Just an idea/thought (after realising I have 10k machined gold and seen the new fancy blocks that take refined gold to make 
)
It would be cool if we could revert the steps on precious metals and gem stonesā¦ for example
Compact > Refined > Machined
Could we perhaps have the option to revert back to the previous step 
Same for oort please
Welcome back Nawty.
I wanted this so bad when the new blocks came out. Iād been machining all my excess iron and had, at one point, around 60 stacks of it machined in storage.
All that stops at refined now until I know what Iām going to do with it.
It would be a nice addition but it would have to balance out the experience earned so you canāt machine/unmachine/machine/unmachine in a loop.
Iām not sure if material loss would cover it as some people would happily grind through multiple cycles for experience.
Maybe if the spark cost to revert something was just ridiculous it would help to offset the xp gain
I think perhaps you should only earn experience going the regular way, but when reverting materials you donāt earn anyā¦ would be fair.
To revert your stuff, it could even cost a little more to do to even it outā¦ I think it would make certain items More desirable within the economy too, making it stronger 
Or maybe you get less back, like some gets wasted in the process
I suppose that could work too. It just sucks having sooo much material of something and then with new blocks constantly coming outā¦ I have no problem having to do the process again to get the new block, just be āquality of lifeā I suppose more than anything.
I think reverting back to base material with no lose and no xp gain for be acceptable from both parties. Have a ton of things would love to revert back.
Maybe add a spark cost as a penalty if anything.
So I had some āfunā with excel this morning 
Hereās a breakdown showing machining/reverting cycles for refined iron with the system returning 32 blocks for every batch of 36. This represents about an 11% material loss per cycle.
I started with 1080 refined blocks and ran it out until thereās not enough blocks left to recycle. Cubit calculation assumes full time on a teaching pie.
This is based on iron which gives 450xp per mass machine. I replaced that with 1500xp for decorative sapphire and got this:
So considering this is with more than 10% materials lost per cycle, it adds up pretty quick.
One way to negate this completely would be to create a new type of block for every material in every stage it could be reverted to. An equivalent of a āDUG_UPā type that doesnāt provide any experience on further processing.
Another way would be to incur a huge spark cost for reverting your materials. I have no idea how much spark it would have to be for the devs to allow infinite reprocessing of the same materials. With no material loss and a spark cost this amounts to farming trunk/peat for unlimited gem processing experience.
If they were to give us this I would expect to see both high spark cost for reversion and steep material loss. It seems a lot more reasonable in terms of development costs than creating all of the new item types and the logic/rules for processing them.
Maybe allow reverting by paying it with xp? For example new food buff, forge boon or augment that takes (part of) xp that can be used for reverting recipes.
I have to say Iām playing ādevilās advocateā on this one since I would love to be able to revert blocks, I just donāt see how it fits into the game without a massive penalty due to the way cubits work.
This would have to actually remove cubits from your cubit balance in order to be effective.
Otherwise you could just grind to a level, collect cubits, revert to lose some XP (who cares) and then grind the levels again, to collect more cubits.
I mean it would take xp when you earn it to aside to augment that could be traded or to some personal shadow xp pool. Not take XP away that has already been awarded so that it wouldnāt be exploited with temp characters or huge negative XP amount.
Hmmm something like the death penalty mechanism where it counts against future experience?
That might be pretty effective.
Something like that. I understood that crafting xp loop is something that is not wanted. So system where it takes xp away (maybe even more than it is awarding) could be part to make this possible.
Technically you could negate all of these issues by simply making it cost XPā¦ perhaps just the same as what a mass craft would give. That way, reverting it and then re running it again would simply cancel each other out. Itās not as if XP/Level gain gives you anything āspecialā other than the coffers 
Well thatās what Iām saying, they would have to take away the earned cubits, not just the XP.
Otherwise you could collect cubits, lose the meaningless XP, collect more cubits, lose the meaningless XP, etcā¦
Getting some additional levels vs. getting the same levels over and over again has the same net effect.
Itās probably easier to apply a system for managing an XP penalty (since we already have this), than to create a system to manage deficits in XP, cubits, and potentially a plot deficit it someone decided to get the level, open the coffers, purchase plots, then revert the materials.
That would be the best way I think personally, make the revert cost the price of the equivalent original craft. Single/mid/mass.
And if you choose to revert you have the XP penalty similar to that of a death penalty, so that if you do want to try and exploit the system it would be fruitless.
Though you also want to take in account players that are level 1,000,000 may not care about an xp penalty. Though if they have to pay spark for the system to work that could be a type of penalty.
Simply suggesting an XP penalty to stop people exploiting XP by doing a cycle and then reverting.
