Categories
Game Mechanics

Rounding and Ascensions

Explanation of why sometimes, the numbers don’t change

Author note: this is a follow-up piece from the previous article on rounding (you can find that here.) The information in this post will be merged into the previous one at a future point in time.

Update 5.1 brought us the extended ascension trees and with them came two new increases to surcharged items:

Pictured: 2 fun ascensions

As the word started to get out about these, players started looking to ascend as many trees as they could. They’d happily sell their own grandmother if they could just to afford more shards1. Why wouldn’t they? After all these milestones allowed for some silly item values:

All the random values!

Then suddenly, a wild 5.2 appears!
5.2 uses surcharge rounding!

What this meant was we saw an end to the random numbers as everything now obeys the rounding rules (I mean it makes everything look tidy I guess.) A quick reminder of the rounding rules:

If the item is worth this much goldit rounds to the nearest
105
5010
1,00050
10,000500
100,0005,000
1,000,00050,000

With the change to surcharge rounding it’s possible for a player to unlock the titan milestone in a line (51 stars) and not see any immediate increase in the surcharge value of an item. Whereas before each 1% was a directly noticeable effect, it’s now a lot more behind the scenes. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Hi there, I used the entire art budget

Goldmane Guard has a base value of 610,000. With the 1.25x milestone this increases to 762,500 which is then rounded up to 765,000. We’ll now compare how it changed in value with regards to surcharging:

5.1 surcharge values
0 ascension – 1,530,000
1% – 1,537,650
2% – 1,545,300
3% – 1,552,950

5.2 surcharge values
0 ascension – 1,550,000 (+20k)
1% – 1,550,000 (+12,350)
2% – 1,550,000 (+4,700)
3% – 1,550,000 (-2,950)

As you can see the shield now sells for more than it did in 5.1 for the first 3 stages, though once we hit the 3% ascension mark it’s slightly lower in value now. This effect persists through 4% and 5% – Goldmane turns positive again once you hit the 6% threshold.

Taking this to the high-end, it’s currently possible to max out 17 of the 28 lines available for +17% to surcharge values (well, +15% until they fix element/spirit but that has been stated the end milestone will change to grant an increase to surcharge.)

Item NameValue at 17% in 5.1Value at 17% in 5.2
Alimyriad1,660,0501,650,000
Amber Citadel1,736,0001,750,000
Archmage Raiments1,616,0001,600,000
Astral Conductor1,801,0001,800,000
Borealis1,692,6001,700,000
Caladbolg1,714,3001,700,000
Ceremonial Katar1,356,2501,350,000
Corsair Boots1,638,3501,650,000
Eclipsis1,746,8501,750,000
Freyja's Talisman1,714,3001,700,000
Gaia Tonic1,681,7501,700,000
Goldmane Guard1,660,0501,650,000
Grimar's Grand Wand1,898,7501,900,000
Juggernaut Fortress1,660,0501,650,000
Midnight Oil1,746,8501,750,000
Nautilus1,714,3001,700,000
Night Crown1,822,8001,800,000
Nightmare Fellblade1,497,3001,500,000
Northwind Gem1,768,5501,750,000
Opal Diadem1,627,5001,650,000
Opulent Maul3,580,5003,600,000
Oversized Cleaver1,638,3501,650,000
Prayer Book1,779,4001,800,000
Seraphim1,746,8501,750,000
Swan's Edge1,551,5501,550,000
Terra Tyrannis1,844,5001,850,000

Some items came out really well with the change (Gaia Tonic) and some got screwed (Archmage Raiments.) This pattern can be seen across all items, there’s a spreadsheet you can view here showing if an item is better or worse at a certain ascension % compared to 5.1.

If you wish to figure out how much value you’d potentially gain by increasing your ascension %, Quil#2207 has created an incredibly useful calculator that you can find here.

You can plug in your ascension percent and it’ll show you what value an item will give when surcharged, as well as showing you when rounding is and is not in your favour. You can also attach enchants to the item to see how that would change things as well.

Ultimately what the change in 5.2 means is whereas before every time you got a milestone you definitely got an upgrade, you can now get a string of 2-3 ascension milestones which won’t affect an item. However when you do get a milestone that pushes an item to the next threshold, you will get a much bigger increase than previously. I am unsure as to why the developers felt this change was needed, it’s not like machines get upset if asked to work with non-round numbers. 😛

Tl;dr

  • 5.1: Ascensions were small impact, consistent each time
  • 5.2: Ascensions are bigger impact, but don’t happen at each %
  • Take a look at Quil#2207’s calculator if you want to see how much of a difference this change has made for your items, and to preview how much an extra couple of percent may benefit you.

  1. I’m not sure how many shards you’d get for a grandmother, probably depends on their baking skills.

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