So where was I? Oh yes, the title was not about crystalline items, but about the unbreakable buff. Unbreakable is a skill under the Defensive tree. It is available to players level 200 or higher. Here's the official description :
+0.5% per point chance per point of equipment not taking durability loss during combat.
First off, the equipment do not automatically take a durability loss. I estimate that one in 20 rounds of attack that a specific item take a hit without the buff. Now, a level 100 buff will reduce that to 1 in 40 rounds, a level 150 buff will reduce that to 1 in 80, and a leel 175 will reduce that to 1 in 160 !! The benefits are increasing almost exponentially. During Valentine's Day, a level 200 'potion' disguised as chocolate were given out, and that garantees no damage to any items.
Note also that the damage depends on the rounds of attack and are not multiplied by the doubler. So you will want to use a high level doubler when using the crystalline items. The cost of using a 3x doubler vs a 10x/11x doubler will be more than 3 times !! Using a 3x or 4x doubler, you might be better off double hitting with wither, and use the cost saved from using non-crystalline items to buy stamina.
So here are some numbers to ponder upon. A 4000 stamina burn with those 3 items above and a 11x doubler has 363 rounds of attack. That means without the unbreakable buff, you will lose about 18 durability on each of the item. That's 2700k in cost, 27 fsps !! A level 100 buff will reduce that to 9 durability loss/14 fsps, and you can get the potion from Auction House at 25k that gives a level 100 Unbreakable buff to save you 13/14 fsps. A level 150 buff will reduce that to 4.5 durability loss/7 fsps. A level 175 buff will reduce that to a little more than 2 durability loss/3.5 fsps. It should be clear that looking for a higher level unbreakable buff will almost pay for itself.
| Buff level | Chance | Durability Cost | Normalized Cost |
| 0 | 0.00% | 2700000 | 100000 |
| 100 | 50.00% | 1350000 | 50000 |
| 150 | 75.00% | 675000 | 25000 |
| 155 | 77.50% | 607500 | 22500 |
| 160 | 80.00% | 540000 | 20000 |
| 165 | 82.50% | 472500 | 17500 |
| 170 | 85.00% | 405000 | 15000 |
| 175 | 87.50% | 337500 | 12500 |
Above table illustrates the value for each level. You should be willing to pay 70k more for a level 175 buff vs a 170, or 140k morefor a level 175 buff vs 165. Since the items you use may be difference, the table also include a normalized cost, so you can mutliply it for based on the value of your items, as well as the number of rounds of attacks you will have in your hunt.
Update : Potion of Indestructibility
With yesterday's (Dec-19 2009) update, players can now scavenge for items. One of the items is the "Potion of Indestructibility". It lives up to its name and provides a level 200 Unbreakable buff.
At level 200. It is garanteed that all items will not take any durability loss. Demand and supply has it that there are ample supply (since not all players use crystalline items), that the potion is probably going to be cheaper than buying a level 175 unbreakable buff. It'll definitely be worth while to use this potion instead of the buffs.
