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Best Exospine in Stellar Blade
- Pick the right Exospine for the scenario. Some work better for exploring vs in boss fights.
- You can eventually equip two Exospines.
- The best Exospines focus on your playstyle, so pick which one works for you.
The best Exospine in Stellar Blade will depend on your playstyle. We prefer to cater our Gear towards perfect parry and the perfect dodge function, capitalising on counterattacks and reducing the Balance of enemies. Exospines in Stellar Blade will round out your abilities, giving you various buffs and bonuses that are fairly focused on different playstyles. You should also upgrade your Exospines in Stellar Blade, enhancing their effects.
The best Exospines in Stellar Blade
We think that the best Exopsines to equip are the Reflex-type Exospine and the Recovery-type Exospine. These two Exopines make parrying easier and increase how efficient your healing potions are. At the beginning of the game, you will only be able to equip one Exospine. Similar to Gear, Exospines will enhance your abilities in various ways. Every Exospine has a stronger variant to find when you enter New Game Plus, so keep this in mind.
It’s not until much later on before you unlock the second slot, so you will have to make some tough choices early on. Before we get into the best Exospine list, we should warn you that it will involve a minor spoiler that we won’t go into too much detail about. Read on if you’re okay with that.
Exospines can be upgraded
At the Repair Console, you can spend Nano Element, Advanced Nano Element, and Extreme Nano Element to improve your Exospine. Each one has ranks and you need the required materials to level it up. Each rank unlocks a new passive for that Exospine.
Recovery-type Exospine
As mentioned, our playstyle in Stellar Blade erred more on the side of survivability by way of trying to mitigate the risk of going for parries and perfect dodges. The Recovery-type Exospine gives all of your healing items a blanket buff, increasing efficacy and reducing damage taken. All in all, if you’re struggling with anything, then this Exospine will help you stay alive longer. At level three, this Exospine grants a portion of Beta Energy when you use a potion, naturally giving you more opportunities to attack.
Reflex-type Exospine
The Reflex-type Exospine is our favourite, hand down. It’s like it was made for us since it not only improves your shield regeneration rate, it also makes it easier to perform a perfect dodge and a perfect parry. Granted, the latter two benefits are locked behind upgrade levels. As such, we think this Exospine is only worth it when you can level it up to the maximum.
Our loadout in Stellar Blade, showing Exopsine and Gears equipped. Image taken by VideoGamer.
The Judgement Exospine helps increase Tachy Mode efficacy. Image captured by VideoGamer.
The Camouflage Exospine lets you sneak up on enemies. Image captured by VideoGamer.
Beta Trance-type Exospine
The Beta Trance-type Exospine has a fantastic passive effect when you level it to rank three. Before you get to this point, it doesn’t improve things a lot but it is good to give you more Beta Skill usage if you find you’re struggling to generate any. At rank three, this Exospine has a chance to let you use Beta Skill without a cost for a brief window when you use a Beta Skill. Trance mode has a fairly low chance of activating in our experience, but it is super clutch if you can get it during a boss fight.
Judgement-type Exospine (minor spoiler)
At a certain point in the game, you will get access to this Exospine that enhances a particular ability known as Tachy Mode. This Exospine is completely designed to enhance Tachy Mode and the buffs it gives are extremely valuable if you like using this. At the first rank, you charge the gauge faster, the second rank increases how long you can stay in Tachy Mode, and the third upgrade lets you damage enemies if you manually exit Tachy Mode.
Protection-type Exospine
The Protection-type Exospine is fantastic for survival. It grants a 10% damage reduction from all sources, you get more shield, and you have a chance to restore HP if you are guarding or parrying while at low HP. Generally, this will be a fairly situational Exospine and not as universally useful as the Recovery or Reflex-type Exospine. As such, you should always check to see if you Exospine is suitable for the fights you’re tackling.
Camouflage-type Exospine
The final pick we have for the best Exospine is the Camouflage-type Exopsine. This basically makes it easier for you to sneak up on enemies and perform an Ambush. Ambushes are fantastic because they will instantly kill any Naytiba in one hit except for special enemies or bosses. This spine decreases the enemy’s field of view meaning you can approach from the side without being spotted, while also granting an attack bonus and HP restoration when you use Ambush or Execution.
How to upgrade your Exospine in Stellar Blade
As mentioned, Exospines can be upgraded twice for a maximum level of three. To upgrade your Exospine, you need materials called Nano Element. This is dropped by most enemies and from treasure chests so you shouldn’t ever have to worry about tracking any down. We will warn, however, that you should wait until you get more Exospines before you start upgrading them. The ones listed above are the best of the best, so make sure you focus on those first.
Once you have Nano Elements, go to any Repair Console at a Supply Camp or by talking to Lily in Xion. In this menu, go over to Exospine and then select the one you want to enhance. You will see the list of materials needed and the Gold requirement here.
