The Mario & Luigi series has always been a lighter take on RPGs, but still has all the core elements you expect from the genre. With Mario & Luigi: Brothership, you can count on the return of turn-based battles, puzzles, leveling up, and plenty of gear to find, buy, and equip to alter your stats. This isn’t the most challenging RPG on the market, but not upgrading or maximizing your gear can certainly make it far more challenging than it needs to be. You will need to manage both Mario and Luigi’s gear individually with dozens of ways to build their abilities. Before you invest in that expensive pair of gloves or shiny pair of boots, let us point you in the right direction on what the best gear is in Mario & Luigi: Brothership.
Best gear in Mario & Luigi: Brothership
Gear can be broken down into five categories: Boots, Hammers, Wear, Gloves, and Accessories. In total, each brother can equip up to five pieces of gear. Some gear can be found, while most needs to be purchased or crafted as you go through the game. We’ll run through the best one or two for each category for each of the brothers.
Best gear for Mario
Starting at the bottom, the best Boots for Mario are the Gobblick Boots DX. These give you Jump +123 and Stache +5 but also give you 10% of damage dealt back as HP so you can keep on the attack and not worry about healing as often.
For a Hammer, go with the Bros. Hammer DX. It has a similar effect to the Boots except that each enemy you defeat will give you 4 BP back on top of the +96 to Hammer.
The Wear category is simple: Masterpiece Wear is the best in the game. It has no bonus effect but gives you a massive +93 to defense.
For Gloves, we like the Speed Gloves since they give your Speed x1.1 and have the effect of increasing your speed by 10%.
As an accessory, put on the Quick-Charge Brooch. It gives +1 to Jump, Hammer, and Defense but also makes you Battle Plugs recharge twice as fast.
Best gear for Luigi
For the taller Mario Bro., put him in the High-Heal Boots DX. In addition to the Jump +96, it also heals 10% of your max HP each time you defeat an enemy. It isn’t quite as good as Mario’s, but can work well in tandum if Mario softens enemies up and Luigi gets the final blow.
Hammer-wise, stick with raw damage and use the Masterpiece Hammer. It has the same +96 to Hammer as the Bros. Hammer DX, but with no special effect.
If you don’t want to give Luigi the Masterpiece Wear, slap on the Bros. Wear DX. It provides +77 Defense and restores 2 BP when you take damage.
For Gloves, the POW Gloves are a good choice that don’t have any trade-offs. You get Jump and Hammer x1.1 and 10% more POW.
We chose the Maykit Bangle as the accessory since it increases the damage of your first attack by 15%, but you can also use the HP Bangle for some small stat bonuses and the passive effect of healing 5% HP at the end of your turn.