Mobs drop Motes of Potential, the currency you spend to permanently upgrade your spells, songs, and gear through numeric tiers, all the way to +10. Here is exactly how upgrading works, what each tier gives you, what it costs, and where the community is spending motes so far.
What a single tier adds depends on the spell's category. These are per-tier values, so they stack with every rank.
| Category | Cast time | Mana | Duration | Damage / Healing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nuke / Lifetap (instant direct damage, stun-nukes) | −2% | −2% | n/a | +6% damage verified |
| DoT (incl. DD+DoT hybrids like Burning / Searing Arrow) | −4% | −2% | +5% | +3% per tick; +6% on the direct-hit portion of hybrids ? |
| Heal (instant) | −4% | −2% | n/a | ~+3% healing 1 report |
| Heal over Time | −4% | −2% | +5% ? | ~+3% per tick table only |
| Debuff (Tash, slows, snares) | −4% | −4% | +10% assumed | No scaling observed |
| Charm / Mez | −4% | −4% | +10% | Max target level rises instead (tooltip does not show it) |
| Buff (incl. self-buffs, damage shields) | −4% | −4% | +10% | No stat gains yet; damage-shield damage confirmed not increased |
verified multiple confirmations · ? unconfirmed or extrapolated · 1 report single data point, not yet a pattern
| Stat | Per tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery | −2% | Rounds down to the nearest 0.1s (1.35 to 1.3) |
| Reuse | −2% | Drops fractions (11.96 to 11s); hard floor of 1 second |
| Resist modifier | −15 | Only applies to resistable offensive spells |
| Proc potency | Tier / 2 | Combat-innate procs (e.g. Spellblade) fire at half the buff's tier, rounded down, capped at proc rank V |
+1 pet level per tier (capped at your level minus 1). Pet HP and stats scale with it, a clean power gain with no tradeoff.
Max effective target level rises with tier, even though the tooltip text does not update to show it.
10% chance per tier to skip the reagent cost entirely, reaching 100% at Tier 10.
Summon a matching-tier version of the item.
Spellblade, Quickbuff, and Symphonic Aura all trigger the upgraded version of the spells they proc.
The per-tier percentages compound fast. One player put 4 motes into Promised Renewal (Tier 3, partway to Tier 4) and cut roughly 200 mana off its ~900 base cost. By Tier 10 the same spell reportedly drops to around 495 mana. That is the shape to expect from any expensive nuke or heal: modest savings early, big cumulative savings by Tier 8 to 10. firsthand report
For spells you actually use as you level, Tier 4 to 5 is cheap (about 15 to 31 motes total) and the mana and cast-time savings add up across every class you play.
Your primary class's core nukes and heals, or anything you expect to still be casting into the next expansion. The jump from Tier 8 to 10 alone costs as much as everything before it combined.
Many players deliberately bank motes for their main class's key spells rather than spending on gear, on the logic that spell upgrades are a permanent, non-replaceable investment.
Several wisdom caster classes share the same healing spells (Light Healing, Superior Healing, Greater Healing, and so on). Upgrade Greater Healing once and it carries across Druid, Shaman, Cleric, and more.
Some players spend first on pet summon spells, since the +1 pet level per tier is a straightforward power gain with no tradeoffs.
Motes are still rare enough in beta that many players hold onto them until a consistent farming method is confirmed, rather than spending loosely.
Denon's Dirge scales hard if you build around it. One player has it hitting for roughly 3k per cast and spammable about 7 times before running out of mana.
Motes are the one currency in the game you can actually waste: a mote poured into a spell you outgrow next week is gone for good. Here is how to earn them quickly and spend them so none are lost.
Drop rate follows the con of the mob and your difficulty tier, and mobs barely get harder between D0 and D2. Running your instances at D2 pays three ways at once: more XP per kill, gear that drops already tiered higher, and better motes. Step back down if a zone gets rough, but most players who try D2 early never go back.
Farming a named for a drop and the zone greys out on you? Every kill now pays nothing, no XP and no motes. The fix is your loadouts: swap to one running your lower-level second and third classes and the zone cons back up, turning the motes and XP back on while you keep camping the same named. Never grind a greyed zone on your top loadout. See class switching to set the loadouts up.
The cheapest way to push a piece of gear is to farm a second base copy of the same item, pump low-rank motes into it until it hits +3, then merge the +3 into your +3. Two mid-tier copies merge into something well above either, and low-rank motes are the ones you have hundreds of. Chasing high-rank motes to move a single copy is the slow version of the same result.
Each rank into a pet spell levels the pet itself, roughly +6% HP, +1 base damage, and +5 skill points per rank, up to a cap of your level minus one. Ranks past that cap sit idle until you level, so feed the pet as you go rather than all at once. Two or three ranks moves a pet from light blue up to your level minus one, and a well-fed pet tanks better than most players do. Prime real estate on a Necromancer, Magician, or Enchanter slot.
Motes will bury your inventory if you let them. Type /advl, filter on "mote," and set the filter to storage so new ones route there automatically. For the ones already in your bags, press I, open Storage, go to Currencies, select the mote at the bottom, and hit Deposit.
The endgame answer has not moved in weeks: D4 Plane of Hate or Plane of Fear, working the yellows and reds. Each difficulty tier doubles the merge value of a drop, so a D4 drop is worth sixteen D0 drops when you push an item toward +10, and the same kills pay your planar gear at the same time. The rule of thumb: D0 or D1 to level, D4 to farm, and a non-respawning instance when you want a clean clear.
There are ten mote ranks, Infinitesimal up to Infinite Potential. The twist is that a mote is worth different amounts depending on what you upgrade: spells value it on a power-of-two curve, so higher ranks are worth dramatically more, while items value it by its plain rank number, so the climb is linear. eqlwiki
| Rank | Mote | Spell XP (2^rank-1) | Item XP (= rank) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mote of Infinitesimal Potential | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | Mote of Minor Potential | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | Mote of Lesser Potential | 4 | 3 |
| 4 | Mote of Potential | 8 | 4 |
| 5 | Mote of Major Potential | 16 | 5 |
| 6 | Mote of Greater Potential | 32 | 6 |
| 7 | Mote of Superior Potential | 64 | 7 |
| 8 | Mote of Grand Potential | 128 | 8 |
| 9 | Mote of Ascendant Potential | 256 | 9 |
| 10 | Mote of Infinite Potential | 512 | 10 |
Each tier costs twice the XP of the one before it, so the back half of the track is where the real spending happens. Reaching +10 takes 1,023 XP in total, and the jump from +8 to +10 alone costs about as much as +1 through +8 combined. eqlwiki
| Tier | XP for this tier (2^tier-1) | Cumulative XP |
|---|---|---|
| +1 | 1 | 1 |
| +2 | 2 | 3 |
| +3 | 4 | 7 |
| +4 | 8 | 15 |
| +5 | 16 | 31 |
| +6 | 32 | 63 |
| +7 | 64 | 127 |
| +8 | 128 | 255 |
| +9 | 256 | 511 |
| +10 | 512 | 1023 |
Item upgrades are tier-gated: a Tier 5 item generally takes Rank 5 or Rank 6 motes, not lower and not higher. Spell upgrades have no such gate, so any mote works on a spell. exact rule varies by source
Because an item counts a mote by its rank, combining loses item value: two Rank 5 motes are 10 item XP, but the single Rank 6 they become is only 6. For gear, use the lowest eligible mote and bank the higher ranks rather than combining up.
These raid rewards, capped at three per week and three held at once, instantly advance a spell or item one full tier. A single one is worth a whole tier, so they pay off most at the top: ride motes through about +7, then spend Void-Touched on +8, +9, and +10. eqlwiki
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. New Kerran characters have the same construct on their home isle, the Constructed Potential, so you can upgrade without leaving Kerra Isle.
The mote-tier requirement is different depending on what you are empowering.
No tier restriction. Invest any amount of motes of any tier; the only limit is the +10 cap. Feed these first, especially early, since gear can be combined up but spells and songs can only be raised with motes.
You must use a mote of the next tier or higher. A Cloak of Flames +1 will not accept a tier-1 mote; it needs a tier-2 or higher mote to upgrade. The exception worth spending on: quested best-in-slot gear that always arrives at baseline.
Motes are a currency that drops from mobs and is spent to permanently upgrade your spells, songs, and gear through numeric tiers, up to +10. Each tier adds to the stat block based on the category.
Motes drop from mobs within about ten levels below you and up, in strength tiers from Minor upward. You can also combine two motes of one tier into one of the next tier at a Construct. Combining raises a mote's spell value but lowers its item value, so combine up for spell upgrades and spend the lowest eligible mote on gear.
Put your first motes into the spells you cast most, your main nuke, heal, or slow, since per-tier bonuses stack with every rank. The tables above break down what each tier gives by spell category.
The assumed cap is +10, ten tiers. Instant and permanent-duration spells never gain a duration bonus, and zero-mana spells have nothing to reduce.