How to increase your gear score in Nightingale
You need to Increase your survivability before you continue.
If you want to increase your gear score in Nightingale, you'll need lots of leather to upgrade from the basic outfit that you start with. Of course, you might decide you just want to explore during the opening hours of the game, but once you return your attention to progression, you'll find that raising your gear score is a requirement for one of the early quests.
The Diving Ever Farther quest requires you to complete the Antiquarian Site of Power, which in turn, unlocks that type of Major Realm Card so that you can freely craft it. But the mini-dungeon won't let you through the door until you're strong enough to survive. With that in mind, here's how to increase your gear score in Nightingale.
How to increase your gear score
Your gear score is the yellow number above your gear slots, just to the right of your inventory. Each piece of gear has a separate gear score associated with it, and the number at the top is the average of all the things you have equipped.
In order to access the Antiquarian Site of Power, you need to raise your average gear score to 20 or higher. This means that every slot needs to contain something with a gear score of more than 20. This isn't as difficult as it might sound because you can use the Simple Sewing Bench to make the "Simple" gear set, which you unlocked with the previous quest.
You need quite a bit of leather to craft everything, but you shouldn't have too much trouble getting the materials. Don't forget to upgrade at least one of your tools and your umbrella too, as both of these slots—main-hand and off-hand—also count towards your average gear score. The Simple Workbench should have the recipes you need for those.
There's no need to upgrade all your tools at this point, so don't waste materials unless you were planning on upgrading them anyway.