Shattered Refining Points An Underappreciated Addition

While there is a lot of talk about Castle Never, the mount system, overall difficulty and PVP issues, I haven’t heard as much about the fact that the Shattered items were a great addition to the game.

Before the Maze Engine, refining points for artifact gear was the hardest to come by. Artifacts have always been cheap to refine because they have so many matching stones, get a massive x5 multiplier when fed into each other and refining points can drop from any mob. Admittedly, the bot supply is also strong, but even without them I think you would get decent progression while simply playing the game.

Enchantment have also gotten a reduction with the new Potency pricing, but artifact gear long suffered from what I think was a false estimation by the devs. They thought the refining points from green and blue trash items would play a more vital role in the refining process. But that never happened, because the tiny amount of RP you are simply not enough and because the system is capped by the amount of identification scrolls you pick up. Nowadays Strongholds also compete for the surplus equipment.

Since the Dragon’s Hoards are on a daily limit as well and farming Resonance Stones with dragon runs in the Well of Dragons or through a Leadership army is only open or viable to some, refining points for artifact gear were way more expensive than those for artifacts or enchantments. This led to the situation that you had to pay as much for one piece of artifact gear as for all four of your normal mythic artifacts.

Since the module launch though, these numbers have come down a bit. Our tool still lists the cost of one piece of artifact gear at 3M+, much more than a mythic artifact (1.2M) or a standard rank 12 enchantment (1.5M), but that’s approximately 30% less than a month ago. Also the refining stones didn’t spike as usual during the double weekend two weeks ago. Looking at our AH tracker all types of Resonance Stones have come down a bit and the reason are the new Shattered items that drop from Castle Never. They finally offer a decent amount of RP for artifact gear and the market has to adjust.

I still wonder why they haven’t just raised the RP you get from the trash gear, which would have been the more robust system after all, because the Shattered supply is closely tied to how often Castle Never is run. Also the additional items add to the bag space problem attached to the system. Players that save for double events now have to free eight additional slots. Currently though getting your piece of legendary gear is cheaper than ever and I expect prices to further dwindle as more and more players will get maxed. It certainly helps that no new weapon set has been introduced as well.

Let’s just hope this trend continues!

j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

One thought on “Shattered Refining Points An Underappreciated Addition

  • April 1, 2016 at 11:01 am
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    “It certainly helps that no new weapon set has been introduced as well.”
    Not even the Demon Lords’ Immortality, oh wait, that is there. I know it’s not a perfect weapon set with a waist item as a third part, especially if it brakes the “broken” lostmauth set – but still there.

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