It's an interface bug.

I've bug reported it at least 3 times since launch. Even being aware of it, it caught me twice now.

The issue may be related to concurrent usage of crafting stations, I think.

What is happening is, after you click on the + sign to increase the number of improvement consumables (say... Honing Stones for Blacksmithing) and then you click on Improve (R by default) then it pops up a box

The box asks you You have a xx% chance to improve blah blah, are you sure?

Press E to Accept.

The bug is, in between the time you press R and E, after pressing + a few times (however many you need to get it to whatever chance you're comfortable with) the value (the number of Honing Stones) reduces, and your chance is reset to using just one. You can watch it yourself at any public crafting station that's quite busy, it's trivial to reproduce.

How to reproduce the bug? Press + a few times, then press R, but don't press E right away. Wait a few seconds, and you'll see the chance percentage drop back to one improvement consumable.

If you go out in to the great wide world to craft a set for set bonuses, you'll see it doesn't happen as much, because so few people use those stations ( I think, not sure, just guessing).

In any case, relogging sometimes helps, or going to a workshop where there are fewer people sometimes helps, but yep, interface/UI bug, been there since launch, but most of the time, people are quick, and they don't get caught by it.

As you can see in this thread, the exact problem has been mentioned three times already, yet people still jump in not reading the thread just as they are not reading the confirmation dialog and still think they are using 100% booster items when it has been reset to one booster item due to an ui bug.

Again: READ the entire confirmation dialog box that pops up. If that does not say 100%, abort. Exit the crafting mode, go back in and redo. What happens is that after improving one item, the UI bugs out and will reset you to one booster item, no matter what you try to set. Only the confirmation dialog which you should NOT BLINDLY ACCEPT will tell you the true chance and if it says 100%, you'll get 100%.

The confirmation dialog box is in the middle of the screen, not the thing with the plus and minus button on the bottom. Read it.

I have had this happen before, but I was clicking the + sign pretty fast...I noticed right before I hit E to craft the item, it went down from 100% to 50%. From then on, I slow down & have not had an issue since.

BirdUp wrote: »

Here's the fix to your problem, and you're not going to like it. When that warning dialog pops up (and we all have learned to breeze through these kind of things, because yeah I wanna improve the item I know what I'm doing), YOU HAVE GOT TO STOP AND READ IT. TWICE. VERIFY IT SAYS 100% CHANCE.

Why? Here's the bug. The number of improving agents you're using can sometimes "magically" go from (omg) 8 to 1 (or similar). I don't know what the deal is, maybe there's some timeout. No idea. But that warning dialog NEVER LIES. When the warning dialog says 100%, you can go make yourself a sandwich, get some sleep, it will stay at 100%, it's locked in. And 100% means it will succeed, guaranteed.

Yeah, I do Clothing (and Smithing and Woodworking). I turn things blue or purple (or even yellow) for customers. I have never once failed a single improvement for them, because: I learned the hard way to STOP AND READ THE WARNING DIALOG.

Gillysan wrote: »

Anthony45122 wrote: »

There is a bug that resets the tannins you are using back down to 1. No matter if it says 1,2,3,4,5. It still might be only 1. Make sure you check the 100% when it shows the warning. What likely happened to you is it dropped back down to one before you noticed, you quickly completed the improvement and it failed because you only had a 20% chance or so. There are a few other threads about this.

This. Pay attention to the pop-up and make sure it is still 100%. I have been wondering if failures come from this because by paying attention I have never failed on improving.

Ummm yeah NO...

If it dropped down to <25% (1 turpin) as I clicked the button to improve, Explain where my 4 turpin are? Because I'm missing 4 Turpin after a 100% fail fellahs...

I saw this happening (the number of improvement items suddenly resetting to 1) just after the game came back up from the maintenance. It hasn't happened since then, so it may have been a server lag/load problem.