Yeah I wasn’t 100% certain on that. I would guess it requires a level 10 devastating damage to overcome the damage loss on a 3x3.
This sounds reasonable my only experience sitting in with forging this type of item was with grapples and they require 10/10/10 where forging a ‘perfect’ AoE hammer is only 4/10/10.
This (the compound cost) is only one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is extending the forging session long enough to hit your desired boon levels at less than 1/4 the boon points (vs a diamond tool) per compound.
Pushing a forging session over 500 rounds carries a considerable expense no matter the outcome. I’ve sat through three of these sessions and while I think one of them was luckily done in something like 490 rounds, one of them also went over 580. With quirks.
This (limiting boons) carries a cost as well, which may end up being more or less than just allowing some random boons depending on how you go about it. Either should definitely be cheaper than pushing for max on three target boons though.
Also @MrNiX is a forging wizard where I’m something of a novice.
This might be the rare case where boon removal solvent 2 has a place over 1. I’m not sure if I’d even bother with trait reduction since the deck is so limited after you load for stacking pastes.
Discarding those hard earned boon points with boon removal solvent 1 would hurt. But letting them slide off into random boons would add a random amount of expense to reaching level 10 with your target boon.
Yeah I have a few of these “why not” items myself lol. Seeing the damage numbers posted on some of those bows with the heavy projectiles recently was interesting though 
The maxed out bows I bought from Morgan some months ago are still decorating my cabinet for the most part. I paid a little extra to get some of the first at auction and save them for t7 hunting only which doesn’t happen often.
@MrNiX will forge to order but he often has a backlog. There may be some pre-forged items in the TNT Superstore.
(Maxing this axe only got rank 420 due to it also being a 4/10/10)
@Tonezone at the golden fist usually has a bunch of pre-forged lucent stuff in stock though most of them won’t be “perfected” they’ll be reasonably priced.
@illuminawtyness had quite a few lucent items at reasonable prices last time I was in his shop too. That was before we got umbris not sure what’s out there now.
I haven’t been to AluTech for a long time either. I have no idea what they have at the moment.