Hows this sound for a consumption fix?
HD ore + base gear = enriched upgrade attempt.
I.E. +8 valk mant + HD ore + valk mant(in inventory) = safe enriched attempt from +8 to +9.
You could toss in an enriched ore as well if you want, but if you made base item consumption part of the actual upgrade formula (if thats possible) that would solve the "1 gear for life" current approach. Can either take the old "bad" chance doing regular HD upgrades (things like KVM weapons i guess) or the new way that would consume some gears in the process.
I like this idea.
We could still make it use KP ores... but also use items.. that way GM's are happy and players are happy.
If you use a KP ore without another item then it can downgrade but it won't break.
If you use a KP ore with another item like the one you're refining, if it fails it won't downgrade, and only lose the item.
This would clean alot of the equips that are not selling in the market. And people would still buy KP for ores. Even more cause they now see that they have a much better chance. (Specially on items that are +10 and onwards that are lower chance to upgrade)
Actually eating 1 item to give its mate a better chance/sure chance is actually the idea I want to do. Â But instead of doing it at 7 and higher it would be at the 4-7 range. Â So the loss would be at the low end not the high end. Â I know there are the safe certificates, those are intended to become very rare and likely used on Kafra shop items that you don't want to sacrifice to get safe tries at.
It is stretching the limits of the RO NPC commands to get it to compare what you are upgrading  with something in inventory but I think it will work. One nut we can't crack right now is to have the game detect the upgrade level of item in inventory (non-worn) if that were possible I think a glorious pyramid upgrade strategy could be developed, like a +4 sacrificing a +4 gives a safe attempt at 5, all the way up.  So a +9 would need another +9 to upgrade to 10 safely.  It would take the "luck" from upgrading and would turn it into massive item destruction starting at +4. (2 4 8 16 32 64 to get to +10)
Basically sacrificing a Valk Mant would give you a safe to 7 upgrade chance on a +4->6 Valk Mant. Â Once we get to the +7 though that model would become "too good". Â Letting it have the enriched chance is fine, but giving it that + not degrading would be a huge problem, if the item degrades still it isn't a problem but it would become very item intensive.
I like that idea also. The item destruction to save upgrade. That way there are two ways to refine, with KP and with ingame items.
@Anchors: Yes you're right the price would go up and the gap would increase but that's how it always has been, and it would bring back market stability. Right now you can barely sell gear at all cause there is so much equips available(least in Valkyrie, I would imagine Ymir and other less populated servers would have even more problems with this), you have to remember it's not just MvP gears what is getting affected, but mob gears as well, and that SHOULD be the main source of income for the avarage new player. What new players are finding now a days is cheap prices but barely no ways to sell their equips/loots to obtain money to buy this "cheap prices" cause the market is full of their current obtained equips. SO they either sell KP(fast), or sell cheap loot or pots which takes a very long time to gain money, even more time than it would take before to reach "the gap" between end gears.
So yeah I believe that Hrothmund's idea would help get rid of all that extra amount of gears, it would keep people happy knowing that they won't break their gears if they use another item. And hey it was always expensive to get a high upgraded gear. I don't know when was it that we changed from that mindset... before renewal everyone knew that an item +9 or +10 was worth ALOT. But now we want the same result but cheaper...
Edited by iiNote, 28 November 2011 - 01:19 PM.