Well... Unless I'm mistaken about it, I think you can still use it, and each step of the guaranteed enhancement will also bring some additional stats to the equipment. So even if you're at a step where you need to use it, it does not seem like a bad deal.

After that, it's all a matter of getting the mats to do it, or the money to buy the item directly at PEN. If you only need 1 armor/1 weapon and if you're patient, the deal is pretty good. 

Morrolan was right.

PA just has a habit of making something that should be straight forward, into a giant clusterfudge.
They keep treating NA like it's korea.

Nah, if they would simply adjust the chapra required for guaranteed PEN, they could've not advertised it as "content" kek

Cool story except they never advertised it as content.

PEN gear is buyable in the MP, so why we need this new V gear system??

the only thing is all PEN gear price drop 40%~50%

PA not try to creat some cool plan to make this game go for FUN,

they just using some long-time plan to let player stay here.

thats why everyone is gone, because no fun, no fun!! understand??

dead game, waste time.

They could've just use that growpass or whathewer which now give that insignificant amount of chapra to give those guarantated PEN materials instead (but with harder goals), so it would be actually feel that you progress by doing various stuff, but yeah PA being the usuall, nothing surprising here really.

This PEN upgrade is much better than the accessories upgrade one. If you have remotely done anything in the game you should have enough concentrated blackstones, bmcs and mem frags to exchange. Jetina even gives you 115 crystals from login rewards and you can exchange two latent auras for 115 more. So you should be able to reach level 2 the first day. This stat is similar to c2 tet boss gear. So I failed to under stand all this fiasco of long grind, without benefit of the weapon logic. 

The word "long", said in this context, is subjective.  One month is "long" to OP.  To others, one month for the highest enhancement level is nothing, especially considering the price (price directly translates to "effort").  First weapon made with this method costs, like, 6 or 7 billion only. 

>> So it's significantly cheaper, and faster to get since most players shooting for PEN currently make like 150 - 200m an hour.  It takes 75 hours to earn 15 billion at 200m an hour.  If someone active grinds mobs for 3 hours a day, everyday, it'll take 25 days.  25 days of grinding mobs for 3 hours.  Some perspective on how easy it is to get PEN with this method.  Just some perspective here, would OP say grinding mobs for 3 hours a day, for 25 days straight, is any better?  I doubt.

Biggest bottleneck right now is BMC's.  The only thing stopping players from getting this without actually earning it.

Without benefit of the weapon, well, that's nothing more than simply wrong information.  You can use the items to play the game while you upgrade them with the 100% method