Augment

Augments are items in Xenoblade Chronicles X. They can be attached to s and, as well as the weapons, armor, and frames of Skells. Doing so will provide beneficial effects such as raising the user's stats. Almost all Augments come in twenty levels from to, with higher levels having stronger effects; the remainder only exist at one possible level.

Augments are divided into five categories based upon which of the above five types of equipment they may be attached to; a weapon augment cannot be equipped on a Skell weapon, etc. Almost every piece of equipment also has inherent qualities called 'traits' that act like pre-equipped Augments. These cannot be removed or changed, but their level can be increased.

Each piece of equipment has a random default number of slots into which Augments may be set in the menu, from 0 up to 3 for s, Skell weapons, and Skell frames, or just 1 for and Skell armor. The number of slots on a piece of equipment can be increased up to this maximum in L's shop using miranium.

Equipping multiple Augments with the same effect will result in the effects stacking, often with no upper bound except that of the maximum number of Augments that may be equipped at once.

Engineering Augments
Engineering is the most consistent way to obtain many Augments. It may be done using the 'Engineer Augments' option at the AM Terminal. For Augments with multiple possible levels, it is possible to engineer versions of level, , , , or ; Augments of intermediate levels cannot be engineered.

To engineer an Augment requires a certain quantity of Miranium as well as one or more of a number of s; which materials are required depends on the effect the Augment has, and how many are required depends on the level. Typically, only one each of two or three materials will be required to engineer a level Augment, whereas level  Augments may require as many as 32 or 48 each of three materials to engineer.

Most of the required materials will be dropped by enemies, and some will be obtained via mining with Data Probes. It is common practice to obtain at least a portion of the required materials using Reward Tickets.

Traits
In addition to Augment slots, each piece of equipment comes with a certain number of inherent traits which give the equipment the effect of permanent Augments. Any piece of equipment may have between 0 and 3 traits of random levels (the number of traits, as well as the range of trait levels, is correlated with the rarity of the equipment). Some effects, such as Custom.WP-MSL-MAG, can only be found as traits on equipment and cannot be made into separate Augments. What traits can be on a piece of equipment depends upon what weapon it is or what body/Skell part the equipment goes on, the Arms manufacturer of the equipment, and (in the case of ground armor) whether such equipment is Skell wear or not.

The traits on a piece of equipment can be levelled up at the AM Terminal using the 'Upgrade Battle Traits' option. Traits are levelled up by one level at a time, and doing so requires a certain number of materials (very often the same materials required to craft the corresponding Augment). One cannot level up a trait beyond level in this way. Moreover, there is a limit to the number of times a piece of equipment's traits can be upgraded. This limit depends upon the rarity of the equipment - common or rare equipment may only allow for two or three trait upgrades, whereas intergalactic equipment may allow for as many as twelve.