tl;dr version: Some equipment lines are too linear; choices in gear path make things more interesting for the player. Suggestion is to add branches to all equipment lines that have none.

I've noticed a few weapons and armor in the game have bland upgrade paths with no choices for the player; once a player decides to upgrade one of these lines they have no choice as to the final form. As a short list:

• Cobalt Armor/Helm (ignoring Vitasuit deluxe)
• Blaster
• Spur
• Snarble Barb
• Spine Cone
• Jelly Mail/Helm
• Quicksilver Mail/Helm
• Skelly Suit/Mask
• Jelly Shield
• Skelly Shield
• Owlite Shield
• Blackened Crest
• Bristling Buckler

Technically the alchemers and chemical bombs come under this as well, but it'd just be an issue of replacing the 2* alchemers with prismatech and the 2* chemical bombs with haze bombs as before. They're all so similar I don't really consider them non-branching.

Anyways, let's fill in some of the gaps for niches the game needs filling.

Cobalt set - This set provides no status defenses, or weaknesses - the latter is the key part in my idea for a branch for the set. The game has no Normal/Shadow armor with no penalties - have Cobalt branch into a generic shadow defense armor.

Blaster - Branch into a lightweight pure pierce gun with otherwise the same properties. A direct upgrade to the Antigua that doesn't add split damage types could also achieve this niche, however. If so, do something like CIV.

Spur - There's already been a couple large threads on this; the most popular suggestion seems to be a shadow line for it.

Snarble Barb - Not much I can think of. Split Piercing/Shadow line plausible - while it sucks on a gun, on a sword it's geared well towards the monsters with the right weaknesses. It'd be worse against 3 families (Fiend, Undead, Beast) to be slightly better against the rest, though. Alternately, lower damage for a status effect - perhaps poison or curse.

Spine Cone - Shadow version. There isn't a high-speed shadow bomb yet.

Jelly/Quicksilver sets - Have jelly branch into quicksilver. The 3* of both sets are available as token rewards anyways.

Jelly shield - Quicksilver shield. Same effect/resistances as quicksilver set. Maybe with a third speed bonus we might notice the difference.

Skelly set/shield - Typically skeletons are considered strong against piercing weapons, as a thrust could simply go between the bones. However, this doesn't really make sense when we're just wearing a skeleton over our clothes. Still, the game has split piercing/elemental (drake scale) and elemental/shadow (silvermail) armor, so piercing/shadow could go well too, and there's something of an argument for it. Resistances - not sure.

Owlite shield - Elemental/Shadow split shield. 4* Dark Owlite, 5* Demonic Owlite, because it feels like a thematic split from Horned. Resistances: Curse, poison.

Blackened Crest - Not sure. Thematic for Vanaduke's token rewards - Crest of Vog - high elemental/fire defense (More than owlite), chance of causing fire in surrounding area on break(including on user, like Fang of Vog)?

Bristling Buckler - Shadow variant. ASI or CTR?

Long post is long. If you can think of anything better, go ahead and post it - I've tried to make the concepts here roughly balanced, though.