Upgrading gear as F2P
This is an example of how to plan a gear upgrade as a F2P player. This will use the Bracelet as an example, as it is a high priority upgrade
So, you want to get into BT raid, but upgrading your character seems like it will take forever. This document will hopefully show you that upgrading an accessory really is not as time consuming as it seems.
We will start with a few assumptions:
- You got your Bracelet through Draken Cores, so you can do Dungeons at least up to Naryu Sanctum
- You have at least a Baleful 9 weapon, and Hollows Accessories, with Story gear everywhere else
- You are not afraid to make your own dungeon Queues (you have low AP, so faster to form a party this way in F8), or you can run with your clan.
Cost to Upgrade a Bracelet
Using the CRTL + I menu, we can see that the total cost to upgrade a bracelet is the following:
- 3 STone of Wisdom
- 390 SoulStone Crystals + 1,650 for Jewels
- 180 Moonstones
- 330 Sacred Crystals + 770 for Jewels
- 75 Elysian Crystals
- 110 (avg.) Legendary Jewels
- 300 gold + 1,110 gold for Jewels
This seems like a lot, so lets devise a plan to get you there in the quickest amount of time
Daily Challenges and Purple Train (Time to complete 1 – 1.5 hours a day)
This is the bare minimum of what you should be doing each day. These include the following dungeons, which you should be able to do easily at your gear level
- Avalanche Den
- Lair of the Frozen Fang
- Sogun’s Lament
- Shattered Masts
- Cold Storage
- Ebondrake Citadel
- Desolate Tomb
- Naryu Foundry
- Naryu Sanctum
Doing these dungeons and their daily quests each day will net you (as a non-premium player) roughly 30 gold from quest rewards, and at least a Treasure Pouch (or better) per dungeon, for 9 pouches total. You will also get gold from people bidding on drops. In my experience, this will be roughly another 10 gold per day.. So:
Results: 40 Gold, 9 pouches/chests, 27 Sacred Crystals
MIsty Woods and Soulstone Plains Dailies (Time to Complete; @ 1 Hour)
These dailies reward you with primarily Soulstones and Soulstone Crystals (I’m assuming you will be selling the soulstones), as well as some gold.
Accept all the red quests and complete them (you are too low geared to farm soulstone pouches with prestige). Do not do the following quests: Crimson Rage (Misty Woods), Restoring Order to the Quarry (SSP, requires opposite faction to win).
These quests will net you 24 Soulstones and 26 Soulstone Crystals a day, plus 2 gold
Results: 26 Soulstones Crystals, 2 Gold + 2 gold from Soulstone selling
Weekly Challenge (Time to complete: 45 minutes)
You should be able to get these done throughout the week. Quest rewards include a chest which generally gives you a bundle of materials (Typically 10 soulstone crystals) for each raid. You will also earn another 35 gold a week.
Results: 35 Gold, 30 soulstone crystals (can be other mats)
What else to do
So, in 1 week, you can farm 343 gold from doing about 2 hours worth of quests (this is over 400 if you have premium), so it will take you roughly 4 weeks to farm enough raw gold to upgrade your bracelet. This also earns you the following materials: 728 Soulstone crystals and 756 Sacred Crystals
This leaves you needing the following materials:
- 1312 Soulstone Crystals
- 344 Sacred Crystals
- 180 Moonstone Crystals
- 75 Elysian Crystals
However, you have also farmed 252 Treasure Pouches/Lucent Chests. On overage, this will give you the following additional materials (on average): 267 Soulstone Crystals, 267 Sacred Crystals, 90 Moonstones, 90 Elysian Crystals. Meaning you still need the following:
- 1045 Soulstone Crystals
- 77 Sacred Crystals
- 90 Moonstones
- 0 Elysian Crystals
You can farm these any way you like (a single chest/pouch drops every dungeon run, but here are my recommended methods:
Yeti/Naksun Method
You should be able to get 30 Moonstone crystals an hour farming Naksun, plus incidental Sacred orbs and elysian orbs you can sell to buy Soulstones. Use the 13th floor tickets, and you can do 20 runs an hour at your gear level. So, farm Naksun for 2 – 3 hours, then switch to Avalanche Den
Den will average out to 8-9 Soulstone Crystals and 1 Sacred Crystal per run, as the 10 soulstone bundle procs frequently. In addition, you get a treasure pouch every run. So figure you will need roughly 100 Yeti runs to get enough materials. However, this is only about 3 runs a day if you spread it out, so maybe another 30 minutes of farming a day over the 4 week period.
Conclusion
So, with a fairly decent 3 hour a day investment of time, you can have your Bracelet to max level in less than a month. Of course, this can be less with lucky RNG from Daily/Weekly challenge rewards, so this is an absolute worse case scenario. It may seem like a long time, but for an item that you are not going to replace for a very long time, this is totally reasonable. You just need to be realistic in your expectations.
If you follow the same kind of logic, and make a plan, for any item you want to upgrade, it makes it seem much easier to do, and gives you a concrete goal to work towards. BnS is a game of grinding, but you can make the grind reasonable with some proper planning.
