It's time for some math regarding T3 honing

[Dr.Acula]

I've looked at the data regarding honing in T3 and thought it would be a good idea to share some numbers so people could understand why some may consider T3 honing a problem or you can correct me if you think I might've made a mistake.

I will start with the result first which is about getting from itemlevel 1335 to 1370. Itemlevel 1335 is something that is easily manageable when you reach T3 and have completed the relevant quest and dungeon content. So I will assume that you have to start the wall climbin towards 1370 from there.

The time it will aproximately take to reach item level 1370 with currently available daily content is => 14-15 weeks or in other words 3 1/2 months. If you take material to increase the honing chance into consideration then you can probably reduce it to around 3 months.

If you only want to debate this you can jump to the conclusion at the end of the post. The next section is just the explanation of the numbers.

__________________________________________________________
So how did I get to this number?

A. Considering the available honing material

1. I'm assuming a player will only do the available 2 daily chaos dungeons and guardians
This will bring enough materials for about 1 honing attempt per day

2. Taking the weekly dungeons gontent and vendor materials into consideration
This means you get around 5 more honing attempts per week (early on more and later less because of increased material requirements but the vendors always sell the same amount per week).

So overall working with the materials you receive from the "casual" content you get about 12 honing attempts per week.

B. How much honing is needed to reach 1370?

1. A successful honing will get you 5 item levels
This means to get from 1335 to 1370 you need 7 successful honings per item. A player has 5 armor pieces and a weapon. I will focus only on the armor here as that is the biggest part.

For 5 items with 7 successful honings each you need overall 35 successful honings

2. Taking the low honing chance percentages (1345 => 1350 is 15%)into consideration on average without bonus material a player will need around 5 honing attempts for a successful upgrade (after number 5 the sixth is 100% anyway)

3. So working with the average number of 5 honing attempts per successful upgrade and the requirement of 35 overall successful honings I end up with a 175 honings to get from 1335 to 1370

4. 175 honing attempt divided by about 12 possible honing attempts per week gives me a final number of 14,6 weeks.

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My conclusion:

If you're not willing to do a lot of Chaos Dungeon grinding (and that is the only content I'm seeing at the moment that allows you to get more honing material) you will either have go full whale or wait a long time to be able to do all available content...

Obviously a few more patches will arrive and some more content will be made available. I'm not sure how much it will affect the honing though. And honestly with how the system works at the moment I think there will be a lot of frustrated players because this is just a wall where you will bash your head against hoping for some luck to smwash through.

[(:AR:)-Paradox]

While I do think a couple gear sources may not be counted in here (PvP vendor is likely undervalued as once you get some PvP levels it's worth an absurd amount of mats per week, and I couldn't see if you worked map runs and field bosses in), the math is interesting to look at.

I think this is just proof of what was said very early on in the release by KR/RU players. The easiest way to be F2P is to raise some alts, as they also have access to almost every source of mats the main does other than weekly vendors. With the power of one or two T3 alts feeding the main, I already know some F2P players who've crossed 1400 or are getting close to it. I've woefully neglected my alts in favor of side content, but I still have a few in mid T2 inching they way to being helpful. If I'd actually kept up with their dailies, they'd probably be resting in the 1300s.

I do appreciate the math though - it's on the conservative side, but it's good to be aware that if you're using just one character you're playing the long route and need to be careful to extract from every source of mats you can grab.

[Almeidas31]

Think you're mistaken, on some points.
You're counting mats for (5) attemps in the worst scenario, rigth? But you forget that the 6º one is 100% but inst free, its cost you the same amount of mats and gold.

Also you should put some perspective of how much gold will the player need in order to achiv that climb, and oh boy, players need lots of gold in T3.

Also, im curious how do you get the "A successful honing will get you 5 item levels", at what level?

I remember that after i reach 1340gs every upgrade only give me 1.5gs per lvl

I also thing you can get more upgrades weekly, if you count Pirate merchant, guild bloodstones, arkesia event for example.

Finally i personal think you miss a point, players get 12 Attemps of upgrade, they can upgrade or fail, but the point is players are losing materials and watching their time burned, all the time invested just for see materials get burned out.

I Know comunity hates to get critics on the game, but Honing is the major problem for Lost Ark, and thats why people are quitting

[bLz']

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

I've looked at the data regarding honing in T3 and thought it would be a good idea to share some numbers so people could understand why some may consider T3 honing a problem or you can correct me if you think I might've made a mistake.

I will start with the result first which is about getting from itemlevel 1335 to 1370. Itemlevel 1335 is something that is easily manageable when you reach T3 and have completed the relevant quest and dungeon content. So I will assume that you have to start the wall climbin towards 1370 from there.

The time it will aproximately take to reach item level 1370 with currently available daily content is => 14-15 weeks or in other words 3 1/2 months. If you take material to increase the honing chance into consideration then you can probably reduce it to around 3 months.

If you only want to debate this you can jump to the conclusion at the end of the post. The next section is just the explanation of the numbers.

__________________________________________________________
So how did I get to this number?

A. Considering the available honing material

1. I'm assuming a player will only do the available 2 daily chaos dungeons and guardians
This will bring enough materials for about 1 honing attempt per day

2. Taking the weekly dungeons gontent and vendor materials into consideration
This means you get around 5 more honing attempts per week (early on more and later less because of increased material requirements but the vendors always sell the same amount per week).

So overall working with the materials you receive from the "casual" content you get about 12 honing attempts per week.

B. How much honing is needed to reach 1370?

1. A successful honing will get you 5 item levels
This means to get from 1335 to 1370 you need 7 successful honings per item. A player has 5 armor pieces and a weapon. I will focus only on the armor here as that is the biggest part.

For 5 items with 7 successful honings each you need overall 35 successful honings

2. Taking the low honing chance percentages (1345 => 1350 is 15%)into consideration on average without bonus material a player will need around 5 honing attempts for a successful upgrade (after number 5 the sixth is 100% anyway)

3. So working with the average number of 5 honing attempts per successful upgrade and the requirement of 35 overall successful honings I end up with a 175 honings to get from 1335 to 1370

4. 175 honing attempt divided by about 12 possible honing attempts per week gives me a final number of 14,6 weeks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My conclusion:

If you're not willing to do a lot of Chaos Dungeon grinding (and that is the only content I'm seeing at the moment that allows you to get more honing material) you will either have go full whale or wait a long time to be able to do all available content...

Obviously a few more patches will arrive and some more content will be made available. I'm not sure how much it will affect the honing though. And honestly with how the system works at the moment I think there will be a lot of frustrated players because this is just a wall where you will bash your head against hoping for some luck to smwash through.

sounds off, but too lazy to search for reasons

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by wpanic:

Think you're mistaken, on some points.
You're counting mats for (5) attemps in the worst scenario, rigth? But you forget that the 6º one is 100% but inst free, its cost you the same amount of mats and gold.

Also you should put some perspective of how much gold will the player need in order to achiv that climb, and oh boy, players need lots of gold in T3.

Also, im curious how do you get the "A successful honing will get you 5 item levels", at what level?

I remember that after i reach 1340gs every upgrade only give me 1.5gs per lvl

Finally i personal think you miss a point. Right players get 12 Attemps of upgrade, they can upgrade or fail, but the point is players are losing materials and watching their time burned, all the time invested just for see materials get burned out.

I Know comunity hates to get critics on the game, but Honing is the major problem for Lost Ark, and thats why people are quitting

I definitely ignored the part about gold. So yes a lot of gold will be required here as well. The last honing attempt I made on a weapon cost me 120 gold (1345 => 1350) and I think armor around 1340 to 1345 costs 50 gold per honing attempt. so that means for a successful honing I have to pay around 250 gold for doing it 5 times. If you do the daily and weekly quests I think you can get around 1000gold from the token rewards of you go to the gold vendor and then there is also the gold bonus from the two weekly dungeons. But yes, people will struggle with some of it.

Btw. the 5 item levels are for each item (5 armor pieces and 1 weapon - rings, earrings and neck do not affect item level of your character) and your overall itemlevel is the average based on all your items. So if you have all items on 1340 and you upgrade one item to 1345 then your overall item level will only go up a fraction of the 5 (it's like 0,8-0,9 per upgraded item).

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by (:AR:)-Paradox:

While I do think a couple gear sources may not be counted in here (PvP vendor is likely undervalued as once you get some PvP levels it's worth an absurd amount of mats per week, and I couldn't see if you worked map runs and field bosses in), the math is interesting to look at.

I think this is just proof of what was said very early on in the release by KR/RU players. The easiest way to be F2P is to raise some alts, as they also have access to almost every source of mats the main does other than weekly vendors. With the power of one or two T3 alts feeding the main, I already know some F2P players who've crossed 1400 or are getting close to it. I've woefully neglected my alts in favor of side content, but I still have a few in mid T2 inching they way to being helpful. If I'd actually kept up with their dailies, they'd probably be resting in the 1300s.

I do appreciate the math though - it's on the conservative side, but it's good to be aware that if you're using just one character you're playing the long route and need to be careful to extract from every source of mats you can grab.

I ignored PVP as I'm not doing PVP in Lost Ark. It's honestly not even remotely fun for me as everything seems to be designed around stun effects where you basically are put into a lock where you can't do anything.

[Totta]

This is such a bad take.

1) you are asssuming the worst possible outcome for every piece which doesn't happen as often as you think. Many people single tap alot of the times. (hitting pity on every piece is a rare occurrence)

2) you didn't even add solars into the equation, this literally doubles your chances of success so 14.6 weeks is MASSIVELY off since the game only been out for 9 weeks and many people f2p players are 1370+ right now.

3) You can make alot of gold selling alot of drops u get from ghost ship/bosses and other events in the game. You can also sell tradeable mats and buy them back a week later at a much lesser cost because prices are crashing.

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by Totta:

This is such a bad take.

1) you are asssuming the worst possible outcome for every piece which doesn't happen as often as you think. Many people single tap alot of the times. (hitting pity on every piece is a rare occurrence)

2) you didn't even add solars into the equation, this literally doubles your chances of success so 14.6 weeks is MASSIVELY off since the game only been out for 9 weeks and many people f2p players are 1370+ right now.

3) You can make alot of gold selling alot of drops u get from ghost ship/bosses and other events in the game. You can also sell tradeable mats and buy them back a week later at a much lesser cost because prices are crashing.

1. I work with percentages shown by the game. Of course you can have a successful honing on the first try (even I had 2-3 successful honings in a row on the first with 40% chance). It possible. Still you will then most likely have various situations in which you have consistently unsuccessful honing attempts till the the sixth one which is guaranteed.

Let's say you have a six sided dice. You have a 16,7% chance to roll a six. There have been various situations where people rolled a 6 six times in a row but then they didn't roll a 6 for the next 50 rolls. It's all about chances.

2. I even admitted that I didn't take this into the calculation and that it would reduce the time by at least 2 weeks. And yes there are "F2P" players on 1370+ right now. The question is what did they do to get there. You can obviously get more materials but it requires a considerable amount of time grinding (for example) chaos dungeons. So if they have reached 1370 without paying money I think they paid with a lot of time investment. Feel free to prove me wrong though.

3. Playing the auction house is not a reliable source of income in my opinion. It will work for some people but not everybody. Also you can definitely sell the stuff you find. You need some luck there as well though to get something valuable. Outside of that trying to buy low and sell high can also backfire. It's basically like the stock market at least a "LITTLE BIT" of gambling (I buy something in the hopes of selling it for profit)

[Taryth]

This is pretty exaggerated. At the 1355 level, the Chaos Dungeon gives almost 200 guardian shards a run. Doing both guardian raids (Igrexion) will give you around another 150. Generally this is 3 hones a day from just your basic sources, seeing as the cost from 14->15 is 228 guardian stones. Doing the right Una dailies along with some random boss rush should keep your bound leapstone count high enough to keep up with mat spending. Things like Moake when hes up also give honing mats, around .75 of a hone.

You also should be trying to earn gold as well, if not to spend, then at least have the option to spend later. My standard income is honestly just selling leapstones and chaos gate. This avgs around 800 gold per day, more if I get lucky with a decent book to sell. Not close really close to any get rich quick schemes, but its steady income.

All in all, it took around 3.5 weeks for me to push through 1302-1370, with 204 honing fails by the end (200 total fails to 1370 seems to be a relatively avg luck after asking around). This is without any t3 alts (I'm in the middle of Punika storyline right now actually).

Alts are not strictly necessary, but they will speed up your progress a lot. Just an alt at 1325 can add around 1-2 additional hones a day, which will speed up your progress significantly considering your only looking at about 4 normally.

Honestly, roughly a month to get to mid t3 seems reasonable enough to me. It's not something you can skip in 1 day being hardcore like t1 or t2, but its not anything to snuff at either.

[Almeidas31]

Originally posted by Totta:

"you didn't even add solars into the equation, this literally doubles your chances of success"

Stop lying because you are covering game problems... accept the dude critic, whats your problem?

Thats a big lie! You can use all the extra honing materials for get between 5% to 10% more change, but that doesnt double your chances.

Getting 20%, 25% or 30% filling all the bars isnt a good experience, either is a just one to the players.

Be honest at least

[Kashra Fall]

Not entirely sure why people just can't accept that 90% chance to fail, is just 90% chance to fail. Sometimes luck is on your side and it's like that ability stone calculator (Which I find hilarious that people follow.) people use it and still fail constantly at 75%. It's done this way as a way to keep you coming back because you want to succeed, but don't. Sometimes it deters people, but given the game's overall success? I'd say the system works. Heck, look at KR's side, they are so desensitized about failing that they just push the button and don't even get excited when it goes through.

[Galroche]

5 attempt per success is already quite generous. you would need to use full solar/other stone thingy for every try which you can't because of limited supply.

[sanjia]

I have 2 weeks of use to get from 1335 to 1370 without alt.!

[Almeidas31]

This is my (Point) dont take it personal.

this game is like 50/50, you will get the upgrade or you dont, but at end of the day players feel like it is more like 80/20% because most of them fails 4 times in a row before get one sucefull upgrade.

I made some threads speaking about this and comunity sprea a lots of hate, but if you dont want to remove honing for complete, at least speak and try to reach devs for increase the mats drop, "We" should together figth for a fair and rewarding system. Also improve the sucess rate a bit, at least for minimum 50% per lvl, again (Do you get it or you dont), simple as that.

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by sanjia:

I have 2 weeks of use to get from 1335 to 1370 without alt.!

Feel free to elaborate on what you did to accomplish that and how much time you invested.

[Xianxia]

even casuals can do weekly Abyss run, Guild exchange/Bloodstone, Racing event/Guardian event, 2 daily Chaos runs, Guardian runs

its more like 1 month to get to 1370 from 1340-1350.

doing 2 chaos run and 2 guardian riad daily is barely 30-45minutes, that is no longer a casual that is outright i have no time for video games because i work 16hours a day time of life -> MMO are not made for these people nor are any RPG game that takes more than 20 hours to complete, if you work 16hours a day and only have 1 hour to play video games then stick basic indie games.


there is no reason a casual cannot do Daily Chaos run, Daily Guardian, Weekly Abyss, Weekly Ghost Ship, Guild Exchange, Racing/Guardian event

1. Daily Chaos Dungeon Run = 15minutes max
2. Daily Guardian Raid Run = 20-30minutes max, if you are good should not be taking more than 15minutes.
3. Weekly Abyss Raid = 1-2 Hour Weekly -> not bad since its only once a week and its fun, RNG on teammates or make a party via finder.
4. Ghost Ship = 10 Minutes, extremely fast run at 1370.
5. Boss/Several times a week = 10-30minutes
6. Guild Exchange/Bloodstone = 1-2minutes
7. Racing Event = 5-10minutes
8. Guardian Raid Event = 5-10minutes
9. Weekly Pirate coin Exchange = 1minute.