A couple thoughts about the Upgrade Item feature:

1) Shields
I think it's too strong of a disincentive to use a shield because not only are you giving up the superior auto attack damage a two-hander or dual wielding provides, but you are also shorting your character +15% enhanced damage. Spellcaster off-hands don't suffer from this disadvantage as they're considered weapons yet I don't see wizards smacking anyone with their snow cones. What do you think of allowing the Upgrade Item to consider Shields as weapons and grant bonus enhanced damage?

2) Weapons Enhancing All Damage
When upgrading weapons, you have to choose between boosting Physical or Magical damage. I'm thinking this choice is unfair to hybrid classes. As a rogue nearly all of my damage is physical so I'm not really concerned that my Poison doesn't get boosted. However, I imagine other hybrid classes deal a mix of damage and so only benefit half as much as a pure physical or magical damage dealing class would. What do you think of having the Upgrade Item for weapons boost both?

1 Nah. I would rather give all shields a passive block% to make them more useful for players that actually care about defense (hardcore).

2. Hey, brah. That's hybrid life. Maybe... but maybe make it much more expensive? Dat gold sink.

Considering there's a message saying, "Success is guaranteed" my first impression was that the system would be an RNG upgrade system to really drain the bank. Guaranteed for the first few but then diminishing chances as you get higher and higher so that last 10/10 would take a ton of gold and luck.

I suppose you could still add in extra levels that do just that for people sitting on a bunch of gold and looking to spin the wheel.

that "success is guaranteed" message is an artifact from a point in beta where success was not guaranteed.

failure destroyed the item.

perhaps failure should still be possible, but without destroying the item?

I always wondered about that. Never upgraded anything all the way, but wondered if I'd get to < 100% success.

If you do re-introduce failure, please make it non-destructive. I'm too chickensh*t to upgrade if it's 99.8%.

Good gold sink, though.

This is a really popular feature in Eastern games, but Western gamers apparently hate it. It was an idea I liked from Phantasy Star Universe.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MQEm3hkSpI[/video]

+rep for retro The Price Is Right audio goodness.

You could have both? Why not have a risky upgrade, with a chance to destroy item/lose overall upgrade slots/fail and lose chunk of change/etc, this could provide additional bonuses, maybe an item proc or special effect for 5/10 or 10/10.

Then if people aren't game for it, a guaranteed success upgrade which costs more/same/less but gives less stats?

Or you could have 5 for risky upgrade and 5 for safe upgrade? Something along those lines.

The min-maxers always want better stats, and this introduces gold sinks/item sinks if/when trading comes around.

Personally, I don't like taking risks quite like that, so the alternative guaranteed but weaker upgrades would probably be my thing, but it would at least allow the choice.

Not a bad idea. Would require some considerable redesign though. I love the idea of destroying items. Maybe I'm just a sadist lol

I'd rather to have random enchants so you have to keep getting an item instead of getting it broken :/ I'ts similar but it hurts a lot more when your items breaks and you realize you spent last 5 hours for nothing..