Best Way to Refine Level 3 and 4 Weapons?

[azurerogue]

Menace, if you can decide on how much you value (in zeny terms) the weapon you're refining and 1 enriched oridecon there's an easy formula to work out which option you should go with:

Take the lowest of...

(1-WS Success %) * (Value of Weapon)

vs

(1-Enriched Success %) * (Value of Weapon) + (Value of Enriched Ori)

So if you're refining a weapon that you feel is worth 5m zeny, but you value E.Ori at 10m zeny it will almost never be worth it to use E.Ori (since the the loss of the weapon will never outstrip the "cost" of using the E.Ori).

If instead you find yourself with plenty of E.Ori (or just don't think it's worth much) but have a weapon you value at 15m (and say E.Ori is worth 2m to you) then you'll want to use that right away.

Effectively it comes down to how much the weapon is worth to you (and E.Ori, though that's not going to vary as wildly) to determine when you should use the E.Ori. Think of it this way, though, that E.Ori does nothing for you sitting in storage. :D

EDIT: A simpler (and more intuitive) way to think about it is this... for a given level of refine take the difference in success between WS (or regular NPC if you do not have a WS) and Enriched and multiply that by the value of your weapon. If the resulting number is bigger than the value you place on E.Ori then use the Ori, otherwise do not use it.

Example. +4-+5 for WS is 70%, for E.Ori is 84%. Difference is 0.16, multiply 0.16 * value of weapon and then compare to value of E.Ori. Take whichever is lower.