This post describes some leveling strategies for U32's new Cannith crafting, based on Slarden's "3% booster" strategy. It presents different options and their respective averages on how much gaining levels costs, mostly for level 1 up to level 371. At or slightly after level 371 it becomes beneficial (and later necessary) to craft shards that require collectables and purified dragonshards in addition to essences, so leveling further is less about optimisation and more about supply and demand.
In order to compare the different stages of advancement, low level (1 to 151), mid level (151 to 261) and high level (261 to 371) crafting may be considered seperately. Many examples to show general trends will be about getting from crafting level 261 to 371, but I'll also post tables with advancement costs for all three areas. Please feel free to ignore the more technical parts 8 and 9.
1. Averages and actual costs
The actual costs of crafing even a single shard can vary a lot - with some luck even a 3.33% shard may be crafted in the first attempt, but with some bad luck even a crafting 50% shard may fail ten times in a row. Further on, even a slight change in crafting experience, maybe from starting at a different point within the same crafting level or even from deconstructing a couple of items at some point, may change which shards become available at which point and thus change the costs.
You should keep this in mind when preparing for the leveling process, and have maybe an additional 10% of all resources available. Even this may not be enough for people with some very bad luck, but it should provide a sufficient buffer for most.
2. Three general rules
In order to make most of your resources, please keep the following general rules in mind:
- Use the best available (i.e. +100%, 40 TP each) crafting experience elixir whenever you craft any of your leveling shards. It reduces your leveling costs at last by half, and two elixirs should be sufficient to get you from level 1 to level 371 - if you have your essences ready and focus on crafting.
- Use some kind of crafting success booster, especially for the 3% success chance shards you will craft. Even +10% boosters (available in game with 50 Cannith favour) massively reduce the number of essences you need.
- Avoid artificer levels and the dragonmark of making while leveling your crafting skills. Having them already means you cannot get them to obtain free skill levels when you need them most.
The consequences of crafting without a good crafting elixir or without success boosters are stated in appendices A and B, while the benefits of being able to gain free crafting skill levels are considered in section 7.
3. One general strategy
If you insist on not using any success boosters at all, then please see appendix B below.
Otherwise always craft the most difficult minimum level shard you can craft. This means switching to a new one whenever the level difference between the difficulty of the shard and your crafting skills falls under 20:
- crafting level 1 to 10: bound minimum level 3 (difficulty 30)
- crafting level 11 to 20: bound minimum level 4 (difficulty 40)
- crafting level 21 to 30: bound minimum level 5 (difficulty 50)
- ...
- crafting level 311 to 320: bound minimum level 34 (difficulty 340)
- crafting level 321 to 330: unbound minimum level 30 (difficulty 350)
- ...
- crafting level 361 to 370: unbound minimum level 34 (difficulty 390)
The crafting machine doesn't seem to reliably update success chances and experience gains, so just keep the crafting tab of your character sheet open and switch to the new shard at level 11, 21, 31, ...
You can switch to unbound shards at crafting level 31 already, but those cost more than twice as much as the bound ones, so sticking to the bound ones as long as possible is cheaper unless somebody else pays for the unbound ones.
4. Four basic options
You can use the same kind of success booster all the time, thus spending one such booster per (failed or successful) attempt to craft a shard. Under the influence of a +100% crafting experience elixir, you'll need the following numbers of essences and success boosters to get from level 261 to 371:
- not using success boosters at all: 468.45 attempts, 231,050.84 essences
- always using +10% success boosters: 187.82 attempts (and boosters), spending 87,317.02 essences
- with +25% success boosters: 116.53 attempts (and boosters), spending 54,573.54 essences
- with +35% success boosters: 94.89 attempts (and boosters), spending 45,256.99 essences
As you can see, even the essentially free +10% boosters reduce the number of attempts and essences needed by 60% - that's more than 140,000 essences saved!
5. Four advanced options
Instead of always using the same boosters, you can also use your better boosters on crafting shards with a success chance of only 3% (typically the first shard of each kind), and use cheaper boosters (or none at all) in all other situations:
- option A: using +35% success boosters on 3% shards, +10% otherwise
- option B: using +25% success boosters on 3% shards, +10% otherwise
- option C: using +35% success boosters on 3% shards, none otherwise
- option D: using +25% success boosters on 3% shards, none otherwise
Once again under the influence of a +100% crafting experience elixir, you'll need the following numbers of success boosters and essences to get from level 260 to 371:
- option A: 28.70 +35% boosters, 105.32 +10% boosters, 58,521.92 essences
- option B: 38.82 +25% boosters, 105.32 +10% boosters, 63,942.17 essences
- option C: 28.70 +35% boosters, 138.45 attempts without, 69,798.23 essences
- option D: 38.82 +25% boosters, 138.45 attempts without, 75,218.49 essences
So compared to always using +10% boosters, option A saves 29,000 essences at the cost of 28.70 +35% success boosters. Compared to always using +35% boosters, option A saves 66.19 +35% boosters at the cost of 13,000 essences.
6. Combining different options
The advanced options make use of the fact that success boosters save more essences the lower the success chance to craft a shard is, but they also save more essences the higher the crafted shard's cost is.
For example (and once again assuming +100% crafting experience), switching from using only +10% boosters to option A saves 11,250 essences at the cost of 28.70 +35% success boosters when leveling from level 1 to level 261, but 28,800 essences at the same cost when leveling from level 261 to 371.
So in order to make the most of your resources in terms of TPs, success bosters and essences, you can also combine different options, maybe using only +10% boosters for levels 1 to 151, option A for levels 151 to 261, and only +35% boosters for levels 261 to 371.
7. Higher level crafting options
At level 371 you run out of new minimum level shards to switch to, but get access to expensive difficulty 400 shards that require collectables and dragonshards. You can continue crafting unbound minimum level 34 shards for a while, but if you use any kind of success boosters it is probably better to craft a difficulty 400 shard immediately at level 371 for the huge experience gain.
After that, you can just continue crafting difficulty 400 or difficulty 425 shards until you reach crafting level 400. Or you take a "shortcut" and gain additional levels to get you to crafting level 396 at some point, for example 20 artificer levels and the least and lesser dragonmark of making at level 380 - and be able to craft a difficulty 425 shard thanks to the 16 bonus levels.
Whether you actually want to reach level 400 is another question. Bonus levels from being an artificer or the dragonmark of making will not raise your crafting levels beyond 400, so without boosters the chance to craft a difficulty 425 is at most 16.66%. This means that crafting any difficulty 425 shards will cost either 5.16 times the materials, or 1.78 times the materials and 1.94 +35% success boosters, (at least until repeatedly crafting the same shard makes that shard easier to craft - and until any form of reincarnation resets the shard counters).
8. Costs and gains of crafting a single shard
The average cost of a shard can be computed from its success chance and its cost:
- FailureChance = 1-SuccessChance
- Attempts = 1/SuccessChance
- SuccessCost = ShardCost
- FailureCost = FailureChance * ShardCost
- TotalCost = 1 * SuccessCost + (Attempts-1) * FailureCost
For example, crafting a bound minimum level 30 shard (with cost 300) and a successchance of 33.33% yields the following numbers:
- ShardCost = 300
- SuccessChance = 0.3333...
- FailureChance = 0.6666...
- Attempts = 1/SuccessChance = 3
- SuccessCost = ShardCost = 300
- FailureCost = FailureChance * ShardCost = 200
- TotalCost = 1 * 300 + (3-1) * 200 = 700
All the shards considered here are crafted with a success chance of less than 100%, and for these the experience gain for successfully crafting one such shard depends on the success chance and the shard's difficulty. Please note, though, that repeatedly crafting the same shard reduces the shard's difficulty by 1 for every two times the specific shard is crafted (and these numbers are reset on any kind of reincarnation).
- ExperienceGain = ShardDifficulty/SuccessChance
So if the shard in the above example is crafted for the first time, then the experience gain is as follows:
- ShardDifficulty = 300
- SuccessChance = 0.3333...
- ExperienceGain = ShardDifficulty/SuccessChance = 900
If it was the tenth time that specific shard was crafted by the crafter, though, then the numbers change slightly:
- ShardDifficulty = 295
- SuccessChance = 0.3333...
- ExperienceGain = ShardDifficulty/SuccessChance = 885
(Numbers need to be rounded where necessary.)
9. Leveling cost totals
(In order to propertly view these tables you may have to copy them into a text editor and disable automatic line breaks.)
With +100% crafting experience elixir:
With +75% crafting experience elixir:
Code:+--------------+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+ | | Attempts/Boosters | Crafting Essences | | Level ranges +--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | | Base | +10% | +25% | +35% | Base | +10% | +25% | +35% | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 1 -> 152 | 137,81 | 62,89 | 37,20 | 29,52 | 14340,30 | 6992,54 | 4272,61 | 3458,60 | | 152 -> 261 | 461,28 | 192,29 | 120,66 | 98,56 | 98701,57 | 40264,18 | 25978,28 | 21773,33 | | 261 -> 371 | 468,45 | 187,82 | 116,53 | 94,89 |231050,84 | 87317,02 | 54573,54 | 45256,99 | | | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 |1067,54 | 443,01 | 274,40 | 222,97 |344092,72 |134573,74 | 84824,43 | 70488,92 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 463,41 | 194,13 | 122,14 | 99,86 | 98927,82 | 40594,71 | 26275,06 | 22048,01 | | 261 -> 371 | 468,71 | 187,93 | 116,57 | 94,91 |231020,09 | 87283,97 | 54550,27 | 45239,51 | | | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 | 932,12 | 382,07 | 238,71 | 194,77 |329947,91 |127878,68 | 80825,33 | 67287,53 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 469,77 | 188,57 | 116,94 | 95,18 |231416,91 | 87529,56 | 54687,34 | 45336,81 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ +--------------+----------------------------+----------------------------+ | | Option A | Option B | | Level ranges +--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | | +35% | +10% | Essences | +25% | +10% | Essences | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 1 -> 152 | 2,61 | 55,39 | 6850,69 | 3,53 | 55,39 | 6877,39 | | 152 -> 261 | 26,09 | 117,29 | 29152,77 | 35,29 | 117,29 | 31244,33 | | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 105,32 | 58521,92 | 38,82 | 105,32 | 63942,17 | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 | 57,39 | 278,01 | 94525,37 | 77,65 | 278,01 |102063,89 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 26,09 | 119,13 | 29530,58 | 35,29 | 119,13 | 31613,24 | | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 105,43 | 58488,86 | 38,82 | 105,43 | 63909,12 | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 | 54,78 | 224,57 | 88019,44 | 74,12 | 224,57 | 95522,36 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 106,07 | 58734,45 | 38,82 | 106,07 | 64154,71 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ +--------------+----------------------------+----------------------------+ | | Option C | Option D | | Level ranges +--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | | +35% | Base | Essences | +25% | Base | Essences | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 1 -> 152 | 2,61 | 107,81 | 13545,96 | 3,53 | 107,81 | 13572,66 | | 152 -> 261 | 26,09 | 161,28 | 36477,66 | 35,29 | 161,28 | 38569,22 | | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 138,45 | 69798,23 | 38,82 | 138,45 | 75218,49 | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 | 57,39 | 407,54 |119821,85 | 77,65 | 407,54 |127360,37 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 26,09 | 163,41 | 36968,69 | 35,29 | 163,41 | 39051,35 | | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 138,71 | 69767,48 | 38,82 | 138,71 | 75187,74 | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 | 54,78 | 302,12 |106736,17 | 74,12 | 302,12 |114239,09 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 28,70 | 139,77 | 70164,30 | 38,82 | 139,77 | 75584,56 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+
Code:+--------------+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+ | | Attempts/Boosters | Crafting Essences | | Level ranges +--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | | Base | +10% | +25% | +35% | Base | +10% | +25% | +35% | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 1 -> 151 | 153.51 | 64.96 | 37.90 | 29.97 | 16385.21 | 7192.85 | 4333.96 | 3496.83 | | 151 -> 261 | 527.49 | 232.14 | 149.26 | 122.86 |111592.25 | 48470.68 | 32234.79 | 27300.41 | | 261 -> 371 | 535.36 | 238.23 | 153.65 | 126.53 |258679.48 |109030.55 | 71573.24 | 60329.19 | | | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 |1216.37 | 535.33 | 340.82 | 279.36 |386656.93 |164694.08 |108141.99 | 91126.43 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 530.47 | 234.40 | 150.93 | 124.29 |112144.17 | 48912.47 | 32586.68 | 27615.04 | | 261 -> 371 | 533.74 | 236.67 | 152.34 | 125.36 |258502.86 |108768.63 | 71290.17 | 60048.42 | | | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 |1064.21 | 471.07 | 303.27 | 249.65 |370647.03 |157681.10 |103876.85 | 87663.46 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 535.91 | 238.56 | 153.84 | 126.67 |258961.96 |109205.17 | 71670.58 | 60398.29 | +--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ +--------------+----------------------------+----------------------------+ | | Option A | Option B | | Level ranges +--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | | +35% | +10% | Essences | +25% | +10% | Essences | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 1 -> 151 | 5.22 | 49.96 | 6294.48 | 7.06 | 49.96 | 6463.58 | | 151 -> 261 | 28.70 | 149.64 | 36508.18 | 38.82 | 149.64 | 38759.95 | | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 155.73 | 80235.44 | 38.82 | 155.73 | 85655.69 | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 | 62.61 | 355.33 |123038.10 | 84.71 | 355.33 |130879.22 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 28.70 | 151.90 | 36949.97 | 38.82 | 151.90 | 39201.73 | | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 154.17 | 79973.52 | 38.82 | 154.17 | 85393.78 | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 | 57.39 | 306.07 |116923.49 | 77.65 | 306.07 |124595.51 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 156.06 | 80410.06 | 38.82 | 156.06 | 85830.32 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ +--------------+----------------------------+----------------------------+ | | Option C | Option D | | Level ranges +--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | | +35% | Base | Essences | +25% | Base | Essences | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 1 -> 151 | 5.22 | 93.51 | 11354.34 | 7.06 | 93.51 | 11523.44 | | 151 -> 261 | 28.70 | 197.49 | 44602.25 | 38.82 | 197.49 | 46854.01 | | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 205.36 | 97426.87 | 38.82 | 205.36 |102847.13 | | | | | | | | | | 1 -> 371 | 62.61 | 496.37 |153383.46 | 84.71 | 496.37 |161224.58 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 151 -> 261 | 28.70 | 200.47 | 45154.17 | 38.82 | 200.47 | 47405.94 | | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 203.74 | 97250.25 | 38.82 | 203.74 |102670.50 | | | | | | | | | | 151 -> 371 | 57.39 | 404.21 |142404.42 | 77.65 | 404.21 |150076.44 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+ | 261 -> 371 | 28.70 | 205.91 | 97709.35 | 38.82 | 205.91 |103129.61 | +--------------+--------+--------+----------+--------+--------+----------+
Appendices
A. Leveling without or with less than +75% experience elixirs
This is a bad idea. One +75% crafting experience elixir is available for free from the crafting introduction quests, and even the +100% ones cost only 40 TP each in the DDO store. Considering that they massively reduce the number of essences needed to reach any target level, this is an incredible bargain.
B. Leveling without success boosters
This is a bad idea, too. Even including the need to advance to character level 18 or 20, it will cost more time and effort in the long run to get the additional essences than it'd cost to get 50 Cannith favour and buy +10% success boosters in game.
If you insist on not using any success boosters, but are willing to use +75% or +100% crafting experience elixirs, however, then it is better for you to switch to the next shard only when the new shard has a success chance of at least 20%:
- crafting level 1 to 5: bound minimum level 2 (difficulty 20)
- crafting level 6 to 15: bound minimum level 3 (difficulty 30)
- crafting level 16 to 25: bound minimum level 4 (difficulty 40)
- ...
If you use neither success boosters nor crafting experience elixirs, then you must use the general strategy and switch at levels 11, 21, 31 etc.