The Interphase Cloaking Device is a Rare Forbidden Tech built for one situation: fighting other players while cloaked. It raises your damage and your defenses by the same amount, adds critical damage on top, and cuts the other player’s chance to land a critical hit back. Every effect on the card is conditional on being cloaked and fighting a player, so it is worth a lot in PvP and nothing at all in your daily grind.
What the Interphase Cloaking Device does
The first buff switches on the moment you unlock the item and boosts damage against players when your ship is cloaked. The defensive mirror of it arrives at tier 3 and raises Armor, Shield Deflection, and Dodge by the same values, so a fully upgraded piece pushes offense and survivability together rather than trading one for the other. The last two buffs sharpen the critical hit exchange in your favor.
| Buff | Unlocks at tier | Unlock value | Max value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage against players when cloaked | 1 | 50% | 1,800% |
| Armor, Shield Deflection, and Dodge against players when cloaked | 3 | 50% | 1,800% |
| Reduces opponent’s critical hit chance after you take a critical hit, when cloaked | 6 | 5% | 100% |
| Critical damage against players when cloaked | 8 | 10% | 350% |
Values are current as of the latest game data. The word that governs all four rows is “players.” None of this applies to hostiles, armadas, or mining, and none of it applies while you are decloaked. Read the third buff as a counterpunch: it only triggers once the other ship crits you, and at full value it shuts their critical hit chance down for a short window rather than reducing it a little. Paired with the critical damage buff, a maxed piece makes the crit trade lopsided in your favor.
How to get the Interphase Cloaking Device
Unlocking a Forbidden Tech piece starts with fragments matching its rarity. This is a Rare item, so you need Rare Forbidden Fragments and you spend them in the Forbidden Tech refinery. Fragments come out of Q’s Trials and special rewards, which means accumulating them is a matter of showing up for those regularly rather than buying your way to the unlock in one go.
You also need a slot to put it in. Forbidden Tech Fusion Rods open Forbidden Tech slots on your ships, and they are also what you spend if you want to pull a piece back off a ship later. Fusion Rods come from the Forbidden Tech refinery and the store. Since this artifact only earns its keep on a cloak-capable PvP ship, decide which hull is getting it before you spend rods opening slots elsewhere.
Upgrading the Interphase Cloaking Device
Two tracks raise this item and they do different jobs. Tier-ups use Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalysts, and each tier raises the level cap and can switch on another buff, which is how the defensive buff, the crit chance debuff, and the critical damage buff come online at tiers 3, 6, and 8. Levels use Forbidden Tech Protomatter and scale whatever is already unlocked. Both tracks consume Forbidden Tech Reactors, which are what you spend to attempt an upgrade in the first place.
| Tier | Level cap | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | Starting tier, no cost |
| 7 | 35 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,200 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
| 12 | 60 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,900 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
Reaching tier 12 costs 352 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 57,000 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst in total. Taking it from level 2 to level 60 costs another 1,856 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 475,975 Forbidden Tech Protomatter. Reactors come from Daily Goals and the store, so they tend to be the limiting resource on both tracks. Probability Devices raise your chances on an upgrade attempt, and the tier pushes that unlock a new buff are the ones worth spending them on.
Best ships and uses for the Interphase Cloaking Device
This belongs on a ship you fly cloaked into fights with other players. A hull without a cloak, or one you use for hostiles and mining, gets nothing from it, because every buff carries both the cloaked condition and the against-players condition.
The natural home is whichever cloak-capable battleship or interceptor you take into territory fights and hunting runs. Because the offensive and defensive buffs land at the same values, the piece suits an aggressive opener as well as a ship that expects to eat the first volley. If you spend most of your time grinding hostiles or running armadas, put your fragments into a Forbidden Tech piece that pays out there instead.
The Interphase Cloaking Device in Star Trek
A cloak that lets a ship pass through solid matter appears in the Next Generation episode “The Pegasus.” Starfleet built a phasing cloak in secret aboard the U.S.S. Pegasus in violation of the Treaty of Algeron, which barred the Federation from developing cloaking technology at all. The prototype cost most of the Pegasus crew their lives, and Captain Picard eventually exposed the program rather than continue covering it up. The Enterprise-D used the recovered device once, flying out through solid asteroid rock, before the Federation shut the research down. Star Trek Fleet Command credits the technology to the Tholians and ties its instability to interphase space, which is a game framing rather than a screen fact, but the banned-and-buried history is exactly why it fits under Forbidden Tech.
Is the Interphase Cloaking Device worth it?
Worth chasing if PvP is what you actually play, and easy to skip if it isn’t. There is no partial credit here: the same conditions that make it strong in a player fight make it dead weight everywhere else. If you fight cloaked regularly, take it to tier 8 so all four buffs are live, then push levels as Protomatter allows. If you mostly grind, unlock it when fragments are spare and leave it there.