Deciding what to keep from the gear you find while leveling

Fix the order you read stats in

Reading in the same order every time makes the call fast, and stops you trading away survivability for a damage number.

• ▸First, resistances: if swapping lowers a resistance, ask whether another slot can cover the hole. If it cannot, pass. Running deep in the red on resistance stops your progress the moment the difficulty steps up.
• ▸Second, health and armor: while leveling, too little damage just means a fight takes longer, whereas too little survivability stops your progress outright. That asymmetry is why health, armor and post-hit recovery come before damage here - a way of playing, not a game rule.
• ▸Third, damage: only check whether it applies to the damage type your actual skills deal. A '+% damage' line for a type you do not use is not a reason to equip something.
• ▸One thing sits outside that order: +skill levels (a +1 to a mastery, for instance) are disproportionately strong. Raising your core skill's rank usually lifts damage and survivability together, so it can be worth a small resistance loss.
• ▸Everything you wear while leveling is a stopgap. Swapping frequently into 80%-good gear beats holding out for a perfect piece.

What the colour does and does not tell you

Colour indicates how many magic properties a piece carries - not whether it is good for your build.

• ▸Normal (white) carries almost no magic properties; Magic (yellow) carries magic properties; Rare (green) adds more on top; Epic (blue) and Legendary (purple) are named upper- and top-tier items.
• ▸What matters for triage is that the green Rare tier includes Monster Infrequents (MIs). **In the leveling band a green MI is quite often better for you than a blue Epic**, so going by colour alone and favouring the blue costs you. The MI article covers how they work and how to target them.
• ▸Through ordinary drops, Rare (green) starts appearing around level 12, Epic (blue) around level 15 and Legendary (purple) around level 50. That describes normal enemy drops - fixed placements are an exception (Francis' Gun, for instance, is equippable from level 1). Either way white and yellow dominate the early game, so there is little to agonise over.
• ▸Legendaries do drop on Normal, but they are more common on Elite and Ultimate. There is little value in grinding for purples while leveling.
• ▸Colour is also used outside equipment: grey for general items such as iron bits, light purple for quest items and map items like dynamite, light orange for components and augments, and deep orange for consumables. These show regardless of filter settings, so you will not miss them.

The attribute-requirement trap

'I'm only a few points short' is the most expensive mistake available to you while leveling.

• ▸Each equipment category requires specific attributes. One-handed axes and maces need physique; one-handed swords and ranged weapons need cunning; one-handed daggers need cunning and spirit; one-handed sceptres need physique and spirit; two-handed melee weapons and shields need physique; caster off-hands need spirit. For armor, caster helms and chests need physique and spirit; light/heavy helms through boots and belts need physique; rings and amulets need spirit; medals have only a level requirement.
• ▸Requirements are derived from item level, damage, armor and similar - which means that within the same slot, stronger gear demands more.
• ▸For belts, rings and amulets specifically, the *number* of properties (not what they are) also feeds the requirement. Having base armor counts as +1, and a DoT duration bonus counts as +2 together with its attack modifier. Maximum-resistance bonuses, granted skills and pet properties are not counted. This is why a promising ring loaded with affixes suddenly demands far more spirit.
• ▸The practical consequence is to **be cautious about spending attribute points for one short-lived stopgap**. Attributes cannot be reallocated at the Spirit Guide; they need a separate consumable, the Tonic of Reshaping (AoM only). If you are playing the base game alone there is no way to undo the allocation at all, which makes it harder still to walk back. For allocation policy and respec details see the attributes and respec articles.
• ▸If you truly want the piece, the escape hatch is to make up the attribute elsewhere - a component such as Polished Emerald, or another slot. Reserve that effort for gear you are confident you will keep.

Keep, sell, or stash

Keeping your bags clear is itself a leveling-speed stat.

• ▸Selling green-or-better pieces you will not use is the sensible default. Iron bits have many calls on them - crafting components, faction writs, vendor purchases - and rarely pile up while leveling.
• ▸Filter out white and yellow entirely; the in-game loot filter can stop them from displaying and makes farming far more comfortable.
• ▸Send something to the shared stash only if another character could plausibly use it. Note that soulbound items cannot go in the shared stash - which includes anything you have applied an augment to. The medal augments added in Forgotten Gods are the exception: they do not soulbind, and items carrying them can still go in the shared stash.
• ▸Keep blueprints and crafting materials even when you cannot see a use yet. A blueprint learned by right-clicking is shared across all characters and difficulties - but **not between Softcore and Hardcore**, which keep separate learned-blueprint data. Duplicates of ones you already know can be sold.
• ▸If a piece is an MI you were targeting, hold onto it even at a mediocre roll. You can hunt a better one later, and meanwhile it plugs the hole.

Do not sink components into stopgaps

Because removal is a trade-off, the decision to socket is really a decision about how long you will wear the item.

• ▸Only one point really bears on triage: removing a component is a choice between keeping the item and keeping the component, and whichever you do not choose is destroyed. Augments are stricter still - the augment is destroyed either way. (The components and augments article covers the full socketing mechanics.)
• ▸So a component sunk into a stopgap is something you either lose when you drop the item, or pay for by keeping gear you have outgrown. **The deciding factor is the item's lifespan**, and a workable rule of thumb is whether you will wear it for another ten levels. If it is likely to be replaced within a few, socket nothing but cheap components. (The ten-level line is our heuristic, not a game rule.)
• ▸Conversely, socket early into gear you know will last. Low-requirement components - Frozen Heart (level 1), Wardstone (level 7), Corpse Dust (level 7) - pay off from the early game and tend to sit in slots you will not change soon.
• ▸For which component fills which resistance, see the reverse-lookup article.

1. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Items — Confirms the rarity-to-colour mapping (white/yellow/green/blue/purple), the non-equipment colour categories, the level bands where each rarity starts dropping (green around 12, blue around 15, purple around 50), legendaries being more common on higher difficulties, the required-attribute type per equipment category, the rule that belts/rings/amulets add the *count* of properties to the requirement (base armor +1, DoT duration +2 with its attack modifier, excluding max-resistance bonuses, granted skills and pet properties), soulbound items being barred from the shared stash, and the inventor's recovery trade-off.
2. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Items/Components — Confirms component level requirements (your level must exceed them), eligible slots, the keep-item-or-keep-component removal trade-off in which the other is destroyed, and the required levels of the low-requirement components named in the text (Frozen Heart 1, Wardstone 7, Corpse Dust 7, Polished Emerald 1).
3. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Items/Augments — Confirms that augments are destroyed on removal regardless of which option is chosen, that applying one normally makes the item soulbound, and the exception that the medal augments added in Forgotten Gods do not soulbind, leaving items that carry them eligible for the shared stash.
4. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn Version V1.3.0.0 + Hotfixes — Official patch notes for the verified version; the latest at the time of writing is V1.3.0.2 Hotfix 2. Also confirms that v1.3.0.0 added dedicated shared-stash pages for components and crafting materials with an instant deposit action, which affects the inventory-management advice here.