I’m playing through SWL slowly and I’m noticing a bit of a dilemma. I’m trying to do all the daily bonuses, but the one that always leaves me coming up short are item empowerments. I’m typically doing 3 main quests, 3 side quests, and killing 50 monsters every day, but I usually skip the empowerments. I read it was better to use like-items for empowerments only, but it can take a while before I have 20 like-items to use for the daily.
If I have 5 amulets, it seems more efficient and useful to use all 5 in one upgrade, rather than doing 1 at a time and missing out on the item bonuses, however using only 1-2 item upgrades at a time is the only way I can hit that daily bonus every day.
So my question is, which is better over the long run, getting the extra marks of favor each day, or having the better-upgraded items?
In other words, here are my options:
Option 1: Get 3000 marks of favor per day + maximum bonuses for all upgraded items (like waiting on upgrading until I have 5 of a like-item to upgrade)
Option 2: Get 6000 marks of favor per day for completing all dailies, but have minimal bonuses to my upgrades (like using only 1 amulet at a time to upgrade another, except doing it 4 times to hit my daily bonus)
There’s no difference between using one item at a time five times or five items one time. The only benefit using five at a time could possibly have is if you get a critical empowerment. But as you say, you have trouble gathering that many. So don’t! Get four items for the daily, and if you happen to get six more, get the second level empowerment daily once you’re finished with everything for the first.
Empowerment should be the easiest to complete daily.
Start with Option 2, but don’t forget to check the Auction House! You can often find items that match what you’re upgrading for a few marks. Then just sell to AH/vendor the items that don’t match so you can get more marks/shards depending on your needs for future upgrades.
To everyone saying there’s no advantage, I’m obviously missing something. The way I see it, I get a bigger power bonus per item for say a weapon if I do more at once than if I do them individually. For example, if I’m upgrading a sword, the upgrade box says the following:
1 sword = +17 weapon power
2 swords = +35 weapon power (17.5 avg)
3 swords = +69 weapon power (23 avg)
4 swords = +87 weapon power (21.5 avg)
I took some screenshots, but the forum says I’m not allowed to post them, I promise that’s what it said on the text though. They were all lvl 1 swords.
I didn’t have a 5th one on hand, but I can only assume it’s higher. If I do any one of those swords individually (I tested each one), the bonus is only +17. What am I missing here?
There is no cost difference for doing 5 single empowerments vs 1 empowerment with 5 items. As for benefit of 5x1 vs 1x5 if you’re counting empowerments for an Achievement go with the single item method as it’ll count as 5 separate empowerments instead of one large empowerment. When it comes to critical empowerments you’ll benefit more from 1x5 as all will be critical vs 5x1 where you’re unlikely to get 5 critical in a row.
Put 1 green upgrade sword in the slot, gain +250 XP for 200 anima shards cost (or whatever the cost is)
Put 2 in at the same time, gain +500 XP (total) for 400 anima shards (total) cost.
The items placed in the slot, and the anima shard cost, are 1:1 linear. The end result is exactly the same to put 5 items in all at once, or 5 items in 1 by 1 (barring criticals, which actually work out the same either way in the long run also).
I suspect the differences in your weapon power results are because of round-off issues and because your 3rd sword placed in caused the item to increase a level or something.
In the not-very-long run however, your items will all end up at max level with the exact same item power, and items and shards are grindable. Marks of Favor however, you have a set limit you can earn per day (except for Aurum exchange or item selling).
Also, if you unlock the 4-item empowerment bonus, you get 1,000 MoF for the challenge, then something like 2,000 MoF for completing the entire first challenge set, and you unlock the entire second set of daily challenges.
Which means you can very quickly bang out 100 more monsters for another MoF bonus, and empower with another 6 items for yet another MoF bonus. Your daily MoF budget has just almost doubled (from your previous skip-the-item-empower approach).
tl;dr : Do the 4-item empowerment with single items, then do the 6-item one with singles or any combo you choose.
Your weapon gains power every time it gains a level. Putting multiple items or distillates in at the same time just means that you’re gaining more levels at once instead of one at a time. The end result is the same.
A.I believe you are good off with doing one scenario for 1 main mission, all of the first batch empowerments and the 50 kills. there are also some strats existent to do Main&Sidemissions done fast…and voila you get 6k. That’s good enough if you are short on time. The only thing that I would put on top of that is raid once a week for the big destillates in that.
B.Focusing on a few/one glyphs, talis, weapon is better than focusing on multiple. Keeps the amount of fodder you have to carry around small.
some wind up trying to do the story raid multiple times a day, esp on alts. lesser rewards after the first one in the week, but with taking the purple mission inside the instance after the boss kill, you get two main missions knocked out in a rather quick time (depends on group, of course, which is why they usually do it with story and not one of the elites)
and i agree with leo on the fodder limit… i try to work on one weapon, one talisman, one glyph, and one signet at a time, but… my inventory is an absolute mess with all kinds of things going on, so i fail even at that…and rarely have even 10 open spots at any given time
Three quick side missions if you’re in a hurry and not yet in Kaidan or South Africa : teleport to Shadowy Forest, do the mission “Red Hand down” at the crashed helicopter, port to Mihas, pick up “Who comes and goes”, port to the tunnel, pick up “A wreath of roses” and the two items next to it), run north into the tunnel, port to the Draculesti camp and put down the flowers.
Only two werewolves to kill, but the teleporting involved might not be suited for non-patrons.
The southwest could be good too…killing the spider guardian, killing the fauns, killing the vampire lord, killing hell soldier and the one mission where you soul suck are all fast. Shadowy forest is filled with fast side missions.
There is one case where you should not upgrade 1 at a time, and that is when there is bonus empowerment XP.
When you get 25% more XP, that 250 XP from a green same item becomes 312.5. The .5 is the problem, because the game rounds down. Therefore instead of 312.5, you get 312. If you use 2 single upgrades you would get 312+312=624. If instead you did it in pairs, you would get 500*1.25=625.
Now 1 point isn’t necessarily important, however because it comes in finite chunks and the xp required is always a very round number, it means you are very possibly going to run into the situation where you need 1 more item to fully upgrade because you are missing 1 xp.
It threw me off at first the having to put one in at a time instead of the game being able to count to five so I could stick all five in at once, but whatever.
Also if you don’t have a piece to be working on - KM drops - head, neck, waist - are always cheap and a couple or so sides there will give you fodder to upgrade. I still use those on alts (purple or lower gear) that don’t have agent distillates. For me the MoF from dailies is much more valuable than missing the empowerments.
Another time that it is better to do SINGLE distillate upgrades over multiple is when you are close to fully upgrading a piece of gear to the max level in its quality. For the sake of simple numbers if you had 1250xp left on an items and you used 5x250xp distillates If you were to get a critical empowerment you waste all the xp bonus this is more notable at higher level distillates. Especially when perhaps only a small fraction of the last distillate entered is being used to max the item level in its particular quality level.
