I don't really care if caphras lose value, as long as they aren't sitting MIN.

Personally I think, this would be a good addition to the game since you will just save up caphras while going for these expensive hard to get end game gear. And like I said before, PA indroduced alot ways to get caphras. You almost get them from doing anything.

There would be an inital spike for caphras, since hardcore players starving for resonable upgrades, but long term it will have almost no impact for caphras market. (In total you need only 33k caphras, thats a single c20 dande)

The alchemy stone cups were lazy as fck from PA, completely agree! Serendia cups are good (atleast for belt/rings).

I can see the argument from CatDK, that reforming duplicates the gear, is poorly coded by PA. But the general idea of reforming an item to get an alternate version is good IMO (i wish we could still get black pegi).

The thing with caphra is, they where intended as an alternative way to pen gear. But because they added levels on top of pen (to "hex") and an abyssmal drop rate, it was only interesting for c4 (after a change where the first caphra level game the mayority of stats) on tet and ppl with pen. noone in their right mind used them to upgrade tri to tet or tet to pen as they where originally designed for. 

The problem PA made, is that now endgame zones drop caphra too and its a significant part of the total income there (gyfin, oluns, etc.). Befor, they where droped on the lower zones primaritly and sold to end game players that made their money on elvia. 

you could just change every caphra to cron stone at these places and up the drop rate. but low caphra prices are a good thing. of course they should not hit or be near min price. 

As for end game progression... I honestly see no way around it. The intention is, that you use crons on fg, debo and godr-ayed (bs to a degree), so ppl get silver out of the system they got through vendor items. orcs has ~70% vendor silver, while most spots only have 30-50% and the rest from drops sold on the market. those are essentially negative silver as they are taxed. It needs to go somewhere. 

That leads my to my conclusion: It cant be less costly (should probably cost more than the average). It should be guaranteed (whats the point in a second system otherwise) and it should take silver out of the system (no direct grind/vendor bought item?) 

How about this: You combine crons, some other item and maybe caphra into something that cant be sold. That is used to upgrade fg in 3 level that grow exponential in cost (first level is cheap, second is costly, third is the main cost, as you basicly get the next level of the item, especially pen slumbering origin). 

That means:

- PA get their whales buying crons

- ppl still buy costumes

- silver gets out of the system

- you dont create more item, just higher level

- can be used as a caphra drain

- ppl make progress besides rng

Additionally we introduce new dp brakets beyond 401. mabe only for pve to not mess with pvp, idk. Lets say 0.X-1% monster dr. And because the gains of dp are so low per level, they should be much more frequent at the top. 

say:

401-425 in 4dp steps (424dp with tri armors and kutum, no disto or dp accessorie) each 1% toal 6% (405/409/413/417/421/425)

426-434 in 3dp steps (436dp with tet armors -||- ) each 0.75% total 1.5% (428/431/434)

435-462 (little bit headroom for future journals) in 2dp steps  (458dp with pen armors -||- ) each 0.5% total 7% (436/438/440/.../462)

that would also give hybrid dp accessories like narcs, orkinrad and ronaros more value in pve. 

Yeah imagine, they surelly add literately their main income, a pure P2W material into mob drops lul

As for the rest they definetlly should not add any m re cluttered progression systems, we already have way too much. We need simple, linear progression that fits into the existing systems, not combining random materials that will just going to add random bottlenecks and meaningless gates for literately no reason or benefit for the game.

I'd probably just add a gamble box, as players love them. Exchange 100 caphras for a box that gives a random amount of crons, mem frags, sharps, or hards, etc.

If PA doesn't want to add more gear, then this idea would be great. (as long as you get the same value or more back)

I don't think PA will ever make cron stones drop from grindspots, but adding more ways to obtain them would be nice tbh.

About your suggestion: It goes in a similar direction as my suggestion, but much unhealthier. I'm personaly not so much of a fan of adding more cron stone requirements, since we have so many of them already. And i'm not sure how expensive these 3 upgrades need to be, since enhancing a Pen fallen god requries like 4 trillion. Do you want something like 10bil (cheapest), 50bil (middle) and 3tril (expensive)?

(ppl already dislike my suggestion, because it introduces more things to get until you reach best gear level)

Low or min priced caphras are the best catch-up mechanic in the game. 

For veteran players, it makes a second set of weapons much more realistic an option, vs having to tag all the time.  Blackstars on pve character, c20s on the pvp character, and then you can still use your tag on either to change things up if you want.

Personally, hope they stack high and deep on the market

Thats the literal point of caphras stones. They were never meant to be a permanently relevant item for endgame/veteran players.  Stop trying to add more pointless bloating dogshit cause you're upset your caphras is gonna lose value in a year. get the fuck over it. 

Did you have a talk with J about  caphras stones, or what? xD

Sure you can disagree, but don't trash talk!

Do you know what was an better catch up mechanic? 2mil vendor crons. Well now they are gone...

And as i said before, this amount of caphras doesn't affect the market in long term. You naturaly accumulate the caphras while going for end game gear.

There are a lot of other items that are much more useful than c20 weapons. Accruaccy Accessories, DP Accessories, Green Offhands or an Evasion/DR Set to switch. I've never seen someone go for c20 weapons to get the 2 extra AP.

And too much horizontal progression should not be the goal....

They stated this during one of the balls. It went along the lines of, "Caphras surprised us because it was meant to help new players slowly catch up to veterans over time, but instead veterans paid lots of silver for very minor stats causing the price to become out of reach of the new players." I believe this explanation was given in the ball where they introduced Tuvala gear as the new alternative since the caphras system had failed to help new players. In the following years and with the increase in late-game players due to the Tuvala success, caphras continued to be bought, creating a larger demand for caphras. Due to this and the complaints from the community, PA increased the drop rate of caphras to allow players to grind them out as individuals rather than requiring them to buy them to reach the end game. Finally, PA introduced FG and reduced the number of caphras required for C10, allowing players to skip the majority of the Caphras grind, which had unintentionally become the measure for end-game progression. We will have to wait and see what PA decides to do with the caphras system in the future, but I hope they sunset this system and move into new directions.