Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-184.156.14.184-20140310180229/@comment-24243615-20140311061829

I think the best answer is either "occassionally" or "it depends"....

Here is one useful option:

Upgrade an uncommon armor with 4 basic armors. That will give you 20 to 24 EP which will raise the uncommon armor to level 6, making it a 15 EP armor. So 2 of those will have the same EP as 3 level 1 uncommon armors. Each of the basic armors cost 300 gold to craft plus 150 gold for the enchantment, so the total cost for the 4 will be 1800 gold. So for 3600 gold you save the cost of one enchantment plus the cost of one uncommon armor, so this pays, on a gold basis, when the cost of enchantment is more than 3100 gold. However, you have to balance that savings in gold with 8 crafting times for basic armor versus 1 uncommon (nominally 10 minutes, but only if you catch them immediately), plus you are using a lot more crafting materials.

Where I find this most useful is when I am upgrading armor that doesn't match snakeskin. Then I try to get the armor as close to the top of the level without going over, and then use four of these to go as far into the next level as I can, since this gives me 60 EP instead of the 40 that 4 level 1 uncommon armor would.