Playing relatively casually (there are days I miss doing dailies and dungeons for example), I finally hit the start of the Tier 3 grind on my main just a few days shy of the first two months since the game launched in the west (counting the head start period). My casual playing was intentional in order to get a good idea of how the progression tuning actually was in terms of what the game actually gave you without try hard grinding, or resorting to utilizing both Mari’s Shop and the auction house (for honing materials). I’ve yet to exchange gold for blue crystals (though the current exchange rate on NA West Mari is looking attractive; it’s around 302 gold for 95 crystals whereas just before the abyssal raid patch went live, it was over 950 gold for 95 crystals).
I know the shop, auction house, and currency exchange are tools but I really wanted to get an idea of how much intentional gating is going on with the actual acquisition rates of these materials (this included the rewards from island quest chains). What was also factored in was the recent events and this months login events that injected additional materials (and books that helped boost honing rates by a few percentage points) into the game. Without this injection, it was clear that my RNG would have been lower while the actual game itself, doled out far less materials where you’d reach these pain points. Additionally, while I have two other level 50 alts, they weren’t really useful since both were only at the midway point of Tier 2 (and I hadn’t yet progressed them through the main story quests where they could also do the Yorn/Feiton chaos dungeons for T2 mats; my Soul Master has since completed Yorn so it is farming T2 mats).
My biggest mistake was not buying the weekly allotment of honing materials from the merchant vessel; this almost turned into a honing shard shortage in Tier 2 when trying to hit 1100 item level (I remembered to buy out this weeks allotment which helped). Leap stones and fusion material however were constantly constrained when I finally hit +14 on all pieces. RNG was on the better side (due to the books that boosted the chance of success) since I had less than 20 total failed honing attempts when finally hitting +15 on all gear slots. But between 14 and 15, those failures burn up a few days to a weeks worth of materials. This is pretty much the story of the item level treadmill that is a gating mechanic by design. This is why I normally just hone (at these higher levels) once a week (March 30th, I was at 1080).
My last piece to +15 was my head slot where I was down to my last 7 pieces of fusion material. Using a honing book which boosted the chance of success to 58%, I finally hit +15 and the 1100 item level needed to enter Punika.
Unlike T1 and T2 where their items were tradable (as an additional catchup mechanic), the T3 gear is currently bound which means you do not (as of the existing patches) have the option of using the auction house to purchase a set before completing the Punika main story quest (finishing this allows you to run the first Punika chaos dungeon in order to collect pieces of the set). I quickly completed the Punika MSQ and ran the chaos dungeon; I fortunately got all the pieces during my first run. I then completed all of the initial Punika side and purple quests since they rewarded additional honing materials (and was also finally able to buyout the event NPC and sailing vessel for the 1302 item level mats). As of this entry, I’m at 1325 and will be running into the fail stack wall soon.
What’s great about this version of the game being only on Steam, is you can see a lot of information for yourself. As of April 5, 2022, only 4% of the player base has hit item level 1300. That’s a Steam achievement tied directly to the game.
While that looks like a pretty dismally low percentage, the large number of players (last reported by AGS in March to be around 20+ million global players with 10 million of that being their version) actually puts it into better perspective. On a quick note, a lot of people misconstrue the Steam concurrency numbers for the total player base; that again is only concurrently logged in players which has been unsurprisingly dropping to its more natural numbers (I’m playing a lot less hours myself). Anyway, using this 10 million number, that 4% number represents approximately 400K players that have reached 1300 item level. In terms of active concurrent player numbers (377K over the last month), it does seem that most current active players are hitting this metric. It is also fair to extrapolate that a much smaller percentage of this, are already at 1370 and higher. 1400+ item level is going to be even lower, and that number (specifically 1415) is a key metric that AGS will utilize for determining if they will stick to releasing the first legion raid in May.
Digressing, like T1 and T2, the first few levels of T3 honing are 100% success rate but at smaller item level increments. The success rate percentages also go down a lot more at T3 as you progress through the higher honing levels. With AGS just releasing the roadmap for this month and May, my personal target is 1340 item level (in order to enter South Vern) by April 14th (when this update will likely be deployed) since I know the honing rates will eventually be adjusted once the legion raid is released (I doubt Smilegate RPG will want to deviate too far from the catchup mechanics deployed in Korea and other regions post-Valtan). Additionally, there maybe other catchup mechanics for newer (and existing) players since past 1370 requires raid gear to really get to 1400+ item level. Regardless, I’m not going to adjust my playing style anytime soon. I am planning on rolling a Lance Master (Glaivier) which thankfully will come with a Feiton PowerPass (T2 ready).
It’s safe to presume the data (over the next month) will likely require them to inject more honing materials into the game as well. Gold and silver are also currently bottlenecks (T3 honing consumes significants amount of silver at the lower levels, and then large amounts of gold at the higher level where you are consistently building fail stacks). Gold income is supposed to improve with the higher tiered content but for the time being, the constraints will feel real since a lot of the marketplace opportunities are no longer as fruitful as it was in the first month.
Overall for myself, the game (and my play time in it) is about where I expected to be for these first two months. The total hours played is actually far lower though (not even 450 hours yet), and I thought I would have more alts at 50 (this is probably due to not having the classes I want to play being released yet including Arcana and Summoner). So it’s a good thing that Lance Master is coming onboard this month as that should be fun to play.
