Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-17710517-20130908011202/@comment-76.248.30.211-20130910174823

Snakeskin and other craftable armors are only worth 24 EP, but non-craftable armors = 50 EP. By comparison, Basic armors = 6 EP and Uncommon = 10; while Legendary are worth 90 EP and Fusion Boost armors are worth 180 EP. When enhancing, you only need one element to mach to get full EP; otherwise, you lose ~20% EP for non-matching armors. Plus versions have no bearing on EP; while each level above 1 = 1 EP for enhancing armors. For combining, your resulting armor will have a level that is the average btwn the levels of the two source armors.

Non-craftable armors are usually 2* or 3*, but you can also combine some basic armors to get a few predictable non-craftable results. Non-craftable armors include Firestorm Finery, Wind Monarc, Volcanic Mantle, and Wavecharmer (combos = fire/air, spirit/air, fire/earth, and spirit/water); you will get those results everytime. That's a guaranteed 50 EP for ~$25k; in contrast, think of how much $$ you have to contribute to your Guild or gems you need to spend to get Fusion Boost armors. Quite frankly, I don't see another legitimate use of fusion stones as combining armors is generally a complete crapshoot based mostly on luck; you can tilt the odds in your favor by using similar rarity armors, but it still boils down to luck. For example, I got a 2* result when I combined two 4* armors : (

The above formula is good for lower-level players; however, once you establish a steady income and a cache of fusion stones, you will level faster by using armors w/ higher EP. In the long run this is cheaper than using the above formula, especially for higher rarity armors.