@Easay9 I do agree that TET > PEN by way of Caphras is a bit..."u wot m8?" Lol.  It's pretty weird to me how the price of Caphras-ing a TET to make it PEN is way more expensive than just buying a PEN outright.  Aside from that, though, I have to agree with Pooty on this one. 

PEN is the highest enhancement level.  And because of that relative strength, it makes sense to me that it would be quite the heavy grind or some RNG-carry to obtain one.  One month per PEN, playing about 3-5 hours active everyday sounds about right.  If getting PEN were easy, then everyone would be full PEN, which both minimizes the effort of those who grinded years for their gear, and minimizes the value of the gear overall.  It's supposed to be hard to get, I guess is what I'm trying to say. 

I grinded my butt off last year, probably the hardest I went on BDO in my entire 4 years here.  I reached full PEN armor and weapons last year, which was a huge goal for a long time, took me about a month - a month and a half to get a single PEN.  But I did it.  And now, when I look at my gear, I get this huge sense of accomplishment and pride.  I think that feeling would be diminished if PEN was easier to get.

But yeah, it does seem off to me that TET > PEN by way of Caphras is stupidly expensive, but in that case, a player would just buy the PEN outright anyway. A weird feature to say the least, but a feature that isn't really used anyway.  Maybe it could be utilized better, which is what I'm getting from your post, and I do agree with that statement.  I'd love it if Savage Rift and Altar of Blood were more interesting and rewarding as well.

 I think the issue with the whole 1 month for 1 piece of gear is the previous gear at TET takes how long to get grinding?  you could get it in a week if you set your mind to it.

So why does it go from 

TET 2 BIL     >  PEN   13Bil   ??????

The progression makes no sense in comparison to any other MMO in existance.

What it should be is:

TET  2BIL  > PEN 6ish Bil  >  Hex  13Bil

15% chance  > 10% chance >  5% chance

See what I mean theres a Gap in progression.

It shouldnt go from 1 week for a piece of gear to   > 1 month  

Then you look at Accessories and the prices make sense its just mind boggling to me

TRI Tungrad  2 Bil          TET Tungrad  6 Bil             PEN  30 Bil          

Again theres a gap  and a much bigger one then   your main gear however this one I can let slide given the entire piece vanishes when you fail.

This is the main thing I would love to see patched over. No one needs to lose progression on thier gear just change PEN > HEX  so everyone with PEN currently will have a HEX piece of gear  and everyone at TET  has an easier PEN to go for  because theres another stepping stone to gearing that currently just doesnt exist for reasons unown other then maybe to take advantage of whales........ And honestly I think peopel would still spend money with this change

well, you clearly didn't play the game before the central market where pen items were capped in prices so low that nobody in their sane mind sold them for in-game currency, only time someone ever sold pens back then was either they quit the game OR someone paid the seller with irl money to list them.

the current pen price is where the players think they are worth for them to not enhance the items themselves.

tl;dr the tet/pen items price is set by the players. 

p.s. the current pen price is actually very low, at the same time last year, they used to cost 25+b each lol

I hear 'ya.  Honestly, I can see what you mean...2 bil > 13+ bil is a huge jump.  I think the devs realize this as well, at least in regards to Black Star pieces.  For normal boss gear, it's the same as it's always been (enhance at a horrid rate, or spend a looot of silver), but with Black Star, the recently introduced these "Black Star upgrade thingys" (sorry, don't know the official name) which take a TET BS and makes them equivalent to a PEN C6 boss armor, or so I've read.  A TET BS with this "upgrade thingy" will make it so BS is actually stronger than a boss gear PEN.  If what I'm reading is correct, boss gear needs at least C6 to be on par with this, which equals to, let's say 15 bil + about 7 bil... so about 22 bil to be equal to TET BS + the upgrade thingy that you can just grind mobs for.  TET BS is about the same prcie as a normal PEN, but the upgrade thingy doesn't cost silver if you can farm it :)

IMO, I think this is the thing you're looking for, or, at least what you're looking for, but in some way, shape or form.  Not sure if it satisfies you, though.

The problem you are also having is there are many different paths as well as directions with gear that you can goto.

example:

Tri oasis-Tet Akum(3 peice) -Pen Akum(3 peice) rednose/dimtree to fallen god,  C19 your Akum then switch to PEN boss moving caphras from c19 akum gives you C9 on boss, the over all price of Akum at PEN is a little more than TET boss and you would never know the difference. It is the direction MOST if Not all new players should go through in progression it gets them the DP and levels they need almost 100% faster than attempting from TET to PEN boss. this will allow you to progess much faster and get you into grinding spots that will make you money.

The issue is players have been spoon feed trash from streamers and content creators that the only direction is boss gear and that my friend is a absolute lie.  There is a much better way to progress in BDO then following in the noob trap of strickly boss gear YES end game is 100% boss gear but other gear will work just as well and not just for PVE Akum is very functional for PVP as well i know i used it for almost a year.

Below in the pic is what i had before i started to make my switch to PEN boss i also included the stats so you can see the DR and Eva stats Akum is a Hybrid set and you can switch out any one peice and keep the set bonus I.E. fallen god or more DR use uragons or more accuracy use Bhegs.

Without this stepping stone i would not be almost a 700 GS now with full boss switching to Akum gave me a massive jump into grinding spots and PVP with it 100% of anyone that did any pvp with me in BA or for DFS were shocked when i showed them and usually would call me a liar.

EDIT: I would also like to point out that this set was on my mystic before i re rolled to valk and my mystic with below gear and stats made me on the leader board for the arsha PvP Comp. i was in the top 24 both events the 1st one i was one of only 2 mystics that finished.

Need to step outside the box and find better ways to move forward becouse i can agree with you that RNG and pricing for the big ticket items makes BDO very hard to progress but i am letting you know that using alternative methods to gain a better foot hold is allowed. DP is DP stats are Stats regardless of weather its BOSS or NOT. the only difference with boss is you can move beyond at C9 and gain much higher stats than other gear can but it all comes at a VERY HIGH price.

all well and good until you start making 226+ failstacks and still can't get TET blackstar LO Lmeanwhile all your friends have gotten full PEN boss/TET blackstar using much less than 200 fs each piece and you're stuck on your own while everyone goes to hadum etc. The enhancement mechanic is GREAT for people who don't fail non stop, it's beyond a joke for people who j ust can't get anything to actually succeed. like literally ever. LOL I don't know how to fix it though but I get what the OP is saying. Watching your friends get dream horses (plural) on less than 10 fails, and TET blackstar pieces like it's nothing while all you do is fail and get left behind is rubbish. Sure, buy gear. The thing is though that takes months to get the funds for one piece, while everyone else playing as long as you or even less time just gets it. For free. Every time. And been going to Garmoth since she was released. Still no heart. Been going to Vell since 2018, 1 heart in 3 years. The rates of success for not just enhancing but drops is depressing. 

Short: new player from my guild asked me how to enchant items other then tuvala especial accessories.

So I told him how it works.

What he did? He quit BDO. Quoting his words: such an enchantment system does not make sense, and buying pens is impossible for a normal person.

Curtain.

PS. I have in guild 5 YEARS players without pens. Even few whales and ... yes they are not full pens even after 5 years.

Haha, thank you :) I'm glad you think it's well-presented. To be honest, I was worried most people would sum it up as a needless complaint post and move on. Although, to be fair, I wouldn't blame them. But still :) I really appreciate your positive response and constructive advice, sincerely, thank you again.

I did play religiously at launch, back when the enhancement system was 10x more cancerous than it is now, and ended up quitting on a pretty awful note. It took me 4 years to give the game another shot, and it was only with the promise that I wasn't even going to let myself *look* at the enhancement menu. Low-and-behold, season mechanics didn't really give me a choice, but oh well, it was bearable. At the very least, I do believe that most of the changes PA have made over the years have been for the better, enough to keep me around and give me a renewed sense of hope for the game's future. Thank god for the CM rework, seriously, I'm pretty sure it's the only thing bringing people back and keeping them around.

On the flipside, I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding as to what I was getting at with this thread. I was really, really hoping it wouldn't devolve into a debate, but I probably should have known better considering how touchy this subject is ^^; My bad on that front. But if I can, I'd like to try and clarify the main point of my post one more time here:

This post is not meant as a complaint against RNG in gear progression.

I think most of us have accepted that RNG is a necessary part of making enhancement feel meaningful and rewarding, and there's a lot of us that even love it. 

My main gripe is that players are being punished for their failed RNG rolls, which leads to a general sense of unease, disappointment, and frustration among the playerbase, *even* among those of us here who have accepted the system as it is and are willing to work with it. For many, it's simply not worth the real stress that it induces, and so they quit in droves. Again, I myself have had countless friends and guildmates quit this game permanently because of this system alone. Anything that disheartens new players to such a degree and causes them to quit in this way is terrible for the longterm health of the game, and I believe that's something that transcends our individual opinions on it.

With that out of the way, I do also believe that it is 100% possible for PA to simply remove backwards progression on enhancement attempts (gear falling down a tier and accessories being destroyed) while still keeping the rest of the core elements of the enhancement system intact, RNG included. It would require them to rebalance success rates and pad it with more grind to preserve the rarity and value of gear, but I do think it's possible.

You guys let me know if you think the prospect is absurd, I'm certainly not an expert here. But I do know that no idea is a good one without real examples, so let me share with you an alternative system that I thought of on the fly, purely for the sake of discussion. This has probably been suggested before, so I apologize if I'm being redundant, but here goes nothing:

Feed the Black Spirit other pieces of gear for the next chance at enhancement.

Obviously the biggest concern with removing backwards progression is that, without the risk of failure, enhancing becomes too easy. My hope with this idea is that gear progression can stay a difficult, longterm, rewarding and somewhat luck-based grind, but without also punishing players by reverting their progress.

The general idea is that the black spirit is a greedy little bugger. If he's to be bothered with enhancement attempts, he needs to stock up on some power first, and the best way for him to do that is to consume some of the spare gear that regularly drops while grinding. Once his 'hunger' bar has hit max, he will then be willing to enhance your gear for you, allowing you to roll for one enhancement attempt before getting hungry again. The rates could be something like the following:

      +1 to +15 are enhanced as normal. The black spirit only starts getting hungry when you start trying to go past +15.

      +15 to DUO requires you to feed the black spirit gear of green rarity, with the 'max hunger' going up between PRI and DUO.

       DUO to TET requires feeding him gear of blue rarity. Again, the 'max hunger' goes up between TRI and TET.

       PEN attempts require feeding the black spirit yellow gear. Of course, this is incredibly expensive, as it should be with no risk of falling back to TRI.

Of course the actual 'hunger rates' would have to be carefully balanced, along with the amount of hunger that each piece provides, but this would both preserve the difficulty of gear progression (remember, success rates are still RNG) while also removing punishment on failure. And as an added bonus, it would give new value to all of the other useless gear that currently exists in BDO, which would hopefully provide a bit of a boost to the economy. There's only two other things that would need to be addressed with this kind of change (at least that I can think of):

1. They would have to put a cap on failstacking. This is an obvious balance concern. Endless failstacking would of course be nice, essentially speeding up the possibility of success with each failure, but that would most likely take away from people's sense of accomplishment in the long run. So in that case, my proposal would simply be to put a cap on failstacks, perhaps at +100 or +120. Thus things like valks advice and valks cry would still have a use, and players would still have a flat increase to the overall percent chance of success.

2. Some enhancement items would need a new function.

Cron Stones: Instead of preventing negative effects, crons could now prevent the 'hunger bar' of the black spirit from dropping back to 0 after an enhancement attempt. This would fulfil a similar function to the way they are used now, but the # requirement would probably need to be bumped up at later tiers.

Caphras Stones: These are a bit trickier to handle, as this system would essentially be replacing their function, aka 'guaranteed success.' My first idea would be to allow players to substitute the gear they feed to their black spirits with caphras, similar to the way memory frags work on durability. In terms of the lore, it kinda makes sense that they're his favorite snack, no? x) This might be trickier to balance at later tiers, but it's an idea.

Artisans and Memory Fragments: These would remain the same, as max durability would still decrease on every failed enhancement attempt.

Valks: As stated above, failstacking would still exist, so these would retain their function.

And that's about it :) Sorry for another long-winded post, I'd just like to steer the conversation in a slightly more constructive direction. Thank you guys for all of the replies and considerations thus far, I very much appreciate it, even if I blab too much for anyone to possibly read all of this.

so what is the difference between that and cron stones? cron stones prevent failure at the cost and have different levels of the cost depends on item grade and enhance level.

if they don't play they not gonna get pens, pens have been the easiest ever to get, literally afk for 30mins a day and you can get a pen every 3 months. most people coming from other casual mmo wants to get maxed out gear in a couple of days like in wow after every expansion with raid gear, not the same kind of game.

Nope.

1. Crone stone enchant price depends on the average price of an item at a mp. 

2. That's why enchanting acc with crones is pointless because 2 fails = item mp price. And acc still can drop lvl even with crones.

3. Fails take it durability and its cost. Too many fails = bigger cost for memory for repair then buy item from mp. 

Conclusion: in BDO enchanting it's pointless. Selling memory, selling black stones, selling items give you better items much faster.

Which is why this game is stupid, it punishes the player for trying to get something on his own.

Which is why 99% of people stop playing in the first or second month.