Reinforcing raises an item's grade from +0 to +10, which is the hard ceiling. It is the only gear system in the game that can take the item away from you.
Every attempt has four outcomes
Not two. The table gives each grade a split across:
- Success - the grade goes up
- No change - the stone is consumed and nothing happens
- Destroyed - the item is gone
- Grade drops - the item survives at a lower grade than it had
Success chance by target grade:
| Target | Success |
|---|---|
| +1 | 100% |
| +2 | 90% |
| +3 | 75% |
| +4 | 60% |
| +5 | 50% |
| +6 | 35% |
| +7 | 20% |
| +8 | 15% |
| +9 | 10% |
| +10 | 6% |
From +4 the grade-drop outcome starts taking over, and from +6 the item can be destroyed outright. At the +10 attempt the split is roughly 6% success, 16% nothing, 18% destroyed and 60% grade drop.
What a grade really costs
Because a failure can send you backwards - and a destruction sends you back to a fresh item at +0 - the success percentage badly understates the cost. Counting the whole chain, the expected number of attempts to reach a grade from scratch is:
| Grade | Attempts | Items consumed |
|---|---|---|
| +5 | about 8 | 1 |
| +7 | about 47 | a few |
| +8 | about 194 | a handful |
| +9 | about 1,300 | dozens |
| +10 | about 16,000 | about 700 |
Reading the success column alone understates +10 by a factor of roughly a thousand. Plan for the chain, not for the row.
Materials and safety nets
- Enhance stones are bought from NPCs, in weapon and armour versions, priced by tier.
- Upgrade Success Crystals add +5 points to the odds of an attempt. ⚠️ They did nothing at all until 30 August: the table reader wanted six columns and every shipped row gave five, so the bonus was never parsed and sixteen items bought no chance whatsoever. It is real now. A non-cash version also drops from every ore seam at 5%, so mining supplies them.
- Upgrade Protection Crystals (also sold as manastones) guard against the bad outcomes.
Both crystal types are genuinely optional - an attempt without one is accepted normally.
Level bands
Reinforcing works on gear up to level 80. Items above that cannot currently be refined at all - the attempt is refused rather than being merely expensive.
Where to go next
- Enchanting - the system that cannot break your gear
- Professions - the smith trades that live around this
Reviewed 2026-08-31