Advanced Honing System Guide

Advanced Honing is a system that increases your character's item level and your power through raw stats. Just like traditional honing, it interacts with the same materials, but it has a different structure. It is not meant to be a significant power increase like Transcendence or Elixirs, instead providing an easier way to increase your item level.

It is important to note that this system has no interactions with traditional honing, which keeps the current levels you have and remains available regardless of Advanced Honing progress.

With the upcoming release of Tier 4, it's been mentioned that this system will still be in place, but it will use Tier 4 materials once the respective gear pieces are obtained. For more information on Season 3 and Tier 4, check out our Tier 4 KR Dev Letter article!

This guide assumes you are already familiar with the basics of traditional honing. If you need to learn about that first, check out our Gear Honing Guide.

Unlocking the System & Materials

These are the materials you will be using when interacting with this system:

• Agris's Scale
  • Used to temper gear, unlocking levels 1 - 10.
  • Acquired directly from the Echidna Kazeros Raid (Normal Mode).
• Alcaone's Eye
  • Used to temper gear, unlocking levels 11 - 20.
  • Acquired directly from the Echidna Kazeros Raid (Hard Mode).
• Honor Shard
• Radiant Honor Leapstone
• Refined Obliteration Stone
• Refined Protection Stone
• Prime Oreha Fusion Material
• Solar Grace
• Solar Blessing
• Solar Protection
• Gold
• Silver

As mentioned before, each gear piece must be tempered using Agris's Scale or Alcaone's Eye before you can hone that item. This process is similar to filling the Honor Shard requirement in traditional honing, with the main difference being that you only need to do it once per 10 honing levels.

• Armors require 12x Agris's Scale or Alcaone's Eye to temper.
• Weapons require 30x Agris's Scale or Alcaone's Eye to temper.
• Alcaone's Eye can be used as a substitute for Agris's Scale at a 1:2 ratio.

Honing Interface & Progression

Unlike traditional honing, this system has a fixed progress bar instead of a varying chance to succeed the enhancement. Once the bar reaches 100 points, the hone is successful. The aim of this change is to greatly reduce the variance between successfully honing within a few attempts and reaching pity. Each successful hone adds 1 item level to that piece, resulting in a maximum of 20 item levels gained from this system.

Each attempt has a chance to increase the progress for that level by 10, 20, or 40 points. This chance can be influenced by using a specific amount of Solar Grace, Solar Blessing, and Solar Protection.

Ancestor's Grace

Every six attempts, your next try will have an additional effect, picked at random. This is represented by the six Protection Orbs in the top right corner of the interface. There are four effects available:

• The progress gained this attempt is multiplied by 5.
• The progress gained this attempt is multiplied by 3.
• Gain an additional 30 progress and restore Ancestor's Grace.
• Gain an additional 10 progress and no materials will be consumed for the next attempt.
  • This only affects regular materials. Solar materials will be consumed as usual, and can be deselected during this free attempt.

Because of how powerful these enhanced effects are, it's recommended to use all available Solar materials on the attempts where they are applied.

Effects

The value for armor pieces is measured in STR/DEX/INT, while for weapons it is measured in Weapon Power. All armor pieces provide defensive stats as well, but only the offensive stats are measured. Here are the effects your character can receive from this system:

Costs & Efficiency

Besides the reduced variance for success, one of the main benefits of this system is the reduced cost, allowing you to reach item level 1630 more easily than traditional honing would. The following costs are just an approximated estimate, and do not include any Solar materials. Your real experience with the system will vary.

Level 1 - 10
Armors	x307,500 x167,700	x1,230 x671	x53,200 x27,955		x1,005 x839	x53,150
Weapon	x503,200 x280,000	x1,565 x895		x55,950 x33,545	x1,675 x1,398	x62,900
Total	x2,040,700 x1,118,000	x7,715 x4,250	x266,000 x139,775	x55,950 x33,545	x6,700 x5,593	x328,650
Level 11 - 20
Armors	x615,000 x335,500	x1,565 x895	x72,685 x50,320		x1,120 x895	x100,640
Weapon	x950,500 x559,000	x2,015 x1,230		x89,500 x61,500	x1,845 x1,510	x140,000
Total	x4,025,500 x2,237,000	x9,840 x5,705	x363,425 x251,600	x89,500 x61,500	x7,445 x5,985	x643,200
Total 1 - 20	x6,066,200 x3,355,000	x17,555 x9,955	x629,425 x391,375	x145,450 x95,100	x14,145 x11,580	x971,850

Important: Solar materials are very efficient in this system, and will greatly reduce the costs presented above if used well. The costs include both values in Tier 3 (top) and Tier 4 (bottom), but only materials from one tier may be used on the piece, depending on the tier of the item (i.e. you cannot mix T3 and T4 materials).

For a more detailed breakdown, check out our Honing Calculator (does not contain Tier 4 yet).

Unlock Order

This depends largely on your current goals for each specific character, and their current item level.

• If your aim is to increase your power, you should focus on the Weapon first, as it provides the most damage. This is recommended for characters above item level 1630.
• If your aim is to increase item level in order to access new content, you should take a more balanced approach, honing all gear equally. This is recommended for characters under item level 1630.

Echidna Raid Rewards

There is a first clear reward of 10x Agris's Scale.
A chest containing 5x Agris's Scale or 5x Alcaone's Eye is available on auction at the end of Gate 2.

Additionally, Agris's Scale and Alcaone's Eye can also be exchanged at the raid vendor for rewards.

Item		Cost	Requirement	Limit
	Desire Growth Material Chest	10x Agris's Scale
	Desire Growth Material Chest	5x Alcaone's Eye
	Echidna, Master of Desire (Jukebox Song)	15x Alcaone's Eye	Snake's Tears Achievement (1 clear)	1 per roster
	Mount: Wings of Longing	40x Alcaone's Eye	Snake's Tears Achievement (1 clear)	1 per roster
	Echidna Emoticon Pack	30x Alcaone's Eye	Snake's Tears Achievement (1 clear)	1 per roster
	Metallurgy: Welding Compound (Metallurgy: Welding Compound x1)	8x Alcaone's Eye		1 per week
	Metallurgy: Professional Welding (Metallurgy: Professional Welding x1)	4x Alcaone's Eye		1 per week
	Tailoring: Mending Compound (Tailoring: Mending Compound x1)	2x Alcaone's Eye		5 per week
	Tailoring: Professional Mending (Tailoring: Professional Mending x1)	1x Alcaone's Eye		5 per week
	Metallurgy: Professional Welding (Metallurgy: Professional Welding x1)	8x Agris's Scale		1 per week
	Tailoring: Professional Mending (Tailoring: Professional Mending x1)	2x Agris's Scale		5 per week

Summary

• Clear Kazeros Raid: Echidna to obtain Agris's Scale and Alcaone's Eye.
• Visit the Gear Honing NPC in any major city.
• Use Agris's Scale and Alcaone's Eye to temper your gear.
• Hone to obtain item levels and stats!

Credits

Written by Raeinor
Reviewed by Perciculum