Swords of Chult Preview and Guide: The New Refining System

The mid-module update “Swords of Chult” will bring a substantial upgrade to the existing refining system. Granted, the overall approach of farming certain refining stones and feed them into artifacts, gear and enchantments doesn’t change. But pretty much everything else in terms of usability gets a boost. In this article we are going over the UI and systematic changes of refining and explain how players will benefit from them.

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The Old Flaws

The old system had two pretty distinct flaws. First of all it was build around refining stones that only granted their full RP to specific items. Most content features refining pieces that are great in one area, but much less useful in all others. It seems like an earlier idea of the design was to keep old campaigns and areas viable as long as possible. Players had to go back to specific content depending on what they wanted to upgrade. Sharandar has Thaumaturgic for enchantments, Dread Ring stuff for artifacts, and Tyranny of Dragons Resonance for gear. Storm Kings Thunder then even introduced a completely new line of refining stones and marks.

This specialization combined with different bind formats led to over a hundred types of refining stones and led to what players widely refer to as “bag space issue” of the system. Having tons of different stones isn’t an issue alone though as long as you can instantly use them. But in comes the Double Refining weekend, which got such an integral part of the progression that players saved all their RP until they could spend them during the event. Not only did their bags fill up over time, they also risked to lose months of progression in case they couldn’t participate in the x2. It was truly a “can’t miss”.

Matching Bonuses are Gone

Both of these issues are being dealt with under the new system. Refining Points are now a character currency and you can convert all refining stones into it. That currency is then used to feed all refining items. So a Thaumaturgic no longer produces way more RPs for enchantments, but the same amount for everything. Please note by the way that all RPs have been divided by 10 across the board. So a Black Opal holding 1,000 RP hasn’t been nerfed. That’s equal to the 10,000 it had under the old system. Also most stones now grant refining points based on their old matching values. That’s why Resonance Stones now give 250 RP for example.

Most of the specific refining stones are replaced anyway. Leadership and celestial boxes now drop basic gems like Peridots, Black Pearls or Emeralds. The same applies to campaign quests and utility enchantment procs. Not that it would matter too much now that you can instantly convert RPs, but in case players still want to hoard, they have to deal with much less variety. The upgrade process itself is getting streamlined as well. The only reagents needed are Mark of Potencys and new Enchanting Stones, a consolidated version of the old Mark of Power/Union/Stability that drop from the same locations. Additionally players no longer need the same enchantment as reagent for some levels.

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Double Refining Replaced

With the change of the approach the Double Refining weekend also gets replaced with a new event that grants additional refining points on killing mobs. The devs want you to spend your refining points whenever you want for whatever you want. The x2 completely works against this purpose and therefore had to go.

UI Changes

Obviously such an integral change warrants some new UI elements. As previewed in our inventory article, you are now able to mass convert refining points using the new inventory options. The conversion window allows to quickly add items of one specific category or manually select or drag and drop them. You can also convert single refining items by using their right-click context menu.

Discarding works differently under the new system as well. First of all, you can no longer discard refining items. They will be converted to RP instead. Also all higher ranked enchantments, gear and artifacts need a special confirmation to be destroyed to prevent any costly mistakes.

It’s really a great tool and the only flaw is that you can’t filter different bind versions. In some cases you might want to quickly convert all character bound stones, but keep everything else to possibly move it to an alt. This still has to be done largely manually. Other than that, it’s really convenient and all you have to do is click “convert all”.

New Relevance to Trash Greens

Speaking about the UI changes, another interesting effect is that basic green level 70 gear suddenly becomes a useful pickup. These items grant 50 RPs (a Peridot) and can now be identified and refined in bulk. So players can start hoarding those Scrolls of Identification again. It might not sound like much, but a VIP getting 25 free scrolls per day can generate 1250 RPs, more than a Black Opal.

Conclusion

The overhaul of refining is a great quality of life change that gets rid of the most glaring flaws of the system. It make managing so much easier, should free up bag space, and let’s players progress continuously as they play the game. It’s a great change that everyone should be looking forward to.


That was our preview of the new refining system. In the next days we will be going through all areas of the refining progression and see what this change means for these specifically. Until then, make sure to post your opinion or questions in the comments below and visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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16 thoughts on “Swords of Chult Preview and Guide: The New Refining System

  • October 10, 2017 at 7:25 am
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    Under the new system, will converted RP be bound to a character, or will it be shareable with an alt?

    • October 10, 2017 at 7:28 am
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      You can still move the refining stones, but the currency will be character bound.

  • October 10, 2017 at 9:22 am
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    Rp stones can be transfered among alts yes but once converted as Rp will be a currency and currencies cannot be transfered one should be careful in conversion.

    The devs however are looking at alt friendly ways and RP currency ‘might’ become tradeable amoung alts in the future as well.

  • October 10, 2017 at 11:43 am
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    What about changes to the reagents needed to refine things?
    – No more identical stones needed for enchantments
    – Marks of potency remain and new ones are introduced?
    – What about other marks, are they converting to a the new stone needed?
    – Is the number of reagents needed being increased or the same as before?

    Will things in general cost more or less than before?
    If an item is ready to refine, is that best done before or after the change?

    • October 10, 2017 at 12:51 pm
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      We’ll have specific posts for each area (enchantments, enhancements, gear, artifacts) in the coming days, where we’ll also compare new vs. old.

  • October 11, 2017 at 12:26 am
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    Most refining stones are equivalent, you say. Are there any that are not, and which we should use up now, before 12b’s launch? For example, SOMI refinement is taking a big loss and should be used now, right? Anything else? Enchants that we would use as RP for an enchantment… are they equivalent in the new system to the new system under 2x and a match?

    • October 11, 2017 at 3:23 am
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      The area where you should definitely wait are Enchantments. Those are getting cheaper across the board. We’ll have more on that on a separate article. You can’t do wrong with gear and artifacts as long as you’re utilizing a Double RP. SoMI is an exception. You should spend those RP under the old system because their matching bonus for Relic gear will disappear in Mod 12b.

  • October 11, 2017 at 12:37 am
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    well stom king mod weapons still use different refining stones, any idea why this is happening?

    • October 11, 2017 at 3:24 am
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      SKT weapons have always been an exception. These are BIS and meant to be gated behind difficult group content. So it makes sense to keep them within their own progression.

  • October 11, 2017 at 9:02 am
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    What if I have a stack of enchants I want to use for feeding. Feed them now, or wait?

  • October 11, 2017 at 9:05 am
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    Most of this will become apparent once the update arrives. The real question probably then is when does it go live on PC, PS and XBOX. When? That, and if it’s better to use what you have now or hold it until the update, if you still have things that match and give max RP for to rank up.

  • October 12, 2017 at 8:14 am
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    On PC it goes live on the 24th of October. The date was announced in late September.

    Not sure about the console date, though.

  • October 27, 2017 at 12:20 pm
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    Trash greens generate RP, but trash blues do not. Is this WAI or is there a fix to be expected? Seems like an odd choice to leave the blues out.

    • October 28, 2017 at 11:01 am
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      It might be a bug, but I don’t think there has been an official statement yet. But you’re right, it would be odd. So hopefully it will be corrected.

  • October 30, 2017 at 9:40 am
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    Unfortunately, it’s not a bug.

    noworries#8859 said:

    “Why can only green gear be broken down into RP?

    At high levels we felt most players would break down blue or better gear for AD instead of RP. If players think they will often break down their blue gear for RP, we can bring the cutoff up to that point.”

    That comment makes sense in that it avoids folks randomly breaking down loot drops from T1 dungeons that they could otherwise salvage. However, I’m guessing they forgot about the broad category of blues that aren’t salvageable, like say all the lvl 70 blues you get from the leveling dungeons that more people than ever are running for AD or as part of the pvp queue victory rewards. You used to be able to feed these non-salvageable blues into your gear for RP, but now I’ve just been vendoring or dumping them into the Guild/Alliance Mimic for Surplus EQ points. I guess you could also post them on the AH, but I can’t imagine there being much a market now.

    Maybe they will realize this and change the cutoff point, though that comes with the risk that people will accidentally convert to RP that which could have been AD. Salvager beware.

  • January 16, 2018 at 3:57 pm
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    I noticed that the Gond stuff no longer requires nearly the amount of matching Gond stuff as it used to. In fact, it seems to use regular RP. In theory, this would make the price of Forgehammers of Gond plummet, seemingly. Is the Gond stuff WAI or will there be a fix?

Comments are closed.