This topic keeps coming up -- primarily with folks who struggle with an overflowing mod inventory, but others as well. I am just ... not a video creator. Not my bag. So I'm going to post this here and link back to it as necessary when someone on the forums looks like they need some advice with mod basics.
What are mods? How do we talk about them?
Mods are equipment for your character that affects the final stats of that character. Unlike gear or relic mats, however, mods can be unequipped from one character and moved to another - or simply sold for credits (never as much as you invested). This allows you to upgrade the mods on your best toons as you gain a new best mod of a particular type. Then you can hand down your old best mods to characters that are good, but maybe not your best. Let's look at the mod screen for my account's version of The Stranger:
The dots indicate a quality known as "rarity" and currently run from 1 dot to 6 dots. Mods from 1 to 4 dots in rarity are worthless. Do not save these mods. Mods from 1 dot to 5 dot all have the same border, a kind of grey. 6-dot mods gain a gold border instead. Since you won't be saving 1-dot to 4-dot mods, you can generally use that border color to tell you at a glance whether a mod is 5-dot or 6-dot.
Each mod gives 5 bonuses, and contributes to what might be another.
I say "might be" because the last bonus is a "set bonus". When you collect enough mods of the same type on a character (the required number is always either 2 or 4), you gain the set bonus. But each mod individually gives you its primary bonus and 4 secondary bonuses.
Each primary gives a fixed bonus. The amount of your bonus is NEVER random.
Each secondary gives a random bonus, and also it can gain multiple increments of that bonus. Once a mod is sufficiently upgraded to have 4 secondaries exposed, with each future improvement that grants a secondary roll, you "roll" an additional hit of some secondary you've already acquired. No matter how much you improve your mod, you can never have more than 5 rolls on a single characteristic. Nor can you have more than 8 total rolls on a 5-dot mod or 12 total rolls on a 6-dot mod.
This produces wide variations in how large a bonus a given secondary provides. Each bonus is random, and you can have 1 to 5 doses, further separating the meagre bonuses from the fat ones.
There are 12 possible secondaries. Apart from a rule that a mod cannot have a secondary bonus of the same type as its primary bonus, any of the 12 possible secondaries can appear on any given mod. But since one is typically ruled out by the "no matching the primary rule" and since there are only 4 slots for possible secondaries, you generally have a 4-in-11 chance of any given secondary appearing on any given mod. Decent odds, but by no means great.
Finally, notice that each mod has a shape to it, and each character has 1 slot available for each of the 6 possible shapes. Two mods with the same shape can never be placed on the same character. There are always the same 6 slots on every character, one of each shape, and you must match your mod shapes to the slot shapes.
Ultimately this will force you to acquire mods that effectively duplicate each other but fit different slots, so that when it is important you can put 6 different mods on a character that all boost the same stats.
That focussed improvement is how randomly selected mods provide reasonable bonuses, but carefully selected mods grant amazing performance boosts.
The next posts will focus on other aspects of mods -- most importantly, how do you know when when a mod is great or good? When to hold on and when to sell a mod? That's going to be the single most important skill in developing your mod inventory, and there don't seem to be many good places to learn it. So let's tackle that, shall we?
This is probably extremely unnecessary and I can see people even getting offended that they wouldn't be trusted to figure this out by themselves, but historically speaking, many posters on these forums are terrible at figuring out simple things in SWGOH by themselves. Seedy, you've talked a lot about circles and diamonds and crosses but you never actually explained what you mean by any of that, so I took 5 minutes to create this chart. If it ends up being helpful, great. If it doesn't, who cares. If it tweaks someone's nose because they assume that I think they're too stupid to know what the diamond mod is, wonderful.
So now we come to the most important topic that none of the intro to modding videos never seems to discuss:
What is a GOOD mod, and how do I know when I have one?
Because Speed is useful for every character type, when building your mod collection you want speed on every single mod. If it is an arrow with a Speed primary, fine. If it isn't, then you'll want a Speed secondary of +5 to start. Some people accept a +4, some people instantly sell a mod that begins with +4 speed. Either approach is fine. Just make a decision and stick with it, instantly selling all the mods that don't meet your speed minimum.
Later you will encounter individual toons that are exceptions. Their kits operate in an unusual way, and for those toons you might want mods with zero speed. You should feel free to mod those toons with specially farmed zero-speed mods. But you shouldn't have those mods in your collection just waiting for CG to release one of these weirdo toons. Save only mods with speed, and when you get an unusual toon that you think might be good with zero speed on it, figure out exactly what you want for that toon and farm those mods specifically.
Once you get past the "has speed" hurdle, evaluation of mods becomes more complicated.
When doing that evaluation, remember that you compare everything else back to the set bonus. Let's look at two of my mods - one bad mod and one good one.
Here's a close-up of that Stranger mod we used to talk terminology in my last post:
The set bonus is Crit Chance. We know that from the central symbol on the mod: an explosion with "2x" in the middle.
Crit Chance - like Offense and Crit Damage mod types - in an inherently offensive mod. For mods of these three types you want to create an entire set of stat bonuses that feed into the central theme of doing damage.
So we want to compare all the bonuses back to central theme, asking, "Does this help us do damage?"
First we look at the primary, and, yes, an Off% primary helps a character do damage. This allows us to say that the Set Type and the Primary match. For squares, circles, and diamonds this isn't as important bc the primary choices on these mods types are severely limited. Square primaries are ALWAYS Off%. Diamonds are always Def%. And Circles are always either Health% or Protection%. While we would LIKE a match between Set Type and Primary, on the left side mod slots, we can't always guarantee it.
But on the right side - the Arrows, Triangles, and Crosses - if the Set Type and Primary do not match, you almost certainly want to sell the mod before investing any resources in it.
So for both the reason that this is a right-side mod where we can't pick just the right Primary, but also because we're lucky and our Set and Primary match anyway, this square passes the first test.
The next test is this: Does the Set have an exact match SOMEWHERE? CC% mods should always have a CC bonus, either in the Primary or in one of the Secondaries. Only Triangles can have CC% Primaries, so on a square we're looking for CC% in the Secondaries. And, yep! We find CC%.
Next we want 3 or 4 out of the 4 secondaries to work well with our Set. Since speed is never bad and works well with any set type, we're counting Speed as "working well" with CC% just as we would with any other set type. That leaves 3 slots to examine. We also have CC% an exact match which by definition works well with the Set, and Potency, which doesn't directly deal damage (or increase it) but does go well with attacker-types.
Of the secondaries, only Defense doesn't work well with our attacking theme.
Still, because our test is to look for at least three secondaries that work well with the theme, we're satisfied that we have a good mod.
SUMMING UP: THE TL/DR OF THIS POST
Ask, does the mod meet your speed minimum (+5 or maybe +4) before any upgrades?
If the mod is an Arrow, Triangle, or Cross: Does the Set match the Primary?
After exposing all secondaries but before any other upgrades: do at least 3 secondaries match the theme of the mod?
If you can answer yes to all those questions, you can keep the mod long enough to do some basic upgrades. If you answered NO to even one of these three questions, sell the mod and start over with the next one.
it's all clear, and thank you for the informative and useful post!but I'm worried about the excessive amount of resources for one mod!and the constant randomness that can ultimately ruin everything!sometimes, when I use calibration, the characteristic returns to its original position several times!it's a waste of resources, as micro is not easily obtained!I've written many times about the excessive cost of a single module!it's not easy to bring a module to a good state!I'll repeat, and this is only one module!I would like to remove the strong randomness when calibrating the module or reduce the cost of micro materials.
I can discuss calibrating in a future post. But for now, I am setting up that discussion by focussing on grouping your Secondaries. If you never upgrade and slice mods that don't have a majority of good working Secondaries, then your calibration is more often successful.
You may not get what you were trying for, but on mods where every stat is useful, you get SOMETHING good. Some attacker-themed mods will still end up with more Speed, some with more Off, some with more CC% and some with more Pot. But since every attacker is different, the ones more TM jumping ability can accept less speed while the ones that inflict fewer debuffs (or, like SLKR, have abilities that inflict debuffs with no chance to resist) can accept less Potency.
Then you juggle: Did you get Potency when you wanted speed? Find an attacker that needs more Potency than speed and give them the Potency-heavy mod to replace a Speed-heavy mod and now you can give that Speed-heavy mod to the character that you wanted the speed for when you started the Calibration process.
If you select the right mods for upgrades, then every hit on a secondary is good. Your job is then to move them around so that the right mod gets to the right character.
PS. I understand the frustration of calibrating and getting the same stat you were trying to reduce. That will always be frustrating, but you can still maximize the odds of getting good calibrations by maximizing the number of secondaries that fit the theme of your mod.
The good news is that you've already done that! You have an absolutely great mod there. The Crit Chance roll is of very low quality, but your Seondaries are Speed, %Off, +Off, and CC%, which is a banger set. Sure your speed is +19 and I understand you might want more, but you got 5 hits of %Off with reasonable to high quality on those %Off hits. This kind of mod on a toon that doesn't need to maximize speed is amazing.
Think about Chewbacca who gets more of his hits from assists, or Jedi Knight Revan who has a TM swap, or GMY who gains +40% TM on basic and has one special that grants a bonus turn. These are all important enough characters that putting a great mod on them won't be a waste, but none of them rely on their speed so much that they can't be happy with +19.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about the mods you want to sell (or, alternatively the ones you don't want to buy from the Mod Store).
WHAT IS A BAD MOD, AND HOW DO I KNOW WHEN I HAVE ONE?
Speed: Set your own standard.
For our purposes, a bad mod has zero Speed -- no Speed primary and no Speed secondaries -- or any speed below the minimum that you set as desirable. For most players, I recommend you set 10 speed in 2 hits or 13 speed in 3 hits as your minimum for a Mk5 Level 12 mod, but this is still up to you. Remember that I'm saying this regardless of color. You can slice Mk5 mods, but you don't want to spend crystals farming those Mk5 slicing mats. So you have to limit how many Mk5s you slice, and you do that by not investing in slicing unless you already know a mod is good enough to keep.
Much later, you'll have so many +10 mods that you might want to set a new minimum of 3 hits and +14 or 15 speed on a Mk5 Level 12 mod to keep it. But for now, as you're building your collection, remember that there are lots of mods out there with speed on them, and it's not hard to get one of the first 4 increases to land on speed. (68% chance) and about half of those 2nd hits will be large enough to get your mod to +10 Speed if it started with +5. So these aren't rare. That makes it a great first goal as you're building your mod collection. Only 26% of your mods will get a 3rd hit of speed while the mod is still Mk5, and fewer than half - about 8% to 9% - will be high quality hits that add up to +14 or +15. So these aren't exactly rare either, but they are much less common. If that's your standard you'll be selling more mods immediately and going through the process of upgrading mods on your toons less often.
Synergy: Left and Right.
While we want all our mods to have synergy between the set type and the other bonuses it provides, left-side mods (the Square, Diamond, and Circle) don't allow any primary freedom (the Square can only have an %Off primary, the Diamond can only have %Def) or literally the most minimal idea of freedom possible (the Circle allows either %Health or %Protection, but nothing else). So when we're working with Squares, Diamonds and Circles, we don't worry about matching the Set type to the Primary. We only worry about Set/Secondary synergy.
On the right, however (Arrow, Triangle, and Cross) the primary very much matters.
While in theory you can have niche modding needs, in general when you have a Potency Set mods for the Cross slot, you should sell any that don't have Potency primaries.
Why? Because the Cross is the only slot shape where Potency primaries are possible. If you care enough to want Pot Sets, you probably care enough to snag that Pot Primary. And if you don't? Well you have plenty of Pot mods that aren't crosses for characters that could benefit from Potency but don't need to prioritize it.
The same is true for Tenacity Crosses, Crit Damage triangles, and Speed arrows. In each case there's only one slot that can have the matching primary so if a character needs that Set type, they probably also want the only Primary of that special type that they can get. Again, there can be exceptions , but in general:
Pot Set Cross should always have Pot Primary
Ten Set Cross should always have Ten Primary
CritDmg Set Triangle should always have CritDmg Primary
Speed Set Arrow should always have Speed Primary
If you have one of these Set/Slot combinations, you can sell the mod without levelling it if it has anything other than the perfect-match Primary.
Crit Chance mods are ... niche. And complicated. Crit Chance Primaries are only available on Triangles, so you would think that I would tell you to ONLY keep CC% Triangles that have CC% primaries. Unfortunately it's just not a particularly good primary. CC% is an attacker-oriented Set type, and for those characters the Triangle offers Crit Damage and %Off primaries that would be better than CC%. That said, there are a few toons that need to crit more than they need to do damage. So I try to keep a balance in my CC% triangles, where about 1/2 are CD Primaries, 1/4 or more are %Off Primaries, and the remaining ones are CC% Primaries. I mainly manage this by simply demanding more hits of speed on CC% Primaries so more of them get sold.
If you want to make it easy on yourself, though, you can simply sell all CC% Primary triangles.
For analyzing other mods, you still want the primary to fit your theme for Right-side mods and 3/4 of secondaries to fit your theme for both Right and Left mods. Remember that Speed will always count as "fitting your theme".
But also remember that if you don't have an exact match on the Primary, you'll always want an exact match on the Secondary. This means that those CC% triangles that I've been telling you should mostly have CD or %Off Primaries? They should still have CC% secondaries. There has to be a match between set type and another bonus somewhere.
Given all that, let's take a look at some mods from the Mod Store and see which ones we would never buy, since that also translates into mods that, if you get them from another source than the Mod Store, you should immediately sell.
If you look at the top row, 3 of the 4 mods have no speed showing. You do have a Potency Cross with a Potency Primary. If you were really hurting for those, you could purchase that mod and take it to L6 to see if either of the 2 hidden secondaries are speed. And if you're building a mod collection from scratch, you probably should. I've got enough Pot Set/Pot Primary mods though, so I let this one pass.
The Purple Arrow is a Speed set with a +3 Speed secondary, but for Speed Set Arrows, we always want Speed Primaries. Every single one of these mods is a bust.
On the 2nd row we have 2 mods with +5 speed secondaries. That's great! Lower-credit players should only buy Mod Store mods that are Speed primaries or have +5 speed showing. If you have credits to burn, then buying +4s and taking them to L12 to see what happens is a legit strategy since we can't tell the difference on this screen between a 4.001 and a 4.999, as Speed always rounds down. But 4s are iffy, and +5s are great.
So why didn't I buy those 2 mods. Well, the Square is a Potency Set Mod. It's not a Cross, so it doesn't need a Pot Primary for us to buy it. But it has to have a match SOMEWHERE, because, again, if it's important enough to use 2 of 6 slots that you get per character to get a set bonus, then it's important enough to use 1 of 24 Secondary slots that you get per character. A Potency mod with no Potency? We don't want it.
The Blue Tenacity Circle is in the same boat: It's a Ten mod with no Ten anywhere on it. This, also, is a bust. Don't bother buying it. If you get one from an event or from the mod challenges, you can "reveal all" by taking a Blue mod to L6 and find out what's hiding in those 2 empty spaces. But if there's no Ten after all Secondaries are revealed, you need to sell that thing. And no, it doesn't. matter what speed it rolls. Just sell.
Here we have 2 lowest-quality grey mods. One is a CC% set with a Speed Primary. Speed Primaries are always good on anything, but we never buy or level grey mods: They will always need slicing materials and that means that if you buy them you'll have to start farming slicing mats with crystals that could be better used elsewhere.
The Blue Diamond CC Set is showing 1 primary and 2 secondaries that are all in conflict with the Set Type. You could buy it and reveal the two missing slots, but if you got 2 offensive stats, you would have no speed, and if you got Speed, you could only get one other stat useful for attacking. There's no way that you can get 3 stat bonuses that match well with the set type, so there's no reason to even think about purchasing this mod. If you get one in an event, sell without levelling.
Then there's a Blue Diamond that I purchased. It has +4 speed showing. I bought it because I'm light on Speed Sets right now and there's always that small chance it will give me great speed hits right away as I take it to L12. And since I have too many credits right now, losing the purchase price and the levelling credits is no loss. I took the gamble, levelled it, and got zero new speed. I sold it rather than spending slicing mats. Risking credits when you have a quarter billion is fine. But no one has a quarter billion slicing mats, so I'm not going to waste them on a gamble.
The final four mods are 2 purple and 2 gold. 3 have no speed, and one is a Crit Chance Arrow with no CC% Secondary. None of them make the cut.
The one mod I purchased here was a Gold mod so it had all 4 secondaries showing. Tenacity Set Type with a Ten Secondary, so that was fine. Started with +5 speed so that was great. After purchasing the mod, I took it to L12 and it ended up wth +9 speed and 3 hits of Tenacity with one hit of Protection. +9 is below my speed minimum and there's a bad match between CC% as a Primary and Ten as the Set. This might be a keeper if it met my speed minimum (If you have 3 hits on a secondary that matches your set, that's pretty good!), but it doesn't, and I don't need Tenacity mods enough to lower my standards.
Of the other 5 mods, one is a Ten mod with no Tenacity showing, but +5 Speed. I have enough credits that if I were desperate for Ten, I could buy it and cross my fingers I'd get some in that last slot. But we already know I'm not desperate for Ten, so there's no need to gamble.
The remaining 4 have no Speed showing: they're all busts.
TL/DR for this section:
Pay close attention to the match between Set and Primary on the Right side mods (Arrow, Triangle, Cross) but don't worry so much about Primaries on the Left.
You always want a good match between the Set type & 3 out of 4 Secondaries, but remember that Speed always counts as a "good match."
Gambling is fine if you have tons of credits or you recognize a mod that you're short of, but you should make most of your decisions based solely on what you can see. If it isn't already showing good synergy and your minimum start Speed (either +4 or +5), you don't have to level it to reveal all secondaries. You can just sell it and walk away.
Remember: Most mods suck. Only 1 in 3 mods has Speed at all, and many that have some Speed don't have enough to matter bc +10 speed is common enough you can quickly fill your inventory with those. Don't mess around with 5-Dot mods that have less than +9 or +10 speed (your choice) at level 12. And don't mess around with mods that don't have good synergy. Why improve an Off mod where all your secondaries are defensive?
Thank you for the detailed guide! It's very nice that you're sharing knowledge about a very important aspect of the game! It would be great if you could make a video guide about the modules! I'm afraid this post will get lost in the forum over time, among the silly and stupid topics about the сolosseum and the new era
This is probably extremely unnecessary and I can see people even getting offended that they wouldn't be trusted to figure this out by themselves, but historically speaking, many posters on these forums are terrible at figuring out simple things in SWGOH by themselves. Seedy, you've talked a lot about circles and diamonds and crosses but you never actually explained what you mean by any of that, so I took 5 minutes to create this chart. If it ends up being helpful, great. If it doesn't, who cares. If it tweaks someone's nose because they assume that I think they're too stupid to know what the diamond mod is, wonderful.
