What does leveling your equipment get you?

After every mission in Spiral Knights, you earn "Heat" which upgrades your weapons and armor. What does leveling your equipment do? Does it make it more damaging / more protective? Do certain activities require items of a certain level?

At Heat Lvl 5 and 10 your weapons get a small but meaningful bonus, and yes if you took the time to look at a Lvl 1 item you see the blue bar and some dark blueish bar after that. Each level fills that up a bit. For crafting the higher tier items eg.Tempered Calibur it need the standard stuff plus a Calibur. An Acended Calibur requires a lvl 5+ Tempered Calibur. A rule of thumb is if you're not at the highest tier of gear and your stuff is lvl 10 get new stuff.

Yes, That is true.

ALSO!! At 4 star the gear is required to become lvl 10 before being able to be transmuted into 5 star gear. Many players see this as a pain. (It is!!) But.if you take the time to do good missions it will be simple. ( A little hint) If you find trouble doing this do 1 of 2 things. Either, Equip all lvl 10 gear so your other weapon gets all the heat. Or do a mission with ONLY 2 PEOPLE, and let that person die many many times, because whenever you die you lose 30% of your heat and the player reviving (you) gets that 30%.