A Brief Guide to Enhancement Converters

Additionally, there is a cost of 250,000 influence per converter, regardless of which method is used.

How They Work

Once you have a converter salvage in your salvage inventory, a "Convert" menu appears next to "Manage" on your enhancement tray bar. Clicking that reveals a place where you can drop an enhancement.

There are two radio buttons that can be selected:

In-set conversion (Cost: 3 Converters)

and

Out of Set Conversion

Additionally, when selecting Out of Set Conversion, there is a drop-down menu. The dropdown menu has two options, but some IOs will only have one choice:

Rarity (Cost: 1 converter)

Category (Cost: 2 converters)

Rarity converts in the same general rarity. Examples:

Rarity: Uncommon
Rarity: Rare
Rarity: Very Rare (purple)
Rarity: PvP IOs

Category converts in a broad category. Examples:

Category: Defense
Category: Ranged

Conversion only works on a crafted enhancement. Once you put a crafted enhancement into the "input" slot and click "convert", you get a new enhancement based on the type of conversion you selected; either a new one in the same set, a new one of the same rarity, or a new one of the same category.

Note: in testing, I discovered the dropdown box would "reset". Do NOT expect it to "stick" to your choice if you are doing a category conversion.

Note: You cannot receive back the enhancement you put in.

Note: For out-of-set conversion, you cannot receive the same set back. When doing a Category conversion, this can sometimes mean you have a guaranteed "other" set. For example, at L50, there are only 2 non-PvP Defense Sets: Luck of the Gambler, and Red Fortune. This means 2-converter Category conversions will always turn a LotG into a random Red Fortune, and vice versa.

As far as I know, the devs have not posted any confirmation that odds are equally weighted. However, I've done quite a bit of converting, on beta and now on live, and they do appear to be equally weighted.

Playing the Odds

When converters were on Beta, I wrote a simulator to get together some numbers on figuring out what the odds were, statistically, of how likely certain things were to happen. For me, my code is more likely to be error-free than my math, thus doing that rather than doing pure computation.

Converting Purples

Let us assume that there will be 4 "more popular" purple sets that will often be the "target" of conversion. The number of converters on average required to convert any non-damage purple to a damage purple is: ~2.25

If you attempt to target a specific purple set (1 of the 10), the number of converters on average required to "hit" a specific purple set is: ~9

Converting a PvP IO

Assuming you have a PvP IO and want to target a specific set. There are 8 PvP sets. You will not get an IO from the "source" set. The number of converters to hit your target set on average is: ~7

Inset Conversions on 6-IO sets

Let us assume you have an IO of a set, and want to target another IO in that set. The number of converters required to convert from one enhancement in a set to specific other of that same set is: ~15 (Note, this is about 5 conversions, using 3 converters each time.)

If you want a specific enhancement, then you can sum up the costs. Say you have a Gladiator's Strike, and want a Gladiator's Armor 3%/teleport proc. You will, on average, pay 7 converters to get to Gladiator's Armor. You have a 16.66% chance of landing on the proc. If you don't, you will pay 15 converters on average to hit it. On average, you will spend 19.5 total converters to target a specific PvP IO.

Likewise, to target a specific purple will cost ~21.5.

Relative Costs

Given there are four ways to purchase converters, and each costs the same influence (not counting influence paid to convert reward merits to H/VAMs if you do that), the question becomes: "What else could I buy?"

As such, you should probably figure out what the "equivalent value" is for your A-Merits, E-Merits, Reward Merits, and H/VAMs.

The math was already such that you could get 1 LotG Global for 200 Reward Merits, or pay 80M influence and get 2 LotGs after converting to 4 H/VAMs. Obviously if you profit more than 80M extra after market fees from selling a LotG, then you should convert.

Similar analysis must be done on converters. If a LotG is worth about 80M, then you can extrapolate the cost of a converter at about:

4M when purchased with reward merits
4M when purchased with H/VAMs
1.5M when purchased with A-merits
750k when purchased with E-merits

For the first 3, I presume buying a LotG and pocketing 80M after fees.

For the E-merits, I presume the alternative is buying a purple and pocketing 300M after fees. These are examples; figure out what you would buy otherwise, and use that to divide up your per-converter cost. Then, multiply your per-converter cost to determine what conversion runs.

For example, converting a random purple to a specific purple costs 24.5 converters, so it is costing you: 98M worth of value if bought with reward or alignment merits; or 18.375M of value when purchased with Emerits.

Results for the Market

My conclusion is that the value of two purples can no longer be more than about 140M apart. (This is a 10% market fee of 40M off the "high end" price, +98M to convert in the least-efficient way.)

In reality, since there is little of value to buy with Emerits once you have all account-wide rewards, and the pricing on Purple and PvP recipes via Emerits is outrageously high, I expect almost all E-merits will be used to buy converters from now on. As such, the intrinsic value of any purple will only be about 18.4M of difference from any other purple, unless demand for conversion is higher than the production of E-merits, forcing purchases by other means, in which case the difference may be as much as ~100M.

I think you misunderstand. He is not addressing any "issue". He is doing a nice favor by doing a thorough breakdown of possible valuation of the converters. I thought it was a great read.

Thanks, updated.

This is 100% why I posted the "What's your over/under" thread, because the fact that it didn't make the known issues smelled like, "Whatever, it's just converters". To me, converters are one of the two biggest changes to the game's economy since the CH was introduced. (The other being the market merge.)

I actually don't care as much as I did when I22 dropped. At I22, I had 4 characters that were straight stripped of purples/pvp ios that I couldn't PLAY until converters came out, because I had to convert my trash purples back to real ones to fill their slots again. Now, I have 30B in influence, my IOs back, and the lack of converters is actually letting me accumulate even more stuff because the prices are not converging like they will when the bug is fixed. So I'm actually profiting from the delay.

This thread is meant to be a guide, not a reminder. When the bugs are fixed I'll revise the verbage. I wrote it mostly to acquaint people with the math behind converters.

Thanks. It's definitely intended to be a useful primer. We've had other guides that let people understand things like the math behind random rolls vs buying recipes; or saving for high-end procs vs buying rolls or 2-merit recipes. Since I spent a while considering the converter scenarios and did write some code to actually get real numbers for conversion odds, I thought I'd share. Plus, there are some nasty things to avoid. I don't think people are doing a lot of "Category" conversions yet, but the dropdown resetting to "rarity" is going to be a "gotcha" for a lot of people.

Nope. PvP IOs and Purples do not participate in Category conversions, to or from. They can only do out of set at the rarity level, and in-set.

Yet you can convert from Rare to Uncommon and vice versa using the category setting.

Why? The devs only know, though it's safe to say that if you could convert a crushing impact to a Hecatomb, that might have a crushing impact on the purple market.

That makes sense, and I suppose it preserves the market somewhat... but damn, I was hoping to swap my Crushing Impacts...

Hmm, I'd wondered about this regarding the travel powers. Are Celerity and Quickfoot their own category (oh hai level 15 Quickfoot! u want become +Stealth??), or are the leaping and teleport sets grouped with them? What of BoTZ? Is there a way to loophole into a Winter's Gift? (probably not)

Leaping, Running, and Universal Travel are each different categories. Universal Travel contains winter's gift and Blessing of the Zephyr.

It sounds to me like you didn't pick "Category: " from the dropdown box. I had a L50 LotG and, on Beta, did >15 conversions, and it only ever flipped back and forth between LotG and Red Fortune. But I have to emphasize: every conversion causes the dropdown box to reset to "rarity" and you must reselect category.

Well that's what I'd have guessed, but for conversion purposes I wasn't sure given Ukaserex's post (and you're right, sounds like the conversion box may have been set incorrectly).

I wonder if anyone has even tried to convert a BotZ to another set. I don't believe it would be profitable, but I'm curious if it works.

On the test server, I tested these specifically. BotZ and Winter's Gift convert back and forth in the Category conversion. What I ended up doing was buying a pile of quickfoots and Zephyr speed recipes at low levels, specifically to target celerity stealth and WG: slow resist. But at the moment, it's not worth converting because the cost of such a recipe is smaller than the profit spread on a purple conversion, and a typical WG/Celerity type conversion is going to cost more converters. (Figure 2 to get from quickfoot to celerity; then you have a 2/3 chance of needing to spend 6 more on average to "hit" +stealth, so basically an average of 8 converters to get from quickfoot to celerity stealth to profit maybe 40-60m. Meanwhile, going from a junk purple to a damage purple is 2.25 and can still net you 100m.)

It's really important to note that if you don't change the dropdown each time from Rarity to Category, you'll end up changing it.

I think tinkered with a category conversion for L30:

As you can see, it sticks within the melee type. But again, the dropdown loves to reset to "Rarity:" so if you don't adjust it each time, you'll get a weird conversion. (That L30 IO started off as a Kismet: +6 Accuracy, and I converted it by rarity until I hit a melee IO.)

True. I haven't checked to see what the supply on junk purples might be - I would think they might dry up fairly quickly if enough folks knew to buy them up to convert (or if they simply stopped listing and converted them themselves).

I'd wondered if you had an efficient toon if you might be able to roll AE tickets to generate Quickfoots, Soaring, etc. faster than you could reliably have purples drop. Then again, if you have that efficient a 15 you probably have an efficient enough 50 that can just generate inf at a fast enough clip anyway and wouldn't need to bother.

*shrug*

I don't generate anything really, except by accident, but I've been buying up purples for ~150m, selling them for ~275-300, and thus making ~45m per converter. (Or 4.5m/merit, as it were. Although I've picked up a few converters actually playing.)

Of course, looking forward to, say, emerits. Making 90m per emerit seems pretty good, or 180m per alignment merit.

I wouldn't expect too much once the rest of the merit currencies come in to play. The spread on purples is going to narrow quite a bit more than it already has. On the first day, I saw the spread from Hypnosis to Apocalypse get down to about 50M. It's recovering right now because the converters are *only* on Reward Merits, which is the least stockpiled currency, and too many people have already "blown their wad" as it were. Once they're available from all four currencies, the spread is going to tighten right down again.

Thank you very much for the detailed reply, Plasma.

You might be suprised how many reward merits are out there.

As a casual vet player I had over 9,000 reward merits. Half of which came from a 32 Super Packs (24 + 8 singles). And while I didn't invest heavily in out of favor purples or PVP ios let just say I'll never have a character without a full ATO set, a 3% def, a numi, a miracle, 6% acc and as many 7.5% lotgs as I can cram into a build.

It kinda felt like cheating.

I did buy waaaaay too many arch type enhancements in anticipation (2-3 hundred at 1-2m each).


Oh I forgot, good guide. The odds and expected returns are nice to see.

No, I completely agree with you. I myself have probably 700+ converters worth of A-merits and E-merits. I have at least 30 characters with an alignment merit, a lot with 10+, and of course, I can easily create 30+ per week via SSAs.

I'll say this much: I am sitting on literally hundreds of Kinetic Combat: Chance for Knockdown recipes, Steadfast Protection: end/res, Blessing of the Zephyr travel speed. All because I eventually expected them to be worthwhile. (I never did get a good choice to convert to LotGs, so I just used my ill-gotten gains to buy 50 off the market and bin them, half at 25, half at 50.)

Yes, yes it did.

Edit, oh and thanks!