Season 3 Enchanting: How to get ripped in 30 minutes

Chances are, you've played this game for a little while before turning to guides, wondering "Just how are the other players so damn strong?!"

Their secret? Enchanting. And we're going to talk all about it.

Introduction - Why yet another enchanting guide?

|| This section is full of opinions and little relevant information. Read only if you want, otherwise, skip to Section 1 ||

La Tale is an interesting game. I've had a lot of fun with it over the four years I've played it, and thought enough of it to even put a little money into its cash shop. That's not to say that I like every aspect of the game - power creep has been the struggle since midway through Season 2, and after several questionable balance patches, no matter what class you play, you're expected to hit like anywhere between truck and small meteor. Gone are the days when a diverse party would succeed a dungeon through capitalizing on the unique skills of each class - the game has turned into kill fast or be killed faster.

So, since the name of the game is now incredible strength, what is there to do? Get the best weapons and armor and just solo everything? Well, yeah, of course. Partially. Even though endgame gear is strong, you'll quickly find that the sheer number of mobs, their strength, or a combination of the two is pushing what you thought was the best possible gear past its limits, and sending you back to your most recent Iris stone real quick.

That's where enchanting comes into play. Technically, that's where enchanting, buff stacking, food items, nostrums, wonder drugs, etc also comes into play, but this guide is specifically about enchanting, and not just any enchanting, Season 3 enchanting. "There's like fifty other enchanting guides between Steam and LaTale forums Forte what gives?", I hear you asking. The answer is simple: They don't explain it in a way that really gives players ripped gear. Almost every guide or suggestion I've read on the subject helps a player make slightly above average gear, but we want to hit millions per hit, right? The game won't let us do it any other way.

Let's dive in.

Section 1: Enchanting 101 - Getting Started

If you already know how to pick up enchantment items, what durability is, or any of that other neat stuff, just skip ahead a little bit.

First things first: How do I into enchant gear?
Glad you asked. In virtually every town in the game, you'll see an NPC with this goofy symbol gyrating over their head:


Even though it's obviously like a potion bottle. these NPCs sell everything under the sun that isn't armor or weapons. If you talk to these NPCs (find a different tutorial if you don't know how to talk to NPCs), you'll be given a dialog bubble that typically has four options. The one we're interested in is "Trade Enchantment Items"


It's so important, the game highlighted it for me.

Clicking it brings us to the Enchantment Shop, which looks nice and orderly compared to how it was not too long ago.


If you look at outdated guides, you'll see that this particular shop used to be a rainbow of confusing looking jigsaw pieces. The updated enchanting system eliminates the need for buying specific puzzles, and instead lets you use these four generic items to accomplish whatever buff you want. It's convenient.

Wew. Those purple ones are expensive, right? The Greater Super puzzle and Lesser Super puzzle are where it's at. You'll hear people call these sups, 6-10s (Greater) and sometimes 1-5s (lesser). Unless you're feeling incredibly lucky, they provide an average of higher enchant values with an average of lower durability loss.

Wait. Durability?


See that thing I circled? Durability. Once upon a time, it meant a little more. If your durability ever fell below 100, you risked destroying your weapon while merely trying to upgrade it to a +X status. They took that out, and now no matter how low the durability of a weapon, you will never blow it up while trying to upgrade it. Keep that information close to your heart, my friend. It'll be on the test later.

So, what's this durability good for now? Enchanting, of course! That's what the guide is on. For weapons and armor, as long as durability is above 100, your enchant success rate is locked at 95%. Sweet, that's an A! And to make matters even better, special equipment with pink text (the kind you'll want for the rest of your life after hitting 190) can be found in any durability up to 250. Regular (S) items can be found up to 300 durability.

So wait, what lowers durability? Upgrading and enchanting. Refer to that image up there again. Notice how that Degos Club has 69 (HEH) Durability? Just an example of enchanting and upgrades pulling the durability way down. In case you were curious, the lowest durability is 1. So, when you want to enchant something, naturally, you want to go for the highest durability you can find... but that isn't all there is to the story.

Section 2: Enchanting 102: Levels, Options, and Cubes.

Let's pull up that image again.


Look at that little yellow thing. He's obviously different from the rest of these puzzles. As it says on the tin, that's an Enchantment Cube, and it lowers an option level by 1 and its effect by a small amount. "Forte," you blurt out, "we want to be SWOLE, why would we want to reduce the effects of our options?" The answer is simple: Sometimes options are ass.

Here's some armor I bought specifically for this tutorial. I don't really play Warrior all too much, but last I checked, they deal in strength and a sprinkling of luck.


So why on God's good earth would any warrior ever want this otherwise nice armor with this Magic enchant on it? Look at that nearly full durability, too... What a waste, right?

No. Far from it actually. In reality, having level 10 options naturally on such a high durability piece of equipment is a boon. The only way it could get any better is if this particular piece also had level 10 Option Rate or something equally worthless (and yes, let's face it, if you want IDR or option rate you're going to enchant your fashion with it).

So, let's open the enchant window for the first time.

By default, you can press N to open the Enchant window, but if you've remapped your keys, that button always works. Now, Drag your armor over to that blue alchemy looking circle.


The window now tells us what the enchant options are on that particular piece of eqiupment. If we click on any of those radio buttons, we're given additional information in the "Available Enchant Options" window. I've skipped to the relevant part already - Cube Enchant is clicked, and we see that the available options are to either lower defense or magic to level 9. In Magic's case, when we lower it, it could lose anywhere between 7 and 3, meaning after the enchant is done, we could have Level 9 Magic +10, or Level 9 Magic + 14. For the purposes of this demonstration, you're a warrior, and you don't care about magic anyway.

So let's click on Lv. 9 Magic in the Available Enchant Option box...


Now we see that Required Item has added "Enchantment Cube". That's just to let you know what you'll need to perform the enchant. If you don't have any on you, it'll be greyed out. Also, look at the bottom! Success seems to be 100%... but the item will be destroyed upon failure? It's true, if you fail your enchantment, you'll destroy whatever super cool item you're working on. The good news is: you can't fail an enchantment cube. So, cube away to your heart's content by pressing the "Execute" button.



Oh boy...


Huh. We only lost four magic on that cube. But... !


The durability went up by 1. Not necessarily the best roll, but it did, in fact, go up. Huh. We just talked about how high durability is good, and the max a piece of special armor like this can drop with is 250... Do you think it could... maybe... Go higher?!

LET'S FIND OUT.


COME ON




RRRRAAAH


Oh look at that, we're done.


And now the durability is 265. Neat! Looks like we have -16 magic, though... That'll hit your SP bar by a tiny bit, but when you're trading it in for strength, that's no big deal. Depending on how you feel about defense, you could technically take that off too, but I play Savior, and I consider it a sin to take defense off.

Ok, Fine.


But I'm not going to let it go negative. We got ten more durability. #worth?

Section 3: Enchanting 201 - Upping stats and avoiding explosions

Now for the expensive part. Here's our shop again:


In case you forgot, Greater Super Puzzles are 3.5 million ely each. You can sometimes find them from players for around 3 million each, but in general, your best bet will probably be to buy them from shops. Lesser Super Puzzles also command a high price, huh? You'll need them too, in some cases.

To save yourself time and money, it's best if the equipment you want to upgrade already has a low level option in that stat with reasonable numbers attached, rather than coming with a high level option with not so reasonable numbers. That's just the ideal, and it won't always happen. Sometimes, like in the case of the Warrior armor I just enchanted, the stat we want (Strength) isn't even present.

That's when you use the Lesser Super Puzzle, to add a Level 1 stat, or upgrade Level 1 to 4 stats up to 5. Once you've got a level 5 stat, you'll be spending a cool 3.5m every time you want to add a little more to it. Because I'm not made of money, I won't be enchanting that Warrior armor, but I will try to cover the steps to go from nothing to something.

Let's go back to our enchanting window.


I've selected the Super Enchant option, and already picked the Level 1 Strength option in the Additional Enchant Option box. You'll notice that this wasn't populated earlier when I selected Cube, and that's simply because you can't add stats with a Cube. Just as an aside, if I wanted to upgrade that Luck stat, I could click it just like I clicked the Strength option.

But hold on. The success rate is 95%. We went over this earlier, but let's revisit it. 95% sounds alright, but for people like me with trashy luck, it's absolutely unacceptable. "Oh no, Forte, surely there is a way we can increase our success rate, right?" Of course there is. And it's going to get costly, either way you cut it.

The first step is the permanent one: A title. Fortunately, if you remember Ignate (the item codex guy in Elias), you can exchange an Ignate's Title Coupon for either the Hand of Craftsman Title, or the Swift Craftsman title. Both of these increase your Enchant rate by 2, despite the names sounding like they should increase your crafting rate. An Ignate's Title coupon can run you anywhere between 60 and 100 million ely, so start saving up. If you're really lucky, you can also get the Hand of Craftsman title from the "Master's Hand" title guidebook, which drops at a low percentage from Monster Tower.

With this title in hand, your Enchant rate goes up to 97%. Still absolutely unacceptable, really. What else is there?



Enchant Remedies and Advanced Enchant Remedies can be bought from other players, given out in events, and won from LaDeck. The Advanced Enchant Remedies are obviously the best, since they give 4% more Enchant rate, meaning that with your title, your enchant rate will become 101%, and you won't fail as long as your Durability is above 100.

Then there's the real cash option: The Mastercraft Mask


You can find this in the Fashion Shop on page 6 of the Utility tab. It lasts for 30 days and as long as you wear it, you'll get another 2% success rate on your enchants. This will save you the approximately 60m ely Advanced Remedies cost in favor of buying the normal Enchant Remedies, but you'll be dropping 149 astros on that one item. If you have deep real life pockets, go for it.

UPDATE: As of a recent patch, you can also acquire a "Hand of Midas" guidebook from Infinite Chest (gamble items from the cash shop). This title lasts for 30 days and provides +3 to Enchant Rate, along with some craft and option reassign rate boosts.

Section 4: Enchanting 203: The vicious cycle of cubes, and upgrading your enchanted gear

So, we've talked about how Cubes are basically the best thing to ever happen to durability before we start enchanting, but while we're enchanting, they're important, too. Once you've enchanted your item to Level 10 [Stat], unless you got 10 godlike rolls in a row, you're going to want your stat higher.

This is where Cubes come into play again. Once you reach Level 10 of an option, cube it back down to level 9, enchant back to level 10, and repeat the process until either your durability is too low to succeed anymore, or you're finally happy with what you rolled. This can be time consuming, feel as if it's accomplishing nothing, and in the end, be a complete waste of money, it all depends on how lucky you are.

On the bright side, once you have the enchantments you want, you're done with the dangerous (and really costly) part. Even if you shot your durability to below 100, since items no longer can be destroyed by a failed upgrade, Degos, Twilight, Odin and gear beyond that will be totally safe to fail upgrading over and over - so you can take a perfect base and turn it into a monstrous +9/Mythic weapon. Remember, I told you that we'd be happy for that mechanic change.

Section 5: What do I enchant onto my gear? And disclaimers.

The general opinion in the game now is that all physical classes should enchant their gloves with Physical Critical Damage, and all other armor should be enchanted as high as possible with Strength or Stamina. Magical classes should go for Magical Critical Damage on gloves and Magic on everything else. Pretty braindead, when you get right down to it. I blame the powercreep I mentioned in the introduction.

Also, in the end, Enchanting is pure RNG. You can make your success rate 100%, but that's all you can actually guarantee - and even then, you can't reach 100% Success rate when enchanting badges, books, gems, or level 10, 11, 12, and 13 enchants. What I've listed in this guide doesn't give you luckier rolls, but the methods listed give you more rolls to try to get lucky with. It'll take a long time to find a really good base, and even then, you might be screwed out of it by trashy rolls, making you start the whole process over again - it takes time and the challenge is never over.

Good luck out there, adventurer.