when should i use black stones and stuff to upgrade my armour/weapons

[Rob]

im currently level 35 and i feel like im starting to become a bit weak should i wait until i get new armour and stuff or should i upgrade my existing things? i dont know if this is true but i saw this video on youtube that said you pretty much have the same armor and weapon from 25 to 50 you just upgrade it or something like that. i dont know how true this is could someone please help me

[Suzaku]

I usually upgrade a throw-away set as high as I can until I fail it 6 times per piece. This makes you lose 30 durability from the failed attempts, but you can use a 3 copies of the item to restore the lost durability at a blacksmith. This usually results in gear around the +10 area, which is strong enough to handle anything up to 50 easily.

After that, because RNG upgrade systems hate me to the core, I simply gather up my silver in any number of ways and purchase PRI/DUO gear from the marketplace. Non-boss DUO armor pieces usually cost around 40 million silver each, while weapons cost around 60-160 million (depending if you purchase an Ultimate version of a green quality weapon, or a Liverto), and sub-weapons around 60 million. It's pricey as hell, but I'm certain with my luck I'd likely end up spending at least 10x as much failing enchants all day.

Gear of that enhancement rank can handle most content in the 50-56 range. After that, I'm not sure since I get seriously side-tracked with everything else in the game.

The good news is that you really only need one or two sets of armor if you don't mind swapping the parts between characters through your storage. One set for casters, and one set for non-casters. The two sets I use both result in max attack/cast speed, movement speed, crit chance, and luck, so I have maxed stats regardless of which character I decide to play.

[Ficelle]

Blackstones are not there to sit in your storage...
You have them, use them.
Better (enhanced) armors and weapons means more efficient PVE

You can go up to +7 weapon and +5 armor without any fail risk.

After that, you can 'fail', aka use a BS for nothing and degrade max dura of the item (repairable with another of the same item).
Not very costly on green stuff anyway.

As a starter, choose a set or a mix you like and enhance it (Heve, Grunil, Taritas, Agarian are popular..often a mix of two)
Same for weapon / subweapon.
Goal should be +15 for both around lvl 50.

Then, try to learn a bit more about failstacking, how to go PRI and more etc

Dont fail into the trap of boss / liverto gear if you dont have the money to enhance them.
Stay green until you fully understand the system and the associated costs...

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by Ficelle:

Blackstones are not there to sit in your storage...
You have them, use them.
Better (enhanced) armors and weapons means more efficient PVE

You can go up to +7 weapon and +5 armor without any fail risk.

After that, you can 'fail', aka use a BS for nothing and degrade max dura of the item (repairable with another of the same item).
Not very costly on green stuff anyway.

As a starter, choose a set or a mix you like and enhance it (Heve, Grunil, Taritas, Agarian are popular..often a mix of two)
Same for weapon / subweapon.
Goal should be +15 for both around lvl 50.

Then, try to learn a bit more about failstacking, how to go PRI and more etc

Dont fail into the trap of boss / liverto gear if you dont have the money to enhance them.
Stay green until you fully understand the system and the associated costs...

No no you can save them and do your projects I only start fail stacking when I got at least 30-90 stones squirled away as its all RNG and its less agravating to not have to stop half way through.

[[Lethalvriend]]

I levelled my characters with +5 armor and +7 weapons all the way to 40-50ish (recent one didnt have a +15 weapon till I reached lvl 49 lol). The advice to stick to green stuff early on is good, it is simply too expensive to upgrade higher quality gear because you can recover less max durability on higher tier items. Like a green item can recover i think 10 max durability by consuming a copy of that item (doesnt have to be upgraded, just regular one works). Blue recovers less, yellow/orange even less so for each upgrade fail it basically becomes more expensive to recover your armor or weapons to full max durability.

I.e. if you fail an upgrade your durability drops from 100/100 to 90/90. If you fail too much it can go all the way to 20/20 which obviously doesn't last long in combat before needing repairs. The majority of cost here comes from having to buy the copies of gear to recover that durability.

As for upgrading to +9 and higher (or 10ish, if it's cheap gear you could even go higher) you should look into 'fail stacking'. Each time you fail an upgrade you get a number in your enhancement window and that increases your chances to upgrade the next time. People use 'fail stacking' to upgrade higher tier gear. Each of those fails are character bound so you can build up low amounts of stacks by upgrading alt gear and then when you have a certain amount of fail stacks you can use those stacks to try upgrade your main character's high upgraded item. Charts on what's beneficial are all over google (and youtube) for that.

[Flotch]

You probably picked up a random mishmash of armor based on whatever seemed to have the highest stats, if you've never played before. Before you go enhancing anything, look up armor sets and figure out which one seems best. Then buy that set and enhance up to +7-10 to start with. Same with weapons.

The "default" in the community is the Grunil set, but there are many other sets with various bonuses. Personally I'd recommend having parts from two different sets to benefit from set bonuses the most.

You could get 2 pieces each of hercules, grunil, heve, or maybe something else. Hercules is vastly underrated, you will want that carry weight when you're grinding, which eventually will be a lot of the time.

As for weapons, I personally stick with both a krea main weapon and krea subweapon. They're very cheap, plentiful on the market, and the accuracy bonus is very useful.

Don't worry about anything more complex for now. Don't get overwhelmed by the failstack system or try to learn about all the tricks people do to manipulate it, just spam enhance until you get what you want.

[Jack Randall]

Originally posted by Robby:

im currently level 35 and i feel like im starting to become a bit weak should i wait until i get new armour and stuff or should i upgrade my existing things? i dont know if this is true but i saw this video on youtube that said you pretty much have the same armor and weapon from 25 to 50 you just upgrade it or something like that. i dont know how true this is could someone please help me

What is your gear ?That way we can be much more of a help.Any way i would recomend depending on your class to save up and get a Liverto which to upgrade to PRI or DUO ,depending on the situation maybe even to TRI,before you get your Kzarka and Awekening Dande .Armor depending on your class ,may differ as well,usualky up to lv 50 Agerian is prety decent,after 50 depending on your class ,Grunil full set,or mix between Grunil and Heve,but that depends ostly on your classs.Also you can reform some weapons and armors to Ultimate via ,Ultimate reform stones.But again we need more info .
P.S. What i ment is that a Liverto +15 and Agerian +15 should be fine for you till 51-52 maybe.Also try to stay at 49 for a while grinding Skill Points and energi + contribution you will thank me later for it .

[axelmonster]

As people have said, green gear will do you nicely for now.
Your gear upgrade priority should be:
1. Primary weapon.
2. Secondary weapon.
3. Armor.
4. Accessories.
5. Crystals.
6. Alchemy stone (don't bother with this until you're pretty much done with everything else)

Once you hit level 56, Awakening weapon jumps to the top of the priority list.

It's a reasonable goal for now to try to have all your weapons and armor upgraded to +15 by the time you hit level 50. You definitely want +15 or higher by the time you hit level 56.
There is no certain point where you SHOULD or SHOULDN'T start using the stones though, you can use them at any time.
One of the most important aspects of upgrading gear is actually failing to upgrade.
Every time you fail an upgrade you get what we call a "failstack". The more stacks you have the higher the chance of success. There is a hard cap for each upgrade level for how much the chance can be increased.
For example while trying to go from +14 to +15 the maximum failstack benefit is at 25 stacks, which gives you a 15% chance to succeed. There is no difference between using 25 or 25000 stacks, the chance is still 15%.

Here is a decent guide on enhancing gear:
http://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/upgrading-gearfailstacking-guide/

As for what actual gear you should get, that depends on several factors.
What class are you playing?
What is your end goal? Is it life skilling, joining a PVP Siege guild, just solo grinding?
What is your current gear?

There are many possible pitfalls for new players where you can waste a lot of silver for very minor upgrades.

Here is a decent guide on enhancing gear:
http://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/upgrading-gearfailstacking-guide/

[Aliapoh]

Blackstones are cheap and you get a ton for free, so just use them

[Y_u_no_come]

+7 weapon and +5 armor are 100% chance. You should only use the black stones on armor you know you'll actually use. Most players use 2 heve (shoes and chest), and 2 grunil (helmet and gloves). Once you get these 4 pieces, you can just start throwing your stones into those armor pieces up to +5.

As for weapon, you have a choice. I'd check the auction house for the damage and types. Rosar for accuracy, yuria for human damage, bares for all species damage, and krea for high AP and set accuracy. When you find what's right for you, you can either smash stones to +7 "or" you can just buy a +15 weapon. I'd recommend buying the +15 instead. Just sell the weapon stones.