"Succeeded?"
Although he had more than ten sets of materials on hand, the Azure Radiance was ultimately a top-tier Dark Gold set. Its crafting difficulty was second only to Epic-grade equipment, and he was merely an Intermediate Master Blacksmith. Even with the Sage's Hands granting him the success rate of an Advanced Master Blacksmith, actually pulling off a successful craft was still incredibly difficult.
Because a success rate was just a success rate — the actual crafting process was an entirely different matter.
In the early stages of the Divine Realm, to make crafting easier for players, the Main God System had proactively simplified every step to its absolute minimum. However, as players' levels continued to rise and they gradually grew accustomed to the process, the Main God System would subtly begin stripping away those simplifications, making the crafting steps increasingly complex and increasingly precise.
Crafting a Dark Gold set had become a massive watershed moment.
Sets were fundamentally different from individual pieces. A standalone piece's energy flow was self-contained, but a set was not only self-contained — it was also part of a greater whole. With each additional piece, the energy flow grew more complete, until once the full set was assembled, all the individual pieces' energy flows merged into an entirely new whole. This made crafting them extraordinarily difficult.
In the ancient era of the Divine Realm, weapons and equipment were actually divided into just two broad categories.
One was ordinary.
The other was extraordinary.
But as the ancient gods fell, weapons and equipment were further subdivided. Ordinary-grade equipment was split into Bronze, Dark Iron, Mithril, Adamantine, and Dark Gold, while Epic-grade and Legendary-grade fell into the extraordinary domain.
Dark Gold weapons and equipment could be considered the absolute ceiling of ordinary gear, which was why both their acquisition and crafting difficulties were so punishing.
An ordinary skilled player without a powerful organization backing them would find Dark Gold equipment to be their personal limit.
And Dark Gold sets were the limit of that limit — an existence without a single flaw. No matter how much you boosted the success rate, even the tiniest crafting error meant instant failure. They had a zero-tolerance margin, and in truth, they were harder to craft than even Epic-grade equipment. Epic gear at least had some margin for error; its success rate was merely low.
As
System: Congratulations! You have successfully crafted the Azure Radiance set. You have gained 10,000,000 experience points. Blacksmithing proficiency +200.
"An eight-piece Dark Gold set really lives up to its name — 200 proficiency points."
At his level as an Intermediate Master Blacksmith, even crafting ordinary Dark Gold equipment granted very little proficiency. Getting three points was considered good, so advancing from Intermediate to Advanced Master Blacksmith required a very long time.
But crafting the Azure Radiance had granted 200 points in a single go — equivalent to successfully crafting nearly seventy individual Dark Gold pieces. The reward was nothing short of lavish.
However, compared to the system's reward, it was actually the Azure Radiance's attributes that truly made
The Azure Radiance was already a top-tier Dark Gold set, but thanks to the addition of Time Sand, all eight pieces had gained a 10% boost to their base attributes. In terms of pure base stats, ordinary Epic-grade equipment only had 20% to 30% more than Dark Gold equipment. Slashing that gap by a full 10% meant this set was absolutely the pinnacle of gear beneath the extraordinary tier.
If not for the fact that the Epic-grade pieces he was currently wearing had excellent effects, he would have wanted to switch to the Azure Radiance right then and there.
After crafting one full set of the Azure Radiance,
Time flew by, and before he knew it, a full day had passed. The day of the Auction House battle had finally arrived.
All of