March 16, 2010

Blood, Sweat and Tears aka Upgrading

I’m pretty stingy. Frugal. Penny-pinching. I don’t have a lot of gold to go around and certainly fewer diamonds so I try to use my money wisely.
I recently leveled Spiral’s rogue side to 54. I had always said that if I got high enough, I would stop wearing the Tempest Heights set and switch to more level-appropriate gear. I have collected five out of seven pieces of that set, but all the pieces are below level 50 and the set bonus isn’t cutting it anymore.
So I decided to record the results of the upgrading of a pair of pants to see how much money I spent and what the results were.
So I went to the Enchanter NPC and gave him a peanut butter sandwich, a backrub and my spleen...kidding!
I gave him 12,474 gold and he gave me a fusion stone that gave two stats plus a random. I chose to buy the stone that gives Defense I and Life II , partially because those are decent stats and partially because I already had some in my inventory to match together.
Okay, so I needed nine matching stones to make three Tier 4s but as the third stat on the stone is random, I ended up buying 30 stones before I got nine that matched. Here is the break-down of the stats I got on top of the Def I and Life II.
7 Intelligence, 4 Light, 3 Mist, 2 each of Spirit, Stamina, Earth and Dark, and 1 each of Ability, Life, Flame, Might, Energy, Whiff.
Plus I got 2 stones that didn’t have an extra stat, just Def I and Life II so they match with anything in this group.
As you can assume, I used the seven Int stones plus the two “blanks” to upgrade my gear.
Then I had to buy belts to transmute the Fusion stones into Mana stones. I bought the Dress Uniform Belts in Obsidian Stronghold, Mercenary Square, because they are the cheapest piece that gives you a Tier 3 stone. I only bought four belts because I had three free belts that I had received from playing Malatina’s game.
I used two pieces of gear I had saved to get the two extra stats I wanted: Stam X and Strength X. The pants already had Energy X on them.
So this is how the pants look after the upgrading.
Now for the cost:
30 stones x 12,474g = 374,220
4 belts x 1,583g = 6,332
TOTAL COST = 380,552

I should also note that I used 13 Arcane Transmuter charges which you can get for free with your Phirius coins, although you can buy them with gold and diamonds too, I think.
To offset the cost of this upgrading, I usually turn nine of the leftover stones into one Tier 5 and sell it on the AH. My price is 200,000g so I get a payment of 187,999 after the AH cut. If I can sell two Tier 5s, I’m almost break-even.
Just tonight, a guildie and I had a great chat about upgrading and she told me that I should use puris (purified stones) on my best blue or purple armor (yeah, right! Like I have any purples!) and then just tier up my weapons using junk stones. She said that the armor needs the stats, like above, but the weapon benefits more from tiering. Good advice. That's why I love my guildies.  :)

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