Refining for cheap

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

For a binary operation (succeed/fail) with a fixed % chance, the margin of error with a 95% confidence interval (i.e. 95% of the time, your results will fall within the margin of error) is just:

0.98 * sqrt [ (success rate)*(fail rate) / N ]

So for the +1 data I just posted (42 of 78, or 54%), the margin of error is:

0.98 * sqrt ((.54)(.46)/78) = 0.055

In other words, there's a 95% chance that the actual success rate falls within 48.5% - 59.5%. That's already a pretty strong result even with a sample size this small.

To get a margin of error of 1%, which is almost the same as knowing the exact value:

0.01 = 0.98 * sqrt ((.5)(.5)/N)
N = 98^2 * (.5)*(.5)
N = 2401

While a sample size of 2400 is large, it's much less than infinity. The point of this thread is that if we can pool our numbers together, we can reach a sample size that large more quickly.

ok so how big is probability and how many mirages you need for refine weapon to +12?

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

For a binary operation (succeed/fail) with a fixed % chance, the margin of error with a 95% confidence interval (i.e. 95% of the time, your results will fall within the margin of error) is just:

0.98 * sqrt [ (success rate)*(fail rate) / N ]

So for the +1 data I just posted (42 of 78, or 54%), the margin of error is:

0.98 * sqrt ((.54)(.46)/78) = 0.055

In other words, there's a 95% chance that the actual success rate falls within 48.5% - 59.5%. That's already a pretty strong result even with a sample size this small.

To get a margin of error of 1%, which is almost the same as knowing the exact value:

0.01 = 0.98 * sqrt ((.5)(.5)/N)
N = 98^2 * (.5)*(.5)
N = 2401

While a sample size of 2400 is large, it's much less than infinity. The point of this thread is that if we can pool our numbers together, we can reach a sample size that large more quickly.

ok so how big is probability and how many mirages you need for refine weapon to +10 at least?

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

ok so how big is probability and how many mirages you need for refine weapon to +10 at least?

We have no data past +5 yet.

Pooling the numbers Peritia, Warren, and I posted, I get the following (all error margins @ 95% c.i.):

+1: 55.2% +/- 3.3% (n = 221)
+2: 36.6% +/- 4.3% (n = 123)
+3: 40.0% +/- 7.2% (n = 45)
+4: 33.3% +/- 13.3% (n = 12)
+5: 75.0% +/- 21.2% (n = 4)

I'd pretty much ignore the +4 and +5 cases right now, sample size is way too small. Of the +1, +2, and +3 cases, 8 of the 9 data subsets have results which are within their margin of error of the overall average. The one exception is Peritia's +1 data, which falls 6.0% outside the overall average, while the 95% c.i. is 5.8%. But with 9 subsets, you'd expect at least one subset to fall outside the 95% c.i. about half the time. Basically, the data is very consistent with the only outlier falling within statistical expectations. If the three of us refined at different times/places, this would seem to discount the theory that time and location affect refining success.

I'm not sure about the idea that higher grade items are harder to refine. I sold 3 wings of the cloudcharger (grade 13), and I always refined them to +3 so people could get a sense how many extra hp each refine would add. I didn't notice anything terribly unusual about the refine rates. They may have accounted for the ~25% success rate at +1 I mentioned in a previous post. Now I kinda wish I hadn't sold the last one so I could reset it to zero and test it again. b:chuckle

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

ok so how big is probability and how many mirages you need for refine weapon to +10 at least?

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

We have no data past +5 yet.

Pooling the numbers Peritia, Warren, and I posted, I get the following (all error margins @ 95% c.i.):

+1: 55.2% +/- 3.3% (n = 221)
+2: 36.6% +/- 4.3% (n = 123)
+3: 40.0% +/- 7.2% (n = 45)
+4: 33.3% +/- 13.3% (n = 12)
+5: 75.0% +/- 21.2% (n = 4)

I'd pretty much ignore the +4 and +5 cases right now, sample size is way too small.

I'm not sure about the idea that higher grade items are harder to refine. I sold 3 wings of the cloudcharger (grade 13), and I always refined them to +3 so people could get a sense how many extra hp each refine would add. I didn't notice anything terribly unusual about the refine rates. They may have accounted for the ~25% success rate at +1 I mentioned in a previous post. Kinda wish I hadn't sold the last one so I could reset it to zero and test it again. b:chuckle

Thanks. So there is still big probability of failure. You can spend +100 mirage and maybe you will not get +5. So what we figure out? success can be or not. We are not nearer to solution as we were at beginning.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Thanks. So there is still big probability of failure. You can spend +100 mirage and maybe you will not get +5. So what we figure out? success can be or not. We are not nearer to solution as we were at beginning.

Well, if you take the averages we got so far, your chances to get to +3 are:

3 mirages: 8.1%
5 mirages: 16.2%
10 mirages: 35.0%
20 mirages: 60.9%
50 mirages: 91.5%
73 mirages: 97.4% <-- equivalent price of +3 dragon orb @ 400k gold and 15k mirages
100 mirages: 99.3%

So I think we can say with very high certainty that you're better off using mirages to try to get to +3 instead of a dragon orb. I won't trust our +4 and +5 averages until we get more data.

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Well, if you take the averages we got so far, your chances to get to +3 are:

3 mirages: 8.1%
5 mirages: 16.2%
10 mirages: 35.0%
20 mirages: 60.9%
50 mirages: 91.5%
73 mirages: 97.4% <-- equivalent price of +3 dragon orb @ 400k gold and 15k mirages
100 mirages: 99.3%

So I think we can say with very high certainty that you're better off using mirages to try to get to +3 instead of a dragon orb. I won't trust our +4 and +5 averages until we get more data.

yep. +3 is easily obtainable. But +3 is really nothing. +hp gained from +3 is low. I'm interested +5 and up. So keep trying and then post it here. pls.b:victory

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver

I just wanted to point this out -

It's possible that you're right, that there's a fixed %chance of refining anything, regardless of its current level of refinement - and also that the old percentages which we've all seen listed, in which the %chance to refine decreases as you level up the item are BOTH correct

This may seem counter-intuitive, but follow my logic on this:

If there is a fixed chance to refine no matter the current refining level, lets just make it 50% for easy math, then the chance of refining that item TWICE in a row, would be 25%, to get it to +2, and 12.5% to refine it THREE times in a row, to get it to +3.

Because of the fact that if the refining fails, the item resets itself back to refining level 0, the statistical odds of refining something without dragon orbs will decrease exponentially, because you're in essence betting on the same outcome happening (success) each time ~IN A ROW~.

It's just like the odds of flipping a penny and it landing heads up 10 times in a row. The odds of it happening once is 50%, and if you flip it a second time, the odds of THAT event happening are still 50%, but the odds of it happening twice IN A ROW are 25%.

My guess is this would account for both the success rate you seem to have, and the listed percentage rate chart, where the %chance decreases exponentially. Does this maybe clear up some things?

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I just wanted to point this out -

It's possible that you're right, that there's a fixed %chance of refining anything, regardless of its current level of refinement - and also that the old percentages which we've all seen listed, in which the %chance to refine decreases as you level up the item are BOTH correct

This may seem counter-intuitive, but follow my logic on this:

If there is a fixed chance to refine no matter the current refining level, lets just make it 50% for easy math, then the chance of refining that item TWICE in a row, would be 25%, to get it to +2, and 12.5% to refine it THREE times in a row, to get it to +3.

Because of the fact that if the refining fails, the item resets itself back to refining level 0, the statistical odds of refining something without dragon orbs will decrease exponentially, because you're in essence betting on the same outcome happening (success) each time ~IN A ROW~.

It's just like the odds of flipping a penny and it landing heads up 10 times in a row. The odds of it happening once is 50%, and if you flip it a second time, the odds of THAT event happening are still 50%, but the odds of it happening twice IN A ROW are 25%.

My guess is this would account for both the success rate you seem to have, and the listed percentage rate chart, where the %chance decreases exponentially. Does this maybe clear up some things?

Sure it cleared very good. It means after +5 you has incredible low chance on success.

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Sure it cleared very good. It means after +5 you has incredible low chance on success.

Yes. Here's a quick table to illustrate

At 50% constant refine rate, your odds of refining to a certain level will be:

+1 = 50%
+2 = 25%
+3 = 12.5%
+4 = 6.25%
+5 = 3.125%

At 75% constant refine rate, your odds of refining to a certain level will be:

+1 = 75%
+2 = 56.25%
+3 = 42.188%
+4 = 31.641%
+5 = 23.730%

That is all of course assuming that our two assumptions are accurate: One, that there is a constant refine rate, independent of the item's actual refine level, and two, that there are no other influences on our chance of refining (location, time, refining aids, some sort of hidden "luck" stat, etc.)

MagicHamsta - Lost City

3.125?%?
me like them odds.
b:cool

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver wrote: »

It's just like the odds of flipping a penny and it landing heads up 10 times in a row. The odds of it happening once is 50%, and if you flip it a second time, the odds of THAT event happening are still 50%, but the odds of it happening twice IN A ROW are 25%.

My guess is this would account for both the success rate you seem to have, and the listed percentage rate chart, where the %chance decreases exponentially. Does this maybe clear up some things?

You're correct, and this is the basic idea behind my theory.

However, the 40% estimate I started with is almost certainly wrong, and as I'm gathering more data I'm beginning to doubt that the number, whatever it is, remains fixed for each level of refine. It appears that the number does seem to drop off as you refine higher and higher, but the data I've got so far is so limited that I still can't be sure.

While this certainly hampers the quest to figure out the formulas exactly, the good news is that in the majority of experimental models I've created (that have Mirages dropping off), it really doesn't matter if you know the exact numbers or not. If Mirages scale off, then the basic rule for the results is they're good to somewhere around +4, then it's best to switch to Dragon Orbs. That knowledge still allows for some decent savings.

But again, I should point out to anybody reading this thread that this is all still in the experimental stages. So far, all I'm confident of personally is that +2 should always be done with Mirages only. I now +2 all my equipment quite easily and cheaply this way. +3 also seems best with Mirages, but I'm less sure of that, and for +4 or more I'm not sure of anything so far.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Sure it cleared very good. It means after +5 you has incredible low chance on success.

If the fixed-percentage theory is true, then the potential savings for levels higher than +5 start to become rather massive.

Problem is, the margin for error shrinks. A small miscalculation when you're only refining to +3 is no big deal, but that same error if you're going for +10 might mean the difference between 40,000,000 average cost and 400,000,000.

That's why I'm doing all these experiments at lower levels first, to try to figure out how the system works.

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver

What interests me is less the dragon orb theory - mostly because we can all pretty much assume that at some point the cost of the dragon orb will be less than the combined cost of thousands of mirages...that's just common sense.

What interests me more is how we might push that boundary out a ways with the use of tisha/tienkang stones. I have an (admittedly harebrained) theory that if we use tisha stones when refining past +3, we might be able to cheaply get our refine up to +5 or +6, without using dragon orbs.

Here's the basic concept: Tisha stones do two things: increase the refine rate (I don't know by how much), and make it so that if the refining fails, the item only drops by 1 refine level. What that means in practice, is that unless you get multiple fails in a row, you no longer have to have 3,4,5,6+ successes in a row, you only have to figure in the math for about 2-3 successes in a row... which makes the chances of refining up to +5 or +6 much much higher in the long run.

Now I have a basic understanding of math, and I was pretty good in school, but I'm a music major, and I don't know how to accurately figure out this problem. Can we get a math guy or statistician in here to help?

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

I used not tisha stone but other blue1 which greatly increase chance to success of refining. I tried from +3 to +4 with this stone and true is, that is not always success. I would say the chance is little bit higher but not much higher. One time I was lucky and with this stone I refined green TT 90 armor magical from +4 to +5. But another time I failed form +3 to +4 with this stone.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What interests me more is how we might push that boundary out a ways with the use of tisha/tienkang stones. I have an (admittedly harebrained) theory that if we use tisha stones when refining past +3, we might be able to cheaply get our refine up to +5 or +6, without using dragon orbs.

I've created some Excel spreadsheet models to test out what might be possible, and the conclusions seem to undermine the fixed-percentage theory.

The problem for the fixed-percentage theory is that if it's true and Tisha/Tienkang stone boost this percentage, then the costs for high level refines become absurdly cheap.

For example, when I plunk in the numbers we've been getting so far through experimentation, and then account for the behaviour of Tisha stones, the average cost for +12 refines ends up less that 100million, which is pretty much just a nonsense result and proves the calculations and/or numbers are way off.

We obviously all still need more data.

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've created some Excel spreadsheet models to test out what might be possible, and the conclusions seem to undermine the fixed-percentage theory.

The problem for the fixed-percentage theory is that if it's true and Tisha/Tienkang stone boost this percentage, then the costs for high level refines become absurdly cheap.

For example, when I plunk in the numbers we've been getting so far through experimentation, and then account for the behaviour of Tisha stones, the average cost for +12 refines ends up less that 100million, which is pretty much just a nonsense result and proves the calculations and/or numbers are way off.

We obviously all still need more data.

Hum... interesting. I don't suppose you would consider posting, or emailing me the formulas you're using to test those numbers? I'd be very interested in looking them over. This might be a flaw in our reasoning, or an error in the basic assumptions we're using to test our reasoning.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Here's the basic concept: Tisha stones do two things: increase the refine rate (I don't know by how much), and make it so that if the refining fails, the item only drops by 1 refine level. What that means in practice, is that unless you get multiple fails in a row, you no longer have to have 3,4,5,6+ successes in a row, you only have to figure in the math for about 2-3 successes in a row... which makes the chances of refining up to +5 or +6 much much higher in the long run.

That was why I brought up Markov chains and took the time to explain it a few pages back. It lets you analyze the results of all three types of stones the exact same way. All you have to do is change the numbers in the P matrix a bit.

It won't let you see how many mirages it'll take on average to get to a certain refine (I'm still doubtful an arithmetic mean would even be meaningful in that context). But it will let you compare the probabilities of all possible outcomes for the 3 types of stones side by side.

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

That was why I brought up Markov chains and took the time to explain it a few pages back. It lets you analyze the results of all three types of stones the exact same way. All you have to do is change the numbers in the P matrix a bit.

It won't let you see how many mirages it'll take on average to get to a certain refine (I'm still doubtful an arithmetic mean would even be meaningful in that context). But it will let you compare the probabilities of all possible outcomes for the 3 types of stones side by side.

ahh i see... i'll have to back up a few pages and re-read it then... thanks.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

I got curious how much Tisha stones could help, so I did a hypothetical comparison between no stones and Tisha stones. For probability to succeed, I used +1 = 55%, +2 = 40%, +3 = 40%, +4 = 35%. Not really sure yet on the +3 and +4, but like I said this is hypothetical. I assumed you'd stop after reaching +4. The % are the chance to finish at that refine state for a given number of mirages used.

I also ignored the extra chance to succeed provided by Tisha stones since we don't have any data on that. This is a "worst case" scenario for the Tisha stones.

The percentages are for just mirages / Tisha stones on only +4 attempts / Tisha stones on +3 and +4 attempts

10 mirages:
+0: 46.6% / 42.4% / 33.1%
+1: 26.1% / 23.8% / 26.7%
+2: 10.6% / 13.4% / 17.2%
+3: 4.3% / 5.5% / 6.0%
+4: 12.4% / 14.9% / 17.1%

20 mirages:
+0: 39.1% / 33.7% / 24.5%
+1: 21.9% / 19.0% / 21.1%
+2: 8.9% / 10.7% / 12.2%
+3: 3.6% / 4.4% / 4.9%
+4: 26.4% / 32.3% / 37.3%

30 mirages:
+0: 32.9% / 26.8% / 18.4%
+1: 18.4% / 15.1% / 16.0%
+2: 7.5% / 8.5% / 9.1%
+3: 3.0% / 3.5% / 3.7%
+4: 38.2% / 46.1% / 52.7%

40 mirages:
+0: 27.6% / 21.4% / 13.9%
+1: 15.5% / 12.0% / 12.1%
+2: 6.3% / 6.8% / 6.9%
+3: 2.6% / 2.8% / 2.8%
+4: 48.5% / 57.1% / 64.2%

50 mirages:
+0: 23.2% / 17.0% / 10.5%
+1: 13.0% / 9.6% / 9.1%
+2: 5.3% / 5.4% / 5.2%
+3: 2.2% / 2.2% / 2.1%
+4: 56.4% / 65.8% / 73.0%

100 mirages:
+0: 9.7% / 5.4% / 2.6%
+1: 5.4% / 3.1% / 2.2%
+2: 2.2% / 1.7% / 1.3%
+3: 0.9% / 0.7% / 0.5%
+4: 81.7% / 89.1% / 93.4%

Without even accounting for the cost of the Tisha stones, clearly they don't have a very big impact at this level. Their impact should be greater (or much greater) at higher refine levels. Going from +3 to +2 is not that different from going from +3 to +0. Going from +8 to +7 should be a huge difference compared to going from +8 to +0

Conclusion: Unless the bonus to chance to succeed turns out to be pretty substantial, don't use Tisha stones at low level refines.

Lulznotwar - Lost City

AoiKagerou - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What interests me is less the dragon orb theory - mostly because we can all pretty much assume that at some point the cost of the dragon orb will be less than the combined cost of thousands of mirages...that's just common sense.

What interests me more is how we might push that boundary out a ways with the use of tisha/tienkang stones. I have an (admittedly harebrained) theory that if we use tisha stones when refining past +3, we might be able to cheaply get our refine up to +5 or +6, without using dragon orbs.

Well saying from what little experience i have i spent nothing on stones(got them all from the tb quests) i managed to refine my axes to +5 and my helm to +3 with using 5 of those blue stones, 5 of the rainbowey ones, and 24 mirages

that cost if i was using gold and coin like 1 gold, and 350-400k in mirages, aka a total cost of like 800-900k

compared to 8mil for a dragon orb packs worth

either im very lucky or refining up to +5 or so seems to be more economical to refine using stones and mirages vs drag orbs

Brael - Dreamweaver

Level 6 wraith robe, I used a level 6 item mainly to help determine if item level has any subtantial impact. I figured level 6 would show a decent difference considering other tests have been level 9, 10, and 12 items.

100 mirage
0-1 31/60
1-2 9/29
2-3 1/10
3-4 0/1

Considering those results, unless I'm extremely unlucky I don't think item level makes a difference.

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

Just upgraded a Cape of tauran chieftan to +3 with 4 tiesha's and 16 mirage stones.

The random generator did a number on me, and refining in Dreamweaver went like this. fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail...

....so I relogged and moved to arch. Got instant success for +1, +2 failed, +1 success again, +2 sucess, and the tiesha's bounced between 2 and 3 and settled on +3.
Either way it perhaps it was just yet another "coincidence" but i'm becoming more and more convinced the random generator can "stick".

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Either way it perhaps it was just yet another "coincidence" but i'm becoming more and more convinced the random generator can "stick".

I did some research and found that the server is written in C++ and runs under Linux.

Assuming the developers used the standard programming libraries, then the random numbers are truly random. Linux takes advantage of hard drive speed fluctuations, keyboard and mouse movement, and (most importantly for us) network traffic to generate a constant supply of genuinely random bits, which it then feeds into a very effective pseudo-random generator to mix things up even more. The result is probably the best random number generator around for gaming purposes.

However, it's also possible that the developers didn't use it. If they used a home-brew quickie generator, such as a simple Linear Congruential Random Number Generator, then all bets are off. I remember back in my Apple II programming days I had a simple wargame that I made that would get stuck during combat because the built-in Apple II LCRNG was horrible and would frequently get stuck in loops.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

100 mirage
0-1 31/60
1-2 9/29
2-3 1/10
3-4 0/1

Overall average thus far with 95% confidence interval error margins:

0-1: 54.5% +/- 2.9% (n=281)
1-2: 35.5% +/- 3.8% (n=152)
2-3: 34.6% +/- 6.3% (n=55)
3-4: 31% +/- 13% (n=13, unreliable)
4-5: 75% +/- 21% (n=4, very unreliable)

Nelae - Heavens Tear

Btw it's true that you have more chance to refine when there are no peeps around you, so testing this in Arch is a no no ......

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear

Ok what is conclusion?

Refining till +3 with just mirages. From +3 to +5 use some support stone and from +5 up use dragon orbs.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Mumintroll - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Ok what is conclusion?

Using the numbers we have thus far, if you start with a +2 armor piece, your chance to get it to +3 without any orbs are:

9.5 mirages: 50%
40 mirages: 85% (sale cost of a +3 DO w/ gold@450k and mirages@20k)
54 mirages: 91% (cost of a +3 DO w/ gold@400k and mirages@20k)
68 mirages: 95% (sale cost of a +3 DO w/ gold@450k and mirages@12k)
90 mirages: 98% (cost of a +3 DO w/ gold@400k and mirages@12k)

If we assume the 31% success rate for +4 is correct (sample size is too small for me to have much confidence in this), starting with a +3 armor piece, your chance to get it to +4 without any orbs are:

32.5 mirages: 50%
112 mirages: 79.5% (sale cost of a +4 DO w/ gold@450k and mirages@20k)
135 mirages: 84.1% (cost of a +4 DO w/ gold@400k and mirages@20k)
187 mirages: 91.1% (sale cost of a +4 DO w/ gold@450k and mirages@20k)
225 mirages: 94.2% (cost of a +4 DO w/ gold@400k and mirages@12k)

So it looks like you're better off not using +4 dragon orbs as well.

We have almost no data on the Tisha and Tienkang stones so can't say if they're worth it. Since the ones from the quest are free, might as well use them.

Hazardus - Heavens Tear

WOW! You mathfolks have brewed up a textbook or two.....I swear some of the stuff on here I haven't even heard of.....b:shocked

Anyways, I tried reading and understanding all your methods, honestly I did (and failed miserably b:surrender). So I thought I'd just contribute this little tidbits of wisdom:

I see quite a few posts inquiring about the % chances of the tiesha (or whatever they are called) stones. I don't know if it still available, but at one time the auction house used to have listed the success chance for each attempt. And I believe that the % chance is based on level of refining and NOT the item level itself. You're talking to a guy who once was trying to get his TT60 axe to +2, and 40 mirages later quit at +1. b:bye

Lastly, its a game folks, relax and have fun. You don't have to have it all at +12. b:chuckle

Brael - Dreamweaver

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Overall average thus far with 95% confidence interval error margins:

0-1: 54.5% +/- 2.9% (n=281)
1-2: 35.5% +/- 3.8% (n=152)
2-3: 34.6% +/- 6.3% (n=55)
3-4: 31% +/- 13% (n=13, unreliable)
4-5: 75% +/- 21% (n=4, very unreliable)

Mine pretty much match that for 0-1 and 1-2, after that the number of tests I had wasn't enough. Something that was level 6 should have been off after that many, rather than almost exactly right, with 0-1 being 51.67% and 1-2 being 31.03%.

Hippie - Harshlands

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Finding accurate information about refining seems to be really tricky. Other than, "Dragon Orbs give 100% of refining success," there seems to be a lot of guesswork and factually inaccurate claims out there.

Now, I don't claim to know the truth either, so I'm wondering if my theory matches what other people have experienced.

My theory, based on my (admittedly limited) experience, is that refining with just Mirages has a 40% chance of success. It doesn't seem to matter what level of refinement you already have, so whether you're going from +0 to +1, or +9 to +10, you've still got a 40% chance of success.

If that's the case, then the average number of Mirages you'll need to refine a piece of armour is as follows:

+1: 2.5
+2: 6.25
+3: 15.6
+4: 39
+5: 98
+6: 244
+7: 610
+8: 1526
+9: 3815
+10: 9537
+11: 23842
+12: 59605

If this is true (and this is why I'm asking what others have experienced), then at current inflated Gold prices vs. deflated Mirage prices you're better off, on average, using just Mirages and skipping Dragon Orbs.

For example, at 15k per Mirage you'll average about 9million to +7 something, but if you buy Dragon Orbs at 400k Gold prices you'll spend about 48million.

Does this sound about right, or am I way off?

U are admitedly stuped