What are Caphras stones?
A Caphras stone is an item that allows players to both improve their gear above that of the regular tiers and also offer a safe way to enhance their gear. Caphras stones are also valuable with their central market price floating around 2 million silver for a single stone.
How Caphras Stones Works in BDO
When you get a Caphras stone you can install it into a piece of weapon or armor you have that has reached TRI or above enhancement level. Each Caphras stone integrated into a weapon or armor will give it a certain amount of experience.
When enough stones have been install to a piece of gear it will gain a level. Each piece of gear can have at most 20 Caphras levels. For each level, the item will get added bonuses and once the item reaches level 20 you can choose to upgrade it to the next enhancement level with a 100% chance of success. This will, however, reduce the durability of the item down to 0 and return the items Caphras level to 0 as well.
The amount of Caphras stones needed to increase from level 1 to 20 varies with the type and rarity of the item. The Caphras stone chart below shows the estimated amounts needed to move from level 1 to 20 as required to enhance from TRI to TET and the same to enhance from TET to PEN.
The benefits gained from each level can be seen in this Caphras stone chart. Also, it is worth noting that an item that has reached PEN enhancement can also benefit from Caphras stones in the same way, but the amount of stones needed for each level has not been disclosed.
How to get Caphras Stones
In BDO, Caphras stones are items that can be found as loot from monsters in the Drieghan, Valencia, and Kamasylvia regions and presumably higher-tiered regions to come.
They can be found when doing gathering actions such as logging, mining and underwater gathering.
Caphras stones can also be made by processing together 5 ancient spirit dust (found in the same manner as the stones) and a single black stone with simple alchemy.
Finally, they are often rewarded for completing missions and defeating bosses.
How to Insert a Caphras Stone in Gear
To insert a Caphras stone into your weapon or armor you first need to access the enhancement window with the black spirit. In there you need to click the Caphras tab at the top of the window. Next, you place the weapon or armor piece you intend to enhance in the right window. You then get information about the number of stones you need to use to enhance your gear to the next level. In the image below you see that the Dandelion Scythe’s level is 0 and it needs 30 Caphras stones to advance to the next level.
Now, as you can see, you can use less than the required amount of Caphras stones to level up. But then you only get a percentage value to the next level. In this case, it will become 80% and you gain no benefit from a partial level. Because of this, it is usually better to collect the stones until you have enough to enhance directly to the next level.
Enhancing Items with Installed Caphras Stones Before Reaching Level 20
Now this bit here is important. You can, of course, enhance items that have Caphras stones installed. However, if you fail the enhancement you will also lose 50% of the Caphras stone experience from that item. And should you succeed, only 10% of the Caphras experience will carry over to the next tier. With this in mind, I usually recommend that players extract the Caphras stones from a piece of gear they are attempting to enhance.
You can see from the gear information screen if a piece of gear has any Caphras levels. The “Current Level” shown in the image below (which is at 1) is the Caphras level of that item.
Extracting Stones From Gear
You can extract Caphras stones which you have already placed in a piece of gear. To do that you need to visit a blacksmith and open the extract window. You can extract 95% of the Caphras stones in your gear, but for each stone extracted you need to pay 100.000 silver. Extracting Caphras stones does not affect the enhancement level of your gear, but you do lose the added bonus from the stones.
Cost Analysis for Enhancement
We can use the following method to find the total cost of enhancing an item by using Caphras stones.
First, take the number of stones needed and multiply it with the current value on the marketplace.
Example: A boss weapon from TRI to TET needs about 2000 stones. When this is written the buyout price is about 2 million for a single stone. This means that the Caphras stone cost is 2.000 x 2.400.000 = 4.8 billion silver.
Next, calculate the cost of 100 memory fragments in the same way. When this is written the price is about 1.600.000 silver for a single memory fragment. This means that to restore the item to full durability would cost 100 x 2.000.000 = 160 million silver, which is a small amount compared to the price of the Caphras stones.
From this, we get the total cost of about 4.9-5.0 billion silver to enhance a boss weapon from TRI to TET.
You can see that using Caphras stones is not a cheap way to enhance your weapons and armor. A similar analysis for a single boss grade weapon from TET to PEN would give a cost of roughly 38 billion silver. The cost of getting full boss gear from TRI to PEN? 256 billion silver, assuming the previously mentioned prices.
Keep in mind that the silver cost is found from the estimates shown in the table above. There is probably some deviation in the numbers shown but this should give you an idea of the costs involved. Nevertheless, these numbers are nuts.
Are Caphras Stones Worth Pursuing?
In my opinion, yes and no. Using Caphras stones for a guaranteed TRI – TET enhancement might be a reasonable thing to do in certain circumstances, but using them for a guaranteed TET-PEN enhancement is mildly insane. The total silver cost aside, the time investment needed for grinding is also just too high for a TET – PEN enhancement.
However, if you already have PEN items, or aren’t considering enhancing your current TET items to PEN then you should consider installing Caphras stones in them to get the added bonus they give. Remember, you can also extract your stones from any TET piece you have if you want to try and enhance it to PEN later on.
So that’s it. Now if you liked this guide on Caphras stones in BDO then be sure to share it with your friends and allies and feel free to check out my other Black Desert Online guides.