Gear

Gears are a category of items of which are able to be bought in the marketplace. They can be worn as accessory items - a gear can be worn on a player's avatar and the player's avatar will be shown holding it. They can also be used as Tools in games that allow that gear's specific attributes and genre, though almost no modern games allow gear. Before you buy a gear hoping to use it in a game, check the game's "Allowed Gear" (below the Description, on the right) and you will likely find the "No Gear Allowed" icon.

For example, Epic Island Gear Wars has the "Navigation" icon in its "Allowed Gear" - so a player of that game who owns a Gravity Coil will find the Gravity Coil tool in their in-game Backpack. Gear that is allowed in a game will be placed in the Player's StarterGear.

Gear should not be confused with tools that come from Passes or developer products. For example, a player who buys the Gravity Coil pass in Speed Run 4 will receive a Gravity Coil tool in Speed Run 4 but will not receive a Gravity Coil tool in any other game or as an item in Roblox. On the other hand, a player who buys the Gravity Coil gear will receive a Gravity Coil tool in all Roblox games that allow "Navigation" gear, almost all of which have no players online and/or are broken.

History

Gear were first introduced on May 5, 2009, due to the Roblox staff thinking "it would be cool to sell items that had in-game effects, and in this release, you can see our first steps in that direction." The first gears released were the ROBLOX Classic Brigand's Sword, Bloxy Cola, Orc Blade, and Board With a Nail in It.^[1]

In older Roblox, such as the early 2010s, many popular games allowed gear, and gear was frequently bought for functional as well as cosmetic purposes. In modern times, gear has become almost solely cosmetic, if used at all. Nowadays, very few active games allow the use of gear and even fewer allow the use of gameplay-affecting gear such as swords and power ups. If the game uses gear, it is likely an in-game copy, such as a Gravity Coil premium Pass that can only be used in that one game. The decline of gear could be a result of developers having a greater desire for control of the tools used in their games, the decline of Brickbattle games, new and more complicated avatar body types, such as R15 and Rthro, which break many gears that weren't designed with these newer systems in mind (with most made before the new systems were even thought of), and the option to take full profit by selling advantageous gear as a Pass.

As time progresses, many gears are at least partially broken due to Roblox updates, since most gears were made before R15 and a large majority of gears do not work with R15 characters. Gears that work with both R6 and R15 are often unusable due to Roblox updates. Many users commonly use the example of skateboards, as of 2010–2016, skateboards functioned properly until the introduction of R15, forced Filtering Enabled and the deprecation of skateboard platforms.

Gear are discontinued, with 2,269 gear in total. and the last published Gear was the Eggphone in 2020. Roblox has stopped all creation of and support for Gear since 2019^[2], most likely due to a large amount of the Roblox community (including some video stars such as KreekCraft) complaining about them being "useless" as most experiences did not allow any gear.^[3]

As an example, the Darkheart now appears as a normal sword.

Gear attributes

Gear attributes

Appearance	Name	Description
	Melee weapons	A close quarter weapon, typically an edged weapon such as a sword, or a bludgeon, such as the hammer. Some weapons in this category are dual-wielded.
	Ranged weapons	Weapons that work effectively, if not better, on distant targets. Such weapons include guns and lasers. Note that some ranged weapons behave indirectly, such as via spawned minions that attack other players.
	Explosives	Items that usually explode, as the names suggest, to clear enemies behind cover, in groups, or for general chaos. Such weapons include bombs and rocket launchers.
	Power ups	Tools that usually enhance the player in some way, such as increasing max health or walking speed. Some flying gears fall into this category.
	Navigation enhancers	Tools that help users move around the game. This can be either allowing higher jumps, flying, or by increasing walking speed for as long as the gear is equipped.
	Musical instruments	Any gear that can potentially be used to play music.
	Social items	Gears that typically are used for social events. An example is one of the many dancing potions, or GUI-based mini-game gears.
	Building tools	Any gear that can potentially be used to build or modify in-game structures that are not Explosives. One example in this category is the paint bucket.
	Personal transport	Any gears that physically help the users move around the map. A prime example are skateboards. Some gears in this category spawn vehicle models.

Gear rentals

Certain gear were set to expire after a certain amount of time from being purchased by a user. These gear items were typically much cheaper than similar gear items that did not expire. While an expiring item was in a user's inventory, it would have shown how much time was remaining until the item expired displayed underneath the item's name and thumbnail. Once a gear item expired, it could no longer be brought into places or worn on the user's avatar. However, the items did remain in their inventory and could have been renewed by repurchasing the item. The renting feature has been completely removed from all items that utilized it as of March 2021, meaning any formerly rental gear now stays in a user's inventory permanently.

A gear item with three weeks left until it expires.

Expired gear items in a player's inventory menu.

13+ Gear

A small list of gear were originally 13+, meaning users who had an account under the age of 13 could not purchase these items. The list of gear mostly included guns based on real-life firearms, so it can be assumed this feature was added because Roblox did not feel these items were appropriate for younger audiences. Strangely, the Rubyhorde the Rapacious' Treasure gear was 13+, despite being part of a bundle all users could purchase, and there being nothing that could arguably be inappropriate for younger users. This feature was completely removed from all items that utilized it on July 3, 2020, allowing them to be bought by <13 users.

Allowed Gear Types

Most users choose to disallow all genres of gear from being taken into their experiences. This means that even though a user may own a gear, it will not show up in-experience. Some other users, however, choose to only allow a genre of gear that matches that of their game. These restrictions have resulted in the "death" of gear. Allowed gear types are no longer displayed on pages.^[4]

Some games allow all gear/some gear.

Most games do not allow any gear.

Other

• Limited - A gear that was once on sale (or distributed in some way) for a set price, put off sale, and reintroduced as a resellable is a Limited item. Any type of Limited gear will not have a serial number.
• LimitedU - A gear that as soon as it is released, has a number in stock and is sold for a set price. Each bought copy has a unique and consecutive serial number in correspondence to the gear's remaining stock at the time of purchase. Once it is sold out, it can be bought and sold much like a normal limited item.
• BC Only Items - These items can only be bought by users that have bought Builder's Club, Turbo Builders Club, or Outrageous Builders Club. This feature is no longer used.
• TBC Only Items - These items can only be bought by users that have bought Turbo or Outrageous Builder's Club. This feature is no longer used.
• OBC Only Items - These items can only be bought by users that have bought Outrageous Builder's Club. This feature is no longer used.
  • NOTE: If users had a Builder's Club membership of a higher rank than the rank required to buy an item, then they could have that item. I.E: A player who purchased TBC could have bought a BC-only item, but the opposite cannot happen.
• Rental - These items would expire after a certain time. This feature is no longer used.
• Timed - Items that have a limited amount of time to be bought.

Bugs

Many gear items have been reported to have bugs (when a gear item doesn't function as usual), some of which have not been patched. Here are several known bugs:

• Whenever a player enters a game with a gear item they are wearing, the gear item will be removed from their backpack. This is because the gear item sometimes doesn't weld properly and results in the gear falling to the void, which deletes the gear in the player's backpack. This can also occur if a player dies and then equips any gear part of a game's StarterPack just before they respawn; in this case, the gear will not appear on the player despite being equipped.
• Whenever a player drags a gear with an icon in their backpack, any other gear moved to that position will not have their text, but other icons are still shown.
• In Roblox Studio, if a player drags a gear item to themselves while testing a place, they would turn sideways and float above the ground.
• If a player rides a flying vehicle after spawning and then unequips it, the player would fall and not be able to get up. This can be fixed by either avoiding wearing the gear on the player's avatar or joining a different game that doesn't allow this type of gear.
• The Musical Gear Icon was invisible in "Allowed Gear". This glitch was eventually fixed.
• Some ranged gears will only shoot towards a certain direction, commonly the center of the place.

Trivia

This section is a trivia section. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections of the article.

• Due to most games disallowing gears and their general obscurity as a whole, many players now simply use them to dress up their avatar on their profile.
• Searching "school" in the gear section of the marketplace shows a variety different school items. However, it also showed the Luger Pistol, due to the description containing "school".^[5] This does not occur anymore.

Gallery

In October 2010, buttons for items from StarterGear are colored.

See also

• Gear first available by year

References

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