Feedback on gear upgrades

I'm a returning player, played a bit in CBT and about 2 months after OBT.

A quick recap of how upgrading equipment works right now:

• Creating a piece of equipment requires Rams and some Behemoth materials.
• Upgrading from +0 to +5 requires Rams and Orbs (Neutral Orbs for neutral weapons, Elemental for elemental weapons).As an exception: Radiant and Umbral weapons use Dull Arcstones instead of Orbs.
• Upgrading to +6 requires Rams, Orbs, some behemoth parts and Dull Arcstones.
• Upgrading to +7 requires Rams, Dull Arcstones and Orbs.
• Upgrading to +8 requires Shining Arcstones and Epic behemoth part on top of Orbs and Dull Arcstones.
• Upgrading to +9 and +10 requires more Arcstones.

This is certainly an upgrade from the old system, where you had to get specific behemoth parts to upgrade equipment, which acted as grind, since some parts just never dropped and getting Arconite was never really an issue.

There are a number of issues with current system, though:

• Orbs and Acrstones reliably drop only from Partols.
• Pursuits don't have guaranteed Orb or Acrstone rewards, and award randomly on pert breaks.
• Higher tier upgrades require more than one patrol to upgrade a piece of equipment:
  • Upgrading to +6 is fine.
  • Upgrading to +7 is a bit costly.
  • Upgrading a piece of armor from +7 to +10 requires 4 Heroic patrols for Shining Arcstones alone, you also need to get Dull Arcstones and Orbs.
  • I haven't upgraded weapons past +7 yet, but judging from +8 requiring 20 Shining Arcstones instead of 10 for Armor, should double patrol requirements.

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Mastery system is a step in a good direction, but some parts of it bring up questions. Let's look at 5 points in Behemoth mastery:

• Craft $Behemoth Armor
• Upgrade $Behemoth Armor to +6
• Upgrade $Behemoth Armor to +10
• Stagger $Behemoth X Times
• Wound $Behemoth X Times

Crafting an armor set is fine: players are likely to accumulate parts to build a set of armor while farming Orbs, exceptions being Valomyr, Riftstalker and Koshai (Dire behemoths, not that big of a deal because these are included in Dire Patrols).

Upgrading just an armor set is bearable, however a lot of people will end up crafting a number of weapons just for weapon mastery, which will make people grind Orbs, Dull and Shining Arcstones.

But then we get to getting certain Mastery levels: to upgrade gear past +10 you need 25 Behemoth Mastery, which will likely depend not only on behemoth kills and damage dealt, but also on upgrading armor set to +10 and completing tier 2 of Stagger or/and Wound challenges.

Stagger/Wound $Behemoth X times - honestly, I haven't touched these yet, but I asked around and tier 2 is 40 actions, which puts tier 3 at least 75. To wound a behemoth even 40 times requires at the very least 8 hunts, with a build specifically geared towards wounding. Same goes for staggers - you would want a specific build to do that, which requires further grind and cells.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good design, I like it. I also understand these are long-standing goals.

What I don't like is being forced to grind out a lot of materials to get to a certain point, remember that upgrading a single piece of equipment requires 4 Heroic Patrols? To upgrade just a set of armor, you need to run 15 Heroic Patrols, assuming you won't get bonus Arcstones, more likely 13-14 per armor set you want to +10. Then you need to farm more Heroic Patrols to upgrade a weapon. And then you need to farm even more Dire Patrols, because you need more Dull Arcstones than you need Shining Arcstones, then on top of that you need an obscene amount of Orbs. This amount feels like way too much.

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As an example: I invited two friends of mine who played in OBT to join me, but one of them, after getting to Riftstalker and being unable to build any weapon after 3 kills just quit and uninstalled, saying "It's just way too much grind to get into".

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How could devs fix this? I have some suggestions:

• Pursuits should award Arcstones.
• Higher tiers of equipment should require less basic resources (for example, upgrading past +5 should require less orbs and upgrading to +8 and up should not require any Orbs at all and less Dull Arcstones).
• Upgrade costs should be lowered or rewards should be increased (probably to a point where it won't require 2 Heroic Patrols to upgrade a piece of armor from +8 to +9).
• Maybe get it to a point where you could reliably upgrade a weapon to +8 after one Heroic Patrol, to +10 after three more with some left over, so next weapon would require 3 runs to get to +3.

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How do you feel about current upgrade system?

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Edit: fixed formatting.