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:
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:
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 gold | it rounds to the nearest |
|---|---|
| 10 | 5 |
| 50 | 10 |
| 1,000 | 50 |
| 10,000 | 500 |
| 100,000 | 5,000 |
| 1,000,000 | 50,000 |
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:
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 Name | Value at 17% in 5.1 | Value at 17% in 5.2 |
|---|---|---|
| Alimyriad | 1,660,050 | 1,650,000 |
| Amber Citadel | 1,736,000 | 1,750,000 |
| Archmage Raiments | 1,616,000 | 1,600,000 |
| Astral Conductor | 1,801,000 | 1,800,000 |
| Borealis | 1,692,600 | 1,700,000 |
| Caladbolg | 1,714,300 | 1,700,000 |
| Ceremonial Katar | 1,356,250 | 1,350,000 |
| Corsair Boots | 1,638,350 | 1,650,000 |
| Eclipsis | 1,746,850 | 1,750,000 |
| Freyja's Talisman | 1,714,300 | 1,700,000 |
| Gaia Tonic | 1,681,750 | 1,700,000 |
| Goldmane Guard | 1,660,050 | 1,650,000 |
| Grimar's Grand Wand | 1,898,750 | 1,900,000 |
| Juggernaut Fortress | 1,660,050 | 1,650,000 |
| Midnight Oil | 1,746,850 | 1,750,000 |
| Nautilus | 1,714,300 | 1,700,000 |
| Night Crown | 1,822,800 | 1,800,000 |
| Nightmare Fellblade | 1,497,300 | 1,500,000 |
| Northwind Gem | 1,768,550 | 1,750,000 |
| Opal Diadem | 1,627,500 | 1,650,000 |
| Opulent Maul | 3,580,500 | 3,600,000 |
| Oversized Cleaver | 1,638,350 | 1,650,000 |
| Prayer Book | 1,779,400 | 1,800,000 |
| Seraphim | 1,746,850 | 1,750,000 |
| Swan's Edge | 1,551,550 | 1,550,000 |
| Terra Tyrannis | 1,844,500 | 1,850,000 |
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.