Black Desert/Enhancement
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Enhancement
the gamble at the center of progression
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| Levels | Twenty, on weapons and armor |
|---|---|
| Named grades | PRI, DUO, TRI, TET and PEN, above +15 |
| Accessories | Five levels, and destroyed on failure |
| Material | Black stones, and concentrated ones above +15 |
| Failure builds | A failstack, improving the next attempt |
| Protection | Cron stones, consumed whatever happens |
Enhancement is how equipment is made stronger in Black Desert, and it is the system the game is most often argued about.
It works by gambling: an attempt either succeeds and raises the item a grade, or fails and costs the materials, and no amount of preparation makes success certain. The reward for accepting that is a ceiling far above what a player could reach through predictable means.
The material is the setting's own history. Gear is strengthened with black stones, the same stones Calpheon and Valencia fought a thirty-year war over, which makes the desert's past a routine part of every player's progression.
1 The grades✎
Weapons and armor carry twenty levels of enhancement. The first fifteen are simply numbered, and the five above them are named instead: PRI, DUO, TRI, TET and PEN, in ascending order.
Accessories work differently, having only the five named grades, with no numbered range beneath them, so an accessory reaches its ceiling in far fewer steps than a weapon does.
Ordinary black stones carry gear through the numbered range. Above it a concentrated form is required, and the specialized weapon lines have material requirements of their own. An accessory is enhanced with a duplicate of itself, which is why upgrading one means owning two.
2 Failstacks✎
Failure is not wasted. Each failed attempt raises a counter that improves the odds of the next one, so a run of failures makes the following attempt likelier to succeed than the first.
That counter is spent when an attempt finally succeeds. Players therefore build stacks deliberately on items they do not mind failing, then bring the accumulated stack to the piece they actually care about. That turns enhancement into a game of managing risk rather than of pressing a button.
3 What failure costs✎
The consequences depend on what is being enhanced and how far it has come.
Weapons and armor lose maximum durability on a failure, and an item worn down far enough cannot be enhanced again until it is repaired with either a duplicate of the base item or memory fragments. Above the numbered range a failure can also knock the item back down a grade.
Accessories are harsher, since a failed attempt destroys the accessory outright rather than damaging it, so every attempt past the first risks losing the item entirely.
4 Cron stones✎
Cron stones are the insurance: they stop a high-level piece from dropping a grade on failure, and they prevent an accessory from being destroyed.
The cost is that they are consumed whichever way the attempt goes. A successful enhancement uses them up exactly as a failed one does, so protection is paid for every time rather than only when it is needed.
5 Reception✎
Enhancement is the most divisive feature the game has. It gives progression an open ceiling and a real thrill, and it is also the single thing most often blamed for driving players away.
Both positions describe the same mechanism, because a system where a long-held goal can be reached in one attempt is also a system where the attempt can destroy the thing being worked on.