Enhancing With Atlas Ore
Last updated: 2012-04-16
Talking about enhancing with atlas ore is doomed to be speculative. Nearly nothing is known about the mechanisms at work here. Fortunately in this blog I don’t talk, I only write. But please take this entry as a report of personal experiences and opinions only. I have no secret knowledge about how the developers programmed its function, I have only the experience of countless attempts, some successful, some less so.
There are two ways of enhancing with atlas ore: safe enhancing and power Enhancing.
Power Enhancing? Never did it before!
Basically power enhancing works like this: You put a lump of atlas ore in your inventory, right-click on it, choose the tab “Power” in the window which just has popped up, and put your item in the left slot. The game will automatically put some atlas in the right slot. Then click on power enhance and enjoy. Simple and direct. The only problem is: it does not work, at least not every time.
Safe enhancing a +2 freezing axe... Don't do that, it is just for show.
There are three possible outcomes:
a) You fail. Your item’s grade (“plus”) will decrease by one, for example from evil gun +9 to evil gun +8. There is no chance for a greater decrease. If the item is plain, the next grade is the bin. Meaning: your +0 evil gun (which you shouldn’t have tried to power enhance in the first place) vanishes. In any case you get some lucky points (see below).
b) You succeed normally. Your item’s grade will increase by one, for example from evil gun+8 to evil gun +9.
c) You succeed big time. Your item’s grade will increase by two to four, for example (and I remember that fondly) from dragon god axe +7 to dragon god axe +10. This is very, very rare. Don’t calculate with it. Lots of failures before seem to trigger it a bit more often, but not often enough to base a strategy upon it.
In any case your atlas ore is lost.
How does safe enhancing work?
It is like power enhancing but you use the tab “Safe” in the atlas enhance window. You pay more than for a power enhancing attempt (see table below for dragon god, evil and pegasus). There are the three outcomes like in power enhancing, with two exceptions:
a) If you fail, your item does not lose a level. It stays at its current level. And as a little token of sympathy your item has full durability again if it was damaged before.
b) You get no lucky points.
How many atlas ore do you need for one attempt to power (and safe) enhance?
The amount of atlas the game uses for one attempt of atlas enhancing depends from the tier of the equipment and the plusses the item has already. Use the following table. An example how to use it: If you want to power enhance a +7 evil robe to +8 you go into the row for “evil” and the column “+7” and read 200. Yeah, that is right, 200 atlas ore or 2.6 billion gold (at the current atlas rate of 12 million per piece) for one attempt which is not unlikely to fail.
| Item Tier | +0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 | +7 | +8 | +9 |
| rings (level 100) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| rings (level 120) | 4 | 6 | 10 | 16 | 24 | 38 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 |
| phoenix | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 |
| dragon god | 20/30 | 35/45 | 50/65 | 70/90 | 90/130 | 110/180 | 130/240 | 150/310 | ?/? | ?/? |
| evil | 30/40 | 45/60 | 60/80 | 80/110 | 100/150 | 130/200 | 160/260 | 200/320 | 240/400 | 300/500 |
| pegasus | 40/55 | 60/80 | 80/110 | 110/150 | 150/200 | 200/270 | 250/360 | 310/460 | 370/580 | ?/? |
Note: The values are given in the format “power/safe”. If there is only one value it is the amount of atlas ore for power enhancing.
What to power enhance?
The table above gives you a hint already: I have only listed item tiers and rings which are worthwile to power enhance. If you enhance depraved items or even lesser gear it is a waste of precious atlas ore. Don’t do it if you don’t have a very good reason to (which I can’t imagine).
For training reasons it is best to start with lvl 100 rings (endurance rings spring to mind). It is relatively easy to produce +10 endurance rings and they will be useful for a long time for you and your mercenaries.
Don’t power enhance +0 items. Vulcanus is cheaper and in case of a failure the item will break anyway.
What about lucky points?
The chance for a successful attempt to atlas is a bit more than 50%, but not much more. If you fail the game rewards you with lucky points. You can’t sell them, eat them or use them in any other way than to make a new atlas attempt (not necessarily with the same item). Lucky points are stored until the daily reset time. The game gives you a hint how much the lucky points will improve your power enhance success chance. Ignore this hint. If you want a heated discussion in the forum make a thread: “Lucky points really help in power enhancing”. There are people who will readily molest you with the sad story of other people who tried to power enhance a valuable item from +9 to +10 with a 123% success chance (according to the game) and failed. While I strongly believe – based on my experiences – that lucky points do help, the additional success chance the game tells you is something out of fairy land.
Is there a strategy to power enhance more successfully?
Nowadays I only use “safe enhance”. But in the past, when there was no safe enhancing, I used the “mood and sacrifice” strategy. As far as I know a lot of people use it but there are also quite successful power enhancers who use other strategies. Sadly I have not the resources to do extensive research and my attempts to deviate from my preferred strategy weren’t very convincing.
“Mood and sacrifice” means: I assume the “random” generator behind the power enhancing has moods (an expression Jenia, a player on Delphi, coined for it). Or speaking more mathematically: After an attempt the next attempt will have a higher chance to have the same outcome as the last attempt than another outcome. After a failure another failure seems to be a bit more probable. But on the other hand after a success another success is also a bit more probable. The trick now is to use cheap items (typically endurance rings) to suffer through the chain of fail attempts and then change to your +9 evil gun in the exact moment when this chain ends and the chain of successes start. Of course there is no real “chain”, only somewhat enhanced probabilities for one outcome or the other, so you will still suffer failures on your most cherished items.
When I started to do an power enhance session, I was sitting in a town, banned my family out of my room, put lots of atlas in my inventory and a lot of items: three or four rings of endurance (+3 or better, so that they won’t disappear so fast…), my “target item” and one or two alternative items which would also profit from a good enhance. Then I tested the mood with some endurance rings and played with them for some time (three to six attempts, depending from the results). If the random generator isn’t in the dreaded FAILFAILFAIL mood (I have myself experienced 7 fails in a row, luckily only with endurance rings) I will put in my target item and cross my fingers. More often than not I was lucky. And when there was a string of failures before, I even do a second attempt in the hope of a general mood change…
How to get a +10 dragon god gun (introducing Wild Cat)?
Buy it from market. Okay, you want to power enhance your way to +10 dg? Power enhance a low plussed phoenix’s gun to +10, go to Rome, find the NPC Wild Cat, pay the fee and hope for the best. Wild Cat will transform your +10 phoenix’s gun to a +8 dragon god’s gun with a slight chance even for +9 or +10. There is no risk of destroying the item or a lower grade than two less than the original grade.
If Wild Cat has given you back a +8 or +9 dragon god’s gun, finish the gun to +10 by power enhancing the last steps.
That method is cheaper than to power enhance a low plussed dragon god’s gun. I leave it to you to calculate how much cheaper. Sadly you cannot exchange dragon god’s items for evil items this way – yet, I hope.
Do I need to power enhance?
Luckily there are people who love to gamble. They do all the work you hate and then offer the shiny +10 evil items for a bit of money on the market – for you to buy without risk. Okay, ignore the “a bit of” part – they will charge you the cost of atlas and a heavy risk premium if they act rationally. Currently you pay between 15 and 20 billions for a +10 dragon god item and up to 40 billions for a +10 evil item. That is most often more than the money they needed for atlas and equipment. But it is justified not only by supply and demand but also by the risk these entrepreneurs took.
I am the cowardly type and have bought and traded all my shiny weapons and armors this way, by paying gamblers for their results. There is one exception – endurance rings +10 I produced all myself. Oh, and a +10 dg axe, which I meant as sacrificial item and then jumped from +7 to +10. Yeah, and there was also… Ok, you get the picture. Gambling can be so addictive.
Shall I power enhance or safe enhance?
You should safe enhance. Here is my reasoning:
Let us assume that the success chance for power enhancing is 2/3 (I am pretty sure that it is lower). This chance takes into account that you use the mood and sacrifice strategy explained above. The success chance for safe enhance is about 50% in my experience (I actually jotted down 100 attempts, 53 were successful – pegasus gear of +2 and above).
Let us look at a pegasus +3 gun. If you power enhance it, you pay 110 atlas. Your chances (very simplified) are:
2/3: +4
1/3: +2
That is an average result of 2.66+0.66 = 3.33.
If you safe enhance it you pay 150 atlas. Your chances are:
1/2: +4
1/2: +3
That is an average result of 2 + 1.5 = 3.5
So you pay 110 atlas for a statistically gain of 0.33 plus while power enhancing or 150 atlas for a statistically gain of 0.5 while safe enhancing.
And keep in mind:
The chance of 2/3 while power enhancing means that you have to use sacrificial items, believe in fate and mood and pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that He may touch your measly item with His Divine Noodly Appendage. And even then 2/3 is quite debatable.
On the other hand the chance of 1/2 while safe enhancing is quite certain (as certain as random chances are, at least). And you don’t have the cruel feeling to pay for losses, when you grade your gun down from +3 to +0 with unlucky power enhancing.
Do I need +10 items?
There is a simple and a longer answer.
The simple answer is: No.
The longer answer is: While they are very convenient you don’t need them (and you won’t miss them) until you are going to tackle the higher level TBS missions (from Spy Hunt onwards). Even then you can do without them, but one +10 dragon god (or evil or even pegasus) weapon, preferably a gun, is very, very helpful. And +10 endurance rings, which are comparably cheap, are also very nice to have. Otherwise level appropriate gear, may be in the +2 or +3 level, is all you need. If you know my character, you may think that it is easy for me to say, with +10 dg armors, several +10 dg/evil/pegasus weapons and full of other goodness. But these nice items came after I have done a lot of the already mentioned TBS missions and earned a heap of money. As they use to say: the first +10 dg item is the hardest…
secretsofatlantica 
Hi Claudia,
thank you for this interesting article. :)
The idea to trade Phoenix gear for DG at Wild Cat is something I haven’t thought about before, I guess I will try that at some point.
As for the strategy, I made some endu +10 rings for my mercs the way you described it. I used two target rings and three to catch the fails and switched between the two target rings as long as I had success and switched between the fail rings for the fail rows.
It would be quite interesting to read how other people approach it, though.
Thanks again for sharing your experience.
As you say it has a 50% rate of succesfull enhanching, but even if it had a 123% lucky point, it only add 10-15% succesfull rate, mean when it comes to failure, at 60-65% chances to success, it still had 30-35% fail rate. For an evil gear with that amount of atlas ore to be bought, it still a very bad rate.
What leads you to that assumption? Is it based on your experience or do you know something about the inner mechanics we don’t know? Please share! :)
i think what he means is that the amount of atlas need to enhance evil gears , could be use to buy an evil of the same grade and enchant . im not sure about evils . but lower lvl gears like frezzing diivine are def not worth atlas-ing .Atlas is around 17mil Ea on Thebes at the moment . Maybe u shld try the Atlas Ore [E] . it cost the same on the item mall as regular atlas.
When talking percentages it’s very easy to confuse things. With atlas and the (alleged) 123% it means 123% of the base chance which means base chance (supposedly 50%) plus 23%.
The math if these numbers are indeed correct (who knows) is:
(base chance * success increase) + base chance = success chance
0.50 * 0.23 + 0.50 = 0.615 or
50% * 23% + 50% = 61.5%
Or even more simply in this particular case you can just say 50% * 123% = 61.5%.
Interesting. Now, you get 123% only if you fail very, very heavily with evil equipment and then try to enchant very, very “cheap” equipment, for example endurance rings.
Usually, if you fail with endurance rings several times and put in evil equipment the chance given to you by the game is something like 0.63%.According to your logic that means:
50% * 0.63% = 0.315%.
That means you would practically fail every attempt. That is plain wrong (or I am the luckiest man on earth and should try to start playing Lotto).
Which underlines my point: the percentage given by the game is something out of fairyland.
You have to include the base chance in your final chance or well, you’re not getting an increase, are you? The number you got is the increase over base chance. You have to add the chance increase to the base chance, so if 0.63% is the increase then its
0.5 * .0063 + .5 = 0.50315 or 50.315%
It’s quite simple really. If all these numbers are correct (none of us have access to the Atlantica code) the chance increase is always going to be half the increase plus a half.
If the increase is less than 100% you can’t just multiply the two together and expect to get the right answer which is why i included the caveat “in this particular case” in the second post. Just like with 150% bonus exp on the weekends, you’re getting a 50% INCREASE over base exp, but 150% of total experience. This is what I mean by percentages can be confusing if you don’t pay attention to the terminology.
I still don’t get it.
The formula you gave before was:
chance = base chance * percentage
(chance = 0.5 * 1.23 = 0.615)
Now you say the formula is:
chance = base chance * percentage + base chance
(chance = 0.5 * 1.23 +0.5 = 1.115 – which is obviously nonsense and seeing that there were fails with that chance is also not true)
Or do you mean the game exchanges the formula depending whether the shown percentage is over 100% or below? That would mean that a shown chance of 90% (0.5 * 0.9 + 0.5 = 0.95) would be better than a shown chance of 110% (0.5 * 1.1 = 0.55) and sounds even more weird.
You have confused me :) But in reality I think the game confuses us all and so I am back to my fairyland hypothesis.
From my (little) experiences I dont think, the base chance is 50% or more. I suggest it to be 20-30 %. With lucky points you can increase your chance only a bit. Lets say you have 10% through fails, than you have a success chance of 22-33% on the next item.
With the mentioned 123% (through lucky points), you will have a chance of 44,6-66,9%. But for these 123% you have to fail a lot and so its highly unsual. So most of time you will have a chance below 50%.
Conclusion: Everything depends on the base chance (we dont know). Form all what I read and hear form guildmates, it must be below 50%. Lucky points won’t help much, unless you fail very high gear and want to enhance very low gear.
Yeah, it remains guesswork. My experience is definitely better than yours, or so it seems.
which one do you prefer : Power enhance or safe enhance?
I only safe enhance now.
Base = .50, or 50%…. 123% from lucky goes like this….. base*lucky 50*1.23=.615, or 61.5%…kinda works like the 200% bonus weekends they announce.. not +200%, but an added 100%
So I would like to know everyone, if you had the Atlas ore would you safety enhance a +8 Nix or just throw caution to the wind and straight power enhance?
Here is my issue, My +8 nix costs 90 atlas ore to power enhance, so by going off the chart above 60% more of that would be 144 Atlas ore to Safety enhance. Well when I put my +8 Cannon in to safety enhance it says 260 Atlas ore is required, now that does not follow the number shown above…..that is a huge increase. Whats the deal, does anyone know??
Where do you get the 60% from? Look at the dragon god values – you have to invest more than 60% there.
Personally I only safe enhance now.
Well, If you run the number on DG and Evil, they run about 60-70% more then regular enhance. So I thought this followed through the whole process but I am mistaken. I agree with you on safety enhance with Evil and Pegasus, Safety enhance on nix does not pay, and enhancing DG is not worth it. DG has horrible atlas/return on investment.
Claudia thanks for giving the credit ;) And good article btw. Is it emerged from my post on a guild forum ? ( just curious :D )
No, but I read it before I wrote it :)
Claudia, do you plan on updating the guide to reflect Pegasus power enhancing? I realize you are only safety enhancing but those values would be very helpful.
Thx, Dimi
Hello,
Got some values for safety power enhancing Pegasus:
+1 – 80
+2 – 110
+3 – 150
+4 – 200
Thanks Dimitrius, I have used them and also added some of my own.
ring 100 +3 – 2/4
the table explain: to enhance +5 evil gear with safe enhance I need 200 atlas ore to get the +6, the problem is, 200 atlas ore its about 3,6 B gold in my server (indonesia AO) while the price of the +5 evil gear its arround 3,2 -3,6 B gold.. so. which one do you prefer? keep gambling with atlas safe enhance (sometime fail and sometime jump) or enchanting two +5 evil gear that rarely jump.??
I would enchant. Personally I don’t use Atlas Ore for enhancing anymore because like in your AO, Atlas ore is so expensive now that it is cheaper to buy the gear directly.
what about lucifer’s rifle ? would u enhance it ?
i got a +0 , so i used safe enhance and it got to +1 . atlas cost is the same as evil gears.i calculated that using safe mode and assuming u dont fail . it would require around 1600 atlas . thats worth ard 20bil + in thebes server. so i would say i would need say 3000 atlas ? which is lmost 50bil . would that be worth it ? +0 luci is around 7-9bil. But their prices dont seem like regulaar gears , where a +1 normally would cost 2 X +0 . need some advice here :P
You have given yourself the answer already :)
Look into the market and see for yourself how much gold people are ready to pay for a +10 lucifer rifle. About 70 b, the last time I have looked (but I think that is heavily overpriced – even if I had 70 b to spend I wouldn’t buy that gun for that much money). So if you think you need 3000 atlas (50 b) you should try it.
But personally I would not advise it. The Lucifer Rifle is no endgame gear. With judgment gear – the next equipment tier – lurking already around the corner I foresee a heavy decrease in price for the Lucifer rifle (and for evil and to a certain extent pegasus gear). If you have alts a Lucifer Rifle+10 is nice to have because you can then do difficult missions like Troy’s Last Battle very early, relying heavily on your gunner. But for a level 150 char you want a pegasus+10 rifle – or, if you get to level 150 right now, you want to wait for judgment gear.
What about lv 130 rings? And non-main 125 necklaces? Main 115 and 135 necklaces?
Are there main-only rings after 80?
now its not 12m per piece ….. =[ its more likely around 40m plus got atlas ore E so if you could change the values and put the rates of atlas ore E / dark pega / judgment would be nice..
Thanks