nearest Enhancement table (they are usually narrow and black with a blue glowy surface and screen). If your Supergroup base does not have an Enhancement table, head to the nearest safe University (Steel Canyon if you're below level 25, Croatoa if you're 25-35, and Founders' Falls otherwise)—-Enhancement tables will be all over the place, in the lobby, in the library, etc.
Step 5: Click the table, and then on the window that pops up, look at the bottom right of the window, where you’ll see a drop-down menu box that has the word “Hide...” in it. See the image below:
Referring to the previous image: click that menu box and choose “Hide unowned recipes”--this just makes it less daunting to look through the recipes for the one you want to build. Here is what it looks like when you have hidden the recipes you don't own:
If you're wondering where your special recipes are, always click the "Invention" bar (in this screenshot, it's between "Hold" and "Knockback") to expand out the list of special recipes (costume pieces, temporary powers, and Enhancement Sets).
I also generally click to hide "Recipes missing ingredients" as well, especially if I've got the salvage to build several recipes at a time. Here is what the Enhancement Table available recipes looks like when you have hidden the ones that are still missing pieces:
If you choose to hide both unowned and incomplete recipes, the screen will look like this:
Much better, huh? Notice that the title of the Enhancement is now in bright orange, showing you that it's a Rare Enhancement ready to be built!
In the above screenshot, the recipe is already expanded; to expand the recipe so that you see the list of salvage, you would just click the name of the Enhancement. Once you have the recipe expanded out, click the blue button labeled “Create” on the bottom left of the recipe box.
With a dramatic swooshing sound effect, your Enhancement is created!
