where to mod

[ninja85a]

hey im a bit of a noob only played it for a few hours and im wondering where you go to mod your items if someone could make a guide on how to mod weapons that would be great cheers

[Atticus Batman]

There was a guide at one time. Think it can still be found in the stickied guide thread.
Here is the modding info from the guide. However it is 2 years old so any prices, Ego ratings, or times listed may be out of date.

Weapon Modding 101!

To start off, for those who don't know. you can find Mods just about everywhere, stores and missions!

The modding process is essential to effective weapon use. With mods a decent gun can be good, a good gun can be great, and a great gun makes you an ark hunter to be reckoned with.
That being said, modding a weapon can be a confusing and troublesome process. First you'll need a few things to get started. A weapon, a mod, and at least 100 EGO rating. Access to the Salvage Matrix is unlocked prior to 100 ER, but at 100 ER you should be able to start adding additional mod slots to weapons.
First let's start with where the salvage matrix is: Here!

There is no hotkey to immediately take you to it, so going through the Loadout menu is the quickest, and will also help keep you mindful of what you have equipped, as that can make a difference to your modding experience, but we'll cover that in a minute.
Welcome to the Salvage Matrix!

In it you select a weapon, and depending on the weapon and your EGO rating you have several options. First is to break the weapon down for resources. This gives you an amount of ark salvage depending on the rarity of the item.
In order:•White - 250
•Green - 500
•Blue - 750
•Purple - 1000
•Orange - 1250
(The colors also indicate rarity for those of you who are wondering, white begin the most common and orange being the rarest.)
You should be doing this with almost any weapon, grenade, or shield that you don't want. Modding weapons can deplete your ark salvage quickly if you're not careful, and an ark hunter flush with ark salvage can buy keycodes at lockboxes, and potentially get even better guns to work with!
So now you've got a gun, and you want to put a snazzy new mod on it. Awesome! This is what it looks like when you've got a un-modded gun selected, and ready to go.
Looking good!
But you realize that maybe you don't really want to mod that pistol. You're going to scrap it, and get some salvage. What you really want to do is put another mod on that awesome Infector that absolutely destroyed those pesky 99er's. You already put a barrel on it to increase it's damage, but it needs a better scope for accuracy.
Oooooh, check out that DoT!
So you can see what a gun with a mod already attached looks like. See how the icon for barrel is lit up, and has the mod stats next to it?
Well lets load that bad boy into the salvage matrix!
Uh oh
Whoops! That's right, if your weapon is equipped you can't perform any action to it. So make sure you check all your loadouts before you try to do anything besides moding. (such as timed events, adding mod slots and such)
There we go! Much better!
Notice that there are now options to remove or retrieve the mods currently equipped on the weapon. Removing the mods destroys all mods that are attached to the weapon, clearing the slots. Recovering the mods destroys the weapon, but you get the mods back.
I mentioned that cost was a factor previously. To simply attach a mod, there is no cost, however everything after that costs ark salvage and time.

[MagnusRune Daltus]

ive been meaning to do a youtube vid, ad could propablly do one thursday eveing (im busy tonight)

but here is a run down

buying mods.

have a look at the map for the vendor icons, if you hover over the vendor icon, not the fast travel point, iti will tell you if it sells mods, and for which gun type. (but they only have white and green/yellow for the most part, and a few blues on item of the day)

then at iron demon ranch, and headlands trasnit depo there are vendors which sell T5/Orange mods, but these cost 10 ceruilian cores each, which at a low level will be hard to get.

how to mod?

press start/bring up character loadout screen, and go 1 tab to the right. this is the salvage matrix. then

select the gun you want to mod.
check it has the mod slots open, if not you can open them using ark salvage (its single use in the game)
if the mod slots are open, select which area you want to mod, an select the mod.
attach mod, you are done!

few things to note.

once a mod is on the gun, you can not get the mod back without destroying the gun. but you can overwrite 1 mod with a new mod (this destroys the old mod)

some guns have synergies, which require mods to be added of the same synergy. ie an assassin gun needs assassin mods. and if you overwrite the synergy mods with non-synergy matching mods, the synergy bonus will be lost. and a gun needs of the matching mods to get up to level 4, if only 1 matches, only the lowest level.


so i think i have covered it all, and proablly got ninjaed by someone else while i typed this...

[crasher]

Grimwyrd had/has several decent vids on Youtube.
These are older, but will give you what you need to know.

Defiance FAQ - Part 5/5 - Weapon Modding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO74ITJ2af8

===============================
Defiance FAQ - Synergy Explained

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXDZwu07aME

The vids were made before the vendors were reorganized to change the mod items available by more specific locations for weapon types.