The Division 2 Gear, Exotics & Brand Sets Glossary

Gear names in The Division 2 describe very different things: a brand set (a family of pieces with bonuses), a named item (one piece with a fixed talent), an exotic (a unique weapon or armor piece), a gear set (a build-defining set with four-piece bonuses) and a stat on an item. Mixing them up is the most common reason a guide seems to contradict the game. This page sorts nine common terms, with their stats, talents, sources and the patch where a rule changed.

Status on 1 November 2026: Year 8 Season 3, Red Horizon, is current (started 27 August 2026), with the Year 8 Season 3.1 Title Update from 24 September 2026. Talents and numbers get retuned every few months, so treat the values below as a reference point and compare them with the in-game tooltip before you commit materials.

Term	Category	Slot
Contractor's Gloves	Named item, Petrov Defense Group	Gloves
Dodge City Gunslinger's Holster	Exotic	Holster
Tardigrade Armor System	Exotic	Body armor
Eclipse Protocol + Chainkiller	Gear set + named chest	Several
Overlord Armaments, Yaahl Gear	Brand sets	All six
Damage to Targets Out of Cover	Attribute	Gear, skills, weapon talents

Named items and brand sets

Contractor's Gloves

Contractor's Gloves is the named glove from the Petrov Defense Group brand set. It is the only glove that carries 8% Damage to Armor among its secondary stats, next to Weapon Damage (up to 15% as the core attribute) and one free minor attribute. That is its whole point: bonus damage against enemy armor plating, useful against heavily armored targets.

You get it from Petrov targeted loot. It can also be crafted from a blueprint, which drops from Reconstructed Caches, a reward you can earn in Descent mode or by crafting with 7 Broken SHD Watches. Do not expect extra hazard or skill stats: the gloves are a pure weapon-side piece. Onlyfarms lists the Contractor's Gloves as a lot, and the named items category covers the rest.

Overlord Armaments

Overlord Armaments is a brand set with an offensive bonus line: 1 piece gives +12% rifle damage, 2 pieces give +20% accuracy, 3 pieces give +10% weapon handling. It covers all six gear slots: the "Vert" Carry Rail backpack, the "Big Drum", "Fortitude" and "Pointblank" vests, the "Deadstick" mask, the "Neptune" gloves, the "Dingson" knee pads and the "Graffham" holster, plus the named knee pads Fox's Prayer. You craft them with Overlord Armaments Protection Materials, which you get by deconstructing pieces of the brand.

The name is easy to confuse with Overlord, an exotic shotgun. The two are unrelated. A brand set is a flat bonus package; it does not add the talents of a gear set.

Yaahl Gear

Yaahl Gear is a brand set with 1-piece +10% Hazard Protection, 2-piece +10% Weapon Damage and 3-piece +40% Pulse Resistance. Its pieces include the Garibaldi Pack backpack, Glacier Bay and Ranier vests, the named mask The Hollow Man and the Cascades mask, Olympic and Shasta gloves, Yukon knee pads and the Snoqualmie holster. It is crafted with Yaahl Gear Synthetic Pennae, gained by deconstructing the brand's pieces. It drops only in the Dark Zone and in Conflict.

The pulse resistance bonus is why the set is mentioned in PvE too: pulse effects are a threat in some activities. The Hollow Man mask also appears in the Red Moon Rising loot list from the 24 September 2026 update. Yaahl is one of the few brands that gives hazard protection on a single piece, which the standalone Hazard Protection page explains in more depth (Eclipse Protocol, for instance, adds 30% hazard protection at three pieces).

Exotics and gear sets

Dodge City Gunslinger's Holster

An exotic holster. Its talent, Quick Draw, rewards pistol play: while your pistol is holstered you gain a stacking buff every 0.3 seconds, up to 100 stacks. When you swap to the pistol, the first shot spends the buff and deals +10% damage per stack, and it counts as a headshot wherever it hits. It requires a pistol to be equipped. The holster rolls Weapon Damage (max 15%), Weapon Handling (max 8%) and Headshot Damage (max 10%), with two offensive mods and one utility mod.

Quick Draw does not make the weapon swap itself faster; the bonus is all in that first shot. How you obtain it also changed over time. The classic route was a blueprint and a project chain at the White House base with parts from control points. In Year 8 Season 1 (26 May 2026 update) it also sits in the seasonal Rise Up cache pool among the special exotics. Onlyfarms lists the Dodge City holster among its lots.

Pistolero

Pistolero is not a gear piece. In the Title Update 11.1 notes (19 October 2020) it is named as a Dark Zone directive, and its fix line says group members had no ammo when the leader activated it. Players use the word more loosely for pistol-focused builds: a Dodge City holster, a pistol with a talent such as the TDI Kard Custom (+1 skill tier when used, added in Title Update 11) and gear that raises the Pistol Damage attribute. Title Update 8 (March 2020) also gave all Signature Weapon pistols a level 40 version.

If you want a pistol build, the one real hard requirement is the Dodge City talent's "pistol equipped" condition. Everything else is a normal weapon build. The best weapons tier list shows how pistols compare to rifles.

Tardigrade Armor System

An exotic body armor added with Warlords of New York on 3 March 2020. It can drop from any True Sons boss. It has one generic mod slot and rolls armor, explosive resistance and armor regen. Its talent, Ablative Nano-Plating, is a team effect: whenever you or an ally breaks armor, that agent gains 80% of your armor as bonus armor for 10 seconds, with a 45-second cooldown per ally. Killing an enemy with your specialization weapon removes the cooldown for every ally.

It is a group-play item. Playing solo, the talent only covers you. Because the effect is based on your armor, armor-stacking builds benefit most, and the armor regen stat ties in with the Armor Regen basics: the Umbra Initiative set, for example, gives 0.8% armor regen per stack when consumed. Onlyfarms lists a Tardigrade chest.

Eclipse Chain-Killer Build

This is two items working together, not one. Eclipse Protocol is a gear set built around status effects: 2 pieces give +15% status effects, 3 pieces give +15% skill haste and +30% hazard protection, and 4 pieces unlock Indirect Transmission, which spreads your status effects on kill to enemies within 10 metres and refreshes 50% of their duration. The set backpack talent Symptom Aggravator adds 30% damage to status-affected targets.

Chainkiller is a High-End chest from Walker, Harris & Co. with the talent Perfect Headhunter: after a headshot kill, your next weapon hit within 30 seconds deals an extra 150% of the kill's damage, capped at 800% of your weapon damage (1250% when headshot damage is above 150%). The catch is slot overlap: the Eclipse chest talent Proliferation (range to 15 metres, refresh to 75%) lives on the Eclipse chest, which Chainkiller replaces. A typical layout therefore uses Eclipse on mask, gloves, holster and knee pads or backpack. The standalone Chainkiller page goes through the chest. See also the Eclipse Protocol set.

Mechanics

Exotic Reconfigure

Exotic Reconfiguration is the system that upgrades an exotic to level 40 and re-rolls its attributes at the crafting bench. It arrived with Title Update 9 (21 April 2020) and costs an Exotic Component per re-roll; a lowered number of components from deconstruction was matched to this cost. Title Update 21 removed Gear Score from the game, so reconfiguring no longer takes Gear Score into account.

Do not mix it up with Recalibration, which is a different bench. Recalibration moves one stat or talent from a similar item to another item (a stat must come from the same family: offensive, defensive or skills), and the donor item is destroyed. At Title Update 22 (28 October 2024) the game had 51 exotics, 20 armor pieces and 31 weapons, and seasons have added more since, such as the Vertigo light machine gun in September 2026. Only one exotic armor and one exotic weapon can be equipped, and exotics cannot take mods or dyes.

Damage to Targets Out of Cover

This attribute increases damage against enemies who are not in cover. It is not found as a flat gear stat on every item. The Precision variant of Smart Cover, a skill added with the Battle for Brooklyn DLC, boosts weapon handling and damage to targets out of cover for agents inside its area. Some weapon talents grant it for a short time: the exotic light machine gun Vertigo, added in the Year 8 Season 3.1 update (24 September 2026) and dropped by the XB-35 Marauder "Phoebe" in the Dark Zone during the Red Moon Rising event, has the talent Startling, in which making an enemy suppressed disorients it and gives you and allies +30% Damage to Targets Out of Cover for 15 seconds.

The practical consequence is that enemies running between cover are the main target. Suppression, crowd control and skills that push enemies out of cover pair well with it.

Guides and services

Choose pieces after reading the PvE builds guide. Onlyfarms offers exotic armor, gear sets and current season services for The Division 2.

Related terms

• Division 2 activities, SHD Levels and skills glossary
• Chainkiller gear
• Armor regen
• Hazard protection
• Game economy and cosmetics glossary

FAQ

What is the difference between a named item and an exotic?

A named item is a normal brand-set piece with a fixed name and a locked-in or perfect talent, such as Chainkiller or Contractor's Gloves. An exotic is a separate unique item, limited to one armor piece and one weapon at a time, that cannot take mods or dyes.

Can I use Chainkiller with the full Eclipse set?

You can use Chainkiller with Eclipse, but not with the Eclipse chest. Chainkiller is a body armor, so it replaces the set chest and its Proliferation talent. The four-piece Indirect Transmission bonus still works if you wear four other Eclipse pieces.

Does Exotic Reconfigure need Gear Score?

No, not since Title Update 21, which removed Gear Score from the game. It costs an Exotic Component and re-rolls the attributes of the exotic.

Which brand set has the most hazard protection on one piece?

Yaahl Gear gives +10% Hazard Protection with a single piece. Eclipse Protocol gives +30% at three set pieces. Compare the brand set bonus with the extra set talents before choosing.