You are forgetting it's not just to get to level 30. It's every level in between. Let's do some math. The old system required 800 XP to get to level 30. Each level is the same as the last so getting to level 1 is the same as getting to the level 30. To find how much each level costs just divide by 30. Don't worry, this is simple math. 800/30 = 26.2/3. Now in 1.8 the cost to get to max level is 1300 XP. 1300/30 = 43.1/3. That's 16.7 more XP you need per level. Over all that's 502 more XP to get to level 30. Owch.
I'm not forgetting it. I'm saying you don't have to go to level 30 before starting enchanting, period.
I don't know what the exact level progression is, but if it's similar in proportion to pre-1.8 progression, then if it takes 1300 to get to level 30, it might take about 430 to get to level 16. Or 26/level. And since the next enchantment I want is Fortune III, as soon as I get three more diamonds in my game, I'm going to check each step from 16 to 30 (as soon as my cows mature) looking for for that Enchantment, and if I don't get it, I'll enchant another item, or a book, and then check again. Rinse and repeat until I get fortune III or I'm completely kitted out.
I don't have to go all the way to 30 if I can get it at 20, saving a lot of XP in the process.
That's great for you. However that was not what I meant by it won't change. As I was trying to be brief so people wouldn't skip over I made one thing unclear. EACH LEVEL will not change from it's designated enchantment. The unfortunate thing for you when you are enchanting below level 22 is you will most likely get crap as your other 2 enchantments. Sure you get silk touch, but you will get efficiency 2 or 3 with it at best. However if that works for you that fine.
So what? As long as I'm not completely kitted out, I don't really care what the lower enchantments are. If I didn't get the enchantment I wanted on the pickaxe, then I'd check a bow. Or a sword. Or the various pieces of armor. Or a book. Or an iron pick (getting a fortune III iron pickaxe would be a good start IMO). And if none of those things has no enchantment I want, at any level of enchantment from 16 to 30, then I'd roll the dice at 16 with an iron pickaxe.
And based on my testing, the chances of that happening, especially if I check at multiple levels, is rather slim.
And once I've gotten my starting kit established, I'll be enchanting directly to books. They're much more useful now, since you know almost exactly what you're getting, and you get your choice of between 6 and 12 different enchants per book.
And yes, low levels of Efficiency do indeed work for me. I prefer not to have high levels of efficiency on my silk touch pickaxes. When I custom make them, I usually go with just Unbreaking III if I can. There's too much danger of breaking blocks I don't need at high levels of efficiency. So getting E2 or E3 (it was E3, with U3 as well) is perfect.
It's the same with Fortune III... or my mining pickaxe (don't want to accidentally break diamond ore)... or pretty much any pickaxe that isn't being used to clear out huge swaths of stone. For everyday use, anything over E3 is overkill IMO.
However, lapis is something you need to enchant your items. It's just like iron or gold or diamonds. When you run out it doesn't matter which resource it is. You have to get ready to mine again. Something, unlike other people I don't like to do. So now I'll have to trade with villagers/ other people on SMP or go mining. A minor problem, but still something you must consider. Right now on my singleplayer I have 4 stacks of lapis blocks. That's about 768 third tier enchantments. I won't run out anytime soon.
I assume you also trade for your diamonds?
Because if you mine for them, then you'll have plenty of lapis, especially if you use a Fortune III pick on them.
Diamonds have always been the bottleneck for me when it comes to enchanting. XP is plentiful even without XP farms, unless you're profligate with it, and the new system makes economical XP use even easier than before.
Edit: Just tested level progression. It looks like it costs (level*2+5) to go up a level for levels 1-16, while it costs 37+(level-16)*4 for to go up a level after 16. At least to level 30. So it only costs 352 XP to get to level 16... a little more than before, but it also costs less XP than before to get to level 10.
Pre 1.8 snapshots you could get special combos of enchants where if they were named you can repair them infinitely, however this didn't apply to every combo so you couldn't have super uber items ( you were restricted to say... a UB III Eff V diamond pic and anything higher would render it in-repairable at all.
Now with the new snapshot nothing can last forever even with naming but.... repairs are kind of lowered so even higher level items like possibly a UB III Eff V Silk Touch I/Fortune III can last for a long time and still be repaired just not infinitely.
Pre 1.8 snapshots you could get special combos of enchants where if they were named you can repair them infinitely, however this didn't apply to every combo so you couldn't have super uber items ( you were restricted to say... a UB III Eff V diamond pic and anything higher would render it in-repairable at all.
Now with the new snapshot nothing can last forever even with naming but.... repairs are kind of lowered so even higher level items like possibly a UB III Eff V Silk Touch I/Fortune III can last for a long time and still be repaired just not infinitely.
Actually, you CAN repair the aforementioned pickaxe under the old system, because I used one myself and repaired it countless times in my first main world, it just costs 37 levels for a one-unit repair; you can test it yourself if you don't believe me (start a Creative world and give yourself a diamond pickaxe and put Efficiency V on it, then mine a bunch (in Survival mode) to wear it out, before putting Fortune III and Unbreaking III on it; remember to rename before repairing).
Not sure why people are always saying (have heard similar remarks multiple times recently) that you can't repair an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III pickaxe, unless they don't know you can use individual diamonds to repair it instead of combining with a new tool (sure, you can only repair it 25% at a time but by caving and mostly just mining ores/fighting mobs I get plenty of XP). Silk Touch would also be 4 levels cheaper, at 33 levels per repair, allowing you to repair it with two diamonds (50% at a time).
Here is the math for calculating repair cost, straight from the Wiki:
Efficiency V = 5 levels
Fortune III = 12 levels (Silk Touch I = 8 levels)
Unbreaking III = 6 levels
Cost for 3 enchants = 6 levels
Prior work cost (renamed) = 2 levels
------------------
Base cost = 31 (27 with Silk Touch)
Cost for one unit = 3 for diamond + 3 enchants = 6
Total cost = 37 levels (33 with Silk Touch, 39 for two units)
ETA:
I also think that having to spend 37 levels and being restricted to how you can repair it makes a lot more sense than the current system, which allows you to completely repair it at a very low initial cost; OP tools SHOULD be more expensive to repair.
TheMasterCaver before you read the rest of this post I want to ask you something to clarify.... does repairing with single units of resources (diamond instead of whole tool) in the old system bypass the effect of naming or does it get stopped by the effect of naming like repairing with a whole tool would? Because if repairing with single units doesn't bypass the effect then that would mean you would be able to repair an Eff V UB III Silk/Fortune III pick forever in the old system... :'o
So yeah can you answer that because I'm really curious
Hmm honestly I am always so vague with my post.... I guess you can repair really high enchanted tools like what you said but I meant to say that :
1. you couldn't repair them infinitely in the old system
2. *(assuming your answer to the above question was it does not repair infinitely) you couldn't repair them as much in the old system as you could in the new system (notice how you said that the cost is 37 levels..... I'm guessing that you would only be able to get 1-2 repairs using diamond before it reaches the 39 level cap. In the new system I heard the repair rate is lowered so you can repair any item a higher amount of times before it becomes unrepairable.
TheMasterCaver before you read the rest of this post I want to ask you something to clarify.... does repairing with single units of resources (diamond instead of whole tool) in the old system bypass the effect of naming or does it get stopped by the effect of naming like repairing with a whole tool would? Because if repairing with single units doesn't bypass the effect then that would mean you would be able to repair an Eff V UB III Silk/Fortune III pick forever in the old system... :'o
So yeah can you answer that because I'm really curious
Hmm honestly I am always so vague with my post.... I guess you can repair really high enchanted tools like what you said but I meant to say that :
1. you couldn't repair them infinitely in the old system
2. *(assuming your answer to the above question was it does not repair infinitely) you couldn't repair them as much in the old system as you could in the new system (notice how you said that the cost is 37 levels..... I'm guessing that you would only be able to get 1-2 repairs using diamond before it reaches the 39 level cap. In the new system I heard the repair rate is lowered so you can repair any item a higher amount of times before it becomes unrepairable.
The old system always fixes the prior work penalty to 2 regardless of what you do or how you repair; again, from the anvil mechanics page:
Regardless of the work being done, be it rename, repair, or combine, there will be an extra cost, the "prior work penalty", to work on an item which has previously been altered in an anvil.
If the item has been renamed at any point, the penalty is always 2 levels, regardless of further alterations.
So, you can indefinitely repair something as long as you rename it, regardless of how you repair it or how much it costs, as long as it is under 40 levels (like I said, I repaired the same pickaxe countless times; I'm estimating around 200 based on how much I mined, minus what I mined with other pickaxes).
Wait so basically after combining the last book or what ever to make say an Eff V UB III Fortune III diamond pick I can repair it forever in 1.7(and preceding versions) using diamonds instead of a whole diamond pick?
Edit : Holy crap I just tested in creative on a named pick with Eff V UB III and instead of costing 33 levels to repair with a pick.... using diamond only cost 19 levels....... I've been living out my whole smp gaming experience as a lie..... lol XD
i belive the new repairing system is better because in older versions some items cant be repaired (To Expensive) and if you got something worth repairing it will be so hard to repair i once had fortune 3 pickaxe i had to get 36 lvls to repair it its just so expensive , yes the new system is abit cheap maybe they will make it more expesnive in the later updates < My opionion Dont judge me
Edit : Holy crap I just tested in creative on a named pick with Eff V UB III and instead of costing 33 levels to repair with a pick.... using diamond only cost 19 levels....... I've been living out my whole smp gaming experience as a lie..... lol XD
Did you remember the Fortune III?
But it is definitely possible to repair uber-items indefinitely under 1.7, as long as you
1) Only do partial repairs. One game I used mostly destroyed bows I'd gotten from skeletons to keep a super-bow from breaking completely. This was before I'd decided that XP farms were ruining my fun in the game. Using a single diamond when the pick is almost destroyed does keep the XP cost below 40, but you can never repair it to full.
I personally created "ideal" tools under the previous system, ones that are not maximum power but rather do a specific task very well. For example my ideal Fortune pickaxe was Fortune 3 + Unbreaking 3, and same for a Silk Touch pickaxe, because these I don't use for speed mining and therefore I don't gain much from Efficiency on them. Then there is the Efficiency 5 + Unbreaking 3 pickaxe which I use for general mining and work (although I have started moving back to stone and iron pickaxes while building structures).
The only way I have ever been able to get my ideal Fortune pickaxe was with books and an anvil aside from one freak coincidence where I got that exact setup from the enchanting table, normally if I get Fortune 3 I also get Efficiency 4 and Unbreaking 3, which turns the pickaxe into a long-lasting but temporary one since I won't attempt to repair it (unless I have no other fallback at the time).
37 level cost is just overkill. It is 1406 experience and 1.7 times the experience you need for level 30. The game forces you into endless circle of repairing since you never can afford to use your levels in other enchanted items, unless you "save" your enchanted tool which is dumb.
The game punishes you for using these so called "too good" (also known as fun) items that probably took many hours to make. The fact that you can lose it any time when adventuring is already enough punishment. The players should be encouraged to use their items rather than "save" them endlessly or be chained in the endless circle of repairing. Reasonable cost would be that you don't spend ANY experience on repairing something you've well deserved already. The fact that repairing is so overly expensive just forces people to use xp farms, which is also "op", right?
Xp farming and power farming is the only way you can progress. Otherwise you're stuck, grinding forever only to upkeep your current state.
I don't know... grinding is like what I do when I'm bored or it's a late night on SMP.... Unless people are mining whole chunks to bedrock or doing some extreme stuff, the diamond tool should last long enough for you to enchant other things that you like... My God bow cost 39 levels to repair but it's really not a hastle.
I don't know... grinding is like what I do when I'm bored or it's a late night on SMP.... Unless people are mining whole chunks to bedrock or doing some extreme stuff, the diamond tool should last long enough for you to enchant other things that you like... My God bow cost 39 levels to repair but it's really not a hastle.
True that, and I've never even made an XP farm or intentionally gotten XP, besides for my initial enchanting (recently, mining Nether quartz), since my regular playstyle gives me plenty of XP; for example, by caving, you mostly mine ores instead of stone, greatly reducing wear on your pickaxe and enabling you to just use one pickaxe for everything, then you have to fight a lot of mobs (of course, this means wear on your armor and weapons; whether this offsets wear on your pickaxe by just branch mining or not, I still get plenty of extra XP, and need to repair my pickaxe far more often than anything else).
You can even use iron ore, and to a lesser extent, gold ore (more XP per ore but rarer) as an "XP bank", as each ore will give you 0.7 XP, or 2,419 XP for a double chest of iron ore; so under the new system, if I need to enchant, I can just fill up a bunch of furnaces with iron ore, then take some iron out to reach level 30 (if not already), enchant, take some more out to get back to level 30, repeat (even now, in 1.6, I'll use XP from this to repair tools, or get rid of some of my low-value enchanted books by making more powerful ones; also, I recently found out (just never tried it before) that you can actually put multiple enchantments on a book in 1.6, just not more than one from the table).
I'm a bit confused. Which is supposed to be more "grind-y": spending 30 levels and 3 diamonds repeatedly until desirable enchantments pop up, then using > 30 levels and a diamond for a partial repair; or getting to 30, spending a few levels and lapis at a time enchanting one of several objects with a known enchant until the one you really want on the tool you want shows up, then spending 1-12 levels for full repairs until the tool can't be repaired any more and starting over?
It seems like different people are saying both are worse in that respect.
All I know is that before in addition to being upset blowing 30 levels and 3 diamonds on nonsense, I'd also be upset if the enchantment was "too good" because then full repairs would be too expensive and partial repairs are not as efficient uses of diamonds, and also expensive. So I'd use mediocre tools because I could handle the repair costs. Now, getting a good pick is easy and cheap enough and reliable enough that if I can't keep my favorite one forever, oh well. I am going to miss having Lapis as a finite and purely decorative block. Now I'll have to weigh using it in builds versus enchanting more goodies. Thank goodness the cost is low; pfft to the one who said it should be more.
Actually in 1.8 there is a new mechanic that stops us from keeping our tools. Every time we work on our tools (repairing, renaming, combining) it multiplies the XP cost to repair it. Renaming a tool doesn't make it stop at a limit now. This has made renaming completely useless (other than for aesthetics) and we can no longer keep our tools that we put loads of time and effort into. The older enchant and repair system was better, at least that way we could keep our tools....
Renaming isn't useless, it's still fun to add a stylish name to something you like, even if it doesn't last forever. Naming is useful in name only, so to speak, and that is reflected by how cheap it is.
As for not being able to keep your tools forever, is that such a big deal under the new enchanting system? My chest full of Fortune 3 and Silk Touch diamond pickaxes as well as bunch of Efficiency 4 + Unbreaking 3 work picks begs to differ on that, and I'd have probably a chest full of Efficiency 4 books if Efficiency 5 was a big thing for me (I only really use that for obsidian). I also have more diamond swords with Sharpnesses, Knockbacks, Lootings and Fire Aspects than I can possibly use faster than I gain them.
You don't 'need' super-tools, and you don't 'need' super-weapons. If you do want those you can certainly still work towards them and they will last you for a long long time unless you're MasterCaver, and by the time they are about to break and the repair cost is uncomfortably high you have probably made the 8 next successors from all the enchanting in-between already.
I'm not forgetting it. I'm saying you don't have to go to level 30 before starting enchanting, period.
I don't know what the exact level progression is, but if it's similar in proportion to pre-1.8 progression, then if it takes 1300 to get to level 30, it might take about 430 to get to level 16. Or 26/level. And since the next enchantment I want is Fortune III, as soon as I get three more diamonds in my game, I'm going to check each step from 16 to 30 (as soon as my cows mature) looking for for that Enchantment, and if I don't get it, I'll enchant another item, or a book, and then check again. Rinse and repeat until I get fortune III or I'm completely kitted out.
I don't have to go all the way to 30 if I can get it at 20, saving a lot of XP in the process.
So what? As long as I'm not completely kitted out, I don't really care what the lower enchantments are. If I didn't get the enchantment I wanted on the pickaxe, then I'd check a bow. Or a sword. Or the various pieces of armor. Or a book. Or an iron pick (getting a fortune III iron pickaxe would be a good start IMO). And if none of those things has no enchantment I want, at any level of enchantment from 16 to 30, then I'd roll the dice at 16 with an iron pickaxe.
And based on my testing, the chances of that happening, especially if I check at multiple levels, is rather slim.
And once I've gotten my starting kit established, I'll be enchanting directly to books. They're much more useful now, since you know almost exactly what you're getting, and you get your choice of between 6 and 12 different enchants per book.
And yes, low levels of Efficiency do indeed work for me. I prefer not to have high levels of efficiency on my silk touch pickaxes. When I custom make them, I usually go with just Unbreaking III if I can. There's too much danger of breaking blocks I don't need at high levels of efficiency. So getting E2 or E3 (it was E3, with U3 as well) is perfect.
It's the same with Fortune III... or my mining pickaxe (don't want to accidentally break diamond ore)... or pretty much any pickaxe that isn't being used to clear out huge swaths of stone. For everyday use, anything over E3 is overkill IMO.
I assume you also trade for your diamonds?
Because if you mine for them, then you'll have plenty of lapis, especially if you use a Fortune III pick on them.
Diamonds have always been the bottleneck for me when it comes to enchanting. XP is plentiful even without XP farms, unless you're profligate with it, and the new system makes economical XP use even easier than before.
Edit: Just tested level progression. It looks like it costs (level*2+5) to go up a level for levels 1-16, while it costs 37+(level-16)*4 for to go up a level after 16. At least to level 30. So it only costs 352 XP to get to level 16... a little more than before, but it also costs less XP than before to get to level 10.
Pre 1.8 snapshots you could get special combos of enchants where if they were named you can repair them infinitely, however this didn't apply to every combo so you couldn't have super uber items ( you were restricted to say... a UB III Eff V diamond pic and anything higher would render it in-repairable at all.
Now with the new snapshot nothing can last forever even with naming but.... repairs are kind of lowered so even higher level items like possibly a UB III Eff V Silk Touch I/Fortune III can last for a long time and still be repaired just not infinitely.
Actually, you CAN repair the aforementioned pickaxe under the old system, because I used one myself and repaired it countless times in my first main world, it just costs 37 levels for a one-unit repair; you can test it yourself if you don't believe me (start a Creative world and give yourself a diamond pickaxe and put Efficiency V on it, then mine a bunch (in Survival mode) to wear it out, before putting Fortune III and Unbreaking III on it; remember to rename before repairing).
Not sure why people are always saying (have heard similar remarks multiple times recently) that you can't repair an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III pickaxe, unless they don't know you can use individual diamonds to repair it instead of combining with a new tool (sure, you can only repair it 25% at a time but by caving and mostly just mining ores/fighting mobs I get plenty of XP). Silk Touch would also be 4 levels cheaper, at 33 levels per repair, allowing you to repair it with two diamonds (50% at a time).
Here is the math for calculating repair cost, straight from the Wiki:
Efficiency V = 5 levels
Fortune III = 12 levels (Silk Touch I = 8 levels)
Unbreaking III = 6 levels
Cost for 3 enchants = 6 levels
Prior work cost (renamed) = 2 levels
------------------
Base cost = 31 (27 with Silk Touch)
Cost for one unit = 3 for diamond + 3 enchants = 6
Total cost = 37 levels (33 with Silk Touch, 39 for two units)
ETA:
I also think that having to spend 37 levels and being restricted to how you can repair it makes a lot more sense than the current system, which allows you to completely repair it at a very low initial cost; OP tools SHOULD be more expensive to repair.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
TheMasterCaver before you read the rest of this post I want to ask you something to clarify.... does repairing with single units of resources (diamond instead of whole tool) in the old system bypass the effect of naming or does it get stopped by the effect of naming like repairing with a whole tool would? Because if repairing with single units doesn't bypass the effect then that would mean you would be able to repair an Eff V UB III Silk/Fortune III pick forever in the old system... :'o
So yeah can you answer that because I'm really curious
Hmm honestly I am always so vague with my post.... I guess you can repair really high enchanted tools like what you said but I meant to say that :
1. you couldn't repair them infinitely in the old system
2. *(assuming your answer to the above question was it does not repair infinitely) you couldn't repair them as much in the old system as you could in the new system (notice how you said that the cost is 37 levels..... I'm guessing that you would only be able to get 1-2 repairs using diamond before it reaches the 39 level cap. In the new system I heard the repair rate is lowered so you can repair any item a higher amount of times before it becomes unrepairable.
The old system always fixes the prior work penalty to 2 regardless of what you do or how you repair; again, from the anvil mechanics page:
So, you can indefinitely repair something as long as you rename it, regardless of how you repair it or how much it costs, as long as it is under 40 levels (like I said, I repaired the same pickaxe countless times; I'm estimating around 200 based on how much I mined, minus what I mined with other pickaxes).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Did you remember the Fortune III?
But it is definitely possible to repair uber-items indefinitely under 1.7, as long as you
1) Only do partial repairs. One game I used mostly destroyed bows I'd gotten from skeletons to keep a super-bow from breaking completely. This was before I'd decided that XP farms were ruining my fun in the game. Using a single diamond when the pick is almost destroyed does keep the XP cost below 40, but you can never repair it to full.
2) Are willing to pay the XP cost to do so.
The only way I have ever been able to get my ideal Fortune pickaxe was with books and an anvil aside from one freak coincidence where I got that exact setup from the enchanting table, normally if I get Fortune 3 I also get Efficiency 4 and Unbreaking 3, which turns the pickaxe into a long-lasting but temporary one since I won't attempt to repair it (unless I have no other fallback at the time).
I don't know... grinding is like what I do when I'm bored or it's a late night on SMP.... Unless people are mining whole chunks to bedrock or doing some extreme stuff, the diamond tool should last long enough for you to enchant other things that you like... My God bow cost 39 levels to repair but it's really not a hastle.
True that, and I've never even made an XP farm or intentionally gotten XP, besides for my initial enchanting (recently, mining Nether quartz), since my regular playstyle gives me plenty of XP; for example, by caving, you mostly mine ores instead of stone, greatly reducing wear on your pickaxe and enabling you to just use one pickaxe for everything, then you have to fight a lot of mobs (of course, this means wear on your armor and weapons; whether this offsets wear on your pickaxe by just branch mining or not, I still get plenty of extra XP, and need to repair my pickaxe far more often than anything else).
You can even use iron ore, and to a lesser extent, gold ore (more XP per ore but rarer) as an "XP bank", as each ore will give you 0.7 XP, or 2,419 XP for a double chest of iron ore; so under the new system, if I need to enchant, I can just fill up a bunch of furnaces with iron ore, then take some iron out to reach level 30 (if not already), enchant, take some more out to get back to level 30, repeat (even now, in 1.6, I'll use XP from this to repair tools, or get rid of some of my low-value enchanted books by making more powerful ones; also, I recently found out (just never tried it before) that you can actually put multiple enchantments on a book in 1.6, just not more than one from the table).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
It seems like different people are saying both are worse in that respect.
All I know is that before in addition to being upset blowing 30 levels and 3 diamonds on nonsense, I'd also be upset if the enchantment was "too good" because then full repairs would be too expensive and partial repairs are not as efficient uses of diamonds, and also expensive. So I'd use mediocre tools because I could handle the repair costs. Now, getting a good pick is easy and cheap enough and reliable enough that if I can't keep my favorite one forever, oh well. I am going to miss having Lapis as a finite and purely decorative block. Now I'll have to weigh using it in builds versus enchanting more goodies. Thank goodness the cost is low; pfft to the one who said it should be more.
Renaming isn't useless, it's still fun to add a stylish name to something you like, even if it doesn't last forever. Naming is useful in name only, so to speak, and that is reflected by how cheap it is.
As for not being able to keep your tools forever, is that such a big deal under the new enchanting system? My chest full of Fortune 3 and Silk Touch diamond pickaxes as well as bunch of Efficiency 4 + Unbreaking 3 work picks begs to differ on that, and I'd have probably a chest full of Efficiency 4 books if Efficiency 5 was a big thing for me (I only really use that for obsidian). I also have more diamond swords with Sharpnesses, Knockbacks, Lootings and Fire Aspects than I can possibly use faster than I gain them.
You don't 'need' super-tools, and you don't 'need' super-weapons. If you do want those you can certainly still work towards them and they will last you for a long long time unless you're MasterCaver, and by the time they are about to break and the repair cost is uncomfortably high you have probably made the 8 next successors from all the enchanting in-between already.