Title: The Alchemy Stone acquisition system and how to improve it

Family Name: Crezcentz

Region (NA/EU): EU

Backround context:

When a lot of people in the playerbase hear or read about Alchemy Stones and how to get them they tend to drift towards Vell's Heart.
You get it either by drop or purchase from the CM (Central Market) and once you got it (and upgraded it) that's that, you can't really improve that slot in the gearwheel further.

Except you can, you can improve your alchstone bonuses a lot.

Currently the best Alchemy Stone for combat can be aquired through two different routes, not including the incredably rare box rewards.

Keep in mind polishing requires polish materials.

Route 1:
Step 1 - Craft Imperfect Alchemy Stones with Alchemy in your residence
Step 2 - Spend (a lot of) hours manually polishing the bases until they reach resplendent (at resplendet a risk of destruction is added on polish attempts)

Step 3 - Attempt polish of the resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stone, if it breaks restart from Step 1

For context the available ranks are Imperfect -> Rough -> Polished -> Sturdy -> Sharp -> Replendent -> Splendid -> Shining

Each rank also have five different grades going from White -> Green -> Blue -> Yellow

Pic taken from LifeSkill Discord, credit to Alzy

Route 2:

Step 1 - Buy/Pre-Order Resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stones from the CM

Step 2 - Attempt polish of the Resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stone, if it breaks restart from Step 1

Problem Route 1:

The amount of time required for route 1 is not reasonable nor enjoyable.

The activity of manually clicking polish attempts from imperfect white -> replendent yellow is neither rewarding, engaging or fun.

Problem Route 2:

Because of the problems with Route 1, the amount of Resplendent Alchemy Stones sold on the (EU) market are avg 1 per day, 300 pre-ordres and 4500ish total sold since released.

Splendid has 17 total sold since they released, I'll let you figure out how many sold per year that is.
This means that unless you go with route one, you're chances of actually being able do polish attempts will be -very- low.

I know one suggestion per post is requested, but seeing how this is a big issue with multiple routes to a solution I decided to include all suggestions in one post. 

Suggestion 1:

Implement an "automatic polish function" for alchemy stones until they reach Resplendent.
Polish materials should either be used from the inventory OR from the storage, perhaps similar to how processing works from storage with pearl outfit?

This would allow us to leave our characters polishing as an AFK-activity while keeping the attempts with risk of destruction (Resplendent or higher) manual.

It would be preferable if you could keep multiple 'Imperfect White Alchemy Stones' in your inventory and upon one reaching 'Resplendent Yellow' the system automatically starts polish attempts on the next 'Imperfect White Alchemy Stone' if you have one in your inventory.

Suggestion 2:

When crafting Alchemy Stones in your residence, change so that the product can be ANY Rank & Grade between 'Imperfect White' -> 'Resplendent Yellow' (higher mastery, higher chance perhaps?).

Suggestion 3:

By adding a protection system which allows an item (Crystallized Despair?/Scorching Sun Shard?) to be used during polish attempts similar to how crons are used during armor/weapon/accessory enhancement, the process of aquiring high rank Alchemy Stones would be more plannable.

Closing notes:

Regardless of opinions, the core gear progression system in BDO is based on chance/RNG (unless bought of CM).

Those suggestions does not deviate from that core system, they only make the process of aquisition more reasonable compared to it's current state.

Personally I believe the autopolish system is a must, though I would like all suggestions implemented.

This will obviously increase the circulation of polishmaterials on the CM.

Yeah they should add cronstones in to protect them from downgrade, also they should show the sucess rates on the UI aswell.

Altrough these was suggested already.

I am leaning more towards they should honestly just add cron stones to it to make it not be downgradable or destructable. If they added cron stones to it they could make it cost 5k crons stones per attempt with crons costing an average of 1.35m per cron if you buy costumes that means it would cost you 6.75b per tap to safely tap. It would cost more then tapping raw stones but at least you now no longer have to wait 2-3 months for 1 pre order to fill for your 1 tap only to explode.

Yeah the sun shards from elvia calph could be used to protect them.

I don't think we should add a auto polish overnight tbh after playing this game for 6 years i've learned something with PA "never try and have them change a complex system" Look at what happened to trading they massacred my boy. And don't even get me started on Sea monster hunting... No i think we keep it nice and simple with PA or they will F- it up just make it be able to be protected and they system is fixxed.

Cron stones as a safety item would be fine as well yes.

open close On: May 17, 2023, 12:12 (UTC), Written by Crezcent

Title: The Alchemy Stone acquisition system and how to improve it

Family Name: Crezcentz

Region (NA/EU): EU

Backround context:

When a lot of people in the playerbase hear or read about Alchemy Stones and how to get them they tend to drift towards Vell's Heart.
You get it either by drop or purchase from the CM (Central Market) and once you got it (and upgraded it) that's that, you can't really improve that slot in the gearwheel further.

Except you can, you can improve your alchstone bonuses a lot.

Currently the best Alchemy Stone for combat can be aquired through two different routes, not including the incredably rare box rewards.

Keep in mind polishing requires polish materials.

Route 1:
Step 1 - Craft Imperfect Alchemy Stones with Alchemy in your residence
Step 2 - Spend (a lot of) hours manually polishing the bases until they reach resplendent (at resplendet a risk of destruction is added on polish attempts)

Step 3 - Attempt polish of the resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stone, if it breaks restart from Step 1

For context the available ranks are Imperfect -> Rough -> Polished -> Sturdy -> Sharp -> Replendent -> Splendid -> Shining

Each rank also have five different grades going from White -> Green -> Blue -> Yellow

Pic taken from LifeSkill Discord, credit to Alzy

Route 2:

Step 1 - Buy/Pre-Order Resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stones from the CM

Step 2 - Attempt polish of the Resplendent (or higher) Alchemy Stone, if it breaks restart from Step 1

Problem Route 1:

The amount of time required for route 1 is not reasonable nor enjoyable.

The activity of manually clicking polish attempts from imperfect white -> replendent yellow is neither rewarding, engaging or fun.

Problem Route 2:

Because of the problems with Route 1, the amount of Resplendent Alchemy Stones sold on the (EU) market are avg 1 per day, 300 pre-ordres and 4500ish total sold since released.

Splendid has 17 total sold since they released, I'll let you figure out how many sold per year that is.
This means that unless you go with route one, you're chances of actually being able do polish attempts will be -very- low.

I know one suggestion per post is requested, but seeing how this is a big issue with multiple routes to a solution I decided to include all suggestions in one post. 

Suggestion 1:

Implement an "automatic polish function" for alchemy stones until they reach Resplendent.
Polish materials should either be used from the inventory OR from the storage, perhaps similar to how processing works from storage with pearl outfit?

This would allow us to leave our characters polishing as an AFK-activity while keeping the attempts with risk of destruction (Resplendent or higher) manual.

It would be preferable if you could keep multiple 'Imperfect White Alchemy Stones' in your inventory and upon one reaching 'Resplendent Yellow' the system automatically starts polish attempts on the next 'Imperfect White Alchemy Stone' if you have one in your inventory.

Suggestion 2:

When crafting Alchemy Stones in your residence, change so that the product can be ANY Rank & Grade between 'Imperfect White' -> 'Resplendent Yellow' (higher mastery, higher chance perhaps?).

Suggestion 3:

By adding a protection system which allows an item (Crystallized Despair?/Scorching Sun Shard?) to be used during polish attempts similar to how crons are used during armor/weapon/accessory enhancement, the process of aquiring high rank Alchemy Stones would be more plannable.

Closing notes:

Regardless of opinions, the core gear progression system in BDO is based on chance/RNG (unless bought of CM).

Those suggestions does not deviate from that core system, they only make the process of aquisition more reasonable compared to it's current state.

Personally I believe the autopolish system is a must, though I would like all suggestions implemented.

This will obviously increase the circulation of polishmaterials on the CM.

I also posted something similar as well

https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=34080&_categoryNo=7&_searchType=0&_sortType=6&_orderType=False&_bigPageNo=1&_pageNo=1&_pageSize=25&_searchDay=0&_forumListType=0

YES! PLEASE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FIX THIS SYSTEM!!! 

I've spent 2hrs on polishing and i will never touch the system again. It is just unreasonable to click that often and repetitive the same single thing. If they just let us auto-polish/mass polish the System would be less painful.  

We really need a simplified way to polish these stones in that mass. I am not enjoying clicking the same stones for 20hrs. 

PA please improve on this Alchemy Stone System. 

I completely agree, the alchemy stone system has to be reworked.

I feel like the automatic upgrade function to a certain level would probably be the best way to "fix" the system in the short run. As most of the endgame players have no problem at all with spending a lot of silver on the alch stone. The only problem for us is that we simply do not have the time to polish them for hours on end of active clicking. 

In the long run i feel like we might need to consider something like failstacking or cron stone use on alch stones as well to allow players to go for shining. 

Lastly I want to mention that in my opinion the polish materials are also a problem. If you want to polish your alch stones you either buy mats or you have to process your ores/ wood yourself. This means that on top of the already insane amount of time that you spend on clicking you also need to spend days in preparation as even with high processing mastery you will take a long time to prepare those mats. So maybe allow us to use base mats at a slighly higher rate when polishing, reducing the time spend in preparation for clicking these stones.

I pray that devs will soon do something about the alch stone system and I hope they will see your post when they do!