DenialOfTruth

AP is not the only factor. What is your Critical Damage and Mystic looking like?

While the exact player count is unknown I highly doubt NCSoft would keep it going for a thousand people. Realistically it's probably closer to five thousand.

Pretty valid point, though I do hope they are there to stay, or get replaced with a superior reward.

Agreed. Either bring back old sources, increase the numbers given, or reduce the numbers needed. Those are the three solutions on the table. I can't stand the current farm and resolved to go just to +15 on my Skystealers to get +11 Starcross, making it for me at least, a mere 3,900 crystals of each type per accessory as I got them all to +11 before the update even. But if someone started from scratch it would be...6,295 of each. There's no real need to +20 things I feel and it would gain one little vs +15. As a note, you're forgetting the at minimum 20 crystals of each type from login rewards (40 if premium) from the pouches it gives. The actual time is slightly lower because of that.

Linking to files on your computer is completely useless as we have no means of accessing them. You should upload them to a image hosting service like imgur.

Honestly I think my idea of just simply replacing the pouches from login bonuses with the chests that daily quests give would solve a majority of the problem. You don't want players getting ungodly gear too fast, but you don't want their progression too slow either so making it both consistent and a somewhat higher number achieves this.

Support does not work 24/7. Give it time.

Not really. There's some config files you can mess with, but it's not feasible to fully reach UE3. However, KR did get a update on May 18th that greatly improved the graphics and lighting which may fix your problem. Twitter user Craig_Chan_ reported on it back then. I can't see us not getting it at some point, maybe with Bard?

So about half the costs. I got impatient with my gloves and jumped straight to Starcross +6 from Skystealer +11 and paid the price.

I dunno about that one, it cost me 20k to go from +10 to +11 on my Starcross Gloves, ignoring the stages before that. Probably like 25k total? Pretty sure I'd spend less then 25k going +15 Skystealer to get +11 Starcross.

The best tip that can be given is to complete the entire story. It'll give a player all the items needed to proceed to later content even if most of it will quickly be replaced by Soul Boost gear. Unity has a side quest available in Quest Letters (J, then Quest Letters tab) after level 55 I think. It explains the system well enough, but it doesn't explain that the Unity Level is account wide, so all of your characters benefit from it being higher. Compound has no quest, but basically you put accessories you are not using into it to unlock Rune slots for Etching Stones to be used on. You can't recover any accessories put in, so always triple check it's one you're not going to use, or has been replaced already by a stronger accessory. There's special Hongmoon Accessories with no stats that are for this that you can put in as well.

Oof, that's dumb. They need to put a amulet exchange in like prior amulets got.

Yeash. And I thought the Skystealer grind back when AD and Sub were Demonsbane content was rough...that only took me around 200 runs to get all six. And the grind for Starcross is still ongoing at over 100 runs in both Hall of Trials and Namdo Shrine...but this surpasses both grinds COMBINED. Also wait, you can get the WRONG SPEC in a amulet? That sounds impossible given that they automatically adjust to your spec...

I wonder if at this point it's just some weird and dumb character/account specific problem and it eventually resolves itself. I think it happened to one of my alts but I haven't played them much to check up on it further.

Quite aware. However I am one to carefully weigh the benefits of my actions...would it be worth set backing my emblem counts to get the upgrade stones needed to upgrade the amulet?

I lost track of my run count but it's probably about 100-120 by now and I've gotten a couple insig boxes and the amulet...and the amulet isn't even a big upgrade, it's literally 2 Boss AP and 25 Mystic over Mythical Silversteel.

Ah, my apologies, I missed their post completely somehow. Honestly we don't even need NCSoft to show us mechs, we know them 2+ months in advance because there's no changes done in that way from the KR version. That said, for those not in communities like Alice KR, BNS Academy, ect ect...maybe some hints in the form of streams and official videos would not be such a terrible idea but I like to think the majority of the BNS active player base is in one of those groups already.

Precisely. While some items will be marginally cheaper or lower priority, getting the six main accessories to Starcross +11 likely would on average cost about 100,000 to 120,000g...and that's just six of the thirteen. The remaining ones are trickier to estimate costs on, but Soul Boost has brought the requirements down quite a bit. Maybe another 120k? Other costs like Unity are very low in comparison though.

Agreed. I'm fine with a slow progression but this makes snails look like they're going mach 2. I recently burned over 20k gold to get my Starcross Gloves to +11 as I love real examples and it pulls things into perspective. My best estimates put a daily gold gain at 347 (450 if premium) doing 'everything', that is, all F8, all the old dungeons that still give rewards, and all relevant solo content excluding Shrouded Ajanara Hard Mode (most of the player base cannot currently complete). Then an additional 631 (760) on top of that from weekly stuff like all raids excluding Serpents Den, not including the gold from dynamic boxes (think each raid would be 70g with a chance of an additional 100g? I'll have to double check. Scarlet Conservatory is 70 from dynamics at least). A free to play player doing all they can gets basically 3,000g a week, and a bit more if premium. By my own numbers, it would take 7 weeks to recover the gold I used on those gloves. Keep in mind this is purely a single character scenario, and players with time to do two characters doing everything is obviously more effective, but it's a ever increasing time investment few can sustain.

The only person to mention mechs is you. In the past community managers would showcase upcoming content for the game not to show the mechs and how to do it, but what stuff looks like and expected rewards. Are you opposed to this, and if so, why?

Quite a few of these I agree with. Currently if one was to do all F8 dungeons, they'd get a grand total of 12 Scale Fragment Support chests, plus 6 from Daily Challenge rewards. To put a real example, I right now need 2,380 to upgrade my Talisman all the way to True Skywatch. A little over 132 days effectively. I know I can do some older dungeons, which puts it somewhere around a total of 40-50 a day depending on RNG which would put it under 60 days to get enough, but not many people go do the older dungeons anymore. As for Skystealer Crystals...one can get 60 a day (from 6 boxes that daily quests give you), plus an additional 20 at minimum (40 if premium) from the Login Rewards. I whole heartedly agree that it needs to be increased, possibly even doubled or tripled. Perhaps the login rewards could swap the pouches that give 4-8 each with the chests from daily quests...that alone would make it 110 (160 if premium) if the same numbers were kept just the item changed.

I suspect in order to start getting rest bonuses you must log onto that character at least once after the update had gone live so it starts counting.

Let us be patient. We've seen some positive changes as of late and gold gains are on an increase, if not enough of one to be comparable to our upgrade costs. The thing to keep in mind is no one at NCSoft, be it Green Storm, support, the coders/developers, ect...can just snap their fingers and make something happen. Even if Green Storm came in right this second and posted 'alright here be gold gains' it could take weeks or even months to finalize such changes.

Worst case scenario is like 2 months for the new dungeon, which will cripple our HMC gains again. When we got the current tier, both Aerodrome and Substratum got removed from Demonsbane and the seasonal content was just Hall of Trials and Sanctum of the Masters. If it takes 4 months I'd honestly be cheering because that's 4 months of 5 seasonal things to do for HMC.

In a couple weeks probably when they release the next outfit RNG box.