As you adventure, mobs drop Motes of Potential — the currency you spend to permanently empower your spells, songs, and gear, all the way to +10. Here's exactly how the system works, and how to make the most of it.
Motes of Potential drop regularly from NPCs. You spend them to empower and upgrade your spells, songs, and gear. Each upgrade costs more than the last, and everything caps at +10.
They drop from mobs within ten levels below you and higher. At level 50, for example, anything level 40 and up can drop one.
There are ten tiers. Higher-tier motes are rarer but push an upgrade further, faster. Your odds of higher tiers rise with rares & bosses, running a double or triple class, and higher difficulty.
Take two motes of any tier to a Construct of Pure Potential — found where the Priests of Discord used to reside — and exchange them for one mote of the next tier. Two tier-1 motes in, one tier-2 mote out, and so on up the ladder.
Upgrading works differently depending on what you're empowering.
No restrictions. Invest any amount of motes of any tier into a spell or song — the only limit is the +10 cap.
You must use a mote of the next tier or higher. A Cloak of Flames +1 won't accept a tier-1 mote — it needs a tier-2 or higher mote to upgrade.
Got two baseline copies of an item? Don't just combine them into a single +1. Use motes to bring each to +1 first — then combine, and you've got a single +2.
Upgrades aren't just bigger heals and nukes. Every rank on a charm, mez, or lull raises the highest NPC level it can affect by 1. A spell that caps at level-55 mobs will influence level 60 once it's at +5.
In your first weeks, pour most motes into spells and songs. Gear can be combined to level up; spells and songs can only be raised with motes (plus one weekly raid token). The exception: quested best-in-slot gear (like Plane of Sky rewards) always arrives at baseline, so it's worth upgrading.
Higher difficulties and killing rares/bosses help, but the real farm is volume — kill as many mobs as fast as possible. Many players group up in a zone like Plane of Hate and clear it for hours.