Refining strategies

randomdigits · October 2015

So with double refining upon us, and considering that this forum is probably visited by less than 1% XBox players (so it's OK to disclose some useful strategies without invalidating them for yourself), I wanted to discuss some of the best practices.
I'll start with what I know, but please do help me. Below, RP= refining points.

1) For artifacts, due to their x5 RP multiplier (or x10 on DRP day) it is sometimes more profitable to buy the cheapest artifact fo the same time (Union, Stability, Power), level it up to 59 and then use for RP on your target artifact. Unfortunately for artifact gear this does not work that well,

2) When buying gear/enchantments of the AH look for the best RP/AD ratio. Sometimes buying green gear and low level enchants is more profitable than refining stones.

3) Artifact weapons get x2 bonus RP from main-hand items, off-hand artifacts from offhands, neck artifacts from neck items, belts artifacts from belts.

4) Coalescent/Preservation Wards are usually overpriced in AH, so buy them with Zen.

5) If you don't have enough Power marks to jump from Uncommon => Rare, Rarer => Epic etc and AH prices are too steep, you can delay the upgrade till the marks prices are low again and make your RP go to overflow RP. This can be done once, since as soon as the RP on the item reach the amount required for upgrade no more RP could be added.

6) Greater marks could be collected in Dread Ring lairs through daily quest or by buying the key from the campaign vendor, so expected higher lag in there during the DRP.

7) It's best to save the generic refining stones (Peridots, Aquamarines, Opals, etc.) for artifact gear refining since artifacts could be refined with enchantments.

8) When you have multiple artifacts and artifact gear items for which you cannot reach the boundary between Uncommon/Rare, Rare/Epic, Epic/Legen, Legen/Mythic where new stats are added it's oftentimes best to level the lowest-level item first (since it takes less RP per level) and then refine all of them, one level at a time in parallel.

zman81420 · October 2015

This is also be a great time to sell all the shards dropped from last mod I have been saving stacks of them. I am going to have so much room now its going to feel like buying a new house in my inventory / bank. Along With double refinement is the mad house on the action house. Take the time to sell any unusable unbound items as well to help hedge your advancement to something you may have not saved for or had time to obtain. Happy Leveling, I have a feeling come Tuesday the fan base should have a lot less complaining about T2 dungeons difficulty. But I may only be kidding myself there... Raid On

Full Metal Witch

xristopher1024 · October 2015

Ideas on what to do with resonance stones (Minor, Lesser, etc...) once all your Artifact Equipment is legendary? Obviously you can sell the unbound ones so my question refers to Character Bound. Should we save them for other possible artifact equipment to come or use them in artifacts/enchantments taking the loss in RP (though double RP lessens the loss)?

xrawcarnage · October 2015

I would save all the extra resonance stones for next dbl rp. Hell soon as this events over start stalking up for next dbl rp. That's what I've done since release.

Also if you place 2 level 59 artifacts into a fresh artifact it'll push it to lvl 90 ish. Then feed that one in your target artifact. Works perfect if you are trying to go for mystic. Obviously each artifact has to be of the same kind. Power to power, union to union etc.

zman81420 · October 2015

Could always level up another complete set for fun? I personally would save all the large RP stones and sell off everything else unbound. Unless you have an ungodly amount of room.

xristopher1024 · October 2015

Define ungodly... I have 4 characters with max bank slots (176 each). Main character has 3 Runic bags, Dragon hoard bag and the basic bag (adventurers satchel?)

xrawcarnage · October 2015

So save them then. You have the room but as much as most us have, we still ran out of said room until yesterday lol

zman81420 · October 2015

I have one character, few greater bags of holding, runic, cult bag and basic bank storage plus one row of free ones. So I suppose anything above that is ungodly to me lol.

randomdigits · October 2015

Well, back to original topic, I personally mostly avoided the problem of buying GMOPs by not having enough of RP.
All in all, on my main character I've collected around 1,000,000 RP split between different artifact types and artifact gear. I've sold everything unbound for now, including enchantments.
Leveled the artifact main hand, off hand and neck items to ~level 27.
Then leveled one artifact of the union, stability and power (lantern, catalog and orb of Tiamat) as much as I can.
Then I'm going to switch to a different belt (it's a good time to do so, since I'd lose only around 20% of RP).
And then finally if I time permits I'm hoping to get the 2 sigils and level them up using the above prepared artifacts.
With all that done I'm hoping to see about 1,500 - 2,000 combined increase in the most important stats, which is a pretty good improvement.

zman81420 · October 2015

I faired quite well in 2x RP. All artifact gear in the mid 40's. Leveled My Lantern, Orb, Lathander's, and Devoted Sigil all in the 90's. Leveled my terror ready for greater, and ran short on GMoPot as my bank was flattened. Haven't even touched my enchantments because I am waiting to decide on what to slot when I get all my personalized gear. And the empty inventory space is such a sight to see! No legendary yet but hoping that will all come by next 2x RP.

randomdigits · October 2015

Well, it's a bit difficult to compare the DRP results once you start comparing people who spend real money or have a lot of leadership workers. As a reference I'm an f2p player playing solo 2-4 hours a day since July - no guild or team of friends, no leadership armies and no dungeon farming - just skirmishes and campaigns. With that I feel it's quite manageable to get far enough in the game to enjoy it the way it was intended. I don't know if the new post-Mod 6 players will be able to reach the same quite as easily, but I hope so.

With regard to refining strategies - mine above played out quite nicely this weekend. With a bit of planning and grinding I've got my alt to level 70 and unlocked 2 sigils - GWF and CW. And then made a lot of purchases and upgrades, though it meant selling as much as I can to make money, E.g. I've got the Lostmauth Horn @ 550K AD and the matching Belt of Puissance @ 250K AD saving about 500K total compared to prices before the DRP event.
That, plus several instances of leveling artifacts to level 59 and then using them for RP made a lot of difference.

Before:
Catalog, lvl 59
Lantern, lvl 60
Lantern, lvl 52
Belt of Owlbear, lvl 26
Artifact orb, lvl 27
Artifact off-hand, lvl 17
Lostmauth Neck, lvl 16

After:
Lantern, lvl 73
Lostmauth Horn, lvl 59 (pending GMOPs for upgrade to 76)
Sigil of Controller, lvl 59 (pending GMOPs for upgrade to 79)
Sigil of Great Weapon, lvl 59 (pending GMOPs for upgrade to 75)
Belt of Puissance, lv 26
Artifact orb, lvl 28
Artifact off-hand, lvl 26
Lostmauth Neck, lvl 26

So with 550K AD more for GMOPs (or a lot for Dread Ring farming) I should have all 4 epic artifacts plus a Lostmauth set looking epic pretty soon.

P.S. The character-bound thaumaturge refining stones seems to be fairly useless at this point, as almost any enchantment seems to be cheaper to buy of the AH vs refining it yourself.

Refining strategies

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