I would like to see a method to unbind items, even if it cost full creation energy and reset the item to level 1. For me it would lessen the cost and pain of trying out new weapons.
★☆☆☆☆: 10 energy
★★☆☆☆: 450 energy
★★★☆☆: 100 energy
★★★★☆: 200 energy
★★★★★: 300 energy
What I hate is when I think I could make equipment for my friends because they don't have the next level recipe, I suddenly remember that the stuff they have is bound to them, thus forcing them to find/buy the recipe.
The cost of recipes is quite high. High enough, that if you have the recipes already, it is much cheaper to make a new, unbound, item as it is to buy the recipe for the next level up. That is, depending on the cr to CE exchange rate and material costs, crafting a new 3* item will cost around 8k cr to 12k cr, while the recipe for the 4* item is 15k cr. Vendors will then pay 3500cr for *bound* 3* item that would be duplicated, thus making the cost of crafting a new item about half the cost of forcing someone else to buy a new recipe.
Of course, if they have a nice UV, then things change a lot, but if they don't, well, crafting a new one also gives them another chance at a good UV. Obviously, 4* and 5* items require leveling too, which may change the situation too.
This pattern holds for 2* through 5*, I think it may not quite work on 0* and 1*, but those are so cheap that throwing them away is no big deal anyway.
My end goal of having this would be creating a secondary market for 4* and 5* items, but there is a charm in having the economy cycle these things out.
There's already a hole in the binding system, but using it is convoluted. I only play with one other person, and we work together for equipment. In order to conserve resources, we only buy one copy of the four-star recipes we want for T3 access. We can both jump straight from two-star to four-star, by upgrading to three-star then handing off the gear to whoever has the recipe for the final upgrade. So, you can unbind gear and use others' recipes, but only by going up more than one grade at a time.
As-is, pooling recipes becomes an exercise in thinking ahead and logic that I don't think was intentional. I would say either allow direct unbinding for a fee or change the upgrade system so bound gear stays bound. This middle ground is odd.
What about unbinding them at heat levels 5 and 10. When an item levels up to its unbound level, you'll be prompted about reequipping it. That said, reequipping a level 10 item would permanently bind it to you.
There's a fix that doesn't intersect with UV grinding or shipping gear to new players: Let crafters do their thing in a trade window. Either party can contribute mats, crafting cost in crowns and energy could come from either (in crystal, probably still only the guy with the recipe can use mist), plus any surcharge the crafter wants. The customer puts say his bound Level 5+ Tempered Calibur in the window and gets a bound Ascended Calibur back out. Done and done.
This would be nice for normal non-bound craft work as well, makes it simple and impossible to scam, both sides see the crowns, mats etc and have to click confirm. The UI would be dead simple, 3 Rings just jams the trade and crafting windows together.
I think this would be excelent middle ground, except I think they want us to have to each buy the recipes... and it doesn't solve for "wow this weapon is not for me" type buyers remorse. I think a place where you can try out weapons before binding them would be similarly effective.
If you have a weapon that you want to un-bind, you can select an option which turns the item into a Recipe for a certain Energy Cost. That way, you can give away/get rid of the item to someone & leave the material hunting to them.
(Sorry if this sounded stupid. I'm kinda new here.)
PLEASE HAVE AN OPTION TO UNBIND ITEMS. PLEASE!
As of today's update, the leapfrogging workaround that AscendantOat describes won't work anymore. Using a recipe to upgrade a bound item... results in an upgraded bound item.
I'd suggest this means we REALLY need an unbinding option, but I suspect the GMs are actually doing this on purpose so that everyone's got to have their own 4* and 5* recipes. On the other hand, at least they're lowering the recipe cost - not sure by how much though.
Negative. That ruins the point of binding in the first place.