Combining fragments - what decides the metal type?

[Muse 2,231]

When combining my rare archaeology items, I always wondered - which fragment decides the material type?  Does the rare piece, or one of the other combined pieces?  Or is it assigned randomly when finishing?

 

I just today found a supreme war arrow head fragment, and so I was looking through my war arrow head fragments for a couple more pieces to combine with it.   

I came across two legacy iron fragments (some fragments used to be labelled iron before that got fixed).

Now if those legacy items were labelled correctly, they should both be made of iron - so I thought I would use those two, to complete the arrow head.

I combined the two iron type fragments which made a 2/3 metal type fragment.   I then activated the supreme fragment before combining the supreme with the combined 2/3 metal fragment.

The resulting war arrow head was supreme, as expected, but was made of silver.

 

If the two iron fragments were labelled correctly as iron, it's fair to expect that they remained iron when combined, even though newly labelled as metal.   

 

This means that the final silver material came from either:

 

A   The supreme fragment OR

B   Random and chosen at the time of finishing OR

C   Legacy fragments labelled iron that were not all iron! OR

D   The 'iron' fragments changed to a random metal type when combining converted them to 2/3 'metal' type

 

SO! Either the supreme piece was doomed to be non-iron, or the metal type was completely random, or at least one of the legacy 'iron' fragments was mislabelled.

 

Whilst the order of combining (and thus rarity transfer) is within our control (activate the rare+), the deciding factor in determining the metal type is still not known. 

 

Q Has anyone any experience of combining a metal fragment with iron fragments one at a time (so they are still labelled as 'iron' when combining with the first)?

Q What do you think determines the metal type?

 

Please add your experiences of combining fragments!  

Edited October 25, 2022 by Muse

[kochinac 1,395]

I would say it's random, if i recall corectly there was something about particular fragments tending to be iron from patch notes but i cant remember which one exactly, or rather particular combined power of frags.... Eitherway i'm not happy with results, lot of my combining ends up not to be iron... which would be fine if we had metal transmutation as i suggested...

Oh and the fact that legacy frags are labeled with iron doesnt mean anything, you can get non iron item by combining all legacy iron frags

Edited October 25, 2022 by kochinac

[Finnn 3,317]

should be random roll when you complete the item,

it was kind of explained in the archaeology feedback thread or valrei/patchnotes update when last big archaeology changes came into the game

[Hailiah 443]

Depends on where you got the legacy fragments, the server crossing bug also produced those, from what should have been the normal fragments.

[jaytoo 687]

Iron in legacy archeology just means metal. it will roll from the non alloy metals at the time of combining the final fragment.

 

Metal distribution is influenced by rune score. So lower tier items and/or someone with better restoration and/or higher ql tools will improve chance at iron and more runes.