Hello. I'm wondering if I could get some advice on whether to start one of the blackstar quests. I've saved up:

- 5 remnants of the rift (the things to start the quests)

- 71 flawless magical blackstones

- 20 mass of pure magic

- no unenhanced boss gear (I realize I might need two of those for blackstar)

- around 350 million in bank and can double it quickly if I sell off some stuff

- 1100 memory fragments (not sure if these apply to BS)

- 4200 cron stones (not sure if these apply to BS)

My stats currently are 254/258/311 AP/AW/DP, and my relevant gear is:

- boss helmet T4 (75 DP)

- boss armor T4 C3 (87 DP)

- boss gloves T4 C3 (58 DP)

- boss shoes T4 C2 (73 DP, and I expect in two weeks I'll get it to C3 and 75 DP)

- boss main weapon T4 C2 (116-120, though I don't use this weapon)

- boss awakening weapon T4 C4 (118-127, I use this but doubt I can enhance it further)

- boss secondary weapon T4

What I can't figure out without help is if it's actually worthwhile trying to make a blackstar item and whether I can realistically afford to make it better than what I have. From what I can tell, only a T4 blackstar item would be worth replacing what I have, and I don't know if it's feasible to do that, and if so which piece would be the best to upgrade to blackstar.

Also, if I upgrade an armor piece to blackstar, would I lose out on the 4-piece set bonus of boss gear?

Thanks for your time and anticipated suggestions.

To begin with prereqs:

- Blackstar quest requires you to use 3 base boss items not 2.

- Crafting some blackstar items such as awakening weapon and other I don't remember requires an additional item which is specter energy which is is an uncommon drop from mobs in areas such as Schultz or Ronaros (both places you should be at ease with in your current gear).

By T4 I guess you mean TET upgrade level. Since you stated using awakening you could consider crafting a TET blackstar awakening weapon. Raising your AP would allow you to make significant PVE progress while focusing on DP not so much given your current gs.

The amount of flawless stones + masses you got might allow you to upgrade to TET but this isn't guaranteed at all since +13/14/15 levels can be quite costly in stones. Your silver savings will probably melt totally through mem frags purchases unless you saved several hundreds of them, ideally like a thousand. It also depends on your cron stones usage strategy: the more you use crons the less flawless stones you will use due to less downgrade/upgrade/downgrade cycles.

Lastly, keep in mind that blackstar level are equivalent to regular boss levels -1, which means for example that the recommended base stack to get PRI blackstar is 25, 35 for DUO etc.

Hope this gives you some insight and will help through the journey of progressing with your gear.

That really helped a lot, Smileybones. Thanks a ton. I'll take your suggestion and work on getting the drops I need to start the awakening weapon.

I used around 1500 memory fragments (and maybe 3000 cron stones) to get my all armor and main weapon to TET, so using 1000 memory fragments to get the awakening to BS TET sounds well worth it. That'll also free me to get my helmet to caphara level 3 after I finish with the shoes.

TET Blackstar awakening seems prohibitively expensive to purchase on the market (I might be able to save that in a year), but if I can craft it like I did my boss gear that sounds like a great plan.

For clarification, if I may ask, do you mean the failstack for TET BS is the same as the failstack for TRI Boss? If so, that's kind of a relief as sometimes I have horrible luck with the upgrades. Upgrading my gloves to TET cost the same as all my other three pieces of armor combined due to bad luck :)

I'm afraid it's the other way around: a TET blackstar is as powerfull as a PEN boss and failstack goes accordingly so you'd want to look at a 110 stack as a reasonable starting point in order to upgrade from TRI to TET.

My personal strategy with BS upgrading is going without crons until DUO then using crons for TRI attempts then not using cron for TET attempts. This will save you a lot of TRI blackstar stacks (50fs books which are not so common), will save you quite some mem frags and will greatly reduce your stress level while growing your TET stacks which help hitting TET: you start from a chance of about 5% at 110 iirc and you will be at around 10% or even 15% at some point which already looks way better than base odds.

I wish you the best on your blackstar crafting journey :D

I just wanna stop by and thank you sincerely for talking me into doing the Blackstar Awakening quest, Smileybones. I just reached the stage where I'll have to try to get the Specter's Energy, and I realize that might be unlucky. And I realize I might even run out of resources and money before getting the weapon to TET.

But so far, today, the quest is one of the most fun things I've done in BDO in ages, possibly in nearly a year. I'm really glad I started this quest, and I'm glad you suggested it. Thanks :)

Dunno if you'll see this, Smileybones, as it's been about a  month, and the forums don't give notifications. But I wanted to give an update on the Blackstar Jordun I started working on per your advice.

At first I was stuck for countless days trying to get the Specter's Energy. Grinding 2 to 4 hours a day I just wasn't able to get the drop, but a couple of weeks ago they had a patch that let it drop from rift bosses, and that did the trick.

From there things got bleak :) I'd saved up around 4000 cron stones, 1500 or so memory fragments, 178 artisan memories, around 130 Valk's Cry, a dozen 60 FS, several 70 FS and a huge stack of 50 FS and even more 40 FS. I'd also saved up around 120 Flawless Magical Black Stones.

None of that was enough, as you predicted. My RNG failures were horrendous. I burnt through all the cron stones (only using them for TRI attempts, as you suggested), all the 60s and 70s, nearly all the valks cries, nearly all the flawless MBS and around 1450 of the memory fragments and most of the artisan memories. I got to just getting to DUO the first time failed like crazy, but once I got to DUO I went from there to TRI to failures on TET back to DUO so many times my final failstack was around 182 going for TET. And I was down to using my 40 FS plus valks cries to get to TRI which burned a ton of cron stones. I was flat broke, out of materials, and was sitting on a useless DUO BS Jordun *laughs*

But I didn't give up. This morning I got back up to 100 cron stones, successfully got from DUO to TRI with only 52 FS, then went for TET on the 182 FS and finally succeeded.

So thanks to you I finally broke the soft cap on AP (technically on AW). Thanks a ton :)

p.s. then I took the 1364 or so caphras I extracted from my old dandelion and dumped them into my main weapon and some armor pieces, making the other stuff better, too.

This is such a wholesome thread and am getting the feels :) great work Deadborn5!  You earned it.  And more valubale info from SmileyBones :)

This is the side of the forums I love.  Thanks guys.  GZ on the gains!

I would save up 15 boss pieces, and get 4 Specter's energy before doing the black star quest.  Use all 5 of the Rift fragments at the same time.  Do the quest once for all 5 pieces.  Enhance the one you want next leaving the other 4 to sit in your bank.  The quest line itself takes a little over an hour to do because you are riding all over the place.  If you can do all 5 at the same time it takes 1 hour, if you do them all seperatly It will take you 5 hours.  Alternately you can just get the 15 boss pieces, and only finish the main hand (no need for specter's energy for mainhand), and as you get a Specter's energy turn it in.  This way you are only spending 10 minutes going to the bottom of Helms.

180ish FS to succeed is not very uncommon. TET BS is a pain.

I'm saving for one, since I'm not gonna subject myself to this game's cancer RNG.