Alright everybody, we have a big topic for you all today as we have put a lot of work into the refinement system for the upcoming update. There is a lot to cover here so I will try to organize it and put it in the best order I can. We will have additional threads to help focus parts of the discussion as one thread could easily get overwhelmed with all of the feedback.
Here we go!
Why the change?
Refinement is a core part of Neverwinter gameplay, but a lot of the time it could feel like it was weighing down on you as a player. The pure number of items that needed to be held on to, the matching bonuses, the different reagents for different artifact types, and yes the hoarding of items until the 2x Refinement Points weekends to maximize the gains. In the end it felt more like a chore that had to be done than a fun part of the game where the player kept making progress.
For new players, the system is overwhelmingly complicated. They don't know what enchantments to use as food, what to hold, what to look for, and we wanted to make that experience far easier for players to figure out. On top of all of that, there hasn't been any major additions to the system in a long time. We took a hard look at all of this and came up with a plan to improve it in multiple ways.
-snip-
Way back in the simpler days of Neverwinter, when a player refined an enchantment or a runestone, they could easily refine it in such a way as to make a higher level item that could be stacked thus not requiring a bunch of storage space, but for some reason changes were made that makes it almost impossible to evenly level up enchantments and runestones so they can be stacked, this is a problem that was created and as such could probably be just as easily eliminated without nurfing the whole system.
Then we had artifacts items like Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, that could be leveled up with runestones and enchantments - but again for some reason changes were made and it took different kinds of refining stones to level up different kinds of things like artifacts, again an intentionally created problem that is now trying to be passed off as a "chore" and too difficult.
Also with the items currently used for enchantment, they are currently only stacked to 99 and we are being told it is creating a problem for people who "hord" items to be used during double refinement points events, once again a "created" problem that we are being told needs to be addressed...
First of all if a person chooses to hord refinement items, it is their choice, no one is forcing them to do it and if they "run out of space" - decisions have consequences - people decide to hord refinement items and await double refinement events to use them, that decision necessitates them using inventory spaces to do so but again it is their choice.
Speaking of choices, if the PTB's chose to change stacked refinement items so they can be stacked to 999 - like they did for ID scrolls - that would also effectively address much of the "storage problems" for a lot of players, but because they decided not to do this and instead decided to undertake a major coding change to alter the way things are refined, I have to wonder if this was the simplist or even best possible solution.
My personal experience so far has been noticeably improved with the new system... with just a few hours of play I managed to move up 3 levels on an orange artifact with just stuff I picked up running around... before it would take a full day of play to move up just 1 level (no, I never was a saver, I just crunched them as I got them)
plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,224Arc User
edited October 2017
The following is my observation of the new system:
1. released a lot of inventory space. 2. the upgraded enchantment can be stacked because you can't over fill it accidentally anymore. 3. green junk gear on the floor will be fought for because each L70 green gear has the same RP value of a peridot. That means the RP of green junk is x5 comparing with pre mod 12b. 4. you still can hoard if you want to. For selling or for another toon. 5. easier to upgrade enchantment because of higher successful rate (comparing with before mod 12b).
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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minotaur2857Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,141Arc User
A couple of observations. I opened my leadership boxes on 1 character (about 2K assorted boxes, I sometimes have a lot more). I got 50 stacks of refinables, FGS please let the green enchanting stones stack to 999, I got nearly 13 stacks of them. I also got a lot of amethysts and peridots. Moving them around to the char that needs the RP is horrible, why you can't crunch them to RP then move those within your account like you can with tradebars I have no clue.
Also if you have more RP than what you want to upgrade takes, the "refine" button changes to "upgrade". If you don't want to upgrade due to lack of wards or stones, you can't commit the RP to the item which makes accounting more awkward if you have several such items. Also you can no longer do what I used to do, which would be to take a R7 and dump LOTS of surplus RP in it (enough to go to r11 or so), refining t later.
...Also if you have more RP than what you want to upgrade takes, the "refine" button changes to "upgrade". If you don't want to upgrade due to lack of wards or stones, you can't commit the RP to the item which makes accounting more awkward if you have several such items. Also you can no longer do what I used to do, which would be to take a R7 and dump LOTS of surplus RP in it (enough to go to r11 or so), refining t later.
A workaround, for single levels at least, until it's fixed is to drag the RP bar down 1 notch so as to leave a tiny bit of RP required (the smallest amount I've been able to "reduce" is 223 RP). Then I move it to the toon with the marks and wards to upgrade. You still can't over-refine like before unfortunately. The system is still relatively new so there will be refinements to the refining refinement I'd say. QoL seems high on the team's agenda atm, so here's hoping
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,224Arc User
-- Rank 5 enchantments used to be worth 216 (or 2160 by old reckoning) when you fed them to artifacts. Now they're worth 100. (Same issue at all other ranks.) Not quite what you promised….
Not sure what was promised. However, putting enchant/runestone to Artifact had 2x bonus. Its actual value was 1080 RP. Since various multiplier bonus are removed from everywhere. that is expected.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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minotaur2857Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,141Arc User
-- Rank 5 enchantments used to be worth 216 (or 2160 by old reckoning) when you fed them to artifacts. Now they're worth 100. (Same issue at all other ranks.) Not quite what you promised….
Not sure what was promised. However, putting enchant/runestone to Artifact had 2x bonus. Its actual value was 1080 RP. Since various multiplier bonus are removed from everywhere. that is expected.
Yes the matching bonus was removed but many of the costs were halved to compensate, but is still a 7-8% nerf as they should be 108
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,224Arc User
-- Rank 5 enchantments used to be worth 216 (or 2160 by old reckoning) when you fed them to artifacts. Now they're worth 100. (Same issue at all other ranks.) Not quite what you promised….
Not sure what was promised. However, putting enchant/runestone to Artifact had 2x bonus. Its actual value was 1080 RP. Since various multiplier bonus are removed from everywhere. that is expected.
Yes the matching bonus was removed but many of the costs were halved to compensate, but is still a 7-8% nerf as they should be 108
There may be something that is halved to compensate but I don't see that often.
e.g. upgrade:
R5 -> R5: It was 3240 RP. It is now 300. ... R10 -> R11: It was 622080. It is now 40000. R11 -> R12: It was 1088640. It is now 50000.
They just round that up to end with 0s. You win some and you lose some.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
-- Why do these new "gemstones" occasionally drop as bind-to-character-on-pickup, when they're only good for converting to the RP currency? It would remove a good deal of (the remaining) tedium, if they just went immediately to increase the RP currency total, much as dungeons did/do AD?
This. Totally this. There is no longer a point to BtC gemstones, since there is no reason to accumulate them and nothing that can be done with them other than convert to RP on that character.
When BtC gemstones are acquired, it would be super cool if they were automatically converted to RP.
> @pterias said: > -- Why do these new "gemstones" occasionally drop as bind-to-character-on-pickup, when they're only good for converting to the RP currency? It would remove a good deal of (the remaining) tedium, if they just went immediately to increase the RP currency total, much as dungeons did/do AD? > > This. Totally this. There is no longer a point to BtC gemstones, since there is no reason to accumulate them and nothing that can be done with them other than convert to RP on that character. > > When BtC gemstones are acquired, it would be super cool if they were automatically converted to RP.
Why have btc at all? Just make all btc gems bta. Simple as that. That way one account shares all gems. I earned them, i should be able to use them where i want. This goes for all refinement items, not just gems. I dont see the need for btc at all. The whole account is the character/player.
This will choose your green artifacts along with the half-dozen+ green L70 items that you want to convert… and it's not especially obvious which is which...
Gotta' emphasize this, now that I've seen a guildie loose a River District weapon. That's a seriously huge loss, and the priority for fixing this has to be HIGH.
Even having recognized it, I lost two green artifacts, but they weren't so significant, and I won't be asking for them back. I seriously hope support will replace the significant losses to this bad UI, though. Yes, I know they have a very bad history of actually doing that…. bet player loses to pure discouragement are high as a result….
I would like that selection to disallow: Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact.
In the meanwhile, I moved all the Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact to the bank. I also establish an habit to visually examine the equipment to make sure every piece in the dialog box has only 1 slot (2 slots and no slot item should not be there).
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
@noworries#8859 I am hoping that you guys are considering increasing the drop rate of the Ultimate enchanting stones. After about 20-30 runs this weekend I have a total of 6 that i got, and i know many others had 50 runs in or more and only got 4-6 stones. and that is with the 2x enchants giving us double rewards. so basically my 30 runs gave me 3 ultimate enchanting stones..., after opening up both chests on most of those runs too. so we are looking at like a 2.5% drop rate here if we are generous. What is more, is that the stones only have a chance to drop from the chests at the end, and the 3rd boss fight is something that many many players have great difficulty with and thus will never have the chance to get any of these stones at all.
prices for the ultimate stones are still at 950-1000k per stone which is crazy expensive given that one needs 70ish stones per character.
I understand and agree that r14 enchants are something you want to make more difficult to attain, but this is pretty darn hard. I really like that TNG has a good reward in it now that makes it worth running but given that ultimate stones are going to be in huge demand for months yet I think it wouldn't hurt to bump the drop rate by a bit.
My idea is to give the bosses a 5% chance to drop a stone, and then a 10% chance on each chest. i have no idea what the actual numbers are of course. the big thing is to give the bosses a chance to drop the stones so that players who can't beat the 3rd boss consistently still can be rewarded once in a while.
I imagine you guys are planning on sitting on this for a couple weeks yet to see how things shake out and to let the whales spend themselves on lockboxes to get the stones that way
-edit- over all i like how the refining changes went.
there are a number of tweaks and QoL changes you need to make yet
- like making it possible to fully refine an enchant without needing to attempt to upgrade it in the same button press as well, this is really bad since it makes it very easy to accidentally waste enchanting stones and potency marks
And I am still very unhappy with the rate of RP returned from old artifacts and artifact gear. We went from getting 80% of our RP back on artifact gear down to 20%, this is absolute HAMSTER. If you want to say that artifact gear costs half as much RP now and that makes it all better... it doesn't. If it took me 100 hours to get the RP for 1 piece of gear pre mod 12.5 then now it takes 50 hours. but when i was upgrading to a new weapon pre mod 12.5 it took me 20 hours to get back to max and now it takes me 40 hours, which is twice as much time as it took to re-max an item before, per item. My hour estimates are completely wrong I am sure, i am just using them as an illustration of why the percentages as they are now in mod 12.5 are bad.
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
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minotaur2857Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,141Arc User
This will choose your green artifacts along with the half-dozen+ green L70 items that you want to convert… and it's not especially obvious which is which...
Gotta' emphasize this, now that I've seen a guildie loose a River District weapon. That's a seriously huge loss, and the priority for fixing this has to be HIGH.
Even having recognized it, I lost two green artifacts, but they weren't so significant, and I won't be asking for them back. I seriously hope support will replace the significant losses to this bad UI, though. Yes, I know they have a very bad history of actually doing that…. bet player loses to pure discouragement are high as a result….
I would like that selection to disallow: Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact.
In the meanwhile, I moved all the Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact to the bank. I also establish an habit to visually examine the equipment to make sure every piece in the dialog box has only 1 slot (2 slots and no slot item should not be there).
If they put a really vivid coloured border around all artifact equipment and artifacts it would do the trick.
This will choose your green artifacts along with the half-dozen+ green L70 items that you want to convert… and it's not especially obvious which is which...
Gotta' emphasize this, now that I've seen a guildie loose a River District weapon. That's a seriously huge loss, and the priority for fixing this has to be HIGH.
Even having recognized it, I lost two green artifacts, but they weren't so significant, and I won't be asking for them back. I seriously hope support will replace the significant losses to this bad UI, though. Yes, I know they have a very bad history of actually doing that…. bet player loses to pure discouragement are high as a result….
I would like that selection to disallow: Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact.
In the meanwhile, I moved all the Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact to the bank. I also establish an habit to visually examine the equipment to make sure every piece in the dialog box has only 1 slot (2 slots and no slot item should not be there).
If they put a really vivid coloured border around all artifact equipment and artifacts it would do the trick.
... To go along with this we have a new conversion window that has some easy options to input all of the different convertible items that you want to break down into Refinement Points in one simple click. ... And you may have noticed how I mentioned Identified Uncommon Equipment can be turned into RP and thought "Man, identifying all of my green drops will be such a pain!", well we are also adding an Identify All button which will take your ID scrolls and identify all the unidentified items in your inventory with one click. ...
In spirit this new conversion tool allows you to get a little RP for all the useless Uncommon Equipment that drops in your daily grind... Nice add...
However, it also has the thoughtless feature to lump your new green Artifact Weapons, (you know the ones you grinded for weeks to restore), in that one click!
I feel the player should have a choice in what to conver to RP or salvage for AD. I feel this should include blue rare gear, purple epic gear and even orange legendary gear. What if a user upgrades their artifact to legendary or even mystic then decide to replace it for something more suitable. Before 12b they would use that artifact as a feeder now in 12b its a waste. It would be best to allow it to be converted to RP. I also feel the marks should be changed a bit. I believe green marks should be able to be upgraded to blue and then blue to purple and purple to orange. Yes numbers needed should be high but this way no marks are wasted. My main is sitting on 40 green marks with nothing to upgrade. So they are useless.
@noworries#8859 I am hoping that you guys are considering increasing the drop rate of the Ultimate enchanting stones. After about 20-30 runs this weekend I have a total of 6 that i got, and i know many others had 50 runs in or more and only got 4-6 stones. and that is with the 2x enchants giving us double rewards. so basically my 30 runs gave me 3 ultimate enchanting stones..., after opening up both chests on most of those runs too. so we are looking at like a 2.5% drop rate here if we are generous. What is more, is that the stones only have a chance to drop from the chests at the end, and the 3rd boss fight is something that many many players have great difficulty with and thus will never have the chance to get any of these stones at all.
You should be happy that it nets you 5.5m straight in one week end
@noworries#8859 I am hoping that you guys are considering increasing the drop rate of the Ultimate enchanting stones. After about 20-30 runs this weekend I have a total of 6 that i got, and i know many others had 50 runs in or more and only got 4-6 stones. and that is with the 2x enchants giving us double rewards. so basically my 30 runs gave me 3 ultimate enchanting stones..., after opening up both chests on most of those runs too. so we are looking at like a 2.5% drop rate here if we are generous. What is more, is that the stones only have a chance to drop from the chests at the end, and the 3rd boss fight is something that many many players have great difficulty with and thus will never have the chance to get any of these stones at all.
You should be happy that it nets you 5.5m straight in one week end
So he should be happy because he'll have to do literally THOUSANDS of TNGs to get everything to R14? Ehhhh. It's not all about profits mate. It's about having fun. Running TNG every day for 50 times and getting jack HAMSTER definitely isn't.
In spirit this new conversion tool allows you to get a little RP for all the useless Uncommon Equipment that drops in your daily grind... Nice add...
However, it also has the thoughtless feature to lump your new green Artifact Weapons, (you know the ones you grinded for weeks to restore), in that one click!
NICE! <-- note the sarcasm. </p>
The quick and easy way to convert green uncommon items is to press the "convert all" button instead of going through inventory and converting items one at a time, but a lot of people are complaining because things they didn't want to be converted like green uncommon artifacts are being converted as well... well, it did say "all"...
Still it sucks to lose something so valuable, there should be some kind of change to exclude any kind of artifact in the one click conversion or at least make those conversions not quite so easy and require the player to convert items one at a time, instead of doing them - artifacts and all - with just one click.
So he should be happy because he'll have to do literally THOUSANDS of TNGs to get everything to R14? Ehhhh. It's not all about profits mate. It's about having fun. Running TNG every day for 50 times and getting jack HAMSTER definitely isn't.
My guildie got 2 stones , after running tong... twice in a row. The rest of us , did not. Ever. I forgot how it looks like. And we try to run it every day at least twice.
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
-- Why do these new "gemstones" occasionally drop as bind-to-character-on-pickup, when they're only good for converting to the RP currency? It would remove a good deal of (the remaining) tedium, if they just went immediately to increase the RP currency total, much as dungeons did/do AD?
This. Totally this. There is no longer a point to BtC gemstones, since there is no reason to accumulate them and nothing that can be done with them other than convert to RP on that character.
When BtC gemstones are acquired, it would be super cool if they were automatically converted to RP.
probably to prevent overflow of selling rp gemstone, bta woull be more acceptable, specialy enchanting stones that were btc on mod 12
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
I feel the player should have a choice in what to conver to RP or salvage for AD. I feel this should include blue rare gear, purple epic gear and even orange legendary gear. What if a user upgrades their artifact to legendary or even mystic then decide to replace it for something more suitable. Before 12b they would use that artifact as a feeder now in 12b its a waste. It would be best to allow it to be converted to RP. I also feel the marks should be changed a bit. I believe green marks should be able to be upgraded to blue and then blue to purple and purple to orange. Yes numbers needed should be high but this way no marks are wasted. My main is sitting on 40 green marks with nothing to upgrade. So they are useless.
upgraded like that with marks of potency to each respective quality, green to blue- blue mop+ % chance, blue to epic- purple mop+ % chanceuntil here pres wards will help), epic to leg- leg mop + % chance(1%) to increase ur coalescent wards sells in zen store.
I ran about 45-50 TONGs. 1st stone I got at 32nd run. 2nd one at around 40th. So the chance is somewhere around 1 in 25-30. Let's say 27.5 as some middle ground. That means, we'll have to run about 2.3k runs to get all. I don't know what the devs are thinking, but this is some irrational stuff.
Comments
Then we had artifacts items like Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, that could be leveled up with runestones and enchantments - but again for some reason changes were made and it took different kinds of refining stones to level up different kinds of things like artifacts, again an intentionally created problem that is now trying to be passed off as a "chore" and too difficult.
Also with the items currently used for enchantment, they are currently only stacked to 99 and we are being told it is creating a problem for people who "hord" items to be used during double refinement points events, once again a "created" problem that we are being told needs to be addressed...
First of all if a person chooses to hord refinement items, it is their choice, no one is forcing them to do it and if they "run out of space" - decisions have consequences - people decide to hord refinement items and await double refinement events to use them, that decision necessitates them using inventory spaces to do so but again it is their choice.
Speaking of choices, if the PTB's chose to change stacked refinement items so they can be stacked to 999 - like they did for ID scrolls - that would also effectively address much of the "storage problems" for a lot of players, but because they decided not to do this and instead decided to undertake a major coding change to alter the way things are refined, I have to wonder if this was the simplist or even best possible solution.
1. released a lot of inventory space.
2. the upgraded enchantment can be stacked because you can't over fill it accidentally anymore.
3. green junk gear on the floor will be fought for because each L70 green gear has the same RP value of a peridot. That means the RP of green junk is x5 comparing with pre mod 12b.
4. you still can hoard if you want to. For selling or for another toon.
5. easier to upgrade enchantment because of higher successful rate (comparing with before mod 12b).
Also if you have more RP than what you want to upgrade takes, the "refine" button changes to "upgrade". If you don't want to upgrade due to lack of wards or stones, you can't commit the RP to the item which makes accounting more awkward if you have several such items. Also you can no longer do what I used to do, which would be to take a R7 and dump LOTS of surplus RP in it (enough to go to r11 or so), refining t later.
You still can't over-refine like before unfortunately. The system is still relatively new so there will be refinements to the refining refinement I'd say. QoL seems high on the team's agenda atm, so here's hoping
e.g. upgrade:
R5 -> R5: It was 3240 RP. It is now 300.
...
R10 -> R11: It was 622080. It is now 40000.
R11 -> R12: It was 1088640. It is now 50000.
They just round that up to end with 0s. You win some and you lose some.
When BtC gemstones are acquired, it would be super cool if they were automatically converted to RP.
> -- Why do these new "gemstones" occasionally drop as bind-to-character-on-pickup, when they're only good for converting to the RP currency? It would remove a good deal of (the remaining) tedium, if they just went immediately to increase the RP currency total, much as dungeons did/do AD?
>
> This. Totally this. There is no longer a point to BtC gemstones, since there is no reason to accumulate them and nothing that can be done with them other than convert to RP on that character.
>
> When BtC gemstones are acquired, it would be super cool if they were automatically converted to RP.
Why have btc at all? Just make all btc gems bta. Simple as that. That way one account shares all gems. I earned them, i should be able to use them where i want. This goes for all refinement items, not just gems. I dont see the need for btc at all. The whole account is the character/player.
[The Legendary Outlaws] (Guildhall 20)
I sure hope that Beacon of Simril will receive the same possibility.
Any ideas about SKT...?
In the meanwhile, I moved all the Artifact weapon, Artifact Equipment and Artifact to the bank.
I also establish an habit to visually examine the equipment to make sure every piece in the dialog box has only 1 slot (2 slots and no slot item should not be there).
prices for the ultimate stones are still at 950-1000k per stone which is crazy expensive given that one needs 70ish stones per character.
I understand and agree that r14 enchants are something you want to make more difficult to attain, but this is pretty darn hard. I really like that TNG has a good reward in it now that makes it worth running but given that ultimate stones are going to be in huge demand for months yet I think it wouldn't hurt to bump the drop rate by a bit.
My idea is to give the bosses a 5% chance to drop a stone, and then a 10% chance on each chest. i have no idea what the actual numbers are of course. the big thing is to give the bosses a chance to drop the stones so that players who can't beat the 3rd boss consistently still can be rewarded once in a while.
I imagine you guys are planning on sitting on this for a couple weeks yet to see how things shake out and to let the whales spend themselves on lockboxes to get the stones that way
-edit- over all i like how the refining changes went.
there are a number of tweaks and QoL changes you need to make yet
- like making it possible to fully refine an enchant without needing to attempt to upgrade it in the same button press as well, this is really bad since it makes it very easy to accidentally waste enchanting stones and potency marks
And I am still very unhappy with the rate of RP returned from old artifacts and artifact gear. We went from getting 80% of our RP back on artifact gear down to 20%, this is absolute HAMSTER. If you want to say that artifact gear costs half as much RP now and that makes it all better... it doesn't. If it took me 100 hours to get the RP for 1 piece of gear pre mod 12.5 then now it takes 50 hours. but when i was upgrading to a new weapon pre mod 12.5 it took me 20 hours to get back to max and now it takes me 40 hours, which is twice as much time as it took to re-max an item before, per item. My hour estimates are completely wrong I am sure, i am just using them as an illustration of why the percentages as they are now in mod 12.5 are bad.
We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1235869/converting-to-rp
With nitocris's post here, I think there is a decent chance of getting them back
However, it also has the thoughtless feature to lump your new green Artifact Weapons, (you know the ones you grinded for weeks to restore), in that one click!
NICE! <-- note the sarcasm.
I also feel the marks should be changed a bit. I believe green marks should be able to be upgraded to blue and then blue to purple and purple to orange. Yes numbers needed should be high but this way no marks are wasted. My main is sitting on 40 green marks with nothing to upgrade. So they are useless.
Still it sucks to lose something so valuable, there should be some kind of change to exclude any kind of artifact in the one click conversion or at least make those conversions not quite so easy and require the player to convert items one at a time, instead of doing them - artifacts and all - with just one click.
My guildie got 2 stones , after running tong... twice in a row. The rest of us , did not. Ever. I forgot how it looks like.
And we try to run it every day at least twice.