Cores
Every armor piece has one core: red (weapon damage), blue (armor) or yellow (skill tier). The mix decides your role more than any single item does.
Gear · checked Sep 26, 2026
Gear and loot
Everything new this season, what changed on existing gear, and how the upgrade systems fit together.
New exotics
| Item | Slot | Talent | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fafnir | Shotgun | Dragon's Breath: each shot has a 40% chance to apply Burn; weapon damage is amplified by 50% of your Status Effect bonus. Mods: +15% crit chance (optics), +5 rounds (magazine), +10% handling (underbarrel). | Red Horizon season pass (free track; the premium track has a second copy) |
| Iron Will | Chest | Resolved: your next body shot counts as a headshot. 2 s cooldown in PvE, 3 s in PvP. Needs a marksman rifle, rifle or pistol. | Red Horizon season pass (free track) |
| Vertigo | GR9 LMG | Startling: when it suppresses an enemy, that enemy is Disoriented, and you and your allies get +30% damage to targets out of cover for 15 s. Mods: +15% crit chance, +50 rounds, +15% reload speed, +10% rate of fire. | Red Moon Rising (Sep 24 – Nov 3) |
| Sarru | Backpack | Decoy King: in combat, a moon cycles through 8 phases every 5 s, amplifying your damage from 5% (new moon) up to 25% (full moon) and back. Deploying a Decoy at full moon overcharges it and pauses the cycle for 10 s. | Red Moon Rising (Sep 24 – Nov 3) |
Status effects have diminishing returns on enemies, so Fafnir's Burn lands less often than a flat 40% suggests. The Steel & Sons ACR was buffed this season (more stability, 4 stacks instead of 3, and +30% amplified damage for 5 s after you destroy a weak point, up from 10%).
The Determined change
Determined now works like Perfect Determined: a kill from a converted headshot no longer triggers another guaranteed headshot, so the chain is gone. Chaining body shots into headshots now lives on Iron Will, which works with exotic marksman rifles or high-end ones using any talent other than Determined. Ubisoft also buffed several marksman-related gear sets and brand bonuses to compensate.
Ubisoft explains the reasoning in its Red Horizon developer notes.
Sets and brands
New gear set: Ember Engine
- 2 pieces: +8% Skill Efficiency
- 3 pieces: +30% Status Effects
- 4 pieces, Spontaneous Combustion: every status effect you apply has a 40% chance to also apply Burn. If the original effect was Burn, the target takes +25% Burn damage for its duration.
- Chest, Flashpoint: raises that chance to 60%. Backpack, White Hot: the Burn damage debuff lasts 50% longer.
- In PvP, Spontaneous Combustion no longer triggers from Pulse (TU Y8S3.1). Secondary effects applied alongside Pulse, like EMP or Confuse, still trigger it.
Rebalanced sets
Red Horizon's gear set pass focused on red-core (weapon damage) sets, plus Ortiz: Exuro and True Patriot. Ubisoft's rule: the harder a set is to use at full potential, the more it should give back. Blue- and yellow-core sets will be looked at in later updates.
Brand set changes
- Removed as brand bonuses: Shock Resistance, Health, Incoming Repairs and Swap Speed.
- Added: Protection from Elites.
- Weapon bonuses were reorganized so every weapon type has at least one brand with it as the 1-piece bonus and another with it as the 2-piece bonus.
- From now on, Ubisoft adds named pieces with perfect talents or attributes to existing brands instead of creating new brand sets, starting with Red Horizon.
New named items
| Item | Type | Talent |
|---|---|---|
| Trick Shot | Imminence Armaments chest | Perfect Reassigned: a kill loads 1 round of random special ammo into your sidearm (8 s cooldown). |
| Rushdown | Richter & Kaiser chest | Tag Team: the last enemy you hit with a skill is marked; hitting it with weapon damage consumes the mark and cuts active cooldowns by 12 s (4 s cooldown). |
| Melon Baller | Airaldi Holdings backpack | Perfect Concussion: headshots add 20% total weapon damage for 1.5 s (5 s with marksman rifles); headshot kills add 15% for 10 s. |
| Keeper | 5.11 Tactical backpack | Perfect Protector: when your shield takes damage, you get +25% bonus armor and allies get 35% of your armor as bonus armor for 3 s. |
| Teapot and Steamer | Named weapons | Perfect Boiling Point: the first 48% of the magazine has −100% crit chance, the rest has 100%. (The normal Boiling Point talent uses 53%.) |
Red Moon Rising also brings back the Recruiter, who drops his unique mask.
Blueprints and loot pools
- Added to the general loot pool: True Patriot and Ongoing Directive materials and blueprints, plus the Unit Alloys, Royal Works, Edelweiss, Concentrated Company, Core Strength and Ortiz: Reficere blueprints.
- New at Inaya (only if you own the item): Agitator, Investor, Caduceus, Nurse's Kneepads, Whiplash and Underboss. TU Y8S3.1 added Prima Donna and Steel & Sons ACR reconfiguration blueprints.
- Known issue: the Prima Donna and Steel & Sons ACR blueprints currently craft an extra copy instead of reconfiguring your existing one. You keep the original, but the materials are spent.
- Targeted loot: Caduceus and Nurse's Kneepads can now be targeted.
How the upgrade systems fit
Recalibration
Extract a roll or talent into your library, then put it on another piece. Usually one slot per item can change, so start from pieces whose other rolls are already right.
Optimization
Raises the rolls a good piece already has, using optimization materials. It can't change which attribute is on the item.
Expertise
Account-wide proficiency that lets you upgrade items for small, steady gains. Worth doing last. Season 4's Prototype rework will change how Expertise and augments tie in.
Prototype gear
Year 8's high-end gear with augments. It's normalized in raids, Incursions and the Toxic DZ, and uses full base stats in Blackout (with PvP-balanced augments). Ubisoft says Season 4 will cut its reliance on RNG.
PvP numbers
Your inventory now shows PvP weapon damage next to PvE values, and the Shooting Range can simulate PvP normalization and balance before you queue.