ChefBoiRD

I stand corrected.

My best guess is that it'll be like the gifting event we just had. Rewards were given on total number of presents sent account wide, not limited to just one character. The rewards were sent to the mailbox under the received items tab and you could pick who got what. Then again, logic doesn't always prevail here (Halloween event token fiasco), so if you're really worried, only enter on those you want to win. Hopefully some from NC can verify. Good luck!

Fusion Stones can be purchased from any of the Primeweald vendors, with a limit of 3 per day. The cost is 250 emblems from each of the four regions. No PvP necessary. You don't even have to play. You can use auto-combat.

You can hang on to what you've got though, and use that while working on getting a lower one with 8. Hammers can be farmed in Moon Refuge, so maybe keep this in mind if and when you create new characters.

I don't think you can salvage them for anything, so up to you if you want to go backward or upgrade what you've already got. The later slots cost 22 legendary gem hammers each to unlock. If you've got a weapon that already has 6 it might be ok to keep upgrading, but if you only have 3 slots now, it's almost certainly better to go backwards.

One other note, you can save yourself a lot of hassle later on by waiting to upgrade your weapon until you find one that has 8 gem sockets in it. Junsorei found in Mushin's Tower and elsewhere sells DawnRift selection chests for 5 Naryu silver each. You can keep buying these until you get a weapon that already has 8 sockets. While they're actually a tier lower than the exalted you get from the story line, they're easy to upgrade. Gem hammers get expensive, just about everyone uses this trick rather than pay more later. All the stuff to upgrade Dawnforge or Riftwalk to Raven can be bought cheaply from Moon Refuge. From Raven you can upgrade to Aransu just like you would from Exalted.

You can purchase Hive Queen Reward Selection Chests from the market place (F5). The lowest priced are being sold for as little as 7 gold, so it should be affordable even for new players. Raid weapons do cost slightly more to upgrade, but you'll do more damage in the meantime. All of my characters are using at least Aransu 3. Since you already know about the bracelet, the other thing you should be working on is your soul shield set and getting a legendary mystic and soul badge. The badges can be purchased from Dragon Express on the second tab for martial tokens. You can obtain these by doing Koldrak, 7th floor of Mushin's tower, and the Moon Refuge dailies. There are multiple ways to farm for Hive Queen soulshields, either by doing Moon Refuge and buying from the vendor there, or using martial tokens from Dragon Express.

Same, I've still got everything I had yesterday. All my legitimately obtained designer thread outfits and pet pods from legitimately salvaged pets are still there. People were told NOT to take advantage, and didn't listen. Many others stupidly thought that buying exploited outfits and pods from F5 at ridiculously reduced prices would somehow launder them. They're crying about lost gold. I'm also seeing people admitting they were using the exploits to obtain some outfits and now complaining they lost all their outfits. Karma 2020

This is now the Blade and Soul Me too movement event. A lot of other players having the same problem in faction chat.

California here, I logged in this morning and got the patch around 8am but couldn't connect. Got kicked after entering my pin. I checked the maintenance announcement and they said 10 hours for NA server. If all goes well that means 2pm PDT.

They said 10 hours, so I'm guessing another 15 minutes before it goes back up.

Yet another case where we were lied to us about this patch. Wasn't the new version of the belt supposed to be comparable to the old belt at level 5? So done with this game. Is it so hard to just tell the truth?