Accessory

An Accessory is an item type found in the Kingdom Hearts series, beginning with the original game. Accessories, when equipped on characters, provide a number of functions to them, including bonuses in their stats, additional abilities, or protection against certain kinds of damage.

In Kingdom Hearts II, a new kind of item, armors, were created and given the defensive abilities, including protection against specific kinds of magic. Accessories became soley focused on improving the character's offensive stats and abilities.

Kingdom Hearts
Accessories were originally the only kind of equipment the characters were granted other than weapons. They covered a wide range of abilties, and were able to improve the the character's defense, hit points, magic points, ability points, and strength, as well as providing defense against one or more of the kinds of elemental magic, Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, and Dark. Accessories could also provide bonuses to magic and Summons.

As they were the sole kind of equipment in the game, they could be gained in any number of ways. Each world had at least one accessory that could be won during events or upon completion of that world. Some were found in chests throughout the game, especially in the End of the World. The most basic kinds could be purchased, most notably at an accessory shop in Traverse Town run by Cid. More complicated and powerful varities of accessories had to be synthesized with the Moogles. Finally, on rare occastions, accessories were dropped by Heartless in the course of battle.

Sora and Donald each begin the game with one accessory slot, and Goofy begins with two. All characters can gain additional slots through leveling.
 * Sora will gain his maximum amount of allowed accessory slots, three, by a certain level, depending on which weapon is selected during the Awakening. Picking the shield provides all slots the most quickly, by level 30.  The sword will grant all three by level 39, while the wand takes the longest at level 45.
 * Donald and Goofy can also gain additional slots via experience, but the levels have not be established yet.

Three accessories underwent slight stat changes in Final Mix, and fifteen new ones were added.

Kingdom Hearts II
With the introduction of armors, accessories took on a simpler task in Kingdom Hearts II. Accessories only provided bonuses to a character's strength, magic, and AP. In addition, two accessories, the Lucky Ring and the Draw Ring, provided special abilities to the party when equipped on a character.

The weakest accessories can be purchased during the first visit to each world in game in the shops of Twilight Town, the Land of Dragons, Timeless River, and Halloween Town. In addition, many are uncovered through chests in various worlds. However, during the second section of the game, stronger accessories can only be obtained through synthesis. Unlike the first game, Heartless will never drop accessories.

It is interesting to note that the first potential accessory to be obtained in Kingdom Hearts II is dependant on game play and events. If Roxas fails to win the Struggle tournament, he will obtain a Medal accessory instead of the Champion Belt armor.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy each begin the game with one accessory slot. Through gameplay, more can be unlocked:
 * Sora can gain two more accessory slots during the game. These are earned by successfully escorting Queen Minnie to the Throne Room in Disney Castle, and by defeating Shenzi, Banzai and Ed during the second visit to the Pride Lands.
 * Donald can gain one more accessory slot by defeating Hades at the Olympus Coliseum on the second visit.
 * Goofy can gain one more accessory slot by defeating Sark and the MCP at Space Paranoids on the second visit.

Other world-specific characters, such as Jack Skellington, Auron, and Beast have at least one accessory slot, but cannot gain any more through the course of the game. Likewise, Roxas only has one accessory slot and cannot obtain more.

Five new accessories were added for Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+. Two of these accessories, Shade Archive+ and Full Bloom+ have the special passive abilities of MP Rage and MP Haste, respecively.