Refining for cheap

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  • zett
    zett Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Well dunno if it will help anyone, but i can share some data:
    I was trying to refine a lv12 gold ff bow (2mir per try) from +2 to +5
    Refine was successful at cost of:
    10 Tienkang stones
    9 Tisha stones
    102 Mirage
    My strategy was: +1 / +2 /+3 without aditional stones, +3 to +4 i used Tisha, +4 to +5 i used Tienkang. Refine was done at archosaur elder at 5~6am game time.
  • Angel - Harshlands
    Angel - Harshlands Posts: 158 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    well I might as well chip in.
    I tried to + my alt's calamities with 150 mirages.
    four +2s, the rest failed. I had to use d orbs.

    some further information:
    I always had bad luck, idk but luck is never with me. I know some people who can +4, +5 very, very easily.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]youtube.com/Angelolwut
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    If you keep posting +3 is 15-20 mirages you've lost your mind. I'm not even going to explain it, but the only hint i'm giving is if you have percentages that ... depend on each other..... 20 mirages doesn't make any sense at all. You do the math to figure out why.
    I'm not sure who/where you're getting the 15-20 number from. And by all means, if you can actually do the math, please do. Forums tend to get clogged with a lot of contradictory "I could prove it if I wanted to," posts, otherwise.

    The math for average number of Mirages is: (average number of Mirages required per attempt) / (odds of success)

    So for +1, it's: (1) / (.5) = 2
    For +2, it's: (2+1) / (.3) = 10
    For +3, it's: (10+1) / (.3) = 36.67

    ...and so on...
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    PWI Merchanting Guides: warrenwolfy.wordpress.com
  • Delia - Harshlands
    Delia - Harshlands Posts: 227 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Well, I successfully refined a pendant to +2 with 7 mirages.

    Then just now I tried to refine a hat 1 level higher than my character at the elder of archosaur, and it failed 7 times in a row. I know this is possible, but it's also highly unlikely, and I'm wondering if it has something to do with it being a higher level than me. Would anyone know?

    Thanks, and thanks for all the great work Warrenwolfy!
  • DeathBanana - Heavens Tear
    DeathBanana - Heavens Tear Posts: 2,674 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Delia - Harshlands wrote: »
    Well, I successfully refined a pendant to +2 with 7 mirages.

    Then just now I tried to refine a hat 1 level higher than my character at the elder of archosaur, and it failed 7 times in a row. I know this is possible, but it's also highly unlikely, and I'm wondering if it has something to do with it being a higher level than me. Would anyone know?

    Thanks, and thanks for all the great work Warrenwolfy!

    Highly, highly doubt it has anything to do with level.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

    9x Demon Cleric
  • Delia - Harshlands
    Delia - Harshlands Posts: 227 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    DeathBanana - Heavens Tear wrote: »
    Highly, highly doubt it has anything to do with level.

    I thought so too... until I kept saying "just one more" "just one more". The probability of getting what I did was less than 1/100 (1/128 based on the probabilities in this thread, which I believe).

    I don't think level could have an influence if you're higher than the item, but maybe if you're below the item (it's red in inventory) it auto-fails you?

    I suppose I'll try again sometime...
  • DeathBanana - Heavens Tear
    DeathBanana - Heavens Tear Posts: 2,674 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Delia - Harshlands wrote: »
    I thought so too... until I kept saying "just one more" "just one more". The probability of getting what I did was less than 1/100 (1/128 based on the probabilities in this thread, which I believe).

    I don't think level could have an influence if you're higher than the item, but maybe if you're below the item (it's red in inventory) it auto-fails you?

    I suppose I'll try again sometime...

    <---+3'd his TT80 gear at 75 fairly easily
    And before anyone comments about TT80, the gold top and pants aren't that bad for their price imo
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

    9x Demon Cleric
  • Delia - Harshlands
    Delia - Harshlands Posts: 227 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    DeathBanana - Heavens Tear wrote: »
    <---+3'd his TT80 gear at 75 fairly easily
    And before anyone comments about TT80, the gold top and pants aren't that bad for their price imo

    Okay, then I just got really unlucky. Thanks for the info :).

    (TT80 green arcane is the only thing I'll say something about... that just sucks for the price. But this is the wrong thread and section to discuss that)
  • Traz - Dreamweaver
    Traz - Dreamweaver Posts: 2,843 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »
    I'm not sure who/where you're getting the 15-20 number from. And by all means, if you can actually do the math, please do. Forums tend to get clogged with a lot of contradictory "I could prove it if I wanted to," posts, otherwise.

    The math for average number of Mirages is: (average number of Mirages required per attempt) / (odds of success)

    So for +1, it's: (1) / (.5) = 2
    For +2, it's: (2+1) / (.3) = 10
    For +3, it's: (10+1) / (.3) = 36.67

    ...and so on...

    Assuming all are 40% chances to succeed; .4 * .4 * .4 = .064 or 6.4% chance to get from 0 to +3. Now lets just round it for simplicity to 6.5%. What's that number mean? Every 13 times out of 200 series of 3 you will get +3. Now here's the problem with your percentages; one standard deviation away from this average is 200/13 or 15.4. That means you can swing from using 3 (or 6 for weapon) to an additional 15.4 series of 3 so another 46 mirages (or 92 for weapon). so from 3-49 mirages (6-98 for weapon) for the first tier. If you pass this mark you have to swing that total up and you can go from 49-95 (98-190 for weapon) etc. This is just +3, for all of you that say getting to +7 is better, the math says you can be VERY very wrong about that.
    BladedZero - Sanctuary
    "Also I don't think actually playing through the game helps your skill either."

    -And we wonder why this game has gone to hell b:cute
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    Now here's the problem with your percentages; one standard deviation away from this average is 200/13 or 15.4. That means you can swing from using 3 (or 6 for weapon) to an additional 15.4 series of 3 so another 46 mirages (or 92 for weapon). so from 3-49 mirages (6-98 for weapon) for the first tier.
    The standard deviation of 1 refine attempt isn't really a very meaningful number to the average player, though. I've had runs where I've gone well beyond 2 or 3 standard deviations in order to get to +3, but they've been balanced out by the times where I got to +3 quite easily.

    The question, really, is how much risk you're willing to accept, as well as what strategies you're going to use to minimize it. I generally avoid risk, so my way of mitigating it while refining is to only refine things when I can do so in batches. Refining only 1 item has a large standard deviation, but refining 10 items equally and treating the refining as a group shrinks the standard deviation dramatically.

    This is why even though I once spent 9 million trying to +5 something and ended up with nothing, I'm still very very satisfied with my overall results. I've managed to +5 every piece of armour I have (except my Rank 6 ring, which can't be refined) for an average cost of less than half the cost of on-sale Dragon Orbs, and that's even after including the "wasted" 9 million.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary
    Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary Posts: 448 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »
    The question, really, is how much risk you're willing to accept, as well as what strategies you're going to use to minimize it. I generally avoid risk, so my way of mitigating it while refining is to only refine things when I can do so in batches. Refining only 1 item has a large standard deviation, but refining 10 items equally and treating the refining as a group shrinks the standard deviation dramatically.
    This is only true across the average of the 10 items, but random draws are done on each individual sequence, so the number of items you're going to refine does not reduce the variance dramatically for any single item; they're all independent events. By your logic flipping a coin 10 times would reduce the standard deviation of getting a head on the 10th flip (unless I've grossly misunderstood what you mean). In fact the 10th flip has the identical chance of being heads as the 1st flip... the number of flips doesn't change the distribution function. Now if instead you said, number of trials (instead of number of items), then this would make sense to me. The chances of failing to flip heads in 10 flips is significantly different than the chances of fliping heads on just one trial. With each assumed failure, the confidence that you will eventually get heads after a string of tails does grow higher. Note also that a discrete binomial distribution is not symmetric unless the probabilty of success is very near 50% (which is not the case for any of these refinement sequences), so using the "standard" deviation assosciated with a continous Gaussian distribution would be in error.

    Just for fun I'll reiterate a simple Excel formulat to assess the confidence associated with a given refinement string assuming the number of trials (double this for a weapon).

    Confidence = 1 - BINOMDIST(0, nTrials, Probability, TRUE)

    where nTrials (number of mirage-burn sequences) could be cell A2 and is something you use the goal seek to solve for and Probability is the cumulative probability of refineing to a level of interest (e.g., 0.5 for a +1 refine, and 0.5 x 0.3 for a +2 refine, etc.). Total number of mirages to have on hand for a given confidence level is nTrials x Refinement-Level. So for 80% confidence of successfully refining an armor or ornament to +3, you'd find you need 35 trials with a probability of 0.045 = 0.5 x 0.3 x 0.3, which in turn means having 105 mirages on hand (35 x 3). If you were willing to risk only a 50% confidence of succesfully refinig to +3, then you could drop the number of trials from 35 to 15, but there's a 50% chance you'll fail if you only have 45 mirages in hand.

    Edit: Play around with this spreadsheet... only enter numbers in the yellow-shaded cells (unless you figure it out and know what you're doing! :D).
  • Mumintroll - Heavens Tear
    Mumintroll - Heavens Tear Posts: 3,393 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »
    The standard deviation of 1 refine attempt isn't really a very meaningful number to the average player, though. I've had runs where I've gone well beyond 2 or 3 standard deviations in order to get to +3, but they've been balanced out by the times where I got to +3 quite easily.

    The question, really, is how much risk you're willing to accept, as well as what strategies you're going to use to minimize it. I generally avoid risk, so my way of mitigating it while refining is to only refine things when I can do so in batches. Refining only 1 item has a large standard deviation, but refining 10 items equally and treating the refining as a group shrinks the standard deviation dramatically.

    This is why even though I once spent 9 million trying to +5 something and ended up with nothing, I'm still very very satisfied with my overall results. I've managed to +5 every piece of armour I have (except my Rank 6 ring, which can't be refined) for an average cost of less than half the cost of on-sale Dragon Orbs, and that's even after including the "wasted" 9 million.

    Wow you have rank 6? That's what I desperately need.b:victory
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • ZOMBIENATION - Heavens Tear
    ZOMBIENATION - Heavens Tear Posts: 44 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    i've always refined my stuff to +1-2-or3 with purely mirages, according to all i have read i am unbelievably lucky lol
  • Solandri - Heavens Tear
    Solandri - Heavens Tear Posts: 2,843 Arc User
    edited March 2010
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    Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary wrote: »
    This is only true across the average of the 10 items, but random draws are done on each individual sequence, so the number of items you're going to refine does not reduce the variance dramatically for any single item; they're all independent events. By your logic flipping a coin 10 times would reduce the standard deviation of getting a head on the 10th flip (unless I've grossly misunderstood what you mean). In fact the 10th flip has the identical chance of being heads as the 1st flip... the number of flips doesn't change the distribution function.
    That's what he's talking about - reducing the average variance per item by doing 10. With a larger sample, your standard deviation shrinks. e.g. if you are flipping coins trying to get just 1 head, it's conceivable you could get unlucky and get 5 tails before getting a head (3.125% chance of 5 tails). But if you're trying to get 10 heads, the chance of getting 50 tails for 10 heads (the same 5:1 ratio as before) is astronomically small.

    I understand what you're saying - that refining 10 items at once in one sitting is no different than refining 10 items one at a time spread across several days. But the comparison he was making was between someone doing this to refine just 1 or 2 items, vs. refining 10 items.
    Note also that a discrete binomial distribution is not symmetric unless the probabilty of success is very near 50% (which is not the case for any of these refinement sequences), so using the "standard" deviation assosciated with a continous Gaussian distribution would be in error.
    Yeah, the asymmetric probability distribution function for this is a real PITA when trying to think of this intuitively.
  • bananatwo
    bananatwo Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    oo hope i can refine mine to +12 b:angry
  • Telarith - Sanctuary
    Telarith - Sanctuary Posts: 1,417 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Just going off last page, there was a whole lot of work put in that doesn't seem to have taken proper variables into account that would kill all work done to date.

    1. The chance to refine changes even with the same elder depending on when you try.

    2. You would need to try each particular +refinement at different times to find if the bonus simply shifts between a particular range at any time.

    Case in point, my TT90 armor. I would try a few times and see how it went for first piece. I would accept one fail to get +3, stop if two fails in a row and come back later. When the arch elder was lucky for the +1 - +3 range, it is very obvious. Got +3 going 3/3 on tries, so used a second piece that was ready. Got 2/2, failed one, then 3/3 again.

    Later on second set of TT90 pieces, don't remember exact order, but +3ed both for only 10 mirage. So it kept with the same pattern.

    Now I tried doing +4 a few times during lucky streaks, and every time it failed for me. Tried 5 times, which if it was part of the lucky rate would have been more than enough. All failed. So the range of +3 includes 1 to 3, but not above. So would the bad streaks when trying to get up to +3 actually be bad luck for there, but good luck for a different number range? Which would mean +3ing, using a spare item for a particular bad run (some will do up to +2 easy, some even +1 is hard), and trying +4 on each one a few times, then +5 on each, etc.

    But this assuming the rate is static, when it very evidently isn't, seems to be going in the wrong direction.
    Fist are the worst at PvP AND PvE, if you disagree, as I said, take it to PM's or make your own guide. Go here if you want to debate about it. - Lyndura

    Get a High lvl Fist warrior use it, Restat to axes. GG - complexx

    :NOTE: These signatures are to forever immortalize, how stupid people can be.
  • Mayfly - Dreamweaver
    Mayfly - Dreamweaver Posts: 6,094 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Random chance is random. Good runs and bad runs of luck are just that, not evidence of hidden variables.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    Weekly Japanese/English bilingual webcomic
    thejapanesepage.com/ebooks/yuki_no_monogatari_manga
  • Chezedude - Dreamweaver
    Chezedude - Dreamweaver Posts: 236 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    When I tried to export the table to excel to run simulations, I couldn't get it to work. It was giving me some weird errors about sheet1 blah blah. Is it currently working or am I doing something wrong?
    youtube.com/chezedude
  • Esnemyl - Dreamweaver
    Esnemyl - Dreamweaver Posts: 3,079 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    it didnt work for me either Cheze >.<
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]<3 by Silvy
    Reborn ditzy archer with a serious oreo addiction =3

    '...cuz my IQ is just above what is required to function as a human' - tsumaru2
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »
    Just going off last page, there was a whole lot of work put in that doesn't seem to have taken proper variables into account that would kill all work done to date.

    1. The chance to refine changes even with the same elder depending on when you try.

    2. You would need to try each particular +refinement at different times to find if the bonus simply shifts between a particular range at any time.
    I agree that if the refining odds changed depending upon when you tried to refine, then that would cause havoc with the results.

    What I can confirm is that on an older non-PWI version of Perfect World, the odds do not change no matter what time of day, NPC being used, item being refined, whether you've just re-logged/re-booted, just succeeded/failed, etc..., etc... Basically, all of Duke Blacke's rumours that I was able to test were found to be completely false.

    This was surprising, actually, since I thought for sure that at least the special land-owning-faction-members-only NPC would make a difference, but even that doesn't.

    Therefore, assuming PWI hasn't changed the basic refining system (and based upon the results of my dozen +5 refines on PWI so far, it appears they haven't) then there's no reason to worry about what the rumours say. There's no harm in following them, mind you, so feel free to use them anyway if they make you feel lucky, but keep in mind they are no different than wearing a lucky hat or saying a quick prayer before clicking "refine".
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    PWI Merchanting Guides: warrenwolfy.wordpress.com
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Chezedude - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    When I tried to export the table to excel to run simulations, I couldn't get it to work. It was giving me some weird errors about sheet1 blah blah. Is it currently working or am I doing something wrong?
    Esnemyl - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    it didnt work for me either Cheze >.<
    I'm not sure what they changed or when, but yeah, it appears that Zoho Sheet now keeps deleting the Macros.b:angry

    I'll re-post a fixed version as soon as I can figure out what's going on.

    - EDIT -

    It looks like the problem is with Zoho Sheet. Although it used to work, it now deletes the macros when you "Export", rather than converting them back to Excel format.

    Here is a link to a direct download of the Excel version: Excel Version - Refining Guide

    I've also updated the link on the first page of this thread.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • Telarith - Sanctuary
    Telarith - Sanctuary Posts: 1,417 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »
    I agree that if the refining odds changed depending upon when you tried to refine, then that would cause havoc with the results.

    What I can confirm is that on an older non-PWI version of Perfect World, the odds do not change no matter what time of day, NPC being used, item being refined, whether you've just re-logged/re-booted, just succeeded/failed, etc..., etc... Basically, all of Duke Blacke's rumours that I was able to test were found to be completely false.

    This was surprising, actually, since I thought for sure that at least the special land-owning-faction-members-only NPC would make a difference, but even that doesn't.

    Therefore, assuming PWI hasn't changed the basic refining system (and based upon the results of my dozen +5 refines on PWI so far, it appears they haven't) then there's no reason to worry about what the rumours say. There's no harm in following them, mind you, so feel free to use them anyway if they make you feel lucky, but keep in mind they are no different than wearing a lucky hat or saying a quick prayer before clicking "refine".

    If I only did one at a time, I would be inclined to agree. But I started saving to do multiple pieces at a time to take advantage of seemingly lucky streaks on the first item, and it worked every time. Similarly it failed every time I did it on unlucky streaks. Odds alone say there is probably something to this, or there wouldn't be such an extreme divergence between two seperate sets. If nothing else there should have been a middle ground to average out, which has yet to occur.
    Fist are the worst at PvP AND PvE, if you disagree, as I said, take it to PM's or make your own guide. Go here if you want to debate about it. - Lyndura

    Get a High lvl Fist warrior use it, Restat to axes. GG - complexx

    :NOTE: These signatures are to forever immortalize, how stupid people can be.
  • Slarti - Dreamweaver
    Slarti - Dreamweaver Posts: 47 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »
    If I only did one at a time, I would be inclined to agree. But I started saving to do multiple pieces at a time to take advantage of seemingly lucky streaks on the first item, and it worked every time. Similarly it failed every time I did it on unlucky streaks. Odds alone say there is probably something to this, or there wouldn't be such an extreme divergence between two seperate sets. If nothing else there should have been a middle ground to average out, which has yet to occur.


    The same effect can be noted with the drops from mobs, critical hits and other "random" generated effects. Some times/places just seem more "lucky" than others.
    Whether this is a feature of the game we can only speculate. I am inclined to believe that it's more an effect of (or limitation in) the coding that governs random number generation in the server software.
  • Telarith - Sanctuary
    Telarith - Sanctuary Posts: 1,417 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Slarti - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    The same effect can be noted with the drops from mobs, critical hits and other "random" generated effects. Some times/places just seem more "lucky" than others.
    Whether this is a feature of the game we can only speculate. I am inclined to believe that it's more an effect of (or limitation in) the coding that governs random number generation in the server software.

    There is an element cycle, duke black will give mention of it as one of his quests, that improves the drop rate of mobs that have that particular element. This was known about more in 2008 I guess, but that's why we sometimes get lucky drops, it's not random :)
    Fist are the worst at PvP AND PvE, if you disagree, as I said, take it to PM's or make your own guide. Go here if you want to debate about it. - Lyndura

    Get a High lvl Fist warrior use it, Restat to axes. GG - complexx

    :NOTE: These signatures are to forever immortalize, how stupid people can be.
  • Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973
    Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 Posts: 7,881 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    You tend to remember streaks of great luck or lack of luck much more than mundane actual luck. Not only this but there if a self selection bias in people who post about luck in this thread.

    I've gotten 5 or 6 pieces to +5 without any duke advice or officers and without noticing anything really noteworthy.
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  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »
    If I only did one at a time, I would be inclined to agree. But I started saving to do multiple pieces at a time to take advantage of seemingly lucky streaks on the first item, and it worked every time.
    Slarti - Dreamweaver wrote: »
    I am inclined to believe that it's more an effect of (or limitation in) the coding that governs random number generation in the server software.
    What I can confirm is that it's not something that the programmers have put into the game. The exact odds can be observed (in the non-PWI version, that is) as refining is occurring. It does not ever change these odds, at least, I've never seen them change under any circumstances that I've tested, and I've tried just about everything I can think of as well as anything that others have suggested.

    Now, the question of whether or not the RNG is actually picking truly random numbers is not something I can answer, since I don't have access to the server code. But if there is something wrong with the RNG then it would affect the entire game, not just refining. Thus you'd see better/worse drops, better/worse crafting, better/worse pack rewards, etc...

    Furthermore, since the same RNG is being used server-wide, everybody should be experiencing the same lucky/unlucky streak at the same time. But as far as I know this doesn't seem to be happening.

    I do admit that my own experiences with lucky/unlucky streaks has made me start to wonder if maybe PWI has indeed changed the refining system to include the kinds of secret bonuses people describe. At the end of the day, though, after 10 successful +5 refines in PWI I've seen countless lucky/unlucky streaks come and go without ever finding a pattern that worked any more reliably than just chance alone. It seems the death of any of my theories is to test it 500 times and take notes.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • Telarith - Sanctuary
    Telarith - Sanctuary Posts: 1,417 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »
    What I can confirm is that it's not something that the programmers have put into the game. The exact odds can be observed (in the non-PWI version, that is) as refining is occurring. It does not ever change these odds, at least, I've never seen them change under any circumstances that I've tested, and I've tried just about everything I can think of as well as anything that others have suggested.

    Now, the question of whether or not the RNG is actually picking truly random numbers is not something I can answer, since I don't have access to the server code. But if there is something wrong with the RNG then it would affect the entire game, not just refining. Thus you'd see better/worse drops, better/worse crafting, better/worse pack rewards, etc...

    Furthermore, since the same RNG is being used server-wide, everybody should be experiencing the same lucky/unlucky streak at the same time. But as far as I know this doesn't seem to be happening.

    I do admit that my own experiences with lucky/unlucky streaks has made me start to wonder if maybe PWI has indeed changed the refining system to include the kinds of secret bonuses people describe. At the end of the day, though, after 10 successful +5 refines in PWI I've seen countless lucky/unlucky streaks come and go without ever finding a pattern that worked any more reliably than just chance alone. It seems the death of any of my theories is to test it 500 times and take notes.

    For the ones I mentioned, it only works to +3 on armor, and +2 for weapons/ornaments. Trying to get higher than that would result in many failures even on the lucky streaks, which may make it less clear.

    However, searching in PWI database had something that might help.


    Price: 100 / 10.000.000
    Stocked: 1000

    Useful when refining equipment.
    Refinery Lv. will not decrease if the refinery fails.
    100% success rate on gear refined to level 0.
    25% success rate on gear refined to level 1.
    10% success rate on gear refined to level 2.
    4% success rate on gear refined to level 3.
    1.67% success rate on gear refined to level 4.
    0.77% success rate on gear refined to level 5.
    0.47% success rate on gear refined to level 6.
    0.25% success rate on gear refined to level 7.
    0.13% success rate on gear refined to level 8.
    0.07% success rate on gear refined to level 9.
    0.04% success rate on gear refined to level 10.
    0.02% success rate on gear refined to level 11.

    This is likely the chance to get refinement for each individual level for a more accurate way to look at it. And considering it only takes 740 gold to use a dragon orb refinement from 1* all the way to 12*, I'm prolly gonna use the trick to +3 armor and then simply orb refine from there.
    Fist are the worst at PvP AND PvE, if you disagree, as I said, take it to PM's or make your own guide. Go here if you want to debate about it. - Lyndura

    Get a High lvl Fist warrior use it, Restat to axes. GG - complexx

    :NOTE: These signatures are to forever immortalize, how stupid people can be.
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »
    This is likely the chance to get refinement for each individual level for a more accurate way to look at it.
    Well, no, it's not. That was actually one of the early theories, but we've checked and done all the calculations and testing.

    The charts and spreadsheets aren't for everyone, I admit, which is why I still recommend Dragon Orbs for people who want a quick, sure and easy to understand (but expensive) way to refine.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    PWI Merchanting Guides: warrenwolfy.wordpress.com
  • WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
    WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary Posts: 1,686 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    New versions of the spreadsheets are available:

    - Chienkun Stones added
    - "Risk aversion" factor added

    The "Risk aversion" lets you have the option to see what would happen if you chose to spend a bit more for Dragon Orbs in order to avoid risk. For example, if you're willing to pay 10% more to avoid risk, then the spreadsheet will choose to use Dragon Orbs in cases where they are only 10% more expensive than the cheapest option.

    The Chienkun stones are calculated for both refining (hint: they're useless) and for transferring refines between non-Nirvana items (hint: they're expensive). I don't have complete data on the costs for transferring Nirvana refines yet, so those prices are not calculated.

    Zoho Sheet - Refining Guide <- Online version
    Excel Version - Refining Guide <- Downloadable

    Zoho Sheet has given me nothing but trouble with its limited macro support, so I'm limiting the simulator to the Excel version for now. When/if macro support improves on Zoho Sheet I'll add it back in.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • quicksandz
    quicksandz Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited April 2010
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    Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »
    And considering it only takes 740 gold to use a dragon orb refinement from 1* all the way to 12*, I'm prolly gonna use the trick to +3 armor and then simply orb refine from there.
    Is this true? 740 gold?

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