[NEW MERCENARIES] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.
It really doesn't matter how rich you are, though, unless you just have to have the weapon ASAP.
+13 Astera weap: 750m
+12 Astera weap, and two reforges: 300m+ for the weapon, 200m+ per attempt. Yes, if you get lucky on the first try before booming or on the first reforge you come out ahead, but only up to that point. Two reforges breaks even, leaves you with a bound weapon, and still only has a 25% chance of success. Say you have one of the +6% Goib stones: now your chance is 31%, so still less than 1 in 3 odds of succeeding, which means odds are it will still take additional tries at 200m+ in material per try. Keep in mind that even after 7 failures your success rate only goes to 38%--44% if you use a +6 Goib.
You only reach 100% success after 8 failures, so if you happen to have bad luck that's over 1.6 bil gold worth of mats to get there, and 300-350m that +12 cost to begin with. It's a much better value to buy a +13 weapon outright for 750m and still have a weapon that you can unbind and resell to recoup gold later than it is to try for +13 Astera on your own and possibly spend the equivalent of nearing or beyond 2 bil in materials. Keep in mind as well we're talking now where Steel is 4.8m a piece; initially it was closer to 9m and some people still went all in on reforge attempts.
For +14 it takes 10 fails to guarantee success, and 12 fails to guarantee success to reach +15. Yes, you could certainly succeed before then, and +14/15s are rare, but if luck isn't on your side that's 6 billion+ in materials to get there. People throwing around prices for +15 100s have been offering in the neighborhood of 4 billion. Even at 5 or 5.5 billion you still come out ahead of what could be the worst case scenario with reforging--and keep in mind that your odds do not go over 50% until you reach the final guaranteed success attempt. Heck, they only hit 50% even for trying +15 on the next to last maximum fails. For a +12 95 weapon you're looking at 100m+ per try, so the story repeats: for the majority it will be less expensive to simply buy a +13/14/15 95 weapon.
The bottom line is this: if you're fine with grinding Onslaught to get your steel relatively efficiently then reforging isn't going to be horrible for you in terms of how long it takes you to gather Steel. That said, the odds are such that you will more likely fail than succeed each try until you get to 100% from failstacks. It is still a more financially sound and time sound investment to simply buy what you want, it's that simple. The bots cannot farm enough steel or essences and ores/shards/chunks at this point to make the system efficient enough for it to be the better alternative.
If NA were as active as KR the Reforge system might very well come out ahead, but we aren't, and for most players Reforging is the most expensive way to attain high enhance gear.
It's a great improvement in theory, just not in practice because of the mat requirements. If you like/can deal with Onslaught then you can get steel relatively cheaply overall, though it might cost your sanity. In terms of value, though, the amount of steel for a single try from 12 to 13, for instance, for a 100 weapon is worth almost 166m in gold. Add in a 40m weapon essence, and two 12m gold ores and you're looking at well over 200m per try. Fail once and your next try after reforging again leaves you sitting at what it would have cost had you simply sold your +12 and paid the difference to buy a +13. Fail twice and keep going and you're worse off than you would have been had you bought a +13 outright. That's a very precipitous change in fortunes with no means of mitigating the risk.
This of course assumes a +13, 14, etc., to buy, but the fact is that it is an extremely expensive system for us. Having the same mat requirements as KR with a much less active population--even with bots trying their best =p--just doesn't make it a great experience. I'm leaving it alone for now because it doesn't make sense cost-wise. I gave it a go on a Dulla weap with steel from the AP shop event and the free packs we've gotten from "Golden Time" since Dulla mats are cheap and we were given steel and runes that would expire anyway. It failed at no big loss since most of the items were free/inexpensive, but doing that over and over again since I'm one of those who doesn't like Onslaught would be mind-numbing and just make me hate even playing the game.
TLDR: could be great, but it doesn't make financial sense for most players. Not worth trying at all for anything below +12, and even then it might be questionable if you don't like farming via Onslaught. The cost really needs to be better balanced for NA/EU/AUS population.
The Xmas tree event isn't finished because Nexon in their infinite wisdom decided to make S3 raids, and especially the new ones, the only thing worth doing. No one wants to go out of their way to smash things in old content for what is apparently a low chance at getting the new ornaments and ribbons. New? Yes, that's right, Nexon coded in new ornaments and ribbons so if you still had some sitting in your story item inventory from the last two times we had this event they don't count.
I did a few runs of Hoarfrost and the like on characters and was averaging less than one ornament a run. Same for Nightmare at the Ruins. So much less than one a run that I gave up after five runs on a character netting only a single ornament. The old Christmas events had much higher drop rates and had things like Clodagh/Outfit dye ampules, runes, etc. Things worth beating your head against RNG for. Vindi has done a much better job the longer it goes on under this new management of making the best ROI doing nothing.
Want +12 gear for all your characters? Do nothing for 30 days. Want rewards? Log in, go afk, and do nothing for 30 minutes a day. No wonder this game has tanked so hard. No wonder Nexon continues to be one of the worst regarded publishers of multiplayer titles.
